Continued from Part 1
By arresting, torturing, and killing Jesus, the authorities thought that they were securing well being and peace again in their society by means of the tried and true method of a single-victim scapegoat. Everyone’s thirst for violence will be satisfied and we can get on with the business of everyday life.
Once they decided on this violence, they were all unified. Everyone’s anger and frustration and hatred converged on a single victim. If we don’t understand this process we will just be baffled by the bizarre unity achieved in John 18–19. The escalation of the rivalries and the advent of violence always witness the strangest about-faces and the most unexpected regroupings: Pharisees and Herodians; Zealots and Sadducees. The bodyguards of the High Priests and the Roman Cohort garrisoned in Jerusalem. Judas and Peter. Caiaphas, Annas, and Pilate. Religious leaders cooperated with political. Barrabas was accepted by the Jews. Jews and Romans learned to work together! “Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day, for before this they had been at enmity with each other” (Luke 23:12).
We have a united kingdom—one society, one kingdom, a kingdom of this world unified in their hatred and violence. They all conspire together against the Lord and his anointed (Psalm 2).
And here is Jesus, the innocent victim, the scapegoat. “My kingdom is not of this world, Governor Pilate.”
Continue reading on the Trinity House blog.
Showing posts with label Sermons/Lectures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sermons/Lectures. Show all posts
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
This Little Babe
Here's my short homily from Christmas Eve 2009. During Advent and Christmas I typically spend some time reading Martin Luther's Advent and Christmas sermons. Anyone familiar with Luther's thoughts about the baby Jesus will recognize my dependence on him. Very few theologians have grasped the full significance of the incarnation of the eternal Son of God as Luther did. The true humility of God is unveiled in the story of Jesus' birth. God the Son united himself to our human flesh forever.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Thou Shalt Not Play God
When I was a teenager, a few buddies and I would periodically break into a local business. We used credit cards to jimmy the locks on the back door. There was no alarm. We would never steal anything of real value, but we always left with something little—maybe some food (ice cream or candy) or a pen—just enough to top off the experience. What experience? The exhilaration that attends such audacious mischief. For us to roam through the facility and not get caught was an adrenaline rush. We could do it. We did it. We were young, but we had the power. And we didn’t get caught. We were untouchable. We were like gods.
Download and listen to the entire sermon on the 8th commandment.
Download and listen to the entire sermon on the 8th commandment.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Doing the Rite of Communion Right
The Colloquium on the Sacraments went well this morning. A good time was had by all. You can find a copy of all the papers here. The title of my lecture was "Efficacy and Ritual Performance: How the Administration of the Sacraments Affects What They Actually Accomplish." Have at it. I'll try to post an audio version sometime soon.
BIG UPDATE:
Here are all four presentations in the order they were presented. The first one has the opening comments of the moderator and then Will Barker's presentation. Enjoy!
Will Barker's Presentation on the Reformation and puritan background (7.1mb mp3 file)
Rob Rayburn's presentation (6.7mb mp3 file).
Ligon Duncan's presentation (6.1mb mp3 file)
Jeff Meyers's presenation (7.9mb mp3 file).
Responses from each speaker and Q & A session.
BIG UPDATE:
Here are all four presentations in the order they were presented. The first one has the opening comments of the moderator and then Will Barker's presentation. Enjoy!
Will Barker's Presentation on the Reformation and puritan background (7.1mb mp3 file)
Rob Rayburn's presentation (6.7mb mp3 file).
Ligon Duncan's presentation (6.1mb mp3 file)
Jeff Meyers's presenation (7.9mb mp3 file).
Responses from each speaker and Q & A session.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Feasting With Jesus
I don't publish sermons very often. For one thing, I don't want to pitch my sermons to people that are not in my congregation. If I know that my sermons will be heard by people I don't know, in cities I've never visited, then I will constantly worry about everything I say. And eventually, of course, I will end up preaching not to the local congregation, but to a more general audience. Way too many pastors fall into that trap. Besides, I just don't want to be constantly thinking about how some critic could misunderstand and twist my words. But, alas, occasionally I throw caution to the wind and post a new one. Here's a sermon in my series on the Gospel of Luke. The passage is Luke 5:27-39. Rip it to shreds.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
A Christmas Homily
Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church
Christmas Eve 2004
Text: 1 John 1:1-4
Title: This is the God in Whom We Trust
You've probably saw the reports a few years back—mostly on the internet—that the famous atheist Anthony Flew at age 81 (or so) now believes in God. The headlines would have you believe that Flew had some sort of conversion and is now a believer.
Remember Anthony Flew? For over 50 years he has been an icon of religious skepticism and a committed atheist.
In 1950 he wrote a short essay called "Theology and Falsification." And ironically this paper was presented to Oxford's Socratic Club, led by C.S. Lewis (until 1954). Dorothy Sayers was part of this club, too. The paper has had an enormous impact.
He began with a parable adopted from someone else: Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing both flowers and weeds. One explorer said, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagreed, "There is no gardener."
So they decided to pitch their tents and set a watch. But no gardener is ever seen. The first explorer says, "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry.
Yet still the “believing” explorer is not convinced. "There is a gardener. But he is invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last his friend, the skeptical explorer despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"
The original claim that there is a gardener (an invisible deity that cares for the garden) has died the death of a thousand qualifications. The claim that there is a gardener (God) is not even meaningful.
