John 16:25-33

08/01/10
John 16:25-33
Hudson UMC

In this passage, we have the very last conversation that Jesus has with his disciples before He is crucified and resurrected. All of chapter seventeen will be the prayer of Jesus, but as soon as that is over, Jesus will be betrayed and taken captive. The disciples will not have any more opportunities to interact with their Lord. These words are the last things we hear the disciples say to Jesus until after the resurrection. Though Jesus’ words are comforting and powerful, we might wish that the disciples had made a better showing.

“I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but will tell you plainly of the Father.” What things has Jesus been saying in figures of speech? He has been speaking of being in the Father and the Father being in Him, He has spoken of how He will not leave the disciples as orphans, He has spoken of the bond between Him and His disciples as if it were like branches on a vine. He has said many things figuratively and, because we live on the other side of the resurrection, because we live in an age where the Holy Spirit has been given, we can probe into those figures of speech and begin to make sense out of them, where the disciples were clueless at the time. Jesus is saying that there will come a time when He will speak and there will no longer be need for figures of speech. As we will see, clearness of speech is all that the disciples wanted, or at least, all they thought they wanted.

“On that day you will ask in my name. I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” This is really a marvelous promise for us. It would be one thing to say that Jesus will ask the Father for us because He is the Son of God who must seem a whole lot more important in the eyes of God than ordinary folks like you and me. In fact, since Jesus has shown us how much He cares for us, it really wouldn’t be that bad a thing at all to have Him ask the Father for us for whatever we need. And yet, Jesus wants to make it absolutely clear to us that He is not the only one who is loved by the Father. The Father loves us, too. It is true that, when we pray to the Father, we do so in the name of Christ because, as Paul says, Christ is the one mediator between human beings and God; however, we get to pray to God and God has promised to hear our prayers. God is asking for us to pour ourselves out to Him in prayer. We do not need to worry that we are not good enough because, as we are united to Christ, we are loved by God with a love that will not let us go.

“I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father.” This is one of those times where Jesus explains, just a bit more clearly, who He is and why He matters. There have been several times when Jesus has made statements like this and the Jewish authorities wanted to have him killed on the spot, because He was making Himself equal to God. He had said things like, “Before Abraham was, I am,” taking the divine name from the Old Testament upon Himself. “The Father and I are one,” which made the people take up stones to kill Him, saying that they were stoning Him “for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.” If Jesus had said this in public, that He came from the Father and has come into the world and that He was leaving the world to go to the Father, the people would surely have tried to kill Him again. People just don’t say these kinds of things. For someone to say things like this is to say that they have some kind of special connection with God. This simply did not fit in with the Jewish mindset.

“His disciples said, ‘Yes, now you are speaking plainly, not in any figure of speech! Now we know that you know all things, and do not need to have anyone question you; by this we believe that you came from God.’” This sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Isn’t this a great declaration of faith, of confidence in Jesus? It sure seems to be, and it seems to be clear that the disciples thought so as well. They are so proud that they finally get it, that they finally can see clearly who Jesus is and why He has come among them. They realize now that, as the one who has come from the Father and is returning to the Father, they have no business questioning Him, making Him answer their questions, as if they held any kind of authority over Him. Now, the disciples are absolutely convinced and certain that Jesus is not just an ordinary man, but one who has come from God to them.

And yet, in spite of how good this confession seems, in spite of all the good things the disciples have to say, in spite of the overwhelming faith and piety they seem to have, Jesus is not totally convinced. “Jesus answered them, ‘Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone.’” Another one of the things that Jesus has done several times throughout the gospel of John is allow people to make claims that show that they think that they or their circumstances are not really so bad and then respond in such a way that shows that Jesus knows the truth and knows it better than the others do. He does this when He asks the Samaritan woman at the well to bring her husband. She says that she does not have a husband and Jesus responds, saying, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband;’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”

Another wonderful example of this kind is when the Jewish leaders were challenging Jesus. Jesus tells them that they should do what they have heard from the Father. They respond by saying, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus corrects them a bit, saying, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did.” They back and forth a bit more and finally Jesus comes out and says, “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires.” Even though the leaders truly thought they were the rightful heirs of Abraham, they behaved as though they were the children of the devil. Jesus knew what the people could not.

The same is true with what He says here to His disciples. The disciples truly thought that they believed that Jesus was the one who came from God. To their credit, they probably were more convinced of this at this moment than they ever were before. To them, it seemed like a total life-changing revelation to have Jesus speak plainly for once. And yet, Jesus knows what the disciples could not. “Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed, it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone.” Jesus calls into question the faith that His disciples think they have. Do they really believe that Jesus is from God? Do they really? If they really believed that Jesus was from God, would they run away from Him in His darkest hour? Would they scatter, each one to their home in fear, if they really believed that Jesus was from God? If Jesus was from God, there should be no need to panic because God is greater than the schemes of human beings.

Jesus is saying that, in spite of their own diagnosis, the disciples do not really believe like they think they do. The pressure will come and, instead of standing strong in faith, truly being willing to share in Christ’s sufferings, even here and now, it will be revealed that they are weak and broken people like you and me, who are afraid of trouble, who do not want to suffer, and who do not always follow through on their promises.

It is easy for us to romanticize the apostles, who first took the word of God to the people. We read about their ministries in the book of Acts where we see them healing the sick, raising the dead, and standing boldly before mighty leaders, declaring the good news to them. They endure beatings and hardships the like of which we have never seen. It is easy to marvel at their faith, to think that there is something about who they are as human beings that makes them so faithful, so responsive to God’s call. However, the gospels tell us over and over again that the disciples who followed Jesus were nothing special. In fact, they might even have been less qualified to be leaders of God’s people than most. They had no formal training, they were not well-known for their deep spirituality, they were not particularly outstanding at anything. And yet God took people like that, people who were no better than us, and transformed them into His messengers, into people who would carry the Word of God to the nations and transform the world by their witness. When we see the apostles doing their miraculous ministry, we should be encouraged because there is nothing about you and me that would stop us from doing the very same things, because we, too, are disciples of Christ, who are filled with the Holy Spirit and bound to Christ like branches on a vine.

One of the glorious things about the gospel is that it shows us that the moments where human beings come off at their worst are the very same moments where God comes off at His best, and, because God’s grace has penetrated into the very depths of humanity and raised it up to new heights of glory, it ends up being the best thing for humanity. It sounds somewhat paradoxical to say that, when humanity is at its worst, it ends up being the best for humanity, but it is true. If the good news of Jesus Christ came to us in such a way that we were not exposed to the depths of our evil and shown to be not as good as we try to convince others that we are, we would always be in doubt as to whether or not God meant to make those promises to us. So long as we think that there are skeletons in our closet, so long as there is still a doubt as to whether or not God really knows how bad we can be, there will be doubt as to whether God’s grace really covers all our sins.

It is important to notice that this is exactly what Jesus is doing here. He is pointing out that they do not have nearly as much faith as they think they do, but He is not mocking them, He is not poking fun at them, and, perhaps most important of all, He is not disappointed in them, as if He expected them to have gotten it by now and that they are failing Him and letting Him down in that failure. Jesus does not say that they will scatter to their houses and leave Him alone and so prove to be unworthy of Him. Instead, He says that, even though His disciples, His closest friends, will leave Him alone, He will not truly be alone. “Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me.” Even though it will seem, to all observers, that Jesus will be completely and totally abandoned, it is not so. Jesus knows that, even when the best that humanity can offer fails, God is still strong, God is still faithful, and God will be with Him, even when His best friends aren’t.

Listen to the last thing that Jesus says here. “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” Let us take this bit-by-bit. Jesus is saying that He has told His disciples that they were going to fail, that they were not even going to be able to keep the promises they made so confidently that very night in order that, in Him, they would have peace. Even though the disciples are still convinced that they are going to be strong enough, Jesus knows better. He knows that they are going to fail and He wants to make sure they know that ahead of time so that they do not lose hope when they do fail. He says that it is in Him that they are promised peace. They are not granted to have peace in themselves, as if they could have peace in the face of their failure. Instead, they are granted peace because they are in Christ and Christ is victorious in spite of our failure.

“In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” This must have sounded odd in the ears of the disciples, who were just told that Jesus was going away to die and that, in spite of their best efforts, they could not prevent it. I wonder if these words rang in their ears when they saw Jesus on the cross. What a paradox, to have a man who is actively dying at the hands of his enemies, assuring his friends that he has conquered the world. And yet, in spite of this foolishness, this is exactly what Jesus is saying.

