Thursday, December 22, 2011

God Trusts Us

12/21/11 God Trusts Us GUMC Youth

Last time we got together, two weeks ago, I said that we live in a culture that just kind of assumes that everyone is a Christian, that we live in a "Christian nation." When I say that our culture does this I don't mean to say that it is a good thing, like many other people might. I am not at all convinced that it is a good thing to think of America as a Christian nation and I will tell you why. When we say, "We live in a Christian nation," it is all too easy to get blinded and tricked into thinking that what is Christian must be American and, even more dangerously, that what is American must be Christian. If we tried, we could probably make a pretty good list of things that we do as Americans that are completely acceptable in the eyes of the culture that, when we look at it through the eyes of the gospel, maybe we shouldn't do.

My point for bringing this up over and over again is not to give America a black eye. I am glad to live here and not somewhere else. I am not anti-America in any way. I am, however, so radically and completely pro-Jesus that I refuse to take my cue of what Christianity is all about from what I see in American culture. With that in mind, I have been trying to focus on things that Christmas teaches us that are more important than what we might imagine from looking at our secular culture during December. Last time, we talked about how, because at Christmas we celebrate the coming of God into our world, the Creator becoming a creature, Christmas is actually the center of all of space and time. Tonight, I want to talk about how Christmas shows us just how much God trusts us, which is a pretty amazing thing.

Now, when we ask the question, "Does God trust us," it seems at first glance that we can only take our answer in one of two directions. The first way we can look at it is to say that, because we are such sinful people and God is so holy, it would be hard to imagine that God really trusts us. It seems that every single time God entrusts anything into human hands, things fall apart. God calls Abraham and he starts telling lies to keep himself out of trouble. He calls Moses and he makes excuse after excuse to get out of doing what God wants him to do. He takes David from a small farming town and makes him one of the greatest kings that Israel ever had, and yet he responds by committing adultery and murder. There is no end to the examples we could put forward of how human beings continually let God down because they keep doing stupid things. Not only that, we can all look into our own hearts and see that we are all capable of doing stupid things, even if we don't do them all the time.

If we want to look at things from this angle, we could say that there is probably no greater example of why God should not trust us than the crucifixion. When God, in all his love and mercy, comes to meet us where we are, what do we do? We nail him to a cross. Back in the 90's, a singer named Joan Osborne asked the question, "What if God was one of us?" That question isn't an abstract one for us Christians. In Christ, God actually did become one of us. What if God was one of us? We have shown by our actions that we would kill him. If the very coming of love into our midst could only provoke anger and hatred from us, why should God trust us?

Now, we could look at it from a completely different point of view, one that our modern culture might like pretty well. After all, we don't need to look very far to find that the view that human beings are basically good and trustworthy by nature is amazingly common. Never mind the fact that human beings consistently commit horrible crimes against each other, never mind that our world seems to be continually torn by war, human beings are basically good. Even though it is clear where I come out on the issue of the inherent goodness of humanity, let's try to take it seriously and see where it leads us in this question, "Does God trust us?"

Now, if human beings are basically good and trustworthy, then the answer to the question whether God trusts us is a resounding "Yes!" And why not? After all, I do what I can to be good and trustworthy and I am sure that many, if not all of you do what you can to be good and trustworthy people. Being "good people" is really important to our culture today. What is interesting is that, because our whole culture teaches us to be fixated on ourselves, we sometimes don't realize how much we get in our own way to be good, especially because everyone around us seems to be doing the same things. I have some friends who have committed to giving away quite a bit more of their money to their church and other causes than the average person. Once, some friends said to them, "Boy, I wish I could give more, but I just don't have enough money to do it." The fact of the matter is that these same people who wanted to give more "go out" every weekend, which is a kind of code for, "going out to eat at a nice restaurant and getting a few drinks (and alcohol can be expensive)" which costs a lot of money if you do it all the time. The fact of the matter is that these people have plenty of money to give if they wanted to, but because they have believed the lie that says they have to spend all their money on themselves and they look around and see everyone else around them doing it, too, they simply can't see it.

Even if we put those kinds of situations aside, how many of you would say that there are people in the world who are not good people? How many of you would say that there are people you go to school with who are not, to all observers, good people? How many of them, if asked if they were a good person, would say "no?" Probably not any, or very very few of them. We all know people who are not good people, and we can see that human evil is a very real problem in our world, but we really want to believe that human beings are, at their core, good. Why is that? I am more and more convinced that it is because we want to convince ourselves that we are good people. After all, if I were to ask you, "Are you a good person?" you would probably say, "yes," right? What would you have to do before you would consider it possible that maybe you weren't as good as you would like to think you are? We desperately want to say, "Yes, God trusts us," because we want to think of ourselves as people that are worthy of trust, as people who are good enough for God to rely on.

So, we have two ways of looking at things. One of them says that God trusts us because we are trustworthy people, but can only say it by pretending the Bible doesn't say what it says, or by pretending it doesn't mean what it so obviously means. The other view says that God does not trust us because we cannot be trusted. This view takes the failure of humanity very seriously, but that seems to be a pretty depressing view of our situation and our relationship with God. In fact, it actually makes God seem kind of stupid, since he can't seem to figure it out that human beings keep messing things up, that every time he tells them to do something, they seem to find new and creative ways of sinning in the middle of it.

If you have gotten to know me at all over the last six months, you can probably tell that I don't quite fit into either group. On the one hand, it is clear that I don't think that human beings are, by nature, good. Yes, God created human beings good, but if that is the last word, we have forgotten the whole story of the Fall and the countless examples of human beings not being what they ought to be that we find in the Bible. And yet, though I feel that way about human beings, I didn't title this message "God Doesn't Trust Us," but "God Trusts Us." Unless I am being sarcastic (which I'm not), I must think that God actually does trust us. If that sounds odd, hopefully it will make more sense in a minute.

This is the whole reason why I had us read the passage from Luke's gospel where the angel speaks to Mary and tells her that she is going to be the mother of Jesus, of God when he stepped into his creation. Have you ever thought about how much God must have trusted Mary? There is so much that can go wrong in a pregnancy, especially two thousand years ago. God is saying to Mary, "I trust that you are going to take care of yourself throughout this whole pregnancy, I trust that you are going to be able to stand strong when people make fun of you for getting pregnant before you got married (because you know the truth that they don't and maybe even can't understand), I trust that you will make a good mother, that I will even allow you to raise Jesus, the God who created you." There is not a single parent in the history of the world who could say with absolute confidence, "I was a perfect parent." They might say, "I did the best I could do," or "In spite of all my faults, my kids turned out alright and that's all I can hope for," but I have not met anyone who would say, "I did everything right as a parent, every single day." And yet, here we have God entrusting the raising of Jesus into the hands of this ordinary, fallible human woman. That is pretty astonishing.

Once we begin to see that God actually might trust us at Christmastime, we start seeing that trust all over the place. Think about it; God comes into our midst, lives his life, has a teaching and miracle-working ministry, but he doesn't stay forever. Jesus eventually leaves. He is killed, raised from the dead, but within two months, he ascends back to his Father and is no longer among his disciples in the personal and physical way he had been before. At the end of the Gospel of Matthew we read what has come to be known as The Great Commission. "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." And then he leaves, he ascends to heaven.

Do you see what Jesus has done? He was raised from the dead in glory, he did not have to leave, but he did. He left the ministry that he, that is God himself, started, in the hands of ordinary people like you and me. Not only that, as we talked about a few months ago, it is a pretty odd group of people that he entrusts his ministry to. The one that we usually remember is that he trusts his ministry in the hands of people like Peter who denied him three times on the night he was betrayed, but that is not all. He also trusts it in the hands of people like James and John who were hot-tempered, impulsive people, and people like Simon the Zealot and Levi the tax collector, people from two groups that hated each other so much, it is amazing they can even be in the same place at the same time without violence, and Thomas the skeptic. When we look at the people that Jesus actually trusts to carry his message into the world, we realize that they are just like us, weak and broken people who have made a lot of mistakes. It is true that he sends his Holy Spirit to strengthen those disciples, but it was in their hands nonetheless.

So, what about all the failures of humanity that we pointed out earlier and are on nearly every page of the Bible? I mentioned that there are some who might say that because we are so unfaithful, God does not or at least should not trust us, but that isn't what I believe. That is because when I look at the failures of all the people in the Bible I don't just see them but I see something else, too. I also see God's plans not hindered by it. The sin of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, the disciples and a host of others did not stop God from doing what he was trying to do.

Here is some good news. We can look at the Bible, the whole of Christian history and even people in our lives today and see that God can do mighty things when people wake up and listen to him. It comes as no surprise that God moves when people are faithful, but does God only use our successes? What about our failures? Can God use them, too? It is clear that God absolutely does use our failures, and sometimes uses them as the most powerful expressions of his grace. We all know Peter denied Christ three times on Good Friday. After he was raised, Jesus asked Peter if he loved him, but he didn't just ask it, he asked it three times. It is almost as if Jesus was undoing those denials. Jesus showed Peter that those denials from back then did not stop him from being his disciple right now.

To give another example, look at the crucifixion. Was there ever a more evil act of humanity than the betrayal and murder of the Son of God? Was there ever a greater failure of human beings to respond in faith to what God was doing? In all of history, the single greatest failure of humanity is in the crucifixion of Christ. And yet, that astonishing failure did not stop God from using that very moment as the most profound expression of his love for us. The crucifixion has been so completely transformed by God, so completely used by God for his own purpose, that many people find it very difficult to appreciate the human evil expressed in it.

The point is that God is not afraid of your evil. That doesn't make your evil good, and he is still going to work with you to get rid of that evil, but he is not afraid of it. In fact, it is very likely that he will take your biggest mistakes and transform them into the the means by which you are bound all the more tightly to him. When I look back and see all the times I have made mistakes, I realize that God's grace is bigger than all of them. That God is powerful enough to use me, even when I am weak and broken and can't seem to get my act together.