There are, of course, a number of problems—philosophical, theological, and biblical—with this parable and what it supposedly proves. But this is not the time or place—Christmas Eve—to analyze something like this for every false assumption and error in logic.
But I should note that Flew to date has not retracted his rejection of an invisible Gardner deity. When Flew says he "believes in God" that's not what he means.'
So, does Anthony Flew now believe in God? Yes and no.
There are three problems with this statement "Anthony Flew believes in God.”
First, the verb "believes.
Second, the noun "god."
And third, just one small little detail—Flew denies that he has come to any kind of religious conviction about a supreme being.
1. What does it mean that Anthony Flew now “believes”?
Anthony Flew now "believes in God" means "Anthony Flew now thinks there is a god" (small "g"). No, he doesn't believe in God. Rather, he now is of the opinion that there may be some sort of deity. That's not the same thing as believing in God. Trusting in God.
But his “believing” clearly has no impact on his life or relationships.
For us Christians "believing in God" is not merely some private philosophical opinion or a religious sentiment.
Jesus birth was very public and his public life demanded change in the real world, not just in the hearts and minds of believers.
You are either for Jesus or against him. He said “follow me,” not simply “form an opinion about divinity.”
2. Then there’s this little word "god."
Whom do you refer to when you say "god'? The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ or some generic supreme being. They are not the same.
We often say that people who think that some supreme being exists "believe in God" but that's not accurate. They think that a god exists. To “believe in God” is to trust in the living and true God, the Creator and Redeemer revealed in Jesus Christ.
Anthony Flew, however, says this: "I'm thinking of a god very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins. It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose." Would Flew ever think that God was a cosmic oriental despot if he took the time to carefully consider the significance of the incarnation of God the Son?
Modern man treats the substance of Christmas—the birth, the enfleshment of God himself—like they would a dead animal on the sidewalk—we walk carefully around it and try to avoid looking at or smelling it.
Christmas becomes a metaphor, a symbol for something happy, something sweet, something—let’s not define it too carefully or identify it too concretely—something nice to think about once a year.
Very interestingly this is admitted by the champion of religious relativism and pluralism in our generation, John Hick, the English religious philosopher. In his book, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, Hick argues exactly this way. The title of his book says it all. He is happy to believe in the incarnation as a religious "idea," a metaphor of God's nearness to man. But he will have nothing to do with it as history, as an event in the real world, as something that actually happened. He wants nothing to do with the Christmas history as it is related in the Bible—God the Son begin born a human child to a virgin mother. We cannot believe that God actually became a man in Jesus Christ, Hick argues, because if we did that, we would have to accept that the Christian Faith is alone the truth about salvation and peace with God. We would have to accept Christianity's exclusive claim. We just can't do that, we can't believe that.
So it turns out –and everybody knows it—that there’s nothing but the shell left—colors, lights, the warmth of Christmas fires and cider, the smell of evergreen and cinnamon. But underneath nothing. Nothing at all.
Ultimately, when Christmas sentiments have freed themselves from the story of Christmas, then every man and woman must imagine his idea of Christmas. These days Christmas provides an opportunity for one’s own privatized religious feelings.
So year after year we have the same old tired “meaning” trotted out for us to “celebrate.” The "meaning of Christmas is giving" Yawn. The true meaning of the holiday season is enjoying family and friends and helping those who are less fortunate than we are. Sigh.
No, these do not explain the true meaning of Christmas. Rather, they summarize how we are to respond to the miracle of Christmas eve. How we are to live in the light of the real meaning of Christmas—the incarnation of God the Son.
But the focus of Christmas should not on us—some humanistic reduction of Christmas to religious sentiments or humanitarian concerns. These horizontal, social concerns are important, but they are not central, they arise because of the vertical.
(Make the sign of the cross): God reveals himself to us in Jesus, comes to us first and then we love one another, give to one another.
You forget the one and you will never truly have the other.
I would hope that even our littlest children know that believing in God means trusting in the One who came to live among us and die for us.
Christmas is the time we remember not an invisible Gardener, not a parable, but the true story of God's becoming man for us.
And the invisible God that is made know to us in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is not a cosmic dictator or tyrant. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a divine community of love and service turned outward toward his creatures.
Believe in God, believe also in me, Jesus said.
Christmas Eve 2004
Text: 1 John 1:1-4
Title: This is the God in Whom We Trust
You've probably saw the reports a few years back—mostly on the internet—that the famous atheist Anthony Flew at age 81 (or so) now believes in God. The headlines would have you believe that Flew had some sort of conversion and is now a believer.
Remember Anthony Flew? For over 50 years he has been an icon of religious skepticism and a committed atheist.
In 1950 he wrote a short essay called "Theology and Falsification." And ironically this paper was presented to Oxford's Socratic Club, led by C.S. Lewis (until 1954). Dorothy Sayers was part of this club, too. The paper has had an enormous impact.
He began with a parable adopted from someone else: Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing both flowers and weeds. One explorer said, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagreed, "There is no gardener."
So they decided to pitch their tents and set a watch. But no gardener is ever seen. The first explorer says, "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry.
Yet still the “believing” explorer is not convinced. "There is a gardener. But he is invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last his friend, the skeptical explorer despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"
The original claim that there is a gardener (an invisible deity that cares for the garden) has died the death of a thousand qualifications. The claim that there is a gardener (God) is not even meaningful.
