TURN ON THE LIGHT!

A sermon based upon Psalm 27: 1-9

Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.,

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

3^rd Sunday of Epiphany, January 23, 2011

A little bit flaky, that’s what you would call Wilson Bentley.   He lived in Vermont from 1865 to 1931 and was fascinated with snowflakes.   They even nicked named him, “snowflake”.  

Bentley actually studied and documented over 5,000 snowflakes and photographed them on black velvet either to prove or disprove the theory that no two snowflakes are alike.   It seemed that he proved the theory to be true.  He affirmed with his study that each individual crystal is a unique, masterpiece of design that was never repeated.  Sadly, he also wrote, “when the snowflake melted, that design was lost forever.  All the marvelous beauty was gone, without leaving any record at all.

One snowflake the catalogued was numbered 892.  It was especially notable.  It was a bit irregular and the top left arm did not cap the top like the others.  “Even though it was irregular,” said Bentley,  it was still very beautiful.”   (As told in a sermon in Homiletics.online, Jan. 2011).

That could describe any of us as human beings, couldn’t it?  We are all a bit “irregular” at times.  But we are also uniquely created and no design is ever repeated.   Even our “strangeness” can be viewed as a divine work of art as we are like snowflakes in the mind and heart of God.

But this also means that we are short-lived and vulnerable to “meltdown”.   This is the kind of thing that happened to Jared Loughner, the deranged person who committed those terrible murders in Tucson.   He was a man who slowly slide from normalness into madness; from stability into schizophrenia.   We are created as marvelous, capable thinking, feeling and loving minds, but we are also at risk of short-circuit.  Our minds and spirits are vulnerable to breakdown and worse, complete madness and evil that can lead the kind of darkness that can spread to the world around us.

It is perhaps because of our human vulnerability that the Psalmist declared in today’s text: “The Lord is my Light and my Salvation, whom shall I fear.  The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?   Like the Psalmist, at some time or other in our lives we will come to realize that we have lots to fear if we try to face life all alone.  As the Psalmist realized, there are always people, diseases, or stresses in our lives that can appear to want to figuratively “eat our flesh” (vs. 2) or in today’s slang, would like to “have us for lunch.”   How do we live in a world where we are always threatened, where we are always vulnerable, and where there is no love, no living, and no life without great risk.   How can we remain faithful to God and to ourselves when we are constantly threatened?  Sometimes it could seem to be practically impossible.

Recently on a World War II documentary,  real-life Marines who survived the landing on the island of Iwo Jima, recounted how they felt when the ships approached and sent them out on small landing vessels to attack the island.   One of them said, “When I looked around me and watched as others ahead of me left the boat, they were entering the sea water that had turned as read as blood.  I didn’t want to get off.  Everything in me was frozen.  Then suddenly the commander pushed us out of the boat, whether we were ready to go or not.  I felt as if that sea of blood would soon be my own.  The next thing I remember was falling down on the shore, then getting up and proceeding ahead to what I knew would be the end of my life.   But to my surprise, I survived!,  while so many others didn’t.   To this day, I’m still trying to figure out why a bullet didn’t take me out, when they were flying all around me?  (As remembered from a documentary, WWII in N.C., aired in January, 2011 on UNCTV). 

HOW DO WE FACE OUR DEEPEST FEARS?

In a world that can scare any of us half to death, what is the source of human faith?

For the Psalmist who lived in the darkness of the ancient world, the source was having the “the light” of the Lord in his life.   But notice how the psalmist expresses his faith.  He does not say that the Lord is “a” light or that the Lord is “a” form of salvation, but he says very personally and intimately, “The Lord is MY light; the Lord is MY salvation….”

One of the first things we must understand about faith is that it must be personalized or internalized to become real in our lives.   Only an inward, living and personal relationship with faith gives us the confidence we need to face our greatest fears.   Here the Psalmist says that his relationship with the light is to “desire” to “dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” (vs. 4).  The daily, personal dwelling in the presence of the Lord is what gives him hope, peace and the strength he needs to overcome his fears and live his life with confidence and faith.

Recently the magazine Christian Century related the story of Mary Schertz, a professor of New Testament at Associate Mennonite Seminary.   In all her academic studies, she had forgotten most of the “evangelical notion” of having a personal relationship with Jesus.