God trusts us, even if we don't think he should, because he knows something that we often forget: That we are his children, that he loves us with a love that will not let us go, that he will not abandon us, even if we might want him to. So, when you go back home and back to school, remember that God has given you a mission, a great calling that you can't get out of even if you wanted to because God trusts that you can do great things, and that he can use even your failures for his glory. So go and be bold, for through his Holy Spirit, God himself dwells in you and has made you his own. Let us pray.

AMEN

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Emmanuel, God With Us

12/18/11 1 John 1:1-10 Grace UMC

Several years ago, at a different church, when I preached my very first Christmas Eve sermon, I made a statement that the birth of Christ was a relatively unimportant event. I did not say, nor did I mean, that it was unimportant, but that it was relatively unimportant. In the message, I spelled out some of the things that Jesus did not come to do: he did not come to give us an extravagant, human-centered holiday, he did not come to brainwash us and make everyone conform to some narrow definition of "the Christian life," he did not come to make everyone happy and, perhaps most importantly, he did not come to leave us how we are. Then I raised the question, "If those are some of the things that Jesus did not come to do, what did he come to do?" I took the response from John's first letter, where he says, "The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil," which happened most fully and finally in the death and resurrection of Christ. That is to say, Jesus was born so that he could die.

While I still stand by the fact that the death of Christ is of supreme importance for us as Christians and that we cannot correctly understand the New Testament witness to what Jesus has done on our behalf and in our place if we forget about Good Friday and Easter, I will never again make the point that the birth of Christ is unimportant, relatively or otherwise. You see, it is not just important that we have a God who dies for us, as amazing as that might be, but we also have a God who lives for us, a God for whom no sacrifice is too great, even becoming a creature and entering into his creation.

The reason I said what I said my first Christmas as a pastor is because I had been misled by a well-meaning but inadequate understanding of just who Jesus is and why he came, which is quite common in our world today. If you were to ask many Christians, "Why did Jesus come?" the answer would often be something like this, "Jesus came because God needed a perfect human to die for us so we could be forgiven." If pushed, they may continue and emphasize that Jesus' teaching ministry was important as well, that we needed to learn from Jesus as well as have him die for us. The radical humanity of Christ tends to play nothing more than an instrumental role in God's plan; that is, it serves as a vehicle to get a perfect human being from the cradle to the cross, but not much more.

I don't mean to imply that the things this view emphasizes are fundamentally wrong. It is absolutely true that Jesus lived his life in utter human perfection, that if he had not lived in such perfection, it would call into question God's saving act through his death. It is true that we benefit from Jesus' teaching, which often surprises us and catapults us out of our comfort zone. My point is that the reality of what God has done in, through, and as Jesus is far more dynamic and staggering than this view leads us to believe. As true as it might be, we cannot collapse all of what God has done in Christ to simply the formula, "We had a debt, God paid it, now we are free."

When we look closely at what John tells us in our passage for this morning, we see that he, at least, understood the coming of God in our midst to be of supreme importance. "We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life." According to John, the word of life is not just a concept, not just an idea that we can learn once and then never worry about again. The word of life is something that does not stay "out there" but something that comes and meets with us, that is something that entered into our world of space and time, that was actually encountered by real human beings. Jesus of Nazareth was not just a man, but the very word and truth of God, taking up residence in the same world we live in, walking around real places that we can visit today, using real human words, eating real human food, interacting with and building relationships with real human beings not unlike you and me.

I don't know how often you think about the fact that the God who created the universe with nothing more than a word, who never needed to create the universe or people to live in it, actually stepped into it, God becoming a man, the Creator becoming a creature, but it is truly astonishing. In Jesus we have a word that we don't just hear, but that we can see and touch and enter into relationship with. In the baby in the manger we have nothing less than all the fullness of God in our midst, the God of all as a human infant, the Creator of all the vastness of the cosmos so small you could hold him in your hand, the very Word of God unable to speak but reduced to cries to communicate with his parents, those he had created. When I think about the earth-shattering idea that God himself has met with us, I am so overwhelmed, I can't hardly get over it.

Though the coming of God into our world in Christ has become a fairly common notion, something that we affirm, often without thinking about it, it was not always so. There have been many people who have found it impossible to believe that God either could or would become a human in our midst. The ancient Greek philosophers argued that God was so utterly detached from the world that we live in that God could not come among us, even if he wanted to. The Jewish thinkers of the first and second centuries who engaged in dialogue with Christians affirmed that God could become a human being, but that he never would do so, that they simply could not entertain the idea that the holy and glorious Lord and God of the universe would stoop to such a lowly position as to become a human being.

The offensiveness of this central claim of the Gospel, that in the man Jesus of Nazareth, we have to do with God himself, did not go away. Arius, a church leader in the early fourth century, said that God would not have come among us, so we must think of Jesus as a creature, a lofty messenger, but not God. A group called the docetists taught that, if Jesus really is God, then he cannot really be a a human, but only seems to be like us. Apollinaris of Laodicea argued that, in becoming a human, God refused to take on a real human mind, since it is so diseased by sin, and so Jesus is not really a human in the same sense that we are.

Even when Christianity became the dominant religion in the West, resistance to this idea that God would really meet us and make himself accessible to ordinary humans like you and me continued. Isaac Newton, the great physicist, thought of God as the great container of the whole of space and time. If that is the case, to say that God entered into his creation is like saying a box contains that contains many things, also contains itself, which would be ridiculous. Even today, we are surrounded by people, theologians, biblical scholars, and many others, who simply cannot bring themselves to really believe that when we look into the face of Jesus, we see the face of God, a face that we have never seen anywhere else and that we could never see in any other way. The reality of the incarnation, that the God of the universe has come among us, is repeatedly domesticated into the idea that Jesus was just really good at being good, that we follow him like we would follow any other human leader, that the real work of Christ is to provide us a model to follow in our lives (though even when we look at it this way, we usually stop short of suffering and dying, like he did), and in other ways as well.

Why do we do this? Why is it so hard for human beings to admit the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Jesus is who he claims to be, truly united to the Father, the Son of God in whose hands the Father has placed all things, the one who is in the Father and in whom the Father dwells, the one through whom all things were made and without whom the Father does nothing? I think it is because we are terrified to see the coming of God into our world for what it really is: an invasion. It doesn't take much to see that we live in a world that is dreadfully infected with sin. It isn't just that we commit sins, but that sin goes down to the core of who we are. We don't just make mistakes, we don't just make wrong choices because we don't know which choice is right and which is wrong. All too often, we know all too well what is the right thing to do and choose the wrong thing anyway. And it isn't just that we sin, but our neighbors sin too, and it is isn't just we as individuals who do what is wrong, we as a society sin, too.

In the midst of all this sin, it really is no surprise why we would rather find some way, any way, to keep God from meeting us here in this world of ours. So long as God remains "out there," we are like kids who have made a huge mess while our parents are out of the house. We keep telling ourselves, "We'll fix it in time, we'll get it all cleaned up before they come home." But every time we try to clean up our mess, in spite of our best efforts, we make it worse. So long as God has not actually come among us, we can still convince ourselves that there is still time to make things right on our own; we can still get our act together, we can still pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Maybe, just maybe, God won't even notice that we haven't been as good as we would like to think and we'll be let off the hook. Maybe we'll get it all cleaned up in time, maybe we'll never have to face the consequences for what we have done. As soon as we admit that, in Jesus we have to do with nothing less than the very God of the universe, we realize that we are out of time, that we were out of time even before we were born. We have made a mess and we didn't get it cleaned up. Indeed, we realize, when we are face to face with God, that we never could have cleaned it up on our own.

But when we realize that the jig is up, that we didn't, and even couldn't save ourselves, when we realize that the high and holy God has actually come near, has met with us, who has, by his Spirit, probed into the depths of our hearts, we find that all the consequences we feared do not come to pass. When we come face to face with God in Christ, we are asked to open our hands and give up everything we have. We are asked, not only to give over the mess we have made, but we are asked to give up even all our best attempts at cleaning it up, and God takes them from us and takes them to the cross. The only way we face punishment is if we stand before God and say, "I never made that mess; it was someone else; I was set up," or perhaps, "Yes, I made a mess, but I did my best to clean it up, so that should count for something."

We read in the New Testament that there will be a judgment, that we will all be judged. This can be, and has been a frightening thing for many people, but we need to ask, "When we are judged, who will be our judge?" We are told in the book of Revelation that the one who oversees the judgment is Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, the one who conquers, but when this Lion is revealed, what is it that we see? "A Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered." Our judge is not a vindictive human being like we can so often be, but one who has been sacrificed in atoning reconciliation on our behalf and in our place. The one who will judge us is not some angry pagan god who weighs up our good deeds and our evil deeds and we had better hope and pray that we've done more good than bad. Rather, the God who judges us is the God who has made our cause his own who, when he set out to redeem us from our sin and death, did not count it too great a sacrifice to become one of us, God of the universe though he was, live in our broken world and finally take our disease, sin and death on his own shoulders and take them to the cross.

As Charles Wesley wrote, "'Tis mystery all, the immortal dies, who can explore his strange design. In vain the firstborn seraph tries to sound the depths of love divine. 'Tis mercy all, let earth adore, let angel minds inquire no more."

If we were in a situation where we had simply built up a debt that needed to be paid, then all we would need is a savior who would be willing to die for us. If all we needed was a savior who would die our death on our behalf and in our place, then we could say that Christmas only matters because there has to be Christmas before there can be Easter. But we are not just people who commit sins, we are sinners. The fact that, in Christ, we see God walking as one of us and one with us, we see him enduring our temptations and overcoming them, we see him confessing our sins when he is baptized in the Jordan, we see him being faithful where we are all too often faithless, shows us that we do not only need a God who dies for us, but a God who lives for us. We not only have a God who offers up his own death so that we do not need to suffer the eternal death that would separate us from God, our God also comes and lives the life that we could not live and offers that in on our behalf and in our place. To believe in Jesus is not just something we say, not just something to check off our list of things to do in this life, but a profound trust that, when God judges us, it will be the God who sacrificed himself for us and that this God will accept, not only the death of Christ in the place of our death, but the life of Christ in the place of our lives.