There are, of course, a number of problems—philosophical, theological, and biblical—with this parable and what it supposedly proves. But this is not the time or place—Christmas Eve—to analyze something like this for every false assumption and error in logic.
But I should note that Flew to date has not retracted his rejection of an invisible Gardner deity. When Flew says he "believes in God" that's not what he means.'
So, does Anthony Flew now believe in God? Yes and no.
There are three problems with this statement "Anthony Flew believes in God.”
First, the verb "believes.
Second, the noun "god."
And third, just one small little detail—Flew denies that he has come to any kind of religious conviction about a supreme being.
1. What does it mean that Anthony Flew now “believes”?
Anthony Flew now "believes in God" means "Anthony Flew now thinks there is a god" (small "g"). No, he doesn't believe in God. Rather, he now is of the opinion that there may be some sort of deity. That's not the same thing as believing in God. Trusting in God.
But his “believing” clearly has no impact on his life or relationships.
For us Christians "believing in God" is not merely some private philosophical opinion or a religious sentiment.
Jesus birth was very public and his public life demanded change in the real world, not just in the hearts and minds of believers.
You are either for Jesus or against him. He said “follow me,” not simply “form an opinion about divinity.”
2. Then there’s this little word "god."
Whom do you refer to when you say "god'? The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ or some generic supreme being. They are not the same.
We often say that people who think that some supreme being exists "believe in God" but that's not accurate. They think that a god exists. To “believe in God” is to trust in the living and true God, the Creator and Redeemer revealed in Jesus Christ.
Anthony Flew, however, says this: "I'm thinking of a god very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins. It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose." Would Flew ever think that God was a cosmic oriental despot if he took the time to carefully consider the significance of the incarnation of God the Son?
Modern man treats the substance of Christmas—the birth, the enfleshment of God himself—like they would a dead animal on the sidewalk—we walk carefully around it and try to avoid looking at or smelling it.
Christmas becomes a metaphor, a symbol for something happy, something sweet, something—let’s not define it too carefully or identify it too concretely—something nice to think about once a year.
Very interestingly this is admitted by the champion of religious relativism and pluralism in our generation, John Hick, the English religious philosopher. In his book, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, Hick argues exactly this way. The title of his book says it all. He is happy to believe in the incarnation as a religious "idea," a metaphor of God's nearness to man. But he will have nothing to do with it as history, as an event in the real world, as something that actually happened. He wants nothing to do with the Christmas history as it is related in the Bible—God the Son begin born a human child to a virgin mother. We cannot believe that God actually became a man in Jesus Christ, Hick argues, because if we did that, we would have to accept that the Christian Faith is alone the truth about salvation and peace with God. We would have to accept Christianity's exclusive claim. We just can't do that, we can't believe that.
So it turns out –and everybody knows it—that there’s nothing but the shell left—colors, lights, the warmth of Christmas fires and cider, the smell of evergreen and cinnamon. But underneath nothing. Nothing at all.
Ultimately, when Christmas sentiments have freed themselves from the story of Christmas, then every man and woman must imagine his idea of Christmas. These days Christmas provides an opportunity for one’s own privatized religious feelings.
So year after year we have the same old tired “meaning” trotted out for us to “celebrate.” The "meaning of Christmas is giving" Yawn. The true meaning of the holiday season is enjoying family and friends and helping those who are less fortunate than we are. Sigh.
No, these do not explain the true meaning of Christmas. Rather, they summarize how we are to respond to the miracle of Christmas eve. How we are to live in the light of the real meaning of Christmas—the incarnation of God the Son.
But the focus of Christmas should not on us—some humanistic reduction of Christmas to religious sentiments or humanitarian concerns. These horizontal, social concerns are important, but they are not central, they arise because of the vertical.
(Make the sign of the cross): God reveals himself to us in Jesus, comes to us first and then we love one another, give to one another.
You forget the one and you will never truly have the other.
I would hope that even our littlest children know that believing in God means trusting in the One who came to live among us and die for us.
Christmas is the time we remember not an invisible Gardener, not a parable, but the true story of God's becoming man for us.
And the invisible God that is made know to us in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is not a cosmic dictator or tyrant. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a divine community of love and service turned outward toward his creatures.
Believe in God, believe also in me, Jesus said.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Behold Your God! A Christmas Meditation
When my son was younger we were driving by one of the banks on Watson Road and he cried out, "Look, everyone—open/closed/ open/closed—a pattern!" His Kindergarten teacher had been teaching them to look for patterns in their daily experience. He found a pattern in the alternation of signs above the drive-thru lanes at the bank.
There is a pattern in my preaching on Christmas and Good Friday. Have you noticed? These are really the only two Christian festival days that we observe that don't fall on Sunday. Christmas and Good Friday—the birth and death of our Lord.
Every year on these special occasions I normally make an effort to assist you in reflecting on how these events inform, even transform our understanding of who God is.
Especially on Christmas and Good Friday, in the manger and on the cross, we are given the clearest and yet most challenging disclosures of the nature and character of the Lord of the universe.
This is not a season for mawkish little stories and the like. It ought to be a time for deep, soul-transforming meditation and reflection upon the character and work of our God.