I think that we need to hear the words that Jesus shared with His disciples today. We live in a culture that measures us by how well we achieve, by what we accomplish and by our reliability. If we make too many mistakes with too many people, people begin to get the idea, for right or wrong, that we cannot be trusted, that we might let them down and we become something of an outsider. We want to make sure that we are seen as reliable, strong and committed people. If we promise something, we want to make sure we can follow through with it. We get offended if anyone calls our sincerity or faithfulness into question. And yet, this is exactly what Jesus is doing here. He is calling the faith of the disciples into question. In a sense, He is actually undermining their confidence in themselves. But He does not do that to depress them or to make them feel like they are failures. Instead, He does this to make them redirect their faith and hope. It is as if Jesus is saying to the disciples, “You think that you really believe now, but you will all run away. Don’t feel bad, but take courage because I have conquered the world! Therefore, put your trust, not in yourself, not in your ability to do good or to stand strong, but in me, even when I appear crucified before you, for though I will die, I will be raised from the dead and the Advocate will continue my ministry in you.”

What a blessing and a relief to be included in a promise like this! What a relief to know that our standing in the eyes of God is not dependent on how well we get our act together, but on the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. What a joy to know that we have been united to Christ, who has already conquered the world. He was the victorious one even before He was crucified, even when it looked like He was defeated. In the midst of this world of space and time, where it so often feels like things are against us and that we have nowhere to look for hope, we can cling to the fact that our Lord has conquered the world, even when He is hanging on a cross, so that, in spite of our failures and shortcomings, in spite of our desire to do more and our constant disappointments, we trust that our victory is not in us at all, but in the one who has bound us to Himself with a love that will not let us go. Let us leave this place and live lives of praise for the one who calls us to do the impossible and then does it in and through us. Let us pray.

AMEN

John 16:16-24

07/25/10
John 16:16-24
Hudson UMC

In this passage, the main point that Jesus wants his disciples to know is that He is going away in a little while and they will not be able to see him, but, after only a little more time after that, they will see Him again. We know that it has to be the point of the passage because it is said three times in a row. First, Jesus says it to His disciples, then they respond by asking each other about it because they do not know what it means, and then Jesus repeats it again because He is aware that they do not know what He meant and is going to explain it. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of a single other passage in the entire Bible where a sentence is repeated so many times in a row. It must be really important.

First, I want to try to enter into the world of the disciples at this moment. How would they have heard and understood this statement? The first part is that, in a little while, the disciples will no longer see Him. Is Jesus going to go somewhere? They are eating supper together. Will He be taking an evening stroll? Will He be going on a journey? It is not clear. It seems that Jesus means something more serious than this, otherwise He would not make such a point of saying it in the midst of this serious conversation where He has spoken of leaving them and their need for an Advocate in His absence. The question is, why won’t they be able to see Him?

The fact that Jesus is getting at is that He was about to be executed. They will no longer see Him, not because He is going on a trip or hiding from them, but because He will no longer be living. If the apostles at that moment could have understood this point, it would have caused all kinds of problems for them. In fact, it is entirely possible that, in light of the various hints that Jesus was giving throughout this last supper of theirs, that they understood that death is exactly what Jesus was talking about and it was because they understood it that they felt like they did not understand it.

Let me explain. I have said before, but it bears repeating, that we only use the Greek word “Christ” or he Hebrew word “Messiah” in relation to Jesus, and so they have a specific meaning that is governed by who Jesus is, or at least who we perceive Him to be. Because we only ever hear Christ and Messiah used of Jesus, it is easy for us to forget that they were words that had a much broader range of meaning in the ancient world than they do today. “Messiah” and “Christ” are words that are used to refer to someone who is anointed. This might be someone who is anointed as a priest or a prophet, but it was, by far, most often used to refer to a king. More specifically, not just any king, but a king who was of the line of David who was God’s very own chosen ruler for the people of Israel. The prophets of the Old Testament had predicted that there would come a time when God’s Messiah, or Christ, would come and deliver the people. According to the way most people understood those words at the time, they could have come to no other conclusion than that God would send a king to deliver them from the oppression of the Romans and they could finally be a nation like they thought they were destined to be.

And yet, even though Jesus was of the line of David, even though He was indeed the deliverer of Israel, and not just of Israel, but the entire world, even though Jesus is indeed a king, He was not the one that the people expected or even wanted. The people wanted a king that was going to come in, rally the nation, and then overthrow the Romans. Jesus is saying that He is about to die and they will no longer see Him. How can He be the Messiah who leads the people to political victory if He is dead? He can’t be the Messiah that the people wanted if He allows Himself to be killed, but He can be the one they need if He does so.

The other reason why, if the disciples grasped that Jesus was speaking of His death, they would have been confused is because He not only says, “A little while, and you will no longer see me,” but also says, “and again a little while, and you will see me.” If, when He says that they will no longer see Him, He is speaking of His death, how in the world will they see Him again? Before Jesus actually went and died and was raised from the dead and ascended to heaven and poured out the Holy Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost, the disciples could not have made any sense out of this whatsoever. Could you make any sense out of someone who has always seemed to be quite in their right mind, telling you, quite calmly, that they are about to die, but that you will see them again in only a little while? No wonder the disciples were confused.

Most of the Gospel narratives are stories about what Jesus has done, or accounts of what Jesus has said. However, they were being written by particular people at particular times and, every once in a while, we hear the author insert a thought or two to help us understand what is going on. There is one moment in John that is incredibly important and it could only have been written after all of these events had taken place. In chapter twelve, we are told that the disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying at first, “but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things to him.” When Jesus was with them and the were following Him, but without having the Holy Spirit dwell inside of them, they heard all the words of Christ, the same words they wrote down for us to read and hear, but they did not understand them. After Jesus was resurrected and the Spirit was given, all of a sudden, those very same words took on a whole new meaning and they understood what was confusing before.

This is a key point where this takes place. Before Jesus was raised from the dead, any talk about His resurrection would be confusing at best, but more than likely dismissed as symbolism or crazy talk. However, once it had actually happened, all of a sudden, it became clear that all those things that made no sense before, because resurrections, according to everyday experience, simply do not happen, were actually legitimate predictions that showed that Jesus knew exactly what was going on and what He was doing.

Now that we understand what Jesus is talking about when He says that His disciples will no longer see Him and that they will see Him again after a little while, we must turn our attention to His actual description of what is going to happen. “Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. So you have pain now; but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”

The first part of this statement is that the disciples of Jesus will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. Over and over again, Jesus has told us that the “world” is very much opposed to what He is doing in their midst. This can not really be in doubt because the world, even the part of the world that we might think would be excited about what Jesus was doing, reacted violently against Him and crucified Him. In fact, just a moment ago, at the beginning of chapter sixteen, when Jesus had been explaining how the disciples would share in the hatred that people had of Him, He said that “an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.” If Jesus, this great teacher and leader, who is adored by this small group of people, is hated by so many, then if the world takes Him and crucifies Him, it would certainly be a cause for weeping and mourning for the disciples but for rejoicing for the world.

Jesus tries to put the pain of the disciples into some kind of perspective by using an image of a woman giving birth. “When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.” Now I, myself, have never given birth, but those who have have insisted to me that Jesus’ words need a little bit of interpretation. It is not as though a woman undergoes a kind of amnesia after her child is born, it is not as though she literally does not remembers the pain, but that the child brings so much joy that the pain is seen as being worth it, that the benefit is so great that it is as if the pain is forgotten.

We need to be very careful that we do not push this image too far because, though he is connecting His disciples and the woman in labor in His metaphor, the source of joy that Jesus is speaking of is not something that the disciples will bring about on their own, as if the source of their joy is already inside of them and they just need to endure pain to bring it about. The thing that will transform their pain into joy, that will cause their hearts to rejoice, is the fact that, although Jesus is going away to die, they will indeed see Him again.

Even still, we need to pay careful attention to what Jesus means when He says that the disciples will see Him again because He says that it will make their hearts rejoice in such a way that “no one will take your joy from you.” It is true that in John’s gospel, we see the disciples rejoicing more after the resurrection than we do in other accounts, but even here it seems to be more the disciples’ reaction of awe and amazement that we see, shocked disbelief that Jesus is indeed alive again and yet being confronted with the reality of God so profoundly that they cannot help but cry out, “My Lord and my God.” We are reminded in the other Gospels that the resurrection in and of itself is not enough to bring joy that no one can take away. When the women in the gospel of Mark find the empty tomb and meet the angel, we are told that they went away frightened. We read in Matthew that, even after Jesus has been resurrected for forty days and is about to give the Great Commission, “when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some were doubtful.”

Let us look at Peter, even within this very gospel, in order to understand better that, when Jesus talks about the disciples seeing Him again and having a joy that no one can take away from them, He means more than the resurrection. Peter, this very night, as Jesus is betrayed and taken captive, will deny Him three times. He who seemed so strong and dedicated, who offered to die with Jesus, is revealed to be far more wishy-washy than he would have ever cared to admit. Even at the very end of John’s gospel, when Jesus tells Peter something about what will happen to him and how he will die, he finds himself very concerned with whether or not he will be alone in his fate, or whether another of the disciples will suffer the same. Jesus, however, refuses to answer his question, telling Peter to mind his own business.