Because of what God has done, we are bound to Christ in every way. Listen to these words of Gregory Nazianzen, one of the most important leaders in the early church. "We needed an Incarnate God, a God put to death, that we might live. We were put to death together with him, that we might be cleansed; we rose again with him because we were put to death with Him; we were glorified with him, because we rose again with him." In everything we do, whether in life or in death, we find that it is in Christ that we live and move and have our being. Our God is a God who does not abandon us, but meets us where we are, long before we ever dreamed of turning to him. Though the coming of Christ is an invasion into this world of sin and that means even our sin is under attack, it is not an attack that destroys us, but liberates us and makes us free to love like we have never loved before. O come, O come, Emmanuel. Let us pray.

AMEN

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Jesus Christ and Time

12/07/11 Jesus Christ and Time GUMC Youth

We live in a country that has been historically shaped by the Christian message. This shaping has been so strong that there are many who would argue that America is, at its roots, a Christian nation, a nation that does not just have a bunch of Christians who live there, but one that fundamentally is Christian. This, perhaps, goes even farther when we look at our culture here in Northwest Iowa. You have all told me about people who go to school with you who are atheists or otherwise hostile to Christian faith, but if you look around at much of the adult population, you will find that most adults presuppose that Spencer is a Christian town, one that is made up mostly of Christians, who believe in Jesus, who believe in God, and who go to church, or at least, used to go to church.

What I think we find is that, when we are in this kind of culture, we end up with a whole bunch of people who simply assume that everyone is a Christian, that being a good Christian is one and the same thing with being a good American, that right and wrong as understood by out culture must be the same as right and wrong as understood by the gospel of Jesus Christ. When this happens, we tend to lose sight pretty quickly of the things that really matter, the things that make Christian faith what it is. So as we get closer and closer to Christmas, I want to spend a bit of time looking at one of the most important things we are celebrating during Advent and Christmas.

How much thought do you give to time? I don't mean, how often are you late or early to places you need to be, nor am I talking about how you like to spend your time. I am asking, how often do you think about time itself, what it really is, how it functions, what to expect from it. The fact of the matter is that not many people really spend all that much time thinking about time. They don't see how it can matter to their lives and, in a lot of ways, they are right to do so. I have no interest in standing up here and going into a huge analysis of time, but there are some things about time, that have to do with Christmas, that I want to talk about because they actually are important; more important than most people realize.

Many, if not most, cultures throughout the ages have had a conception of time that it is kind of like a big circle. There is a certain way in which this makes perfect sense. After all, days go in a kind of circle. We have a day today, we had a day yesterday, and we will have a day tomorrow. Even our clocks reinforce this idea. Just like the hands of a clock keep spinning round and round, marking the passing of time that never really runs out, just keeps repeating itself over and over, we could say that the day and night cycle is like a circle. Never ending. You can just keep going around and it will never end, only repeat.

In a larger sense, our years follow a cycle. Right now we are in winter, but we don't imagine that the sun is going out, or that the world is just getting colder and colder. Instead, we realize that winter is not the end, but we will eventually get to Spring and Spring will give way to Summer and Summer will give way to Fall, until we get back to Winter again. There are some little differences from year to year, some winters are worse than others, for example, but the yearly cycle is basically the same. You can always count on the fact that the seasons are not just going to stop suddenly, but will keep going, like going around a circle.

What if we thought of time the same way? What if time never really began and never really ended, but just kept going on a loop, like a CD or a playlist left on repeat? There are many, but not all, scientists who say that the universe began with the Big Bang and that it will end with some kind of Big Crunch, where it could explode again in a new Big Bang. What if those big moments weren't just big moments, but the bookends of time itself, that the universe, after it collapsed, would explode again and everything would happen just as it has happened before? What if even this youth group, this message, had been given who knows how many times before and it will be given who knows how many times again, over the course of trillions upon trillions of years? What if the whole universe as we know it is just going to repeat itself over and over again, never ending, never changing, always just going along, like going around a circle?

This was, generally speaking, the view of many cultures throughout the years. It is kind of like the idea of reincarnation, where you never really die, you just become a new person over and over again. There is a certain comfort in this way of thinking. It takes a lot of pressure off, because nothing ever really changes. There really isn't anything you can do to make a truly lasting impact, since things will just repeat, regardless of what you do. For some, it might seem like life is just pointless, but for others, it can be liberating. Things have already happened before and they will happen again. I can just float along and let things happen.

What is interesting is that this is not the view of the ancient Jewish people and it was not the view of the first Christians. If we could say that this first view of time is that time is a big circle that repeats over and over again, we could say that the Jewish and Christian conception of time is like a big line that has a very definite starting point and a very definite ending point. I mentioned earlier that some scientists think that the universe will collapse one day. Not everyone thinks that. There are plenty of scientists who are convinced that the universe will just keep expanding. If that is the case, then the universe can never repeat. It can never get back to its starting point.

How many of you have heard that the Big Bang Theory is very much an anti-Christian idea? Usually, this is because there are many who think that this raises questions about the first chapter of Genesis, where we read that God created the universe in six days. What is interesting is that, when the Big Bang Theory was first put forward, it was suggested by a priest who was also a scientist. When he published his ideas, the mainstream of scientists were offended and said that he was trying to bring religion into science. What is interesting is that, even though the Big Bang Theory is not, I want to stress that not, the same thing as the Christian doctrine of Creation, it is actually closer to it than the idea of an eternal universe. At least the Big Bang allows for God to have created the matter and caused it to explode, where the other views do not. The Big Bang Theory is science agreeing with Christian faith that the universe had a concrete beginning. The universe hasn't always existed. There was a time before it came into being and, many scientists say, there is only this universe; there will never be another one. If something happens to this universe, thats the end of the story.

The point is that the single most important reason why Christians cannot really believe in a repeating universe or an eternal universe is, believe it or not, Christmas. That might sound like a weird thing to say, but Christmas actually has profound implications for the nature of time and how we understand it. First, I want to show you what it means for time and then I want to point out why this actually matters in our understanding of God.

What do we celebrate on Christmas? We celebrate the birth of Jesus, right? But what is the significance of the birth of Jesus? Its significance is that the God of the universe, who created all there is with a word from his mouth, who has interacted with people since the beginning of the human race, has actually stepped into his creation. Think about it, we are talking about God, the one and only God, the God who is all powerful, all knowing, and all-everything-you-care-to-mention coming here. Not here as in Spencer, Iowa, but here as in Earth! This is the Creator of the universe stepping into his creation, this is the maker of humanity becoming a human. This is the almighty God of all, whom the highest heavens cannot contain coming among us, not just as a human being, but as a baby, so small you could hold him in your hands.

What is amazing about Christmas is not only that God actually did this but that he did this for the very first time. It isn't that we had God come among us in our human flesh over and over again, just in different forms throughout the years. It isn't that, in Jesus, we are dealing with just one more human teacher. In Jesus, we are brought face to face with God in all of his majesty in a way that we never experienced before and we could not have experienced in any other way. Jesus is not just one more example of God coming to earth, but the only one there is. God came among us in a very specific place and time, lived in specific towns, met and spoke with specific people, ate specific pieces of food, and spoke specific human words in a specific human language. And not only that but he did this for the first time in all the eternal life of God and he has never done it before and will never do it again.

God coming into our midst is an absolutely singular and unrepeatable event that never happened before and will never happen again. It is because of this incredibly singular event that we cannot really believe that time is just a loop that keeps getting played on repeat. If that is really how time worked, it would mean that Jesus had come over and over again; it would mean that God is just as bound by space and time as we are, which would mean he was not the Creator of the universe, by the way.

So, what does all of this mean to us? Well, there are lots of people who emphasize the fact that Earth is not the only planet out there, that the universe is incredibly large. And yet, out of all those places that God has created, out of all the vastness of our universe, when God enters into it, he doesn't do it just anywhere, but here, on this planet where we live. Not only did God meet us here, but he met us now. I know its been a long time since Jesus came, but especially if we listen to the scientists who tell us the universe is about fourteen billion years old, we realize just how close to Jesus' time we really are.

The point is that God came here. Out of all the places he could have gone, he came here. He didn't go to Mars, he didn't go to the outer reaches of the universe, but came here. When he came, he did not come as just any creature, but came as one of us. By coming precisely when he did and precisely where he did, God in Christ has set that time and place aside and said to us, "Here I am, come meet with me here." And through the power of the Holy Spirit and the testimony of the Bible, we can actually stand with the original witness of God's self-revelation, the disciples, and actually meet him there and then in the here and now.

There are so many people in the world who talk about God as if he were someone who is far off, who does not actually meet with us, about whom there is not much that we can say. And yet, that is not what we read in the Bible and it is not what we believe as Christians. We believe that, in Christ, God actually came here to meet us and to transform us.

So how does this tie in with how we understand time? Well, remember that, because God actually came among us at a particular time, what the scriptures call "the fullness of time," we can't really believe in time as a circle. Instead, we need to think of time as being a line, with certain very precise points on it. The line starts at a specific point, with the creation of space and time by God and then, at another precise point, God came into this world in Jesus of Nazareth. But that wasn't the end of the line. The line continues on, doesn't it? It has continued to this day, where you and I are living and it may well continue on for a while. The point is that it does not continue on forever. There will come a time when time as we know it will be done away with. There will come a time when Christ will return and change the whole game. When will that happen? We don't know; nobody does. And if anyone tells you otherwise, they are mistaken.

The point is, as we celebrate this Christmas season, we should remember every day that Christmas, in many ways, is the center of all space and time. It is where God the Creator stepped into his creation and made it his own in a powerful way that was new, even for God. Christmas is a really, really big deal. It is such a big deal that it impacts all of time and space. So let us celebrate, not any less, but all the more, because our God has come to meet with us. Let us pray.