When I studied geology at Mizzou, we could learn just a little about the subsurface geological phenomenon without physically examining the rocks themselves. But what we were really looking for was an outcropping of rock that would reveal to us what was below. The birth and cross of Jesus, if you will, are two major outcroppings of God, who remains largely invisible to us, even though he has in some sense made himself known in creation. In Jesus the invisible God is seen.
Of course, Jesus' entire life was the manifestation of the glory of God, according to the first chapter of John: Jesus is the Word of God, the true and original Image of the Father, the very form of God, and the true and final revelation or manifestation of God by which all of our conceptions of God are to be measured.
I am convinced that every year it is supremely beneficial for Christians to be brought again to the manger and to the foot of the cross and forced to look—Behold, this is your God! No other. What Jesus is, God is. What Jesus does, God does. Here is the meaning of the word "god."
All of the birth narratives rub out noses in this essential fact: this baby is your God. Worship him. This infant is nothing less that "God with us"—Emmanuel. "God among us." Worship him.
This is the error of every major heresy in the early church. Most of the heretics meant well. They were concerned to guard a pure conception of God and his nature. This is well illustrated with the arch heretic Arius. The reason why Arius would not say that Jesus was fully God was that he consumed with protecting God's purity from any contact with the material world. He was defending the immutability and impassability of God, as he understood it.
Jesus just had to be something less than fully God! Why? Well, it's not too difficult. He is born an infant! He is in full contact with flesh and material existence. He suffers and dies on a cross. God cannot, God must not be envisioned as submitting to these indignities. God is higher and holier and loftier and therefore above all of this muck.
The Church, by God's grace, did not give into these Greek conceptions of God as surgically removed from his creation. For all of the possible pitfalls, the church confessed what the Scriptures said: Jesus was God. Jesus was born. Mary was the Mother of God (theotokos, literally: "God bearer"), not just the mother of a man. God suffered and died on the cross for us, not merely a man. We cannot explain this. It makes us wince and causes us great intellectual angst, but it is what the Scriptures teach. Here we stand.
Let me address a mistake that continues to be perpetuated and it sounds so right because it is popularly repeated over and over again in apologetics and evangelism books, tracts, and sermons. The mistake is to think that the miracles that Jesus did proves that he was divine. That the clearest, most compelling outcropping of the divinity of Jesus was when he did miraculous works of power. No. Read the Bible carefully. In the Scriptures it is prophets who do these kinds of things.
Moses was not God. He was a mighty prophet. And Moses discovered, too, that the magicians of Egypt could imitate these acts. Jesus himself knew and the author of Acts relates that other people were able to perform exorcisms and various miracles. Similar miracles were done by Elijah and Elisha, but they were not God. Haven't you every thought it odd that the epistles of Paul and Peter and John make no mention of the miracles of Jesus as a proof of his divinity. That whenever they speak of Jesus as God they connect it with his incarnation and self-sacrificial death? As Peter says, "Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him."
But his divine nature and character are unveiled primarily in his humble service to us in his birth, life, suffering, and death. Think of Phil. 2:5-11: "because he existed in the form of God . . . he humbled himself."
The point is that what makes, what proves, if you will, that Jesus is God, is not his works of power and might, but his humble self-sacrifice. His self-effacing love and service for humanity. This is who God is.
The Good News is not that God made some external determination to forgive man, exercised the his divine will, waved a disinterested wand and sprinkled some salvation dust across the human race. What he did was penetrate the very depths of humanity's being and live, to restore the distorted and corrupt condition of man's actual human existence. Genuinely united himself to human, creaturely existence.
God himself bore our infirmities and sins and the whole inheritance of judgment that lay against us--God himself, not merely in some extrinsic, detached wa--but he personally bore all this.
The angels knew where to direct the shepherds. The apostles know where to guide the world to find life—to the heard, seen, touched Word of Life! To Jesus. Listen to the angel when he says, "You shall find him. . ." Where? The angel did not say, you should find him in heaven! The angel did not say you shall find him within you. The angel did not say, you shall find him after much fasting and prayer so that you can transcend the distance between God and man. The angel did not say, you shall find him if you do great works of mercy and love. The angel did not say you shall find him when you philosophically abstract from him all created attributes. The angel said, "Unto you a Savior is born, he is Messiah Yahweh. You shall find him in Bethlehem, lying in a manger."
Listen to the beloved Apostle John. "We proclaim to you the Word of Life" What word of life? John does not say you will discover it within you. He does not give a list of the attributes of divinity and ask you to hold all of these together in order to get your mind around God. He does not say, "You must understand now that God is quite spiritual and cannot have any contact with physical matter." He does not attempt to take us down the path of negation so that we can rise about earthly, material things in order to make mental, purely internal contact with divinity.
No. He links what seems impossible to bring together: "That which was from the beginning" and "what we have seen, heard, and our hands have handled." This is the Word of Life. This is the one "who was with the Father" (v. 2c) and has now appeared.
This little baby is your Creator and Savior. This is the glad tidings to be shouted on the mountain top, according to the prophet Isaiah: "O Zion, You who bring good tidings, Get up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, You who bring good tidings, Lift up your voice with strength, Lift it up, be not afraid; Say to the cities of Judah, "Behold your God!" (Isa 40:9).
This limp infant is the Lord of the universe. The speechless child is the Word of God. This is the offense of genuine Christianity. This is also the glory of our faith.