She reports that “it all began one warm spring afternoon as I was working with a group of women pastors in a Bible study that we had been calling "Luke's quest stories," a phrase used by Robert Tannehill.  They are a cycle of stories in which someone approaches Jesus regarding a quest for something vitally important to human well-being.  There are obstacles in the way of the quest, sometimes physical, sometimes social, psychological or spiritual. The obstacles are overcome, or not. The quest is fulfilled, or not.

These stories are simple stories that many of us have known all our lives: the paralytic, the centurion with a sick slave, the woman of the city, Mary and Martha, the lepers, Zacchaeus, the rich ruler, the thieves on their crosses with Jesus, the women at the tomb.  But the stories' simplicity is deceptive. The more deeply one looks at them, the more complex they seem. There is often more than one quest and sometimes more than one quester. Sometimes the quest presented is not the quest completed…

….The second hour, (she writes) after a break for tea and scones (which was very important), we laid the text next to our experience: What does this quest story have to do with my life and my ministry? Where am I in this story today? How is this text calling me? We divided into two groups for that discussion, and the conversation became more personal, more intimate. There were silences. There was laughter and sometimes there were tears.

…..Usually members of the group would readily volunteer for any part except the part of Jesus.  So this particular month, as we were preparing to read the text together, I teased the group. "We don't need Jesus today, he's not in this story."

I was unprepared for the intense wave of grief that washed over me at that moment. I missed him. I felt bereft. Of course, I thought immediately, he is still present in the same ways he has always been present—so what is going on here?  I pulled myself together and we went on with the session. This jumble of emotions was too new and too raw to mention at the time. But I have been pondering these things. What the quest stories did for me that year was help me know Jesus and for the first time experience his death in a human, personal way. Thanks to the company of my pilgrim friends, Jesus had become a person.  As a result, I have reclaimed the language of personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  I found Jesus—and some of the old evangelical language I had forsworn seemed newly relevant to the somewhat jaded and shopworn New Testament professor that I had become.”  (From Christian Century, “Now it’s Personal”, by Mary Schertz, January, 2011).

For those of us who grew up being taught the need for a “personal relationship” with the Jesus of the Bible we read about and worship, this word from Mary Schertz is a great reminder.   Our understanding of faith must become personal, realized, and internalized into who we are and how we live our lives, or it has no real effect at all.  Faith must be personal and real to us, or it doesn’t help us overcome the fears of life and death.  This is what Mary realized and we all need to hear again in our own walk of faith.  We must daily ask ourselves, for the sake of our faith and our sanity in life, “am I walking daily with Jesus?”  “Do I find it my desire and delight to dwell daily in the presence of the Lord?”  When God is “my” light and “my” salvation, then we can also say to ourselves, no matter the situation: “Whom shall I fear?”

HOW DOES FAITH BECOME PERSONAL?

The Psalmist reminds us with his image of light that the first step out of our own fear and darkness is to “turn on the light”.  

Think about what it’s like to wake of early in the morning in the darkness and to get a glimpse of shadows that you are unsure of?  All those things you left laying on the floor could become dangerous objects or even your furniture or pet could be “dangerous” for you, until you simply “turn on the light.”  When you turn on the light, the shadows and uncertainties disappear and as your eyes adjust the way becomes clear.

Or think about it another way.  Have you ever seen a horror movie?  My favorite are the classics, Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, and the Creature From the Black Lagoon.   In all these movies there is something to fear, but every good filmmaker of horror knows that once you expose or introduce the “creature” or “monster” in the movie, he begins to lose some of his fearfulness.   The more familiar and clear we see, even fearful things, they can become less fearful and less monstrous.

In the same way, God calls us not remain or live in the darkness, but he challenges us to come closer to the light.    This is how John’s gospel brings us closer to the light, when John writes about the “light of Jesus”: “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.  "For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. ²¹ "But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God." (Joh 3:19-21 NKJ).

The beginning of the movie Schindler’s List is unforgettable.   In a day of Technicolor,  the whole movie is produced in Black and White to show the contrast between Light and darkness.   As the movie begins, the camera follows the smoke of the candles from the Jewish menorah which blends into the smoke coming from a fires of a smokestack in a Jewish concentration camp during WWII, where Nazi’s had imprisoned and killed millions of innocent Jews.  You can’t help, in the rest of the movie, to see the contrast between those, like Oscar Schindler who joined the light in their attempt to save lives, with the darkness of those who were determined to bring great darkness into the world through the murder of innocents.