The point is that, in spite of the fact that Peter seems so weak and hesitant, even at his best throughout the gospels, he does not remain so. Peter does indeed become the rock that Jesus told him he was, but when does that happen? When does he truly step forward to be the leader of the apostles? Not until the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the church. Within the context of our passage, this makes perfect sense and we should not be surprised. After all, Jesus has just gone to great lengths to explain that it is good for the disciples that He goes away because He will send the Advocate who will take the things of Christ and declare these things to them.

The Holy Spirit that Jesus promised is indeed the presence of Christ in the midst of the church. It was because the Holy Spirit was given to the church that Jesus fulfilled His promise that He would not leave His disciples as orphans, but would come to them. We can rephrase and interpret Jesus’ first words in this passage like this. “A little while and you will not see me, for I go to die, yet after a little while, you will see me, not only because I will be resurrected from the dead and you will be able to put your hands in my wounds, but because the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will come upon you. This way, you will not only see me with your eyes, but will be so grafted into me that I will be closer to you than you are to yourself.”

What is absolutely amazing to me about this is that the promise of the Holy Spirit is not just given to the eleven disciples around the table with Jesus. Throughout the book of Acts, we see countless converts, indeed every convert, receiving the Spirit and being utterly transformed by it. Every single person who receives the Spirit in the Bible has a life that is changed in such an amazing and radical way that it simply cannot be explained in terms of anything but the very power of God coming and dwelling inside of them.

The good news of this gift of the Holy Spirit is that you and I are every bit as much recipients of this promise as the original disciples. We, too, have been promised the Spirit of God and that Spirit dwells inside of us. We, too, have been grafted into Christ in such a way that it is His blood that pumps through our veins. We, too, have been utterly bound up in the ministry of Christ in the world. This means that, when we gather together as the body of Christ, we should not be surprised if God moves mightily, touching our hearts and souls and empowering us to go into the world and make a difference, making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. In fact, what should surprise us is if we gather together, as the body of Christ, the ones who have received the Spirit, and we are not changed, if we are not empowered for ministry, and if we are not compelled to join in the work of Christ in the world today.

When Jesus was betrayed, every single one of His disciples scattered. Not one of them stood strong when their leader was in His darkest hour. And yet, even though there was an abundance of weakness, God did not turn away from them. In fact, because their weakness was shown for what it was, because it was more than clear that, on their own, they could not stand strong, it is an undeniable fact that, when they did indeed become strong in the blink of an eye, it was not because they got themselves all excited, but because God had fundamentally changed them. So if you are discouraged today, if you feel weak, if you are convinced that you are not up to the task of participating in God’s transformation of the world in Christ and through the Spirit, take heart that the strength you need is not your own. It is not something you can muster up, but something that God freely gives for no reason other than He loves us and wants us to be involved in what He is doing. So if the Christian life is anything less than a joy and a privilege for you, pray that God would make this same Holy Spirit that has transformed so many throughout history and so many even in this room, empower you in a new way so that you, too, can know the joy of the Lord. Let us pray.

AMEN

John 16:4b-15

07/18/10
John 16:4b-15
Hudson UMC

The previous chapter in the Gospel of John, chapter fifteen, is entirely concerned with the fact that we, as believers, are united to Christ as branches on the vine. As such, not only are we utterly bound up with the love, life and joy of Christ, but also with the persecution and suffering that He endures in this world. The question that might come to our minds is, “Why is Jesus going on about this?” We need to remember the context of these several chapters. Starting in chapter fourteen, Jesus began on an extended discourse, explaining to His disciples all the things that He needed to tell them. We are in the thick of this discussion and we will not be done with it until we finish chapter seventeen. The reason why this is so important, the reason why Jesus needs to say all these things to His disciples at this point is because He is going to be betrayed and die. Jesus and the apostles are at the Last Supper and Judas has already left to betray Christ to the authorities. This is His last chance to tell His disciples what they need to know in order to stay strong and endure through the trials to come.

In fact, Jesus even hints at this at the beginning of our passage. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’” The point is that Jesus is going away. The leader of this group of people is going to be gone and they are going to be leaderless. Jesus leaving His disciples alone because He is going to be executed, and yet, we don’t get the sense that He thinks that they will be able to lead in His absence. After all, He has said to Peter not all that long ago that he was going to deny Him three times before that very night was over. The disciples were sad that Jesus was going to leave. “But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts.”

“Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away.” This must have completely blindsided the disciples. How in the world could it be to their advantage that Jesus was going away? If Peter, for example, who seemed to be so strong, would collapse into cowardice the very night that Jesus goes away, how could it be to their advantage that He leaves? And yet, Jesus assures them that this is absolutely true. “For if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”

I think that we need to reflect on this statement here, because, if we really think it out, it will strike us as odd. Why can’t the Advocate come to us unless Jesus goes? Why can’t the God who can do anything send the Spirit to the disciples, even while Jesus is on earth? There seems to be some intimate connection with Jesus leaving and the Spirit being given. We need to think about that for a minute.

The thought that God could have poured out the Spirit upon the disciples before Jesus had left them presupposes without any kind of proof, that it would be a good thing for that to happen. It might be argued, I suppose, that God’s presence is always a good thing, but I am not so sure. Remember when Isaiah encountered an image of the glory of the Lord in a vision. Even though there were several layers of separation between Isaiah and God at that point (he is having a vision, and it is not truly the direct presence of God he is encountering, but an image of the glory of God), his only response is to cry out and say, “Woe is me, for I am undone!” The only thing Isaiah could do is exclaim that he was about to die. All throughout the Old Testament, when people encountered an angel or a miracle, they were amazed that they had not been consumed by God’s presence.

If this is the case, if God really is the consuming fire, it might not be a great thing to have ordinary folks like you, me, and the disciples, indwelt by God the Holy Spirit. And yet, Jesus says that it is indeed a good thing, that it is to our advantage. And yet, it will not happen until Jesus goes away. As it turns out, if we allow ourselves to let the reality of God becoming a man to really impress itself upon us, we will come to realize that throughout His life, death, resurrection and ascension, Jesus is hard at work, redeeming and re-creating our humanity. When Jesus is baptized in the Jordan, He receives the Holy Spirit into our very humanity and lives with it, without being consumed. It is as if the Spirit, that would normally overwhelm us, has learned to compose Himself within our humanity in Christ.

I also want to remind you of what happens on the cross. Each of the four Gospels tells us something of what happened on the cross. Each has Jesus saying one or two things before He died. What they tell us is incredibly important. In John, the words we hear Jesus saying right before He dies are, “It is finished.” This is truly fitting, as John has made a point of speaking of the work of Christ being the work of the Father, that it is only when Christ has been put to death, when, as He has said, He leaves His disciples, that the work is “finished.” It is only when Jesus takes the curse that has rested upon humanity since the days of Adam and sin entered into the world and nails it to the cross with Him that He can say that His mission on earth, the reclaiming of humanity for God and the reconciling of the world to Himself, is finished. Then and only then, when Christ has provided the appropriate human response, throughout His life and even more so in His death, that the Spirit can come and not consume us but empower us for the trials that Jesus has just told us about.

But what will this Advocate, this Holy Spirit, do? Jesus says that, “When he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.” I must admit that for a long time, this statement confused me. I understood that the Spirit would prove the world wrong about sin because they did not believe in Him because this was indeed sin, but the other two statements baffled me. I can’t say that I understand them fully today, but I think I understand it a bit better than I used to.

The Spirit will prove the world wrong “about sin, because they do not believe in me.” Jesus is not just saying that the Spirit will prove the world wrong because they have sinned by not believing in Christ, but that the world will be proven wrong about sin. Jesus is saying that the Holy Spirit will show that the world does not even know what sin is and that God’s definition of sin is very different than ours often is. What do we say is sin? We think that murder, adultery, and violence is sin; we think that oppressing others is sinful, we think that when we work against the well-being of others or hate them, it is sin. Are those things destructive? Absolutely. Are they things that Christians are called to avoid? You bet. But Jesus is saying that our whole concept of sin needs to be redefined. The greatest sinner is not the one who has done a lot of things wrong, but the one who, in spite of the grace and love that Jesus has shown them, refuses to believe in Him.

This is an offensive idea, one that Paul says that is “foolishness” to the world, but is in fact the very wisdom of God. To give an example of how offensive this idea is, I want to reflect a bit on Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Paul had preached among the Galatians a gospel where Jesus has taken their place, where He has done what they could not do and lives in and through them, making them more who they were created to be than ever before. It is in this letter that Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.”

The Galatians had forgotten this message and had begun to listen to other teachers who told them that, once God showed them grace, they needed to work really hard and finish their salvation themselves, that, now that God had done something, it was their turn to work and bring what God had started by grace to completion by works. Paul’s message was that God will finish the work He has begun. What this means is that Christian faith is not simply an ethical lifestyle where we human beings are the judge of right and wrong. Instead, it means that, in spite of our best efforts, only the response that Christ has made on our behalf and in our place is worthy of God. Because it is Christ’s response and not our response that is pleasing to God, we must renounce ourselves, our own way of doing things, and follow Christ, pleading only the name of Christ for our acceptance by God. This is a very different way to think about sin. It is not a matter of getting your act together, but of letting Christ be your righteousness.