AMEN

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Mark 4:35-41

11/30/11 Mark 4:35-41 GUMC Youth

Tonight, we look at the last passage the fourth chapter of the gospel according to Mark, which means that, as of tonight, we are already a quarter of the way through Mark's gospel. It has already moved pretty fast and it will only move faster as move closer and closer to the end of Christ's life on earth. We look tonight at Mark's account of Jesus calming the storm. But before we do that, we need to look at something that has come up a few times so far.

Our passage begins by having Jesus say, "Let us go to the other side," by which he means, the other side of the sea of Galilee. Jesus is leaving the West side of the sea of Galilee and going to the East side. Now, to us today, this might not seem like such a big deal; he's just going on a trip. From another point of view, it might seem at least a little bit interesting, since he is leaving a crowd on the one side and going to a place where basically nobody knows who he is. The big point that I want to make is to remind you that Mark uses geography to make some of his points about Jesus. We always need to remember which side of the sea he is on when he does things. When he is on the Western side, he is doing miracles for and giving teaching to the Jewish people, those who have been historically identified with God's interaction in our world of space and time. They are God's people and see themselves as belonging to God in a special way. When he is on the East side, he is doing miracles for and giving teaching to Gentiles, the people who have, historically, been a corrupting influence on the Jewish people. These are the people that "Good Jews" don't talk to. For Jesus to deliberately go and minister among the Gentiles is a huge deal.

All of this is to remind you that it isn't just important what Jesus does, it is also important where he does it. So far, everything that Jesus has done has been on the West side of the sea of Galilee, that is, he has been among the Jewish people. Now, for the first time, he is traveling to the Gentile side. So, when this storm comes up, it isn't just a storm on a lake, but a storm that arises as Jesus is on his way to minister to the Gentiles. So far we have seen that every encounter that Jesus has with unclean spirits, or demons if you like, has them freaking out and being overcome. The idea that we are left with is that Jesus is actually invading the territory of these unclean spirits. Here is Jesus marching into a region that has traditionally been hostile to God. This storm is not merely a natural event, but we could easily see it as a resistance to Jesus in the spiritual realm.

So, let us look at the concrete situation in our passage. Jesus and his disciples get into a boat and set off across the sea of Galilee. While they are on their way, a storm came up quickly, which is not an uncommon occurrence on that particular body of water. The storm was significant enough that the disciples, many of whom were experienced sailors, were very worried that they were going to sink. What is amazing is what Jesus is doing during this time. He is in the back of the boat, asleep on a cushion! Now, I don't have a huge amount of experience traveling by boat, but it seems to me that to sleep through a storm is a pretty significant thing. It is one thing to fall asleep while the sea is calm. After all, the rocking of the boat could be soothing. It is another thing altogether to be asleep while the boat is being tossed to and fro. And yet, there he is, sound asleep.

One of the things I hope you have gotten from me by now, or will get from me is that we are not only interested in what Jesus says. We are just as interested in what Jesus does and who Jesus is. Sometimes we learn more about Jesus, which is to say, sometimes we learn more about God, by looking at what Jesus does or does not do than by always looking at what he says. In this case, we see that, while the storm rages around the boat of disciples, Jesus is fast asleep. Here we have Jesus, that is, God, sleeping the night away while all around there are people who are panicking for their very lives. What are we to make of this?

I think that we learn something very important here. Jesus is not concerned with the things that we are concerned about, which means that God is not concerned with the things that we are concerned about. Now, this unconcern of God could be interpreted in two ways. First, we could interpret the fact that God is not concerned with the things that we are concerned about in a sense that God is simply unconcerned with human struggles and suffering. We could assume that Jesus is sound asleep in the midst of a crisis because he is heartless and doesn't care what happens to the disciples. This is precisely what the disciples think is going on. They wake Jesus up and say, or probably shout, to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" They are basically saying, "Jesus, don't you care about us? The whole world is crashing down around us and you're sleeping! Don't you care at all?"

But that is not the only way to look at this unconcern. The other way to look at it is that maybe, just maybe, Jesus knows something that we don't and is living in light of it. Maybe Jesus knows that the things that we get worked up over aren't really worth getting all excited about. Think about it. Let's say that someone you know stubs their toe and are in pain. To them, in that moment, they are in a crisis. Their world is so tiny that they can't hardly think of anything outside of the pain in their toe. The worst thing you, as someone who knows just how small this pain is in the grand scheme of things, could possibly do is to freak out with them. You might show some signs of sympathy, but you wouldn't react as if the world was coming down because you know better and you know that, in spite of the momentary pain that they might be experiencing, it is not a big deal. And it isn't that you just know it in your mind, but you know it so deeply that you can actually live that way.

Perhaps that is what Jesus is doing. Jesus can be relaxed, not because he doesn't know how powerful and dangerous the storm is, but because he knows precisely how powerful and dangerous the storm is and that it isn't that big a deal. After all, in a moment he will stand up and, with a word, calm the storm. However powerful the storm is, it is not nearly as powerful as Jesus. The disciples are worried, but Jesus isn't, because he knows that the storm is no match for himself and that, at the end of the day, it won't matter all that much. Now, just because Jesus knows that doesn't mean that his disciples do. In fact, the opposite would be the case. They are worried because, even though they have seen all kinds of miracles, they are still not certain that Jesus can do anything to stop the storm (though they must have hoped he could do something, or they wouldn't have bothered to wake him up and plead for help).

Now, this is actually really hard for us today, because though we might know that Jesus is more powerful than our troubles in our heads, we haven't really internalized it, we don't know it so deeply in the core of who we are that we are willing to trust everything into his hands. When we as Christians say things like, "Everything will be alright," we don't mean, "Nothing bad will happen, or if it does, it won't be all that bad." Sometimes, things that are really bad happen to Christians as well as to non-Christians. When we say, "Everything will be alright," what we really mean is, "Everything will be alright, even if it kills us," because, at the end of the day, we as Christians believe that death is not the end, that Jesus is more powerful even than death and that we will one day be rescued even from death. And if even death is not a deal-breaker, then what do we have to fear? The trick is getting that truth so deeply into our very being that we actually live every day knowing and trusting that we are secure in Christ, regardless of what happens.

I want to make a connection between this story and one from the Old Testament. Are you familiar with the story of Jonah and the Whale? Jonah, while running from the calling that God had given him, got on board a boat with a bunch of other people. Not long into the voyage, a storm came up, so strong that the boat was in danger of sinking. The people on board were panicking, but Jonah was asleep. Sound familiar? The other people wake Jonah up and ask him to do something. This is where the difference comes in. Jonah says, "Pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm for you, for I know that on account of me this great storm has come upon you."

Jonah said, "Alright, because we have this storm, I will throw myself on God's mercy." By having himself thrown out of the boat, Jonah was hoping that God would move, especially since it was his fault that the storm came in the first place. But where Jonah hoped that God would intervene, Jesus just stands up and stops the storm. Jonah basically said, "Nobody but God can stop this storm," Jesus stands up and stops his storm. Do you get the connection? Jesus is doing what has been shown in the Old Testament as something that only God can do.

Now, we in our day have had two thousand years of church history, of people working hard to make sense out of who Jesus is, so when we read that the disciples were filled with great awe and said to one another "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" we want to say, "Duh, he's the Son of God, God in flesh, God with us." But the people at the time didn't really know what to make of him at that point. To them, Jesus was a man; yes he was a miracle worker, he was an exorcist, he was a great healer, but he was just a man. After all, just about everything that Jesus did, miracle-wise, had been done at least once in history by other prophets in the history of Israel. The fact that this man who had authority over the unclean spirits had just as much authority over the wind and waves was astonishing.

But given the fact that, in Jesus of Nazareth, God himself came among us, we shouldn't really be all that surprised that Jesus could calm a storm. After all, we read all over the New Testament that the whole universe was created through Jesus. We read "All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being," and "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers - all things have been created through him and for him," and "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, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds." If this is who Jesus is, it should come as no surprise that he can calm a storm. After all, he was the one who created the world in which the storm happened. Jesus is Lord, even over nature.

I do want to draw attention to the word that is used when Jesus calms the storm. The word in the Greek that is used is επιτιμαω and it means "to rebuke," which means to sharply correct or to scold. The reason why I bring this up is because it shows up every once in a while in Mark. For example, it is the word that is used to describe how Jesus deals with the unclean spirits we read about earlier, he "rebuked" them. At one point, it is even used when Jesus rebukes one of his disciples. The point here is that Jesus rebukes a storm, an inanimate thing. The sense we get is that Jesus is telling the storm to get in line, to behave itself, to do what it knows it's supposed to do. I have read that the idea is that Jesus is treating the storm like "an unruly heckler," behaving toward it as if it were someone who was interrupting his teaching. This is hard for us to understand because it doesn't make much sense for us to rebuke something that is not alive, but that just means that we need to understand that God approaches the storms of this life differently than we do.

I want to leave you tonight with the question that the people asked. "Who then is this?" There are lots of people in the world who say, "Jesus was a great teacher," or "Jesus is a nice guy, but I don't like his followers," or a bunch of other stuff that makes it seem like they want to honor Jesus but we need to remember that Jesus is not merely another teacher but is the one who can stop a storm that threatened to kill his disciples with a word from his mouth. Jesus is the one who sees the big picture, who has an understanding of context that is far beyond what any of us can imagine. We have a God who is not worried about the things that we are worried about, not because he doesn't care about us, but because he cares about us so much that he will not allow every little crisis, every little difficulty to shake him from his plans. Remember, even though Jesus did not prevent the storm and seemed to be unconcerned about it, nobody died that day. Nobody's boat sank and nobody drowned. In the end, it wasn't the panic of the disciples but the calm of the Savior that made the most sense. So let's go day by day and trust that, even though our troubles might be strong, and even if they kill us, our God is still in heaven and still cares for us. Let us pray.

AMEN

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Biblical Inerrancy

Biblical Inerrancy

A topic that comes up in conversation for me with some frequency is that of Biblical inerrancy. It is something that sneaks itself into various conversations on a wide range of issues and seems to be surrounded by all kinds of assumptions that I feel are simply not true. To that end, I have decided to write out my thoughts on the topic of Biblical inerrancy.