Don't be distracted by the majesty and incomprehensible otherness of God. Consider the pattern of God's work for us in Christ. Consider what this pattern reveals about who God is. Come and watch and listen at the manger. Consider the cross.
In every other way God is terrible and awesome, a consuming fire. Only in the flesh of Christ do we find a merciful God. Only in Jesus Christ do we find the Word of Life, communion with the Father, eternal joy.
HT: Martin Luther!
There is a pattern in my preaching on Christmas and Good Friday. Have you noticed? These are really the only two Christian festival days that we observe that don't fall on Sunday. Christmas and Good Friday—the birth and death of our Lord.
Every year on these special occasions I normally make an effort to assist you in reflecting on how these events inform, even transform our understanding of who God is.
Especially on Christmas and Good Friday, in the manger and on the cross, we are given the clearest and yet most challenging disclosures of the nature and character of the Lord of the universe.
This is not a season for mawkish little stories and the like. It ought to be a time for deep, soul-transforming meditation and reflection upon the character and work of our God.
When I studied geology at Mizzou, we could learn just a little about the subsurface geological phenomenon without physically examining the rocks themselves. But what we were really looking for was an outcropping of rock that would reveal to us what was below. The birth and cross of Jesus, if you will, are two major outcroppings of God, who remains largely invisible to us, even though he has in some sense made himself known in creation. In Jesus the invisible God is seen.
Of course, Jesus' entire life was the manifestation of the glory of God, according to the first chapter of John: Jesus is the Word of God, the true and original Image of the Father, the very form of God, and the true and final revelation or manifestation of God by which all of our conceptions of God are to be measured.
I am convinced that every year it is supremely beneficial for Christians to be brought again to the manger and to the foot of the cross and forced to look—Behold, this is your God! No other. What Jesus is, God is. What Jesus does, God does. Here is the meaning of the word "god."
All of the birth narratives rub out noses in this essential fact: this baby is your God. Worship him. This infant is nothing less that "God with us"—Emmanuel. "God among us." Worship him.
Matt. 1:23, ""Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel," which is translated, "God with us."There you have it. We behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God is most fully God when he is taking on human flesh in order to serve us.
Matt. 2:11, And when the wise men from the East had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Luke 1:35, "And the angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God."
Luke 1:76 (Zechariah's Song about his Son, John the Baptizer): ""And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest; For you will go before the face of the Lord [Yahweh] to prepare the way for him, (Luke 1:76).
Luke 2:11, (to the shepherds) "For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:11).
John 1:1, 'In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14).
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life-- the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us (1 John 1:1-2).If you insist on learning the meaning of the word "god" from somewhere other than Jesus himself, then your god is a false one. This has always been the temptation for the church. To make over God according to how we think he ought to be.
This is the error of every major heresy in the early church. Most of the heretics meant well. They were concerned to guard a pure conception of God and his nature. This is well illustrated with the arch heretic Arius. The reason why Arius would not say that Jesus was fully God was that he consumed with protecting God's purity from any contact with the material world. He was defending the immutability and impassability of God, as he understood it.
Jesus just had to be something less than fully God! Why? Well, it's not too difficult. He is born an infant! He is in full contact with flesh and material existence. He suffers and dies on a cross. God cannot, God must not be envisioned as submitting to these indignities. God is higher and holier and loftier and therefore above all of this muck.
The Church, by God's grace, did not give into these Greek conceptions of God as surgically removed from his creation. For all of the possible pitfalls, the church confessed what the Scriptures said: Jesus was God. Jesus was born. Mary was the Mother of God (theotokos, literally: "God bearer"), not just the mother of a man. God suffered and died on the cross for us, not merely a man. We cannot explain this. It makes us wince and causes us great intellectual angst, but it is what the Scriptures teach. Here we stand.
Let me address a mistake that continues to be perpetuated and it sounds so right because it is popularly repeated over and over again in apologetics and evangelism books, tracts, and sermons. The mistake is to think that the miracles that Jesus did proves that he was divine. That the clearest, most compelling outcropping of the divinity of Jesus was when he did miraculous works of power. No. Read the Bible carefully. In the Scriptures it is prophets who do these kinds of things.
Moses was not God. He was a mighty prophet. And Moses discovered, too, that the magicians of Egypt could imitate these acts. Jesus himself knew and the author of Acts relates that other people were able to perform exorcisms and various miracles. Similar miracles were done by Elijah and Elisha, but they were not God. Haven't you every thought it odd that the epistles of Paul and Peter and John make no mention of the miracles of Jesus as a proof of his divinity. That whenever they speak of Jesus as God they connect it with his incarnation and self-sacrificial death? As Peter says, "Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him."
But his divine nature and character are unveiled primarily in his humble service to us in his birth, life, suffering, and death. Think of Phil. 2:5-11: "because he existed in the form of God . . . he humbled himself."
The point is that what makes, what proves, if you will, that Jesus is God, is not his works of power and might, but his humble self-sacrifice. His self-effacing love and service for humanity. This is who God is.
The Good News is not that God made some external determination to forgive man, exercised the his divine will, waved a disinterested wand and sprinkled some salvation dust across the human race. What he did was penetrate the very depths of humanity's being and live, to restore the distorted and corrupt condition of man's actual human existence. Genuinely united himself to human, creaturely existence.