The next point, that the Spirit will prove the world wrong “about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer” is deeply related. When we read the book of Acts and we see the apostles taking the good news into the world, what do they do? They do the things that Jesus was doing, they say the things that Jesus was saying, and they were persecuted in the ways Jesus was persecuted. Real righteousness is not the self-discipline and dedication of human beings, but the very empowerment of God. The Holy Spirit shows that real righteousness is the righteousness of Christ, who once walked the earth and is now present in the lives of Christians through the power of the Holy Spirit. We become righteous, not because we do many good deeds, nor because we avoid evil ones, but because we are becoming ever more closely joined to Christ in every aspect of life.

Finally, the Spirit, we are told, will prove the world wrong “about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.” Our way of thinking about judgment is where someone or something is declared bad and then action is taken immediately to remove that person or thing from society so they can’t hurt anyone anymore. Jesus is saying that judgment is something that is declared long before the sentence is carried out. Christians do not live with hope and joy because the world is doing well, nor because we think that the world is going to get better by human strength and creativity. Instead, we have hope and joy because we know the end of the story. We know that, in spite of the evil that we see all around us, the source of this evil, the ruler of this world, stands condemned. We do not say that Christ is Lord over sin and death because sin and death are no longer present in our world of space and time, but that they have been defeated and their days are numbered.

What I think is perhaps the most amazing thing that Jesus says here is not his radical redefinition of sin, righteousness and judgment, but what the Spirit will do for believers. “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” Earlier, in chapter fourteen, Jesus has promised that He will not leave His disciples as orphans, but will send the Holy Spirit to be with them. Here, he clarifies what He means when He promises the Spirit. It is not as though the Spirit, this Advocate that Jesus is promising is some stranger, even though they have not received Him yet.

The Spirit is not someone who can be separated from Christ as if the ministry of the Holy Spirit is separate from the ministry of Christ. What can the apostles expect when the Spirit arrives? The do not need to worry that they will miss the Spirit or that they will confuse it with their own spirit because the Spirit is not some random Spirit but the very Spirit of Christ taking up residence in themselves. The things of Christ will be imparted to them through the Spirit.

This is truly an amazing miracle. If we were not overwhelmed by the idea that the God of the universe, who created everything that exists out of nothing, who has manifested Himself throughout history in mighty miracles, signs and wonders, has entered into our brokenness and taken our limitation upon Himself in order to redeem it, this idea, that this very same God would enter into, not just the one man Jesus of Nazareth, but into absolutely every single person who comes to believe in Christ, should knock us over. Did you know that being a believer in Christ is not an agreement to live according to a list of “dos” and “don’ts,” it is not a matter of believing all the right things in just the right way, it is not even a matter of being at church every Sunday of your life and helping on all the committees, though all those things might happen. Instead, believing in Christ is a radical transformation where you are given the very Spirit of God, who is the fullness of God so that you might be made to live more like Christ day after day.

Think about what this means. It means that God has not abandoned you, even during the times when it might feel like it, but has taken up residence so that God is even closer to you than you are to yourself. It means that you have not been forgotten, but bound to Christ with the very power and presence of God. It means that you are not left to your own devices to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and work really hard in order for God to love you, but rather that Christ has already offered that perfect sacrifice that you are searching for and offered it to God on your behalf and in your place.

Brothers and sisters, we have not been left as orphans; instead, we have been given a family that will never end, that will never be broken, and will never cast us out. We have been adopted into the family of God and God has given His very self as our pledge that He will not turn His back on us. Everything that belongs to the Father also belongs to Christ and the Holy Spirit takes those things and gives them to us. As those who have received the great things of God, let us go out and let Christ live His life in and through us, that the world might know the transforming power of God manifest in our lives and in the lives of others. Let us pray.

AMEN

John 15:18-16:4a

07/11/10
John 15:18-16:4a
Hudson UMC

Over the past few years, I have become something of a stickler for context. I find that, if you take a quotation out of context, you can make it mean something very different from what the author intended. We have all experienced the confusion and difficulty when our words get taken out of context. However, the danger is never greater than when we are dealing with the Biblical text. Our culture today loves sound bytes, we love brief, simple statements and we don’t always have time to listen to a whole paragraph, just to make sure we understand the context clearly. The problem with this is that, when we do not take the context of a quote from the Bible very seriously, we will separate what God has joined together; we will rip the words away from their meaning.

Today’s text is a wonderful example. If we consider only the words of Christ here, we will come to some conclusions about what Jesus is getting at. We might not like what Jesus has to say; we might even decide that He is wrong or that it doesn’t apply to us, since His words of warning that those who follow Him will be hated are somewhat uncomfortable. However, we cannot make a line down the middle of chapter fifteen and say that the first half has nothing to say to the second half. The two halves are deeply related and we need to allow them to speak to one another.

I haven’t been here for two weeks, so let me remind you of what was in the very last passage before this one. Jesus had used the powerful image of a vine and branches to explain how we are related to Him. When we think about how we are related to God, we cannot think of it as if we are over here and Jesus is over there. We are utterly united to Christ in such a way that we are bound to Him; we are, as Paul loved to say, in Christ. At the end of the day, the life of Christ has been implanted into us and we cannot be separated from Him. Our lives only make sense when considered in light of who Jesus is. This idea that we are united to Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit is not something that is a nice thing to think about once in a while, but the primary language in the New Testament for being a child of God. Our being bound to God through Christ is more basic, more fundamental, even than our being forgiven.

The reason I wanted to remind you of the first part of this chapter is because of the direction Jesus takes in this passage. His main point is that the disciples, those who were following Him, who were giving their lives to His teaching and his message, were going to suffer. The last few statements Jesus makes in this passage help us understand what is going on here. “I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.”

Jesus has some uncomfortable things to say to us but we need to remember that He is not telling them to us to make us squirm, or to make us second-guess our faith, or to put us down in any way. Instead, He is telling us these things because they are true, whether we know them or not and He wants us to be well-informed about them. He wants us to know that the Christian life is not a life of peace where everyone loves us and we all just get along. No, the Christian life is marked by persecution by others, by being hated by those who hate God. We don’t like that idea, but Jesus wants to let us know, so we are not taken by surprise when the road gets hard.

But why does Jesus say that people will hate us? What is it about the followers of Christ that is so irritating to the world? Why should our following of Christ result in tensions with other people? The reason that Jesus gives is rooted in what He has just said about being united to Him like branches on a vine. By calling ourselves Christians, by calling ourselves by the name of Christ, we are proclaiming that we are indeed united to Christ like a branch on a vine. We cannot be separated from Him, whether we want to or not. We are bound up with Him in every way. If we keep this in mind, Jesus’ words make a lot of sense.

“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.” If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own.” These two statements from the mouth of Christ work together to tell us that how we will be treated is absolutely tied up with Him. If the world hated Christ, it will hate those who follow Him. The fact that the world hated Christ cannot really be doubted because when Christ came into the world, the world responded by putting Him on a cross and killing Him. Jesus is not threatening us, but is giving us warning. He is more or less saying, “If you are hoping that, by following me, you are going to become people of power and influence, who will live in luxury because you are my closest friends, you will be sorely disappointed. Do not be surprised that the world hates you, because it hated me first. Do not be surprised when you are treated as I am treated.”

Indeed, how could we expect to be treated differently than Christ? After all, as He has just said, we are grafted into Him like a branch on a vine; His blood pumps through our veins, we are, by grace, utterly united to Christ. Because we are in Christ, we have become participants in every part of Christ; not just the love and joy of God manifest in our lives, but also the difficulty and struggle and even pain of Christ. You can find many examples in the New Testament where the apostles’ took this warning of suffering seriously. It was not simply an academic question like it sometimes seems to be for us. We can question the universality of Christ’s statements that His followers will suffer because we find ourselves so often not suffering at the hands of others, especially those who do not love God. However, for the early church, and for many groups throughout Christian history, this hatred and mistreatment has been all too real, all too close to home. Nearly all the apostles died nasty deaths, but they were not surprised, because they heard Christ’s warning long beforehand.

Jesus goes on to explain a little more about why this persecution will come to those who follow Him. “Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you.” Those who have been chosen by Christ live according to Christ’s commands, as Jesus Himself has said several times in the last few chapters. That means that from day to day, the life of the Christian is not governed by what they want and desire, but by what God wants and desires. This is something that the rest of the world cannot stand. The world and the dominant culture says that we need to go out and get everything we can, that we need to do our own thing, that we need to be the ones who take control of our lives and shape our own destiny. The Christian says, “No. I will not take that kind of control of my life, where I am the one who finally calls the shots. I won’t do that because I know that, left to my own devices, I don’t always make good choices. However, the God who loves me more than I love myself has given me a better way to live. A way that is centered, not on myself, but on Him and, therefore, on others. I will ruthlessly tear down any remnants of self-assertion in the face of God and allow God to shape me into the person I was made to be.”