Before I begin, I feel that a disclaimer is in order. It must be said at the very beginning that I do not identify myself as one who subscribes to Biblical inerrancy (precisely for the reasons outlined below), but I would like to encourage, as much as I can, for anyone who reads this to do so knowing that this is in no way intended to be an anti-Bible essay. I believe the Bible to be remarkably important, it is truly the sole source and norm for our faith and practice and that it is an irreplaceable witness to what God has done that is vitally important for us to take very seriously and to submit ourselves to the radical critiques that it makes on our lives. Reading the Bible has had an absolutely transforming effect on my life. I continue to read and study the Bible and I continue to use it as the basis of my preaching as a pastor. It should also be noted at the beginning that, though I do not subscribe to Biblical inerrancy, neither do I identify myself as a theological Liberal. To me the Liberal tradition is just as deeply problematic. In fact, a large portion of my critique, though at a tacit level, is that Biblical inerrancy has Liberal roots, inasmuch as it is, in its modern form, just another way of dealing with the challenge of Liberalism and so bears its stamp.

A distinction must be made here between Biblical inerrancy and Biblical infallibility. From one point of view, the words inerrant and infallible are synonyms; from another, infallible is actually a stronger term because while inerrancy implies that there are no errors, infallible implies that there can be no errors. However, in spite of how the words might be used elsewhere in discourse, within the context of this issue, they have become technical terms. Specifically, inerrancy is a stronger term than infallibility. Biblical infallibility states that, in matters of faith and life that is, what we believe and how we live, the Bible is absolutely trustworthy and must be taken seriously. Biblical inerrancy asserts that every part of the Bible (down to the very words) is true in every sense of the word. The reason for this is because, if it were not true in any sense of the word, the whole authority of the Bible would collapse.

It should be noted that the mainstream of inerrancy, when pushed (or even just when clarifying their position), will qualify their position by saying that the Biblical texts are inerrant "in the autographs," which means the texts were inerrant when they were originally written. Now, why would someone feel it necessary to make that clarification? Why not just say the Bible is inerrant, especially since that is how it plays itself out in day-to-day Christian life? The reason is because even those who hold to inerrancy are not convinced that the copies we have today are really inerrant. The impulse for affirming that the autographs were inerrant is understandable because such a view needs to affirm that the text, at least as given by God, is perfect in every sense of the word, but it is my contention that such a qualification actually destroys the whole inerrancist position.

The point is made that the Bible must be affirmed to be true in every sense of the word because if any part is not true in any sense of the word, the authority of the Bible falls to the ground. The reason why this is the case is because, once you have made the argument that one part of the Bible may not be true, we are left with the question, "Why do we say that about this part and not about some other part?" Before long, a questioning of one part of the Bible becomes a questioning of the entire Bible. If we judge the text to be errant based on some extra-biblical criterion, why can't we apply that to the whole of the Bible? And yet, the admission that the Biblical texts are only inerrant in the original autographs brings the problem back in for this simple fact. We do not have access to the original autographs. It is true that the Bible is just as reliable, both from a literary and a historical point of view, as any other ancient text, but what we have is not identical to the original autographs. However, though we have a high degree of certainty that our copies are not the originals, we cannot be certain precisely which parts were in deviation from those autographs. After all, if we could, we could simply restore our copies to the original. However, if our copies are not identical with the autographs, and we can not point to precisely where those discrepancies are to be found, what can stop us from saying that any particular point is in deviation from the originals? Yes, there is an absolutely reliable source of doctrine, but if we have no access to it, we are back to square one.

Another interesting weakness to the inerrancist position is put forward by Donald G. Bloesch, a leading evangelical theologian who passed away just recently. In his Essentials of Evangelical Theology, he says this. "The rise of pseudo-Christian cults that champion biblical inerrancy has been a source of embarrassment to those who contend that this doctrine is the foundation stone and practical guarantee of orthodoxy." He names groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons in the endnote as concrete examples of this tendency. Clearly, Bloesch notes, inerrancy as such does not guarantee orthodoxy. It should be noted that, though the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons also have other authoritative texts outside the Old and New Testaments (or rely on a particular version of them), other groups such as Unitarian (Oneness) Pentecostals fall into the same boat.

There is one more methodological objection to Biblical inerrancy before I go into a concrete analysis of the shortcomings of the position and how I deal with the problems posed by the Biblical text. It is my greatest concern that, in point of fact, Biblical inerrancy ends up being an idolatrous position. My biggest concern is a theological one, not that it takes the Bible very seriously, allowing it supremacy over our culture and our own opinions, but because it also gives it supremacy over Christ himself and transforms him into nothing more than just one more of the doctrines that the Bible teaches and one we should affirm on the basis of that Biblical authority, rather than emphasizing that the Bible is the written witness to the living Word of God that actually encounters us.

An example is appropriate here. A local physician and leader in a nearby local church wrote an essay in defense of Biblical inerrancy which was made part of his church's official resources for its members. It is a fairly long treatment of the issue, but in my judgment only the first few paragraphs actually dealt with the issue of inerrancy and about the alleged difficulties that arise, merely from denying it. The overwhelming majority of the work was concerned with demonstrating the historical reliability of the Bible, especially as compared to other ancient writings. In this, I agree in every regard. There is a reason why, when archaeologists have wanted to locate an ancient city in the Ancient Near East, they go to the Bible first to try to find out where it may be located. There have been doubts about the existence of groups of people spoken of in the Bible that have been consistently cast aside by subsequent research. If we ignore the problem of induction (which plagues all science, not just historical science), there is much to compel us to conclude that any other parts of the Bible that are open to doubt will be vindicated eventually.

What is interesting is that, though this is a fairly common way to articulate and defend Biblical inerrancy, it actually undermines it and proves my point. The question is whether the position of Biblical inerrancy relies on justification from historical and archaeological science to stand. If it does not, it makes one wonder why so much effort is taken to demonstrate the Bible's historicity. If the Bible's authority is supreme, even over historical and archaeological science, why use the results of such science used as reasons one should believe in the inerrancy of the Bible? If the legitimacy of inerrancy does indeed depend on the findings of historical and archaeological science, it undermines the position altogether. After all, it implies that the Bible is, in point of fact, not of ultimate authority but rather that historical and archaeological science has the final word. It is my contention that, in this particular treatment of the issue, the amount of time and energy spent on defending the historical reliability of the Bible shows that inerrancy cannot stand on its own but must be bolstered by an outside authority.

I would like to move now to a concrete examination of how Biblical inerrancy plays itself out, but before I do so, I must make one more observation. The real problem that we are trying to overcome with a doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the problem of interpretation as opposed to looking at what the text actually says. Once we cross the gap from looking at what the words on the page say to what we say they must mean (that is, placing a particular interpretation on the words that cannot be reduced to the words themselves), we have given up inerrancy. Allow me to demonstrate.

1 Kings 7:23 is a relatively unexciting text. It lies merely in the account of the building of Solomon's Temple, specifically within the context of Hiram the bronzeworker making various items for it. It reads this way (NASB), "Now he made the sea of cast metal ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference." The problem that arises here, that many have noticed, is that the text says that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of this circular object is 3:1, which is not true (that is to say, it is not true in the absolutely most strict sense of "true" which is what we are talking about when we are dealing with Biblical inerrancy), as the ratio is π:1. This is a more striking issue than even the evolution controversy, since we are not concerned here with a question of evidence, but the simple fact that such a ratio is not 3:1.

Now, many people have come up with explanations for this, most commonly by running to 2 Chronicles 4:2 where the same details are given and by pointing out that 2 Chronicles 4:5 names the thickness of the sea as a hand's breadth. The argument goes that, if we take into account the thickness of the brim and compare the inner diameter with the outer circumference, we get a result that is remarkably close to the value for Pi (though again, not exact, though we will not press this point). My concern is that this, first of all, does not deal with the text as it appears in 1 Kings but interprets it in light of another text altogether. At the very least, this technique demonstrates that all parts of the Bible are not evenly weighted, that 2 Chronicles 4:2, 5 is a more important text than 1 Kings 7:23 and the latter should be interpreted in light of the former and not the other way around. I think that this raises the question "Who decides which texts are more accurate and how can we determine which texts are clear and which are unclear?" but that is not the direction I plan to go with this.

The fact of the matter is that, in both texts, the diameter and circumference are mentioned in the same breath, without even so much as a hint that we are not dealing with two different circles. It certainly appears, based only on the text, that regardless of whether we are talking about the inner or the outer circumference, we are dealing with the same circle. To argue that we can use the diameter of one circle and the circumference of another requires that we make an argument that goes above and beyond the words on the page and stems from a preconceived notion of precisely how we must get the words on the page to work out. That is, the text does not stand on its own, but must be interpreted to bring it into line with mathematical observations, so it must be carefully interpreted to make it work out.

So, we are left with a few options if we hope to keep this text while still holding to the innerancist position. The first is to say that, whatever mathematicians have found, the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of circles in general is actually 3:1. This falls to the ground unless we wish to subscribe to a wholesale rejection of mathematics, which would be, in my judgment, a foolish thing to do. A more moderate position is to say that, whatever might be the case with other circles, this circle has a ratio of 3:1. This, however, does not solve the problem, because now we have an example where the events and items spoken of in the Bible have no real connection to anything else in our world, which undermines its authority to speak to us.

A third option (which encompasses the standard solution just mentioned above) is to say something along these lines. "Look, if we look at the history of mathematics, we find that human beings have always known that the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle is a little more than 3:1, but they only began to get any kind of conceptual clarity around the issue until about 400AD. The text in question is describing events that took place around 1000BC, 1400 years earlier. Maybe, just maybe, God wasn't concerned with getting such minute issues exactly right, as they have no bearing on any aspect of life, and maybe when the text says 'circle' it means 'something pretty darn close to a circle.' In that case, what good would it have been for God to say 'Make it 10 cubits across and 31.4159265359... cubits around?' None at all. It would only have bewildered the people. What really mattered? Getting the thing built. What harm is there in saying that God simply said, 'Make it ten across and thirty around; it's close enough for jazz?'" This is a position that I wholeheartedly embrace, but there is a serious problem for Biblical inerrancy that only becomes clear when we play out its implications.