How do you know where the darkness ends and the light begins, a student once asked a Jewish rabbi?  

        The student goes on to suggest, “Would it be when you can see the difference between a dog or a goat at 20 paces?” 

        “No,” the Rabbi responds.  

        “Would it then be when you can see the difference between an elm or a birch tree at 50 paces?, the student continues to question.

        “No, that would not be the moment of distinction either, the Rabbi responds once more.

        Somewhat frustrated, the student asks a third time, “Well, Rabbi, what is the exact moment when the darkness of the night turns into the light of day?”

        “That’s simple,” the Rabbi answers.   “It is when you can look into the eyes of the person beside you and see that they are your brother or sister!”

We don’t get rid of our fears by memorizing something or by holding on to a mere philosophy, says the Psalmist.  We don’t even get rid of the fears themselves, but we can make friends with our fears.   How?  Because the Lord is his “light” and his “salvation”,  the Psalmist says he can depend upon God as his safe shelter.  From that “high” position and “holy” perspective of life and hope,  the Psalmist can “lift his head above his enemies” and continue to offer his life as a “sacrifice of joy” in God’s tabernacle.  He sings, and his life ‘sings’ even thought enemies are all around him.  He can sing because he has already “offered” his life to God and has nothing to fear!:  “ For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion; In the secret place of His tabernacle He shall hide me; He shall set me high upon a rock.   ⁶ And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me; Therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in His tabernacle; I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the LORD (Psa 27:5-6 NKJ). 

 

Making God his personal “tabernacle”,  the Psalmist’s fears are dispelled and everything, even his enemies look different.  In the “light of the Lord” he can make friends even with the worst of fears.  In the light of the Lord, he can  sing his way through the best and the worst days of his life.  The “light” of the Lord, which he has made personal and real in his own life, makes everything look different.   It can be a light that reveals “salvation”  and “hope” to any of us who are willing to reside in it “all the days of (our) lives.” Amen.

Hurry Is the Devil

A Sermon based upon Psalm 40: 1-11

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

January 15, 2011, 2^nd Sunday of Epiphany

Van Kemper tells how twenty-five years ago, a young band of Irish musicians, who called themselves "U2," was recording an album at the Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin, Ireland. They had recorded nine tracks, and needed just one more song to complete their work. But the long night was turning into morning, with another band waiting in the hallway to begin the next recording session at 7:00 a.m. The band’s lead vocalist, a 22-year old known simply as Bono, realized that the band was in need of a miracle.


He sought inspiration in his Bible, opening it to the Psalms, where his eyes fell upon Psalm 40. With the words of the psalmist in his head, the last track—known simply as "40"—was created. Ten minutes for the lyrics, ten minutes for the music, ten minutes for the band to record it, and ten minutes to mix it—and the miracle song was completed.


And thus was completed their album titled "War." It was their third album, but the first to go "gold" in the U.S—eventually selling more than 4 million copies. Over the past twenty-five years, "40" has become one U2’s most famous songs, often used to close their concerts and send the crowds home with a new song in their hearts and minds.


The message of the album "War" and its closing track "40" was overtly political. U2 and Bono expressed their outrage about the conflict then raging in Northern Ireland and decried the prospects that the political leaders of the superpowers would bring nuclear war on all our heads.  But, like the psalmist, in the midst of their despair they urged solidarity among the world’s people, and in "40" closed with a call for peace and understanding—urging all of us to sing a new song.  (From www.goodpreacher.com).


But how can we sing a “new song” when we are all in such a hurry to get where we think we are going, but have little time to stop and think about where we are really going?  Someone has said that the only way to gain true perspective in this life is for us “to peer into an open grave”.  Only then, it is said, can we see exactly where we are going and why we, as the old saying goes, need to take time to “stop and smell the roses.”


This Psalm we’re considering speaks directly to one of the greatest spiritual needs of human life: our need to slow down, to take time to stop, and also to learn, as the Psalmist did, to “wait patiently upon the Lord.”   I’ve entitled my sermon not after the words of a preacher, but after the words of one of the world’s most famous psychiatrists, C.G. Jung, who studied under Freud, had a more practical mind, and a great ‘doctor of the soul’.   He has said: “Hurry is not of the devil, but HURRY IS THE DEVIL.”  What I think he meant by this phrase is that when we rush through life, seldom taking time to reflect or consider where we are going and who we are becoming, we don’t grow in our soul and personality, and then, even without realizing it, we can destroy the “new song” we could sing and person we could become.  This is how Satan  becomes our “adversary” (which his name means), his deceptive power is displayed through the rush, the hurry, and an unexamined lives which destroy all God would create in us.   