God himself bore our infirmities and sins and the whole inheritance of judgment that lay against us--God himself, not merely in some extrinsic, detached wa--but he personally bore all this.
The angels knew where to direct the shepherds. The apostles know where to guide the world to find life—to the heard, seen, touched Word of Life! To Jesus. Listen to the angel when he says, "You shall find him. . ." Where? The angel did not say, you should find him in heaven! The angel did not say you shall find him within you. The angel did not say, you shall find him after much fasting and prayer so that you can transcend the distance between God and man. The angel did not say, you shall find him if you do great works of mercy and love. The angel did not say you shall find him when you philosophically abstract from him all created attributes. The angel said, "Unto you a Savior is born, he is Messiah Yahweh. You shall find him in Bethlehem, lying in a manger."
Listen to the beloved Apostle John. "We proclaim to you the Word of Life" What word of life? John does not say you will discover it within you. He does not give a list of the attributes of divinity and ask you to hold all of these together in order to get your mind around God. He does not say, "You must understand now that God is quite spiritual and cannot have any contact with physical matter." He does not attempt to take us down the path of negation so that we can rise about earthly, material things in order to make mental, purely internal contact with divinity.
No. He links what seems impossible to bring together: "That which was from the beginning" and "what we have seen, heard, and our hands have handled." This is the Word of Life. This is the one "who was with the Father" (v. 2c) and has now appeared.
This little baby is your Creator and Savior. This is the glad tidings to be shouted on the mountain top, according to the prophet Isaiah: "O Zion, You who bring good tidings, Get up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, You who bring good tidings, Lift up your voice with strength, Lift it up, be not afraid; Say to the cities of Judah, "Behold your God!" (Isa 40:9).
This limp infant is the Lord of the universe. The speechless child is the Word of God. This is the offense of genuine Christianity. This is also the glory of our faith.
Don't be distracted by the majesty and incomprehensible otherness of God. Consider the pattern of God's work for us in Christ. Consider what this pattern reveals about who God is. Come and watch and listen at the manger. Consider the cross.
In every other way God is terrible and awesome, a consuming fire. Only in the flesh of Christ do we find a merciful God. Only in Jesus Christ do we find the Word of Life, communion with the Father, eternal joy.
HT: Martin Luther!
Friday, October 26, 2007
A Trinitarian Wedding Meditation
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1Cor. 13:4-7).
What family would you identify as a model for your marriage and future household? In terms of this reading, where have you seen or where will you see the love of 1 Cor. 13 lived out? Is there a couple or a family that you would name as exemplifying the kind of life together that you would experience?
I can’t read your minds and I’m not going to ask you to tell me of whom you are thinking, but I will wager that you are setting your sights too low, way too low.
Whatever human couple or family may have come to your mind and however radiant and attractive their relationship may be, it is but a dim reflection of the fullness of love, the eternal riches of love resident in the Holy Trinity. That’s right. The Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in their shared eternal life together.
Well, I will tell you both that God himself holds the key; God himself is the key to marital happiness and fulfillment. He is the definition of, the very living embodiment of love. As the Apostle John says, "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him" (1 John 4:16). This does not mean simply that God is nice—the dear, kind God. Reduced to this, "God is love" comes dangerously close to being innocuous and sentimental nonsense.
Rather, John means that in himself, in his own inner life, God is characterized by love. Love binds Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternally covenanted companions. God is in himself the fullness and perfection of love, in loving and being loved, in giving and receiving. And this eternal communal existence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as God is the ultimate model for every human social bond. Today, of course, that means your marriage.
Cornelius Plantinga has put it this way: “The precincts of heaven are occupied by more than one divine person. The unity of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is more like a marriage, or like persons bound together in a single community.”
The active movement of reciprocal love within the eternal being of God is the one ultimate source of all love in the universe. What that means for us, for you, is that the Triune God constitutes the very ground and possibility of love between human beings, not the least of which is marital love. The marriage covenant, you see, is grounded in the original covenant of love and companionship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
But wait a minute, isn’t that like telling you that Robert and Jennifer Smith possess the secret of marital happiness and love? Robert and Jennifer Smith? That would be all well and good, but who are they? Where do they live? If you have no access to their household, to their personal relationship, what good is it to you?
You might find out where the live and go and stand in front of their house and look through the windows or even bang on the door. You could park in front of their house and try to get glimpses of them as they come outside. You might even get a listening device and try to catch bits and pieces of their conversations. A telescope to see them interact. But unless they graciously invited you into their circle of love, unless they allowed you in, you would never benefit from what they had.
Similarly, we cannot know of or experience God’s love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from the outside. God as he is in himself is not open to our inspection. We cannot pry into his Three-Personed being for the purpose of examining his life.
And just as the Smith’s must invite you into their family for you to know them, so in a similar way, God himself must invite us in if we are to know him as the perfect communion of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God himself must open up himself to us and draw us into his life of communion so that we can experience and know his covenant love.
That is exactly what has happened in time and space history as the Father loves the Son so much that he finds a bride for him that will be his eternal covenanted companion. This is the wonder of God’s love. This is what God has done for us in Christ.