The fact of the matter is that I know of no Christian, inerrancist or otherwise, who would say that any aspect of Christian faith stands or falls depending on our interpretation of 1 Kings 7:23. But if we take this third option, we have made a tremendous step. We have said that the text as a text cannot stand on its own; we must interpret it based on what we know to be the case independently of the text itself (whether simply because of mathematical considerations or by saying it must be interpreted in light of another text and is inadequate on its own). We have made a significant leap away from the text as such into the world of interpretation. We have said, "The text might say that the ratio is three to one, but what the text means is that it is close enough or that there is some other explanation." Let us now move on and see what can become of this position.

What would happen if we were to turn to Genesis 1? What if we were to say, "The text might say that creation took place in six days (defined as the sun coming up and going down, implying a day of 24 hours), but what the text means is that creation took place in an orderly way that follows this general pattern but that the word 'day' must be interpreted as 'period of time.'" Not every Christian would object to this, but there are many that would. And yet, at the end of the day, the crucial distinction between what we did with 1 Kings 7:23 and what we have done here are not fundamentally different. We have taken a text and said that it cannot stand on its own but must be interpreted in light of something we know elsewhere. Nothing but a sheer force of will can make someone say, "We can take that step with 1 Kings 7:23 but we cannot take it with Genesis 1."

To take it a step further, let us look at the accounts of Christ's Resurrection from the dead. What if we were to say (as many have done), "The text might say that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead in glory, but what the text means is that, on Easter morning, the disciples had such a profound encounter with the spirit of Christ (not without parallel in the history of Hinduism) that it was as if he had been raised from the dead." This is where many (if not all) Christians, myself included, should stand up and say, "That is going too far." If there is one thing that is necessary to keep the New Testament documents from falling into unintelligibility, it is the physical, literal resurrection from the dead. The resurrection is not just another doctrine to believe, it forms the epistemological cornerstone of all our faith. If Christ was not really raised from the dead, as Paul says "We are of all people most to be pitied."

And yet, if we have made the leap into interpretation based on external insights back in 1 Kings 7:23 (or anywhere else, I might add), on what grounds can we stand and say that a purely metaphorical interpretation of the resurrection is unacceptable? I think that, ultimately, this gets at the heart of the whole impetus of the Biblical inerrancist position. Nobody thinks that the gospel stands or falls with the diameter of the sea in Solomon's Temple, but it certainly does with the resurrection of Christ. How can we be flexible (or even self-consciously non-literal) with the former and not with the latter? It is precisely because it is hard to find a way to do this within the interpretational worldview fostered by Western culture that we find ourselves pushed into an affirmation of inerrancy. We desperately want to defend the resurrection and the incarnation and the only way we can see to do this is to affirm inerrancy.

I think that the whole view of Biblical inerrancy is an inverting of how things ought to be and a simple observation from our most basic Christian experience should help to make it clear. Very few, if any, of us, became Christians because we had a high doctrine of the Bible first and then were convinced of the gospel because it was in the Bible. Most of us encountered the living Lord first and only after that were driven to the text. We do not believe in Jesus because the Bible teaches about him (as if the Bible was the supreme authority and Jesus was merely one of the many doctrines taught in it), but rather we read the Bible because we have been confronted by God in Christ and through the Holy Spirit and the Bible is the only place to turn for reliable information about Christ.

So, as I said at the beginning of this essay, I do not subscribe to Biblical inerrancy. For what it is worth, most inerrancists whom I have taken through this whole line of thought have said that they don't take as rigid a position as I portray. My response is that, in point of fact, whatever term they may use, they are not inerrancists in the classical sense, but are likely infalliblists, which is based on weaker claims (weaker in the sense that they do not claim as much, not that they are weak arguments). One might ask me, "If you reject Biblical inerrancy, do you affirm that the Bible is inspired?" My answer is that yes, I do indeed believe the Bible is inspired. My understanding, however, is that biblical inspiration is much more complex and dynamic that most people think.

As is clear by my argument so far, I do not think that the Bible is primarily inspired in its writing, that is, I do not think that God is the only author of the Bible in the sense that the words are merely a transcript of God's words to the human who actually put pen to paper. Some strands of inerrancy argue that the Bible is even a transcript of the very thoughts of God (a view that is not the mainstream and has disastrous consequences for our doctrine of God). I used to think that this view was a fairly recent one, that it only arose in protest of theological Liberalism. I have been convinced since then by Karl Barth that this has been present in at least a few thinkers throughout the whole history of the church (Barth's argument and historical survey is long, but culminates in his Church Dogmatics I.2, pg. 529-30).

I commented at the beginning that, though I am not an inerrancist, I am also not even close to what many would call a theological Liberal. I believe in a literal incarnation, virgin birth, resurrection, and miracles. In light of this, it should come as no surprise that I do not believe that the Bible is primarily inspired in its reading. That is, though I believe that God actually does speak anew to us as we read the Bible, I do not think that we can reduce all the inspiration of the Bible to the activity of the Spirit as we read the text. After all, if it were nothing more than the Spirit moving and the text is not involved, why should we expect God to speak through the Bible and not other works of literature (such as Huckleberry Finn, as a professor of mine suggested)? I think that, though we cannot reduce the inspiration of the Bible to the text on the page, it must involve it or else we will end up with a view that is even less satisfying than inerrancy.

My understanding of inspiration flows more or less directly from my doctrine of Christ. It is my contention that Christ is, in the final analysis, the real foundation of the Christian faith, that it is not on the inerrancy of the Bible but on the living Person of Christ with which the gospel stands or falls. This manifests itself in dialogue with some Christians as a need to place Sola Christus above Sola Scriptura or even Sola Fidei. It manifests itself in dialogue with others by modifying the statement, "God will never reveal anything to you through his Spirit that is contrary to what is written in the Bible," with "God will never reveal anything to you through his Spirit that is contrary to what he has revealed of himself through Christ." It is given tremendously clear expression in the words of T. F. Torrance. "Now if we think of Jesus Christ in this way as the Truth in his own Person, our statements about him, biblical or theological statements, cannot be true in the same sense as Jesus Christ is true, for they do not have their truth in themselves but in their reference to him away from themselves, and they are true insofar as that reference is truthful and appropriate" (Reality and Evangelical Theology, 124).

My understanding of the role of the Bible is also deeply connected to the Christian doctrine of the ascension of Christ. In Christ, God himself came among us in a particular place and at a particular time. During that time, he taught, he lived and he formed a community of redeemed sinners to take the good news out to the whole world. And then, after he was raised from the dead and met with his disciples for forty days, he ascended to heaven. There is not only a particular location in space-time where God came to meet with us, there is also a particular location in space-time where God departed from being physically present. By doing so, God has marked off the years of Christ's earthly life and ministry to be the covenanted place where he can be met; he has subordinated all theological activity, all pretended claims to inspiration to those concrete years and that concrete revelation of himself in our midst.

It is because of this, because of these Christological considerations, that we cannot do away with the radically important place of the Bible in our Christian lives. To try to avoid the Bible as the source and norm of our Christian knowledge is to try to avoid the centrality of Christ and to look elsewhere to find God, that is, to search for God where God cannot be found. Not only this (as one might claim that the argument so far only sanctions the use of the gospels), but the fact that God did not become incarnate in a cultural vacuum but did so in Israel as a Jew, "born of a woman, born under the law," we must take the Old Testament seriously for without it, we cannot rightly understand the revelation of God in Christ. Additionally, because Christ did not simply come and go, but specifically commissioned the apostles to go and proclaim, their post-resurrection activities and pastoral correspondence is of incredible importance and cannot be jettisoned without tremendous disaster (not to mention the arrogance of assuming that we can understand Christ from our foreign culture and language better than those who lived with him for years). Unless one can find another collection of texts that so comprehensively bears witness, not just to Christ, but to the whole historical context, both before and the generation after Christ, we are not free to dispose of Biblical revelation.

I do not expect that everyone will agree with these arguments, and some may even become angry with me as I have come from a decidedly Evangelical background and am self-consciously departing from orthodoxy as defined by that community. I only stress once again that my doing so is not rooted in any way, shape or form in a rejection of the Bible, but in absolutely radical devotion to Christ as the Lord and center, not only of my life, but of all.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Some Thoughts about the Nature of Illustration in Sermons etc.

Some thoughts about the nature of illustration in sermons etc.

I have just begun my fifth year as a pastor.  I must admit that my approach to preaching has changed over the years.  Those who attend the United Methodist Church in Hudson might be able to point out one or two things that have changed since I have been there, such as cultivating a somewhat milder tone, but there are others as well.  For example, before having to preach week after week, I thought of myself as an outline preacher.  I always thought it was neat when someone could just stand up with a few scribbles on a piece of paper and then deliver a passionate and engaging message.

The transition from outline to manuscript, in hindsight, was inevitable.  When I preached several times at my home church in Marshalltown as an intern, I only ever used outlines, but they steadily got to be far more detailed and each point turned into a paragraph.  Once I had to write a manuscript for my sermon that I had to give at licensing school.  One of the things I appreciated was the ability to think out in more precise terms what I wanted to say.  As I put it into practice, I found that the Holy Spirit worked just as much when I prepared throughout the week as it did when I preached from an outline.  In fact, I found that, by thinking out exactly what I wanted to say and seeing how it sounded out loud, I was able to use more precise language, reducing confusion and other good things. I found that I was more able to preach with boldness and conviction when I wrote out a manuscript than I ever was when I preached from an outline.

Though manuscript preaching is quite common in the mainline (or, at least, within some parts of the mainline), it was quite uncommon in the circles I found myself in before becoming a pastor.  In spite of the fact that I found a manuscript extremely helpful, there was still a nagging feeling that I had, at least in this way, abandoned my tradition.  I had to wrestle with this for quite a while.