A REASON TO PAUSE

But slowing down, being patient and waiting on the Lord is not something our world knows as much about today.  Even this very simple language of the Psalmist can be very difficult for us to comprehend.   We live lives that demands things to happen fast, instantly, automatically.   Most everything we value today appears to run counter to what the Psalmist is saying in this text.

Right here in my hand I have an IPOD Touch.   I had a classic IPOD that was recently stolen out of my vehicle and had to replace it.   This new, but already “outdated” IPOD is a very small, compact device, but all this is very deceptive.  When I am connected to a wireless network,  like the one in my home, I can get pick this IPOD up off my night stand and through the push of one button, automatically download access to the headlines and front page articles to over 4,000 newspapers around the world.  I can surf the Internet and have access to immediate information that even world leaders didn’t have 20 years ago.   I can check the outside temperature or take a glimpse of an approaching storm on a weather radar.  I can access a Bible, turn on the local FIRE or POLICE scanner or access thousands of others around the world.  That’s not to mention gaining access to Twitter or Facebook, which I seldom have time to do.  Oh, yes I can also access all my music or most any radio station around the world.  I can even review my Greek and German vocabulary.  The only thing this device does not have is a camera and a phone, but they have that too.

This small piece of amazing technology is transforming our world and hopefully will be wonderful tool used for good purposes, and it is not my purpose to denounce technology or our good use of it, but what does concern me and what this Psalm speaks to, is something that this great piece of technology can’t do, or might make us forget or neglect.  It can cause us to become so distracted that we overlook the great value of slowing down, of being still, and of reflecting upon what all this information mean and what all this information cannot do.   It does not insure the growth of our soul.  For, what the Psalmist suggests, is that we have not been put in this life to know anything and everything, but the Psalmist reminds us, we are here, if anything, to learn to “wait” and to “partner” with God in singing a “new song”.  That’s the very point U2 make the chorus in their song, 40: “How long to sing this new song?  How Long? 

This week our nation found reason to pause, albeit a very tragic one: The death of many innocent people at an outdoor political meeting in Tucson at the hands of a mentally deranged young man.   There is, of course, even political controversy surrounding why this happened.  But beyond all the mostly useless rhetoric remains what we need to stop and consider.  In the tragedy we learned that a young 9 year-old girl, who wanted to get involved in politics and do good for the world, was unduly murdered.  A conservative Judge too, who was there to support his opponent was also killed.  So were others senselessly killed or injured, including congresswoman, Gabriella Giffords.  But still the question remains, not whether or not we have access to all the information, or can fully explain “why” it happened, nor who’s to blame, but the real question of such tragic events like this, is whether or not, we who live and remain, will stop, pause, learn from it all, and learn to “sing a new song” because of it.   Our old songs of division, hate, self-centeredness, self-centered political agenda is not getting this nation where it needs to go.   The only hope in any time of great tragedy is that we will stop and learn to “patiently wait” upon the LORD for answers we can’t seem to come up with ourselves..  It is a shame that we can know so much, hear so much, gain so much information about life, but still can’t learn “how” we should live it.  That is the real tragedy of life; that we might rush through such terrible events without stopping to consider what we can learn and how we can grow through them.

What is the value of pausing, stopping, having patience to “wait upon the Lord” for what only God can teach us?  What really is the value of not rushing to our own rationales for such things and to truly stop and wait on God for what He can teach us?  Do we even have time to stop?  Are we so busy with our own agendas, our own concerns, our own desires, our own opinions that we have little or no time to “stop”?    What really is the value of “waiting on God” and not rushing to our own conclusions?

The Psalmist gives us a very interesting “reason” for stopping, listening, taking pause, and waiting on God in our lives?  Do you see it right there in the very first verse?  Only when he “waited patiently for the LORD” did the Lord himself, “incline to me, and heard my cry.”  It was only when he stopped to wait patiently on God did he know that God was with him, knowing his situation, hearing him and responding to his cry for help beyond himself.