In light of that kind of humble attitude, the world’s ways of selfishness and destructive pride are exposed for what they are. Those who do not love Christ do not hate those who do because they do terrible things, but precisely because they are being transformed into the image of Christ. Those who hate Christ do not do so because God has not chosen them as well but that, in spite of God’s choosing them and giving Himself to them in such a radical way, they have done the irrational. They have refused Him. We are not dealing with a God who chooses some and rejects others, but a God who loves us to the uttermost and a humanity that rejects Him, though to reject God’s love is the most nonsensical thing we can imagine.

“Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also.” Here we find ourselves back into the warnings that we will face persecution in this life. Christ is the master and we are the servants. If someone hates our master, they are going to hate us as well. Because of the intense solidarity we have with Christ and Christ with us, we cannot expect different treatment than Christ. Indeed, if we were to receive different treatment than Christ, it would mean that we do not belong to Him and that we are not in Him. I also find it interesting that Jesus says if they persecuted Him. Jesus is not asking a hypothetical question that may or may not be the case. He is not saying, “You might be persecuted,” but “you will be persecuted.”

We come now to what might be the most troubling and yet the most powerful statement in this passage. “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.” Here we have Jesus saying that, in a sense, He has caused the sin of those who hate Him. He is saying that, if He had not come and spoken to the people, they would not have sin; but He has come and spoken to them so He has brought about their sin. When we think about the fact that it is because Jesus has come and spoken to the people that they hate Him, persecute Him and will finally execute Him and that, because He has done this, people will hate us, persecute us and execute us because we are not greater than our master, we might be tempted to ask, “Jesus, if your coming makes so many problems for you, not to mention the problems it causes for us, why did you come at all?”

We need to think about this seriously, because here we are getting to the heart of the Gospel. As we listen to Jesus and as we consider what He has said and what He means, we are probing into the very problem of humanity in relationship to God, we are entering what is at the same time the most difficult and also the most glorious part of the good news of Jesus Christ.

Jesus has pointed out to His disciples and to us that it is only because He came that those who persecute Him have sinned in this way. After all, if Jesus never came, they could not have hated Him, they could not have persecuted Him and they could not have killed Him. You cannot hate, persecute and kill someone who does not exist. Because of this, if Christ had not ever come, Christ’s followers could not be persecuted or killed because there would have been no Christ to follow. Because God has acted so decisively and has come as the man Jesus, there really is no other option, no other choice other than what has actually happened and cannot ever be undone. However, the other conceivable option was for Jesus not to come at all.

But what would be the case if Jesus had never come? What would be our situation if God had never become a man and lived among us? We would never have been pressed to kill Him, we would never have had the opportunity to place the Son of God on a cross, but it would also mean that God’s love has not really touched our very humanity and brokenness. God’s love would have stopped short of becoming one of us and one with us. We would never be able to truly know God’s love for us. We would remain broken and without hope of redemption. God would always remain “out there.”

If God had remained distant, if God had never come so very close to us and our evil, our sin would never have been exposed for what it is; but if that were the case, it isn’t as though we literally would not have sin. Our sin would remain and we would remain alienated from God; we just wouldn’t realize it. We would never know the fearful depths of evil of which humanity is capable, but that evil would remain; unredeemed, un-atoned for, and we would remain to this very day the enemies of God.

The crucifixion is at once the very most evil act of human history as it is the final rejection of God by humanity and yet the very most extravagant display of God’s goodness and mercy, as it is the event that binds us to Christ and through Christ to the Father. It is both the final rejection of God by humanity and the final claiming of humanity by God. God has loved us in spite of ourselves. Just as this is the case, our own personal and private sin is exposed by Christ; just compare yourself to Christ and you will see that your sin stands out when held next to His sinlessness, and yet this judgment, this calling sin what it is, is the bond that binds us to Christ for Christ came to save sinners. Every single sinner is implicated. By revealing our sin, God is simultaneously offering forgiveness that is so complete that, if we will believe, we are already forgiven.

When we consider all of this, it means that the persecution that was suffered by Christ, the persecution that the saints throughout the ages have endured, and the persecution in which we too participate, is the reaction of people who want to do things their own way against the God who wants to love them in spite of themselves. It is the result of human evil in the face of God’s redemptive compassion. So, when we are persecuted, in whatever form it may come, it is not something to get mad about, as if it were unexpected or if those who persecute us were people we should hate. Instead, it is something to pray about. Something that should break our hearts in such a way that we pour ourselves out in prayer on their behalf, that they might not be forever imprisoned to themselves but set free in Christ. Brothers and sisters, we have chosen a difficult road. A road marked with suffering, a road that seems like it may consume us, and yet a road that we can walk by faith, because Christ has walked it first. In spite of the rejection of God by humanity, God has not let us go, but has loved us with a love that is beyond any of us. Let us rejoice over what God has done. Let us pray.

AMEN

John 15:1-17

06/20/10
John 15:1-17
Hudson UMC

If you were to ask just about any Christian what is the main benefit from being a Christian, or, in other words, what do we gain by being a Christian, the answer would most likely be, “Your sins are forgiven.” This is indeed a marvelous thing, that our sins are forgiven and that we are reconciled in the eyes of God. It is an amazing thing because, if we look at ourselves with truly honest eyes, comparing ourselves with the standards that are set up, not by our society or government, but by our God, we realize that we do have sins, that we commit them day after day, that we are totally powerless to atone for even one of them because, if we were to live every day from now on in perfect obedience, it would still leave all the sins of the past untouched. We can’t go back and undo the sins we have done, so they remain. However, because of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, God has actually undone the sins we have committed and we are freed from the bondage that goes along with them.

However, in spite of the fact that most Christians will speak about their relationship with God in terms of, “I had a debt, God paid it, and now I am free,” this is only part of the picture. It is indeed a major theme of the New Testament, primarily championed by Paul in his letters to the Galatians and Romans. However, not only is this idea of “God paying our debt” not the only way the New Testament speaks about the Christian life, it is not even the primary way it does so. There are other ways to speak of the life of a Christian that emphasize other aspects. One of them is being “in Christ.” Paul uses the phrase well over a hundred times in his letters; far more than he speaks of being forgiven.

The question that we might ask when we see Paul saying that believers are “in Christ” is “what in the world does it mean to be ‘in Christ?’” Jesus here tells us what it means in such beautiful language. “I am the true vine…Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” When Jesus speaks about how His followers are related to Him, He uses a gardening image. He doesn’t first and foremost say, “Hey, you know all that sin you’ve got? I’ll take care of that.” Instead, He says, “You are engrafted into me, you abide in me and I abide in you. We are every bit as connected as if you were branches on a vine.”

The reason why I began this sermon with a comment about most people jumping to the forgiveness aspect of salvation is because, though the idea of justification by faith is something that was reclaimed in a powerful way in the Reformation, none of the major reformers thought that this way of thinking could exhaust the incredible depths of the reality that God has brought about in Christ. Luther spoke of a “blessed exchange,” where God takes the things that are ours, our sin, our brokenness, and our shortcomings, and gives us the things that are His, His life, His righteousness, His joy, and all kinds of other things.

It might be that the one who spoke most wonderfully about this in the years after the Reformation was John Calvin. I don’t always agree with what Calvin has to say about everything, but I absolutely love his grasp on this idea and how clearly he points out its centrality. I want to give you several quotations to help understand the significance of our being united to Christ by being engrafted to Him like a branch to the vine. “We must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us…For, as I have said, all that he possesses is nothing to us until we grow into one body with him. It is true that we obtain this by faith.” “Christ, when he illumines us into faith by the power of his Spirit, at the same time so engrafts us into his body that we become partakers of every good.” “We do not, therefore, contemplate him outside ourselves from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ and are engrafted into his body – in short, because he desires to make us one with him. For this reason, we glory that we have fellowship of righteousness with him.” “For we await salvation from him not because he appears to us afar off, but because he makes us, ingrafted into his body, participants not only in all his benefits but also in himself.” “Thus ingrafted into him we are already, in a manner, partakers of eternal life, having entered in the Kingdom of God through hope.”

Now, you might be saying, “Who cares? We aren’t Presbyterians, we’re Methodists. Who cares what John Calvin has to say? He isn’t part of our tradition.” Actually, we Methodists owe far more to Calvin than we often admit. Even still, John Wesley, who actually started the Methodist movement, does not ignore this important idea. He said, “Christ does not give life to the soul separate from, but in and with, himself.” When he was trying to articulate his understanding of Christian Perfection, that it does not release us from relying on Christ, Wesley gave the following clarification. “In every state, we need Christ in the following respects: 1. Whatever grace we receive, it is a free gift from him. 2. We receive it as his purchase merely in consideration of the price he paid. 3. We have this grace not from Christ but in him. For our perfection is not like that of a tree, which flourishes by the sap derived from its own root, but like that of a branch, which, united to the vine, bears fruit, but severed from it, is ‘dried up and withered.’”