All of this is to set the stage for some thoughts on illustrations in sermons, because this is also an area where I find myself at sharp distinction from, not only my tradition before becoming a pastor, but even among my seminary peers and throughout the mainline.  I have personally never been in favor of filling my sermons with illustrations.  The initial, gut-level reason why I have tended to avoid them is because I am simply not that creative of a person.  I have always had a hard time figuring out good illustrations, so I more or less let them go.  From time to time, someone (usually from outside of the church I serve) would talk about how helpful they have been in their lives, and I would begin to wrestle with the issue over again.

I found myself having conversations with people who love good illustrations in sermons and been able to discern my issues at a deeper level.  I began to realize that, when people would speak of really powerful illustrations they have heard used, they would not be able to recall the point from the Gospel that was the real purpose.  One person in particular related to me a youth leader he knew who frequently brought small items that were related to the message that they could take home to remind them of it.  There was one particular item that he kept in his room and had a lot of meaning for him.  But when I asked him, “What was the point of the message that went along with that item?”  The response was, “I don’t remember.”

Even in my own experience, I have found that this is the case.  Relatively recently, I used an illustration that I thought was better than most.  Not only did I make the point at the very beginning that the illustration was very limited, I also made sure to frequently point away from the illustration to the reality I was hoping to communicate.  The talk was very well received.  The young people who heard it loved it and really resonated with the illustration.  However, it became clear that their grasp on the illustration was far stronger than their grasp on the actual point made by the Gospel.  The talk was relatable, but I began to think that it could be argued that, since in practice, the illustration overshadowed the Gospel in the hearers, it was not truly a Gospel message, not truly the Christian faith proclaimed and received.

It is only recently that I found, in the course of my reading, a truly clear and deeply theological argument along these lines.  Let us say that we have an aspect of revelation, “Thing A.”  Because the ways and thoughts of God are not like the ways of human beings  (Isaiah 55:8-9), we should not be surprised that it is not easy for us to understand.  After all, it stands against the ways of the world and it stands against us inasmuch as we are sinners who are not fully conformed to the image of Christ.  In order to understand the revelation of Thing A, we introduce an illustration, “Thing B.”  The moment we try to illustrate Thing A with Thing B, our attention becomes divided between the two, if it is not wholly captivated by Thing B.

The problem is that, while Thing A is revelation, Thing B is not.  At its best, the illustration would intend to make a leap from Thing B (the illustration, created out of our own imagination) to Thing A (revelation, given by God).  But how is this possible?  How can we make a jump directly from something that is not revelation to something that is?  How can we say that the two Things are similar in any meaningful way for the church if one is revelation and one is invented by human beings?  It might be argued, “But Thing B is so much easier to understand than Thing A, so we should start there.”  I do not deny that Thing B is easier to understand.  How could it be otherwise?  Thing B stands far closer to us than Thing A because Thing A stands against us as the Word of God while Thing B was invented by the creativity of human beings.

When we illustrate the Gospel with images that we have thought up ourselves, what have we done?  If people walk away from the sermon or other message remembering the Gospel and the revelation from God and not the illustration, then the illustration was unnecessary.  If they walk away remembering the illustration and not the revelation, they have walked away with something, but it is something of fundamentally human creation and not the word of God.  There is a word for substituting something of human creation for the revelation of God.  Idolatry.

When I first heard illustration bluntly called idolatry, I thought to myself, “Well, I probably wouldn’t go THAT far.”  However, the more I think of it, the more I think that it is true.  What can we make of the desire to illustrate the Gospel to make it easier to understand by making it something of our own creation?  What are we to do if illustration is as important as we make it by our constant use of it?  What are we to say to those who think that illustration is so important for sermons and other Christian proclamation that it is not just helpful but necessary?

I cannot finally stand in judgment of others on this as it probably would not take someone long to find all kinds of other problems in my sermons that I post for all to see, especially if they were looking for them.  However, I have become more convinced than ever before that illustration is not where I should be putting my energy.  I refuse to feel that my preaching is inferior because it is devoid of illustration.  I hope that people would walk away from my sermons remembering nothing that was said than remembering something of my own clever invention that replaces the Gospel in their minds.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Probability and Meaning

Probability and Meaning

One of the things that well-meaning apologists for the Christian Faith do from time to time, is argue that the odds against the universe having the laws that it has, especially in the combination of these laws, is astronomically unlikely. This is a fact that everyone who is aware of the issues will grant. However, the conclusion that is often drawn from this is that such an incredible statistic should drive us to conclude that the Christian doctrine of creation (and who knows but all other traditional doctrines of Christian faith) is true.

The chief problem with this, as atheists are quick to point out, is that the argument trades on a conviction that "Incredibly Unlikely" => (that's "implies") "Designed by an Intelligent Source (or at least profoundly significant in some way)." In spite of the best efforts of such apologists, such an implication is simply not valid. Not valid, that is, as stated. There is an additional dimension that is taken for granted by the apologists that needs to be made explicit and, until it is, it will not hold any water at all.

Michael Polanyi, a Hungarian Physician/Chemist/Philosopher of Science, wrote his monumental work, "Personal Knowledge" based on the Gifford Lectures of 1951-52 on a wide range of topics, ultimately arguing that the goal of absolute objectivity (or, perhaps more accurately, "objectivism") that some claim for science is unattainable and should never have been viewed as the goal in the first place. It should be noted that Polanyi did not set out to undermine science in any way, but rather to help put it back on its proper foundations, where it functions quite authoritatively. In fact, he was trying to provide a more accurate account of how science actually works (which, as a scientist, he found was not the same as the way many scientists believed it to work) and promote more complete honesty among scientists. It should also be noted, for the sake of total disclosure, that Polanyi was himself a Christian, though his Christian faith does not enter into his writings on science and his views on evolution would not be agreeable to many particularly conservative Christians.

In the third chapter, on Order (and following a chapter on Probability), Polanyi suggests three scenarios. The first is that, at a particular village, when one enters by rail, there is a statement on the railway embankment in pebbles that reads "Welcome to Wales by British Railways." It is clear that those stones were placed by an intelligent human being who designed their location with some care. If someone were to challenge this view, how might we defend it? We would take the number of all the different ways that those pebbles could be arranged to make the phrase, and divide it by the total number of ways the pebbles could be arranged on the embankment (an incomprehensibly higher number) and say something along the lines of, "See? It is so improbable that it would have happened by accident; it must have been planned."

The problem arises if we imagine that, long after the person responsible for the phrase dies, the pebbles may find themselves scattered around the embankment in a haphazard manner. But what if someone were to argue that the evidence was just as strong that they are in this position by intelligent design than it was earlier. If we do the math, we find that the odds of the pebbles falling to this exact location is just as astronomical as before. Using a purely statistical approach, the evidence is identical on both sides.

Another example is that we would find it coincidental, interesting and incredibly unlikely (in the sense of "surprising") that someone was the 500,000 visitor to an exhibition, whereas we would not if they were the 573,522nd visitor, even though, if we do the math, the odds against being the latter are higher than against being the former.

The third example is to take twenty flips of a (fair) coin. Let us say they are all heads. What are the odds of this happening? Two to the twentieth power, or 1,048,576 to one. Sounds significant. But if we think about it, it turns out that every unique sequence of twenty throws of a coin are equally improbable. We now have over a million results that are, statistically, equally unlikely. Why single out one of them (or two if we also consider twenty tails in a row to be significant) to be particularly striking?

The point that Polanyi is getting at is that probability is not the only factor at work in this kind of reasoning. The striking thing about the first example is not that it is unlikely that the pebbles would be arranged at random, but that they were arranged at random and it resulted in an English phrase that made complete sense in that particular location where it wouldn't in nearly any other part of the world. The distinguishing factor is meaning. It isn't that we could pile a bunch of rocks in any particular way and have it happen to be unlikely how it turns out, but it is that it is incredibly unlikely that such a pile would be the carrier of a message (in whatever form this message may take) that has meaning for a specific group of people. The issue is whether the unlikely event is of no particular meaning, that is, it could easily have been different with no substantial impact ("noise") or whether it makes a considerable impact (a "tune").

This raises the key question. How can we tell whether what seems to us at first glance as random is a tune or whether it is just noise? That is to say, how can we know if there is a message, whatever that message may be, embedded in the details or whether it is nothing more than random facts with no significance? This is a real question (though the example is somewhat trivial) for those who cannot see the hidden images contained in Magic Eye puzzles. Everyone around them proclaims that there is an image to be seen; they can independently verify what it is and can even trace it out with their fingers, but, so long as the individual in question cannot see it, the dilemma remains: Is there really an image that I cannot see, or is everyone around conspiring against me?

Another example might be that of Stonehenge. Such a huge monument has attracted attention for years. If we were to forget everything we knew about the function of Stonehenge, we would have to ask the question, "Were these stones placed here for a reason, or is it merely random?" We might be inclined to the former conclusion because it might seem impossibly improbable to explain how the rocks ended up where they were merely by chance, but, since chance is not convincing evidence in and of itself, as we have noted above, it is not sufficient to tilt the argument decisively in one direction or another. It is only when we begin to say, "These rocks are here as a calendar," when we notice how it charts the solstices, that we are fully convinced, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the rocks are meaningful.

The problem still remains. How can we judge whether the object of our study is truly random, that is, purely coincidental or meaningful in a way we cannot yet understand? How do we know that what seems to be nothing more than white noise does not contain a message we have simply not yet learned the language to understand? The fact of the matter is that there simply is no surefire way to judge ahead of time which is the case. What is more, there is no way to ever prove that there is no message, even after countless trials. One can only prove, or make a strong case for, a message bring present; never that one is absent. After all, a message may emerge one day after years of fruitless research. Projects to understand a given reality may even be abandoned and yet be pregnant with a meaning that we have not yet been able to grasp.