Most all of us know what it is to lose our patience with someone; perhaps with our spouse, our children or our friends.  We normally regret it, when we do.  What the Psalmist reminds us is that the worse thing that happens when we “lose patience” is that we also lose our knowledge of the presence of God in our lives.    The Psalmist would have us know that not only does God inhabits the “praise” of his people he also inhabits the “patience” of his people.  Even God does not get in hurry to answer us, because life, in the great scheme of things, is not about having the knowledge, having the answers, nor getting everything done.  What does getting anything done mean when you are staring in a grave?  No, life is about finally about knowing that God is with us, that we need him, and that he hears us.  

A REASON TO TRUST

Life is finally and ultimately about “waiting” and gaining “patience” because life is about learning to trust and learning to trust in each other, even learning to trust again within   ourselves when trust has been broken by life’s experiences.   Listen to what the Psalmist calls the greatest value of learning to “wait patiently on the Lord” as the he becomes the person who is “blessed” to “make the Lord his trust.”  (vs. 5)   What most of us know already is that you don’t learn to trust by knowing everything, having everything, or getting everything but you learn to trust by making something out of what you already know and have.  In the same way, you don’t come to trust God by rushing through life to get more of what you want out of it, but you come to trust God by learning to wait patiently for what you know only God can give you: himself.

But of course, there are all kinds of things only God can give you when you learn to “wait upon the LORD” says the Psalmist.  Only when you slow down and wait upon the Lord can you be assured of his presence, as we have said, but also only when you slow down and wait upon the LORD can you know his power to deliver you out of the horrible “pit” you’ve got yourself in.   If you are always rushing to save yourself, you don’t experience God’s ability to bring you up “out of the pit”.  You have to stop.  You have to slow down.  You have to wait.  You can’t even know you’re in the “pit” until you slow down or until something slows you down.   

This is what happened to Ted Williams, that homeless guy who has been made an immediate household name and American sensation by the media the last couple of weeks.  But Dr. Phil was right to stop the fellow and the whole episode in its tracks.  Dr. Phil, as an expert of the soul, knew that you can’t really get out of the “pit” until God helps you and you can’t have God’s help until have to stop and consider the pit you’re in, and you can’t really get out of it unless you stop to get “real” help.  Only when we stop, and fully come to know his presence, and feel the need of his deliverance will we gain the “new song” that only God can put in our hearts, which will leads us, as the prophet Isaiah also said, “to put our trust in him.”

But trust in God, in people, or in life itself, is not always easy to have.   Sometimes any of us can lead lives that have become “broken records of negativity” due to our loss of trust.   We may not become addicted to alcohol and drugs, like Ted Williams did, but we can become addicted to a host of other things, including money, our skills, or our own false opinion and false sense of power and rightness.  When we rush through life,  wrongly thinking that our lives are in our own hands, or that we have to figure it all out, or that we’ve got it all figured out, this is when that negativity really begins to swell and will finally come to crash on the shore of all our experiences.   It was that way for the Psalmist too, until he realized the value of “waiting patiently” on the LORD.   Only through “waiting” did he realize God was present, did he get out of his miry pit, did he began to sing a new song, and did he regained his ability to trust.  It wasn’t in “getting” but in “waiting” that the Psalmist grew up in his soul and gained the peace he needed for life.

When we are able to wait on the Lord, we grow up in our soul and we learn to trust.  That is what we all need, and it should be our single agenda, but sometimes finding time to learn to trust God falls way down on our priority list.   All kinds of things can cause of to lose trust, in God and in each other.  This week the Biblical Recorder had a shocking article about Clergy Reputations in the U.S.  Did you know, according to a recent Gallup Poll, who Americans trust more than Clergy?  A majority of Americans now say that nurses, police, elementary school teachers, soldiers, and doctors are more honest and ethical than their pastors.  How can we rebuild a trust that has been broken and has brought a negativity that stifles our ability to trust and do God’s work in our own time?

The way of rebuild trust comes, of course through learning to wait upon the Lord, but the Psalmist also shows some very practical ways trust can be rebuilt, both in the Lord and in the Lord’s work.   In his time of reflection and pause, he come to consider not what humans are doing or not doing, but to ask himself to stop and consider what “God’s wonderful works”.  Didn’t you hear that happen this week as that medical neurosurgeon who was taking care of Gabriella Gifford said, “miracles happen every day in medicine we like to attribute miracles to what we do, but so much of medicine is out of our control.”  (http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/14/doctors-call-giffords-progress-called-a-miracle/)

   

How do we consider the “miracles” in our lives each and everyday?  This is the way to begin to regain trust in life and in each other---to look for the good, to look for signs of God’s presence in our world and to pause to consider just how “many are (his) wonderful works.”   This is how trust begins to be rebuilt, when we put the focus on God, but then, says the Psalmist, we must also “declare and speak of them” (vs. 5).   Nobody knows the miracles still happen, that God is still at work in our lives, unless we tell them.   Trust doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but it happens when we stop and take time to talk and share to each other.   And out of this sharing come the greatest revelation of all, whether or not, we find “delight” in God’s “will” (vs. 8). 