Jonathan Edwards puts it well: “There was, as it were, an eternal society or family in the Godhead, in the Trinity of persons. It seems to be God’s design to admit the church into the divine family as his Son’s wife.” Jonathan Edward’s again: “The end [goal] of the creation of God was to provide a spouse for his Son Jesus Christ, that might enjoy him and on whom he might pour forth his love. . . Heaven and earth were created that the Son of God might communicate his love and goodness to a spouse.”
I need to stop here to make sure that everyone has this right. God didn’t create the world to have people to dominate and manipulate. To command and control. He created the world and humanity to share his glory, to turn his eternal love outward on humanity and to bring us into the circle of his blessed fellowship.
Your life in the covenant of marriage must model that eternal covenant of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as it has been revealed, manifest, uncovered for us in Jesus Christ.
Now, you may be thinking, what? He’s talking about the Trinity at our wedding? Isn’t that just some abstract, confusing ecclesiastical doctrine invented to confound simple people about the nature of God? Shouldn’t the pastor just give some pointers on how to act as husband and wife and get on with it. Some practical "how to" advice. Absolutely not!
Have you ever noticed that whenever the Apostle Paul addresses a very practical problem in one of his churches, he doesn’t offer some cute emotional story or merely quote or construct some catchy religious aphorism, rather he gets very theological.
My favorite example of this is the church at Philippi. Read Philippians 2:3-7. It was because Jesus was God that he humbled himself. It was because he was in very nature God that he emptied himself. This is God's mode of life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They live together is self-giving humility and love.
This, then, is your God! This is the one in whose image you have been created. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . in the image of God he created them, male and female, he created them. This is the image that you are being renewed in. The likeness of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is love.
As Christians, we do not look primarily to an abstract impersonal idea or set of ideas for our model. We are imagers of God. We have been made to resemble God. We are to actively seek to conform ourselves as creatures to his perfect character. “Be ye holy as I am holy”
Another way to put this is that our flawless exemplar is the Person(s) of God himself, especially the Father and the Son! When we ask what does it mean to love, how can I know what it means to love, we, as Christians (who bear the name of Christ) answer: It means to imitate the Lord, Jesus Christ.
1 John 3:16, “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” John 15:12 "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
Without this context, this list in 1 Cor. 13 degenerates into pious platitudes, religious mush. So substitute the word “Christ” for the noun “love” in this list and you make explicit Paul’s reason for using this literary device called personification. “Jesus Christ suffers long, Christ shows kindness, Jesus does not envy. . . .”
Here then is a positive, healthy ideal towards which to strive. Here in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is a vivid picture of purity and spiritual health.
You know we might have settled this afternoon a fast-food, sugar-high from cute little aphorisms and sentimental sayings about marriage. Or we could have gotten a temporary emotional buzz from the current fad in psychological marital advice and techniques. But that kind of thing will never satisfy your need for lasting nourishment as a couple. As you begin your life together, do not settle for such junk food.
You’ve got something more nourishing. Something that will transform you through and through. Let me suggest to you that thinking, reflecting, meditating on your own participation in the covenantal love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as husband and wife is worth more than whatever techniques or marital slogans or psychological advice you can find in the millions of how-to-books on marriage.
As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord."
If you have experienced the love of God in Christ, if your marriage is going to be rooted and grounded in love, then you will have to this life-long goal of making progress towards understanding what is the width and length and depth and height of the love of God in Christ which surpasses human comprehension.
By means of the marriage covenant God permits you both to taste something of the inexpressible bliss of the personal intimacy and companionship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
You are called upon this afternoon to begin a life of love towards one another just as God is love.
"For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3:14-19). Amen.
What family would you identify as a model for your marriage and future household? In terms of this reading, where have you seen or where will you see the love of 1 Cor. 13 lived out? Is there a couple or a family that you would name as exemplifying the kind of life together that you would experience?
I can’t read your minds and I’m not going to ask you to tell me of whom you are thinking, but I will wager that you are setting your sights too low, way too low.
Whatever human couple or family may have come to your mind and however radiant and attractive their relationship may be, it is but a dim reflection of the fullness of love, the eternal riches of love resident in the Holy Trinity. That’s right. The Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in their shared eternal life together.
Well, I will tell you both that God himself holds the key; God himself is the key to marital happiness and fulfillment. He is the definition of, the very living embodiment of love. As the Apostle John says, "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him" (1 John 4:16). This does not mean simply that God is nice—the dear, kind God. Reduced to this, "God is love" comes dangerously close to being innocuous and sentimental nonsense.
Rather, John means that in himself, in his own inner life, God is characterized by love. Love binds Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternally covenanted companions. God is in himself the fullness and perfection of love, in loving and being loved, in giving and receiving. And this eternal communal existence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as God is the ultimate model for every human social bond. Today, of course, that means your marriage.
Cornelius Plantinga has put it this way: “The precincts of heaven are occupied by more than one divine person. The unity of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is more like a marriage, or like persons bound together in a single community.”
The active movement of reciprocal love within the eternal being of God is the one ultimate source of all love in the universe. What that means for us, for you, is that the Triune God constitutes the very ground and possibility of love between human beings, not the least of which is marital love. The marriage covenant, you see, is grounded in the original covenant of love and companionship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
But wait a minute, isn’t that like telling you that Robert and Jennifer Smith possess the secret of marital happiness and love? Robert and Jennifer Smith? That would be all well and good, but who are they? Where do they live? If you have no access to their household, to their personal relationship, what good is it to you?