So, we can see that it is in the New Testament, we can see that it is strong in the Protestant reformers, we can even see that it is in our own Methodist tradition. So, what does it mean for us today? It means that God is not a God that is far away, but one that has come so very close that He has taken up residence inside of us and we inside of Him. It means that God has penetrated deeply into the very core of who we are and has brought the transforming power of God into the depths of our being, to transform us from the inside out.

As believers, our sins are not just wiped away, we are not just forgiven, but this salvation has penetrated deeply into our heart. Our lives are no longer our own, we do not stand over here while Christ is over there. Now that we have believed in the incredible love of God, that we have received the Holy Spirit who binds us to Christ like a branch on the vine, it is the blood of Christ that pumps through our veins. We cannot separate ourselves from Christ without completely renouncing everything God has done for us. We are not just in relationship with God like business partners are in relationship with each other. We are in a relationship with Christ like we are to those who are closest to us; even closer, in fact. The relationship we have with Christ is not just something that we do because it is to our advantage to do so. Instead, this relationship goes to the depths of who we are and transforms who we are.

When we are transformed by the Gospel, when we live in this deep relationship with Christ, we do not get depersonalized or dehumanized, as if being in intense relationship with God through Christ and in the Spirit somehow makes us less who we are. Instead, as people who were made for this kind of relationship, we are actually made more who we really are, who we were meant to be, when Christ abides in us and we abide in Him. Think back in your life to the time when you were most profoundly aware of the presence of Christ. It might have been during a time of prayer, or listening to a sermon when the Spirit kindled a fire in your soul through the words that were spoken, or in a time of radical transition. Was not faith in Christ and a life that is shaped by the life of God the most natural thing in the world? Did you not feel more alive, more vibrant, and more who you are than at any other time? This finding our identity in Christ is not the destruction of who we are, but the final recognition of what we were created to be.

I have been attempting to proclaim this kind of deep, penetrating relationship with Jesus, being engrafted into the life of God, not just as one other way to think about your Christian life and faith that you can take or leave, depending on how satisfied you are with the idea of justification by faith. I mean that this is the primary language used in the New Testament to speak of followers of Christ to which forgiveness is secondary. Debates have raged over what happens after we are forgiven. How hard do we have to work, how holy do we have to be, do we need to do anything at all after we have been forgiven? Those who want to preserve the fact that it is God who is doing the real work will say that forgiveness is the culmination of grace in our lives. Those who realize that the Christian life is far more dynamic and active than just forgiveness now and heaven later want to stress that we do need to keep working.

But when we actually listen to what Jesus says here, how can this question even arise? How can we even begin to say, “What do we need to do after we are forgiven?” Brothers and sisters, we have been engrafted into Christ like a branch into the vine. We can no longer live for ourselves because God has died for us. We are so connected to Christ that, if we were to be separated from Him, we would wither and fall into sin and destruction. If we are so connected to God that Christ is living His life in and through us by the power of the Spirit, we realize that it is because of this union with Christ that we are forgiven and not the other way around. We realize that, in Christ, not only are our sins implicated, but our entire lives are transformed.

So, why have we as modern Christians tended to ignore this powerful theme of the implanting of the life of God into us and living as those who are united to Christ? The theme of forgiveness rose to prominence in the Middle Ages, when people lived under a system of feudalism. There was a strict hierarchy in place and everyone had power over those under them and owed a debt of honor to those above. It was helpful to think of God as the great Lord to whom we owed a great debt of honor because of our sin. It was strongly developed during that time, but what happened later? After all, if all the Reformers emphasized our participation in and union with Christ, if they reclaimed this important belief, how have we forgotten it again?

I think that we have forgotten it because in our modern, Western culture, we like the idea of having our sins forgiven from a distance and we don’t like a God who penetrates into the depths of our humanity. So long as God remains out there, we can claim the forgiveness of our sins and God can go and do His thing and we can go and do our thing. We like to hold on to our own way of living, a way of living that is shaped by our priorities, that responds to our likes and dislikes. In short, we like being able to live the American dream, to look out into the world, see what we want, and work hard to get it. So long as God is kept at a comfortable distance, we can still do that. If God gets too close, if He takes up residence inside of us and we take up residence inside of Him, we don’t get to do whatever we want to do anymore. God wants us to live with the very life of God in us. We desperately want to be forgiven, because we realize that we need it, but what we don’t want is a God who is going to meddle with us; and meddle He does.

But what kind of meddling does God do when we get engrafted into Christ? God begins to live in and through us. No longer are we a branch that is out on its own, but grafted into the source of life. The meddling that God does is insist that we don’t live like people who are dead and cut off from real life, but to live like those who are truly alive and passionate about the world and the God who created it, who care deeply about people and the God who loves them. The meddling of God is not something that sucks the life out of us, but injects it into us. God’s life reveals the life that the world offers for what it is: shallow, joyless and never quite delivering what it promises.

Though God, when we are engrafted into Christ by the power of the Spirit and we abide in Him and He abides in us, challenges the way we live and begins to mould us and shape us, this is indeed the Gospel! For God to forgive us and then leave us as we are would be a tragedy. It would mean that God doesn’t really care about us and that, for all He cares, we can continue on in our destructive and self-destructive ways, doing our own thing, failing when we try to live the right way. God becomes nothing more than a genie, who snaps his fingers and forgives us only for us to go back out into the world and sin more and more because our nature remains fundamentally untouched.

But thanks be to God that this is not the case. God has loved us so much that He was not willing that we should continue on the path to death and destruction, that things should continue as they have always been, but instead chose to move decisively, to step in, to stand against our evil and to rescue us from our sin, not just the sin that is what we do, but the sin that is lodged deep in who we are. God has declared that things are indeed not as they should be, but that they need to be redeemed and that, if He did not bring that redemption about, we would be lost. It is like a life preserver thrown to someone who is drowning. The only way out of danger is to cling to the flotation device that connects you to the ship. Without God, we wither away and die, but when we are engrafted into Christ as a branch on a vine, we are filled with the life of God.

So, as we leave this place and go into a world that increasingly chooses rather to reject the gift of God and remain in their brokenness, let us go out and be witnesses that the life of God is better than what the world has to offer us, that God is the source of our life and it is a life that does not leave us to our own devices but transforms us so that we might know the peace that passes knowledge, that gives us strength in the midst of tribulation, and that saves us from our sin. Let us pray.

AMEN

John 14:15-31

06/13/10
John 14:15-31
Hudson UMC

A while back, I made the decision that I needed to keep pressing through the Gospel of John and get through it just a bit faster. What that really meant was that I would not, in general, spend more than one week on a particular passage. This meant that, even if a single sermon would have to leave many important ideas unsaid and even completely untouched, that would just have to be the case. So far, it has worked out pretty well, but when I came up with this text, my heart broke because there is so much good stuff in it and I would only have a chance to speak generally and briefly on it, boiling it down to just a few main ideas. Now, you all might be thrilled that I am just boiling it down, but I want to remind you as your pastor who loves you and longs for you to explore the Scriptures and live by them every moment of every day that it would be well worth it if you spent some time and energy pondering the words of Christ here. It is a mine full of the very riches of God and you would never run out of things to learn from them.

However, given that we simply don’t have time to spend weeks on end on this particular passage, I have just a few main points to make about the incredible words of Christ. For centuries, and especially since the rise of Protestantism, there has been a heated debate over two major things in the Christian life. These two things are faith and works. First, I want to put before you the argument on behalf of faith. God has promised to make us His children, to adopt us into His very family on one condition and one condition only, that we believe in Jesus. This insistence on only faith is extremely offensive to humanity, because we desperately want to do something, anything, to contribute to our salvation. Salvation by faith, the key to understanding Christianity, absolutely destroys our self-sufficient American attitude that makes us think that asking for help is weakness and that we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Salvation by faith says to this attitude, “There is no salvation except that which comes from God without any help from humanity at all. The only faith that will save us is the faith whose hands are empty and brings nothing to the table at all.” Real Christian faith is not a faith in our own ability, but an utter conviction that we simply aren’t good enough on our own and that God must be all of our hope, all of our confidence, and all of our joy. Any hope in our own works is a denial of God’s grace.

Against this is the argument for works in the Christian life. It doesn’t take much for us to look around and see that there are people who say that they have faith in Jesus but constantly act as if Jesus means nothing to them. To be a Christian means to work, not less than the non-Christian, but more. To hope for a Christianity that does not place moral demands on us is to hope for a Christianity without Jesus. Nobody spoke more about doing good to our neighbors, of helping the poor, about going out of our way to show the mercy of God to others than Jesus did. Jesus does not even acknowledge a possibility of following Him without taking up our cross, that is being willing even to die, and following Him. There are countless moral obligations pointed out, not just in the Old Testament, not just in the epistles, but in the Gospels themselves. To say that we should not place a high priority on what we do but only focus on what we believe is a wholesale denial of the Gospel and an abandonment of the Jesus that we claim to love.