In his very recent book, The Rise of Christianity, Sociologist Rodney Stark tells about some of the things that made Christianity different than the pagan religions of Rome.   More than anything else he tells how Christians offered the world a meaning and hope in crisis the world was facing at the time.   But another major difference was that in pagan Rome, the gods and the religion  required dedication and sacrifice, but it only did this out of a sense of duty owed to the gods, and it was never done out of a sense of “love”.  The original truth Christianity offered the world, which it had never known before is that God loved the world and that God expects us to love each other too.  This is exactly where the Psalmist is going, when he tells us that we learn to trust God because we find in God the deepest “delight” of our souls and we all know very well, that the ultimate delight of the soul is to find true love.  

And this brings us to the final word of this text, which ends with the highest value of all, where trust is learned and where we know that we can learn to “wait” and “trust” in the Lord.  Listen to what the Psalmist says in verse 10, as he declares the deepest feelings of his heart as he had again learned to trust God through waiting patiently on the Lord.   In verse 10 and 11 he ends with this honest confession of his soul that is growing through patiently waiting on God: "I have not hidden your righteousness within my heart;  I have declared Your faithfulness and Your salvation; I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth from the great assembly.   Do not without Your tender mercies from me, O Lord; Let Your lovingkindness and Your truth continually preserve me” (NKJV).    

Stopping to find the deepest expressions of love is the key to our human preservation.   This is the only thing that we are really waiting on: to know that we are loved and to know how to love in return.   The one thing that true love always strives to do is to stop, to pause, and to wait patiently on the one who is the object of our love.   This week I was hurt to see where our lives can go when we stay stuck on what we want and forget how to love.  There was a young family sitting behind us with two children.  The children were sitting there looking rejected.  The entire time the two parents, both of them, were punching their fingers on their phones, texting to who knows who, impatiently rushing to text, to talk, to someone way across the world, all the while they were ignoring each other and the two who needed their love the most.   More than anyone, they needed to pause, to stop, to think, to consider, and to wait patiently for the Lord to show them what was most important for their lives right now.  But this is what they couldn’t do. 

This is what too few of us know how to do today in our rushing, hurried and harried world.  We are rushing through life ignoring what we’ve been given while we are still going who knows where, to get what we are still missing but can only be found when we learn to “wait patiently on the Lord”.   Only then, when we discover this love, as both the Psalmist and even a Rock singer like Bono declares, can we sing the song we were made to sing.   Amen.

What Does Baptism Mean?

A Sermon Based Upon Matthew 3: 13-17

By Dr. Charles J. Tomlin

Flat Rock Zion Baptist Partnership

January 9^th, 2011,, Epiphany 1, The Baptism of Christ. 

Today’s Bible text is most familiar.   In the opening moment of public ministry, Jesus comes to the Jordan River to present himself for baptism.   It seems simple, right?  Wrong!

What happens next is quite amazing.   This strong, earthly, manly John the Baptist who has been pronouncing judgment, fire and the wrath of God, and apparently stands ready to “baptize” anyone who will repent is suddenly stopped in his tracks.   When John sees Jesus entering the water he does not want to baptize him.  In the most humble reversal, John says to Jesus: “I need to be baptized by you, and you are coming to me?” 

Are you confused, yet?  At least this was one of the “hottest” issues we used to discuss in my junior boy’s Sunday school class.    About the time in our lives when we were getting baptized, we wondered aloud: Did Jesus really need to be Baptize?   We’re baptized because we’re sinners and John’s baptism was a “baptism” of repentance which confesses sin, so the question came to us: Since Jesus is the perfect, Son of God, the lamb who, as Scripture says, “was without blemish and spot” (1 Pet. 1:19) and was said to “be the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1: 29) why did he want to be baptized?  To our young minds, it just did not stand to reason.   Why did Jesus, who did not need baptism, allow himself to be baptized?   And what did he mean, when he tells John: “Permit it to be done, for it is fitting for us TO FULFILL ALL RIGHTEOUSNESS.”  (vs. 15).