This does not mean, of course, that we should operate with the assumption that every seemingly meaningless thing has a hidden, deep meaning. We simply cannot function if we look at every arrangement of rocks or grass as holding a deep truth about the universe. Sometimes things that appear meaningless are precisely that. Among scientists, there is only so much grant money available, there are only so many pages in a given journal, there are only so many lab technicians, which means some selection must take place. Not every lead can be followed; not every pattern can be analyzed in every possible way. Decisions must be made and they must be made knowing full well that by doing so, important discoveries that have hitherto been just beyond reach, might be missed.

So, to return to the question raised by apologists in our modern world, is the universe an accident or is it created? The decisive point in the argument is not on the improbability of the universe being precisely what it is and not otherwise, but on whether the universe being what it is is full of meaning that would be destroyed if it were not what it is. This often takes place around the issue of the so-called "anthropic principle." I do not mean to suggest that this observation will solve this or other problems easily, but that it must be taken into account and realized that the battlefield upon which much debate has raged is a false one and should be abandoned by both parties, so that we might start again and have more authentic, more fruitful, more honest discussions. The question is (we might say always) one of meaning. Not just "What is it?" but "What does it mean?"

Let God Be True...

11/20/11 Let God Be True... Grace UMC

The concept of truth has played a dominant role in the history of Western thought and culture. In their various ways, in spite of all their differences, the whole history of theology, philosophy and natural science, have been engaged in the search for truth and to understand how that truth impacts us as human beings. In the classical period and after the Enlightenment, truth was held to be the most beautiful of things. Truth and beauty were so connected, it was as if everything that is true is beautiful and everything that is beautiful is true.

But not everyone has thought that truth was beautiful. With the rise of postmodern skepticism and relativism, truth has taken on a different, almost sinister turn. There have been many thinkers who have concluded that the shocking truth is that there is no truth, at least no truth that can be agreed upon by everyone, which means no truth in the sense that we usually talk about truth. In this case, truth is far from beautiful, but can be ugly and even frightening. This kind of truth is something before which we tremble because we have deep desires that there are absolute things like love, goodness, value, meaning, and things like that. What are we to do if there aren't? It is a stark idea that many people have resisted, even if they have been convinced by it, if by nothing else than by a sheer act of the will.

When Jesus was standing before Pilate, he was asked, "So you are a king?" Jesus responded, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." Pilate's retort to this is famous. He asks the question that has been on so many lips since that time and is more common now than perhaps at any other time in history. "What is truth?" Pilate merely did what so many skeptics have done. He attempted to dismiss Jesus' claims to the truth on the grounds that he could not find anything that he felt he could call truth.

Since I have begun my appointment here a few months ago, I have found myself asking a classical question about the nature of truth that goes back to Socrates. In his dialogue with Euthyphro, a man known as a prophet of the pagan Greek gods, Socrates asks this question. "Are things loved by the gods because they are holy, or are the things holy because they are loved by the gods?" Now, it must be said at first that this question has a lot of buckshot in it, because Socrates is, in his own way, attempting to make Euthyphro look foolish. After all, you do not need to read Greek mythology for long before you realize that there isn't hardly anything that the gods all agree on. If we define goodness in terms of what the gods think is good, we can never get started, because they can never agree on what is good and what is not.

This particular jab does not apply if we direct the question to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. After all, we do not affirm a plurality of gods who disagree, quarrel, and even wage war on one another, but only one God, who is absolutely united, even in his triunity. And yet, the question still needs to be asked. Are things good because God loves them or does God love them because they are good? To many people, this sounds like a silly question to ask when they first hear it. After all, what difference does it really make? What should we care which way we look at things, if they both say basically the same thing.

Of course, the real question is, "Where does truth come from?" Is truth something that is defined by and has its source in God, specifically the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, or is truth something that is even more basic, even more fundamental than God himself? To look at it from a slightly different point of view, is good what it is because, first and foremost, God is who he is and not otherwise? That things are objectively good or evil based on what relation they bear to God? In that case, we find we must listen hard to God in order to really know what good and evil are. Or, perhaps, are good and evil what they are independently of God, and we follow God because he is so good and being good?

Often, when I ask this question of people, the moment they realize that there is actually a difference between these two ways of thinking, they say, "God loves things because they are good." I think that the reason we do this is because we are so deeply aware of the realities of good and evil, we can see good and evil in our lives everyday in undeniable ways, because we want everyone to live according to our understanding of good and evil, regardless of whether they agree with our religious convictions. And yet, the Bible consistently portrays God as the source of everything, of everything that we can see and everything that we cannot see. And that means that God is also the source of the distinction between good and evil. Things that are consistent with God, that are in their proper relationship to him are good; those that are not, that defy God, that take authority that belongs to God, are evil. This distinction holds regardless of what we as individuals or as a community think about it.

Paul has something to say on this topic. In his letter to the Romans we find a careful and heartfelt exploration of the relationship of the old covenant to the new, of the nation of Israel to the church as a whole. There is a constant going back and forth between the Jewish situation and the Gentile situation. Paul explores and compares how the Jewish people have reacted toward Christ with how the Gentiles have. In the chapter before our text for this morning, Paul, a Jew, critiques the Jewish people and their failure to respond to God in obedience. He argues that the Jews, no less than the Gentiles, fall under God's judgment. Indeed, they are even more guilty, for they had been set apart by God, they had been given a law to live by, they were truly meant to be God's people, and yet they misunderstood when their God came among them.

After pointing all of this out, Paul asks his readers, "Then what advantage has the Jew?" Biblical scholar C. H. Dodd responds here by saying that, according to Paul's line of thought, the answer should be "Nothing at all!" If all of the laws and rituals don't necessarily make the people better, what good is it? But that is not Paul's response. What advantage does the Jew have? "Much in every way!" Why is this? Because the Israelites were entrusted with the oracles of God, the revelation of God from the very beginning. The Israelites had played a vital part of God's interaction with humanity and this cannot be forgotten. After all, later in his letter, Paul will say that Gentile Christians, like you and me, are like branches from wild olive trees that have been grafted onto the roots of Israel, and not the other way around. Whatever may have taken place, we are not free to discard the history of Israel, for in Christ, it has become our history, too.

Paul puts forward the counterargument that someone might make. "What if some were unfaithful?" What if the Jewish people, in spite of all the blessings they had received, in spite of the care and mercy that God had shown them, didn't react in faith, but rather in unfaithfulness? What if the people showed by their actions that they did not value God? Paul's response to this is, "What about it? What difference should that make?" After all, just because a whole nation of people, generally speaking, did not behave faithfully to God, why should that mean that God should be unfaithful? "Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means!"

This bold declaration by Paul is incredibly comforting, especially because it reminds us that we are simply not capable of undoing the love that God has for us. We might live inconsistently with it, we might not receive the benefits that we are meant to get from it, but we can never actually undo it, we cannot actually make God change his mind about the compassion and mercy he has decided to show us. Not even the murder of the Son of God could stop God from loving us and working out his redemption for us and in us. "Let God be true though every man be false" is encouraging because it reminds us that, even if we have dedicated ourselves to falsehood, it does not change the fact that God is still true and that the truth of God stands in spite of our falsehood.

There is a bit of potential discomfort that comes with the declaration that, even if every human being was a liar, God would still be true. Because, you see, it means that, if I am false, if I, in spite of myself, am a liar, it means that God stands against me as far as my falsehood is concerned. It means that, if I am to be put in the right with God, I must simultaneously be put into the wrong as far as myself is concerned. That is, I cannot be made right with God without being deeply changed. The same God who reveals himself to us in Jesus Christ is called, in the Old Testament, a consuming fire, a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces. When we are confronted with the truth of God, all our falsehood is exposed for what it is and, if we are honest, we don't really like that. We would rather avoid it.

Christians in every generation have wondered why it is that some people simply will not turn to God. We sometimes wonder if people are just not convinced that God really is good. I think that the opposite is sometimes the case. I think that sometimes, people do not avoid God because they do not know how good he is but precisely because they know exactly how good he is. It is precisely because, when they meet with God all their evil is exposed by God's goodness and all their falsehood is exposed by God's truth that they want to stay away. It is as Isaiah says. "We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away." When we compare ourselves to the absolute truth and goodness of God, we shrink away; not because we have found out something about God that we do not like, but that we have found out something about ourselves that we cannot bear.

And yet, it is not as though this discomfort is the final word. God did not come among us to make us uncomfortable, though that certainly happens when we are challenged by his very being. God came among us to stare our evil and falsehood in the face and to overcome it. To endure it in all its depths and even to provoke it to new heights by offering himself to be betrayed and murdered by us, and to use that very manifestation of our human evil and falsehood as the moment where God's goodness and truth are most concretely manifest in our world of space and time. Jesus said once to his disciples, "I am the truth." He did not say, "My words are the truth," or "The scriptures are the truth," but "I am the truth." And how did humanity react to this truth in their midst? By nailing him to a tree and leaving him to die. And yet, in spite of the radical faithlessness that humanity showed toward the faithfulness of God, God did not turn away, but remained faithful, remained true, remained absolutely fixed on his goal to take us and make us his own.

"Let God be true, though every man be false" is a statement of the absolute reliability of God's promises to us. When all the world comes crashing down around us. when it seems that all our hopes and dreams for certainty, for joy, for meaning, collapse, God still stands. When we look around and see that all our heroes are crumbling into dust, when all those we thought we could trust turn out to be deceivers, when we realize that not everyone we thought was looking out for our best interest was actually doing so, when we realize that we ourselves were not always looking out for our best interests; when we realize that our falsehood goes down to the core of who we are, God remains true.
Being put into the right with God carries with it, simultaneously, the realization that we are in the wrong. The word of justification, the word of salvation, the word of redemption means that we, in and of ourselves, are unredeemed, that we are in need of redemption; that we are not who we ought to be.

The good news is that God is true, regardless of whether we are. That God is good even when we are not. That the Good News of Jesus Christ stands, regardless of whether anyone listens. God will not let us out of the implications of what he has done that easily. God is true, even if you are a liar; God is true even if I am a liar. God is true and has invaded this world of falsehood; and that is good news. Let us pray.

AMEN