Both of these two strands of argument have raged throughout much of Christian history. Both sides are absolutely convinced of the fact that they are right and that the other is wrong. In fact, many times, you will get people who were once on one side and then on the other and argue for their new position with all the passion a convert. Those on the side of faith point to the arguments of Paul and his absolute insistence on faith as the core of the Christian faith and his unwillingness to allow works to have a place. Those on the side of works will point to the Gospels, especially the Gospel of Matthew and the letter of James to point out that the Gospel does not ignore how we live but that good works are part of our daily lives.

Now, if you are anything like me, you listen to both of those arguments and you nod your head, saying to both of them, “Yeah, you’re right. All of that makes good sense.” The problem is that so much of the tradition has taught us that we can only have one or the other, that they stand over and against one another, as natural enemies and as enemies to the true Gospel. Our deepest experience as Christians does not want to believe that we have to choose between faith and works, but since we are surrounded by so many who think that they can’t go together, we sometimes feel pressured to do just that.

But if we look in this passage, with Jesus’ words to His disciples, do we see this kind of fighting over whether faith or works are more important? No. We see Jesus saying things like, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” and “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me,” and “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words,” and, interwoven with this emphasis on obedience in our lives, we hear Him say that the Holy Spirit will come and abide in us, that Jesus will not leave us as orphans but will come to us, that we do not need to be worried because the Spirit will continue to teach us day by day, that, because He lives, we will live as well, and that all of the things He is telling us is so that we may believe. We do not even get the smallest hint that these two strands should be in conflict in any way.

In fact, if the way Jesus speaks of our radical obedience and the absolute priority of grace in this passage tells us anything at all, it should tell us that the ideas cannot be separated at all, that they are utterly interrelated and that we cannot argue as if they are opposing views without destroying the relationship with God that He has established. Real faith, according to Jesus, cannot exist without corresponding action. However, this action is, at every moment, enabled and bolstered by faith and cannot exist without it. We will go more in depth about this continuous, dynamic and personal way to think about the Christian life when we consider Jesus’ image of the vine and branches next week, but it is enough for us today to be reminded that real Christian action simply cannot exist except where it is generated, encouraged, and empowered by Christian faith by the Holy Spirit.

So, in spite of the ocean of ink that has been spilled on behalf of promoting faith apart from works or promoting works apart from faith, we see that the choice between faith and works is a false one. I think that the reason we want to choose between them is because it is so much easier to live if we just reject one of them out of court. After all, it is hard enough to emphasize either one or the other. It is next to impossible to do both. Did I say, “next to impossible?” That is silly. There’s nothing “next to” about it. Living our lives emphasizing both faith and works is something that is utterly beyond all of us. And yet, this is indeed our call. Perhaps this is why Jesus made such a big point about assuring us that He was not leaving us as orphans, that the coming of the Spirit will strengthen us from day to day. We have the promise of God that assures us that, because of our participation in the life of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can indeed do this impossible thing called the Christian life.

Again, it is critically important that we understand that faith and works are not different things that we can play off, one against the other, but two sides of the same reality. We can see it here, where Jesus speaks so pointedly about the utter need to obey and keep His commandments if we hope to be His followers and yet treats us with incredible kindness, taking the burden off our shoulders and fulfilling it from within us. But, if we actually read the Bible without allowing the debates of others to force us to read it in a certain way, we see that faith and works are interwoven throughout all of the New Testament. Indeed, even in the Old Testament, the life of faith was accompanied by a corresponding way of life. But, when we look at James’ insistence on the need for works, how does he speak of it, as works that are independent of and against faith? No, but as a way to show whether the faith we think we have is dead or not. Whatever else we might have if we do not do good works, it certainly isn’t living and active faith.

Even Paul, the mighty defender of salvation by faith does not ever imply a faith that is utterly without works flowing from it. In his letter to the Romans, where he explores the idea of faith and the Christian life most carefully, Paul spends a full five chapters at the end, explaining how everything he has said before has concrete consequences in the Christian life and that, to live with the faith of Romans 1-11 without a life that answers to Romans 12-16, is something that never even entered into his mind. Even in his letter to the Galatians, where Paul is more prepared to warn against any works of our own contributing to God’s grace, he does not entertain a possibility of a Christian who does not have a life flowing with the fruit of the Spirit. A Christian whose life is not thoroughly marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control is a contradiction in terms.

The New Testament is of a single voice in saying that there is no Christian faith that does not manifest itself in works and that there are no genuinely Christian works that do not spring from an actual participation in Christ by faith. Brothers and sisters, that should be enough. It should be enough for us to listen to the apostles, who gave their lives to proclaiming the word of God, who are the foundation upon which our Lord has built His church, who are the leaders who do not point to themselves and their own authority, but to the very authority of God, to which they are subject. It should be enough to say that the entire New Testament cries out with a unified voice that we are to be people of faith and action and that those two things must never take away from each other.

It should be enough, but just in case it isn’t, it is not just the New Testament that has affirmed both sides of this tension. Methodism under John Wesley did the same thing. Though Wesley wrote thousands and thousands of pages, sermons, treatises, letters, and his lengthy journal, chronicling the Methodist Revival of the eighteenth century, there might be no better way to understand this twofold emphasis on faith and works than by what it meant to be a Methodist at that time.

If you wanted to join with the Methodists, you were only asked one question, “Do you desire to flee the wrath to come,” that is, are you a sinner who wants to be forgiven. However, if you wanted to stay a Methodist, you had to agree to do three things: Avoid evil, do good, and use the means of grace. You couldn’t be a Methodist and still engage in a life of sin or avoid doing the good that you are able to do, or to not be at church, worshipping with the larger body and participating in the sacraments, as we are about to do. And if you did those things and refused to hold true to your commitment, they would simply not renew your “ticket” for the next quarter, which was your pass to come to the Methodist gatherings.

Surely Methodism under Wesley emphasized works. If you wanted to be a Christian without works, whatever you were, you certainly weren’t a Methodist. However, in spite of the major emphasis Wesley put on obedience to God, he always warned the Methodists of degenerating into what he called the “dead, empty shell of religion.” And what was this but avoiding evil, doing good, and using the means of grace. Wait a minute. Weren’t those the very same things that he said you had to do to be a Methodist? They are indeed, but if they are being done, even with fervor and passion, but without real living and vibrant Christian faith, they are as useless as an empty shell.

In a moment, we are going to celebrate the sacrament of Holy Communion. The sacraments of the church also add their voices to the utter inseparability of faith and works. When we are baptized, especially if we are baptized as infants, we are not baptized because we have already been transformed, but because God has claimed us long before we ever knew He existed. And yet, though the initiative in baptism is all God’s, we are forever stamped with an indelible mark, a never-ending commission to live the rest of our lives as those who are set apart for God. Communion is no different. What have we done to deserve to come to the very table of God? We can look back over even just the last week and see example after example where we were not the people of faith that we ought to be, where we did not respond as Christ would, but as the world would. If our participation in the Lord’s Supper was limited to our earning it, it would be an empty table, a meal that would have to remain uneaten and unshared.

But thanks be to God that this is not the case. We are not invited because we have given God what is required to participate but precisely because we have nothing to contribute. And yet, after we share this holy meal, we do not remain at the table, but go out the doors and back into the world. The spiritual food of which we partake, the body and blood of Christ, nourishes our souls and prepares us for our obedience in the week to come. We come with nothing to give, but are sent out with a story to share, with good news for the world.

So let us come to the table together, as people who hear the voice of Jesus, of Paul, of James and all the apostles, and even the voice of John Wesley and the early Methodists, and participate in the good news of God, knowing that we have not been left as orphans, and that the very Spirit of God will remind us of the words of Christ and strengthen us to do the works of the kingdom. Let us pray.

AMEN

How We Know God: The Incarnation

06/10/10
How We Know God: The Incarnation
BASIC

Over the last few weeks here at BASIC, we have been considering and discussing the question, “How do we know God?” in order to be able to begin to answer the question, “How should we live in response?” So we have been considering ways in which we might come to know God. This whole project really gets down to one of the very most central ideas in all of Christian faith; the idea of revelation. Now, as Christians, we are not just interested in revelation in the abstract. We aren’t interested in revelation of any old thing, but the revelation of God. Now, ever since the very beginning, the people of God, right on back to the ancient Israelites, were intensely aware that only God can reveal God. Not only did God tell them this, they were able to look around at all the nations around them and see what happened when God did not reveal himself to human beings. They made up bizarre rituals, they sacrificed their children, they had drunken orgies, and all the rest. Every time the Jews began to do the kinds of things their pagan neighbors were doing, God sent prophets to remind them of who they were and what they were about. They worshipped a God who told them who he was. They had a God who revealed himself to them in a unique way.