You might find out where the live and go and stand in front of their house and look through the windows or even bang on the door. You could park in front of their house and try to get glimpses of them as they come outside. You might even get a listening device and try to catch bits and pieces of their conversations. A telescope to see them interact. But unless they graciously invited you into their circle of love, unless they allowed you in, you would never benefit from what they had.
Similarly, we cannot know of or experience God’s love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from the outside. God as he is in himself is not open to our inspection. We cannot pry into his Three-Personed being for the purpose of examining his life.
And just as the Smith’s must invite you into their family for you to know them, so in a similar way, God himself must invite us in if we are to know him as the perfect communion of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God himself must open up himself to us and draw us into his life of communion so that we can experience and know his covenant love.
That is exactly what has happened in time and space history as the Father loves the Son so much that he finds a bride for him that will be his eternal covenanted companion. This is the wonder of God’s love. This is what God has done for us in Christ.
Jonathan Edwards puts it well: “There was, as it were, an eternal society or family in the Godhead, in the Trinity of persons. It seems to be God’s design to admit the church into the divine family as his Son’s wife.” Jonathan Edward’s again: “The end [goal] of the creation of God was to provide a spouse for his Son Jesus Christ, that might enjoy him and on whom he might pour forth his love. . . Heaven and earth were created that the Son of God might communicate his love and goodness to a spouse.”
I need to stop here to make sure that everyone has this right. God didn’t create the world to have people to dominate and manipulate. To command and control. He created the world and humanity to share his glory, to turn his eternal love outward on humanity and to bring us into the circle of his blessed fellowship.
Your life in the covenant of marriage must model that eternal covenant of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as it has been revealed, manifest, uncovered for us in Jesus Christ.
Now, you may be thinking, what? He’s talking about the Trinity at our wedding? Isn’t that just some abstract, confusing ecclesiastical doctrine invented to confound simple people about the nature of God? Shouldn’t the pastor just give some pointers on how to act as husband and wife and get on with it. Some practical "how to" advice. Absolutely not!
Have you ever noticed that whenever the Apostle Paul addresses a very practical problem in one of his churches, he doesn’t offer some cute emotional story or merely quote or construct some catchy religious aphorism, rather he gets very theological.
My favorite example of this is the church at Philippi. Read Philippians 2:3-7. It was because Jesus was God that he humbled himself. It was because he was in very nature God that he emptied himself. This is God's mode of life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They live together is self-giving humility and love.
This, then, is your God! This is the one in whose image you have been created. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . in the image of God he created them, male and female, he created them. This is the image that you are being renewed in. The likeness of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is love.
As Christians, we do not look primarily to an abstract impersonal idea or set of ideas for our model. We are imagers of God. We have been made to resemble God. We are to actively seek to conform ourselves as creatures to his perfect character. “Be ye holy as I am holy”
Another way to put this is that our flawless exemplar is the Person(s) of God himself, especially the Father and the Son! When we ask what does it mean to love, how can I know what it means to love, we, as Christians (who bear the name of Christ) answer: It means to imitate the Lord, Jesus Christ.
1 John 3:16, “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” John 15:12 "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
Without this context, this list in 1 Cor. 13 degenerates into pious platitudes, religious mush. So substitute the word “Christ” for the noun “love” in this list and you make explicit Paul’s reason for using this literary device called personification. “Jesus Christ suffers long, Christ shows kindness, Jesus does not envy. . . .”
Here then is a positive, healthy ideal towards which to strive. Here in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is a vivid picture of purity and spiritual health.
You know we might have settled this afternoon a fast-food, sugar-high from cute little aphorisms and sentimental sayings about marriage. Or we could have gotten a temporary emotional buzz from the current fad in psychological marital advice and techniques. But that kind of thing will never satisfy your need for lasting nourishment as a couple. As you begin your life together, do not settle for such junk food.
You’ve got something more nourishing. Something that will transform you through and through. Let me suggest to you that thinking, reflecting, meditating on your own participation in the covenantal love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as husband and wife is worth more than whatever techniques or marital slogans or psychological advice you can find in the millions of how-to-books on marriage.
As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord."
If you have experienced the love of God in Christ, if your marriage is going to be rooted and grounded in love, then you will have to this life-long goal of making progress towards understanding what is the width and length and depth and height of the love of God in Christ which surpasses human comprehension.
By means of the marriage covenant God permits you both to taste something of the inexpressible bliss of the personal intimacy and companionship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
You are called upon this afternoon to begin a life of love towards one another just as God is love.
"For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3:14-19). Amen.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Christian Faerie
I'm only halfway through book 7, so I don't have anything to say about that yet. But I thought I would post this talk I did on the novels last year. This was part of a "Cultural Discernment" series that the Associate Pastor and I have been doing for a number of years. We review, critique, and discuss books, movies, etc. about once a quarter. What Should Christians Do With Harry Potter?
WSCDWHP PowerPoint Presentatiion
I gave this talk last year (Nov. 6, 2006) at an evening service. It's an informal talk, not a sermon, so the lecture can be hurky-jerky at times. And I'm using a PowerPoint presentation to illustrate and sometimes read my points. I would suggest downloading both the audio file and the PowerPoint doc.
"The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of the traveller who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gate should be shut and the keys be lost." -- J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories."
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