What is really important for us to understand is that, since it is only God that can reveal God, it means that, under absolutely no circumstances at all, can we reveal God. This means that, no matter how much sense an idea about God makes, no matter how much we might want to believe something about God, no matter how good a speaker might be at convincing people that it is true, if it is not rooted and grounded in God’s actual revelation, we must not take it as truth. This means that we are utterly bound to what God has actually revealed about himself to us in our actual world of time and space and we cannot ever bypass this actual self-revelation and invent a god of our own. By the way, there is a word for this kind of behavior. It’s called idolatry.

God has never left humanity utterly without any revelation, but this revelation has always been fundamentally veiled. I want to consider a few ways in which God has revealed himself to us and see in what ways we can come to know God. As the one who created the universe out of nothing, God has left something of an imprint of himself on creation and we encounter creation. However, in spite of this interaction, creation is something other than God so, at the end of the day, we are encountering something that is consistent with God, but not God himself. As the one who inspired the writers of the text of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, God has revealed himself in a way that is much more full. However, we cannot forget that, though God has imprinted himself more clearly in the text of the Bible, the Bible as a text, as a book, is not God (for example, we do not worship the book of the Bible). So, when we encounter the Bible, we are encountering something that is not only consistent with God, but something that is an active witness to that God, but it is still something that is not God.

Now I want you to consider the fact of the Incarnation. When God became a human being in Jesus Christ, he revealed himself to us in a staggering way where the fullness of the divine majesty took up residence within our broken and weak humanity. He died two thousand years ago, but he was also raised from the dead and ascended into heaven and lives even today as a person that we can meet. And when we do meet Jesus, when we encounter him in a personal way, we do so by the power of the Holy Spirit. However, unlike creation which is not God and the Bible which is not God, Jesus is indeed God and the Holy Spirit is indeed God so, when we encounter Jesus in the Spirit, we are encountering God through God.

This is not meant in any way to make it seem that the Scripture is unimportant. After all, how is it that you and I learn anything about Jesus in the first place? It is because we have heard the stories of Jesus as told by his first followers, the ones who knew him and lived with him and were transformed by him. Unless you know of a reliable way to access Christ rooted in what God has actually revealed to the apostles that doesn’t involve the Bible, you are stuck with it. If we try to know Jesus by ignoring what he actually did and said, we are once again trying to make an idol.

The real point of everything I have to say is that Jesus is absolutely the answer to both of the questions “How can we know God?” and “Who is God?” Point me, if you can, to another decisive self-revelation of God along side of Jesus or some source of revelation that tells us something that is true of the reality of God that is utterly new and outside of the revelation of God in Christ and not really an unpacking of what God has actually revealed in Christ and everything that I have to say tonight is absolutely useless. However, be careful about what you say, because if you think you have such a source, then one of the things you are actually saying is that Jesus is not really the fullness of God, but that something has been left out and we can only really know God by trying to peek behind the back of Christ, and if we do that, we set him aside as something less than God in doing so.

Let’s turn to what I think is a particularly amusing passage in the Bible to try to understand this. John 14:7-10 says, “If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; from now on you know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” The real point that Jesus is trying to make here is that there is no need, and actually, no possibility of finding another source of revelation to see God. There is no outside way of thinking, no abstract speculation, no philosophy, nothing else whatsoever that is going to get us closer to God than we are in Jesus Christ.

When we look at Jesus’ response to Philip, we see him saying that a request to see the Father from those who know Him is silly. If you know God, how can you ask to be shown God, as if you did not know Him? He is saying to them. “God is in your midst, living as one of you. God is right in front of you if you have eyes to see it.” The same God that the Father is has come among us as the man Jesus. When we look deeply into the face of Christ, we do not simply look into the face of a man, but into the very face of God. Just earlier in chapter fourteen, Jesus told his disciples that he was going away and that they knew where he was going. Thomas responded, saying that they did not know where he was going. “How do we know the way?” The response is very famous. “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.” What this means is that Jesus is the way to God and there is no other. If we try to think about God without thinking about Christ, if we try to generate an understanding of God that is not fundamentally rooted in the reality of Christ, we are trying to find a way to God outside of Christ. We would be trying to get to God by avoiding God, which would be incredibly stupid, to say the least.

So, if we need to look first and foremost at Jesus to understand God instead of trying to think up God outside of Christ, what do we find when we look there? Let’s try to think out God’s love in light of Christ. We don’t have to look very far if we want to find out how people think about the love of God apart from Christ. I don’t know about you, but I have heard all kinds of different things about God’s love. The real problem seems to be the word itself. What do we mean when we say that God loves us? After all, when we use the word “love,” we mean all kinds of things. Sometimes, we say we love our family. Sometimes, we say we love pizza. Sometimes, we say we love a particular sports team. If you happen to be married, you sometimes (hopefully often) say that you love your spouse. In the last year, I became a father and so I often say that I love my son. If we look out into broader society, we see that love takes on any of a number of meanings. Sometimes love means “a deep, committed decision for a lifetime of relationship.” However, sometimes love means “I enjoy your company at least a little bit.” It also sometimes takes on the meaning, “lust.”

If we have all these different meanings of “love,” which of them, if any, do we mean when we say that God loves us? When God says he loves us, is it like the love we have for our family or is it nothing more than saying he loves us like we love a band or a movie? As if this were not complicated enough, a person’s experiences can radically shape the way they hear the statement, “God loves you.” Even saying that God loves you like a father doesn’t always help because some people have had some terrible fathers, who mistreat them, who maybe have abused them, either physically or mentally. To say that God loves them like a father might (though this is not always the case) make them say, “Forget that! One father is bad enough. Why would I want another one?” Imagine someone who has never received real love before. Perhaps it is a young woman who, every time she ever heard someone say, “I love you,” it was only a way to manipulate her to sleep with them. What might be her reaction if we said to her, “God loves you?”

We have so many ways of understanding the word “love,” and they are not all equally helpful. In fact, some are actually destructive. If you look around, among people who want to talk about the love of God, there are groups who will lobby for one or another meaning for the word love. How are we to decide what God’s love is like, especially since the human expressions of love that we can see are not always very good at all?

In order to sort through all the garbage and actually come to know and be transformed by the love of God, we can’t start with our own experience, with what we imagined one day the love of God is like, or even what someone has told us that God’s love is like. We need to look at Christ, and, when we do so, we see a love that not only helps us to sort through some of the bad ways of thinking of love, but absolutely transcends anything that we would ever have imagined on our own.

Sometimes, we will talk about the coming of Christ into the world, and we will say that the whole world was just waiting for a savior, grieving over their sins, and then God came and took care of it. Now, it is indeed true that God has dealt with sin, but the fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of people in the world, even among the people of God, were quite content to stay in their sins, and may not have even been aware of them. Humanity was so utterly steeped in sin that they didn’t even notice it anymore. It was so much a part of their daily lives that it seemed truly natural and therefore, the way things ought to be. In coming into our midst, Jesus exposed our sin for what it is, evil rebellion against God that is not just manifest in what we do, but in who we are.

It is against that backdrop that I want to raise up two particular statements in the Bible about the love of God for us. In Romans 5:6-8, Paul says, “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for a good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” When we were so steeped in sin that we couldn’t even see it anymore, God entered into our weak humanity, making our brokenness his own and standing as one of us and one with us. Can you even begin to understand what it cost the second Person of the Trinity to enter into the life of a newborn child, a weeping and wailing baby? For the God of the universe to have to eat food and drink water to survive? To have to go to the bathroom? Can we even begin to fathom the agony on the cross where Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” because he had identified with our sin so completely and suffered the unbridled wrath of God on our behalf and in our place?

The other passage of scripture I want to lift up is 1 John 3:1. “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are.” We have been adopted into the very family of God and made children and, as Paul says, “if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” God has not just forgiven us, has not just invited us to be with him for all eternity, but has adopted us into the divine family where the Spirit of God takes the things that belong to Christ and makes them ours. When we look at the actual reality of Christ, we realize that God’s love for us isn’t like the love of our family and it certainly isn’t like we love pizza. We see that the God of the universe, who never needed anything and never had to do anything he didn’t want to do, freely chose to die for us, just because he would rather die and suffer the incredible wrath that our sin deserves than be without us. It means that the love of God is far greater than we ever would have imagined on our own. It means that, at least in a sense, God loves us more than God loves God’s self.

I wanted to talk about how the reality of Christ challenges our understanding of the love of God as one example to help demonstrate how important it is to begin and end all of our thinking about God in the actual, concrete reality of God’s self-revelation in Christ. If we tried to think about God’s love outside of Christ, we would end up starting with our experience or some other made up standard of love and applying it to God. Don’t be afraid to really let Jesus be God. Don’t be afraid that letting Jesus be your standard will somehow cheapen God. As we have seen with just one example, looking at what God has actually done in Christ does not show us that our concept of God is too big, but far too small. The God revealed in Jesus Christ is far greater than any idol we could make for ourselves, so let us abandon our idols and let God be the God he really is and not the false god we human beings want him to be. Let us pray.

AMEN