           

BAPTISM AS A “CLEANSING” OF THE HEART

To help us understand why Jesus was baptized, let’s begin by taking a closer look at John’s baptism.  John the Baptist did not invent the concept of “baptism” but he is the first person in the Bible who goes around baptizing people.   Before John, baptism was normally reserved for Gentiles who converted to Judaism.   Baptism was a ritual of conversion. 

But more than a way to mark “conversion”, John’s baptism also pointed backward to all those ceremonial washings we find in the book of Leviticus.  In Leviticus 14-17, we find rituals of “washing” for various life situations.   You’ll find washing rituals for a person healed of leprosy (Lev. 14:1 ff.) and a washing ritual for a man or woman who has had an infection (15:1ff.), a washing ritual for someone who comes in contact with a dead body (17:1) and a ritual of washing for someone  about to enter the temple of the Lord (16:1ff).  What all these “washing” rituals have in common is that they draw a line, make a boundary and create a distinction between what was considered “clean” or “unclean” holy or profane.  

You can also see that these rituals are not only “religious”, but they were also very practical rituals.   A community which observed rituals of cleanness was able to fight off infection and to preserve its life.  Some of these “washing rituals of cleanliness” were precursors for the some of the most basic sanitation laws of our modern society.   When I go into a hospital today, one of the first signs I see is a sign with the word: WASH!   The best way to prevent the spread of disease is the easiest thing we can all do: WASH YOUR HANDS!   We know this because we all know about germs.   But amazingly, rituals of washing and cleanness predate scientific knowledge of germs, going all the way back to some of the earliest forms of religious rituals of the Bible.   Through these ancient rituals, the ancient Law of God was getting at something very basic to life: If you want to live, you’d better keep yourself CLEAN !

The Baptism of John goes back to this simple, but powerful human need for “cleanness.”   Interestingly, even in our scientific world, this need can become a neglected part of our lives, even forgotten by doctors and nurses.   When I came out of my foot surgery just a month ago, I was preparing to come home.  The nurse came in to take out my IV, and he was not wearing gloves.  As he started his work, he pulled out my IV and blood was going everywhere.  I looked at him and complained, “Hey, you’re not wearing gloves!”  He responded, “Oh, that’s O.K., I’m the one who’s not protected!”  That was pure ignorance and it was right there in the hospital!

When we lose the concept of what is clean and unclean, we are dealing with something that is more than a science problem.   When we take start taking life   for granted and let things slip, we no longer visualize the power of the unseen and invisible around us.  When we do this, we invite all kinds of uncleanness into our lives, not just physically, but also spiritually and emotionally. 

There is a theory of science which promotes a popular idea called “The Butterfly Effect”    The Butterfly Effect says: “that something as small as the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings, can cause a typhoon halfway around the world.”  This is a rather popular ways to express a mathematical theory about the interconnectedness of everything.    It is theory of science which has opened up all kinds of new discussions about God at the University.   How do we see chaos theory at work in the world?   Chaos theory is in the constant unpredictability of the weather.   Chaos theory is what makes the Stock Market erratic and impossible to determine.   It is also theorized that Chaos theory is what makes life possible on earth and may very well be the exact place where Science meets God.   In all of this, Chaos theory makes a very important point about life; that even smallest event in one place, or a single action in one single moment of our lives, can change the course of everything else.   

You and I know how this to be true, don’t we?  One right or wrong decision can change everything.   You break the law and you can end up in prison the rest of your life.   You send one text while driving and you could wreck.   You say one wrong word, and a relationship ends.   Small things we do, or we don’t do, have a very huge impact on us and determine who we are or who we aren’t.   Right now, I’m thinking about something tragic that happened last week in the local.   A 23 year-old Winston-Salem middle school teacher named Mark Mercer, is facing sexual misconduct charges.   As a result of irresponsible behavior off the school campus, when he sent inappropriate text messages to a couple of young female students, the paper says that the young teacher will suspended without pay and recommended for dismissal.  

 I can’t help but grieve over this young man.  He is so young, and only starting his life, but it seems to be ending before it is beginning.  He didn’t realize the “Butterfly Effect”.  He didn’t realize that there were consequences to his actions.   Isn’t it a terrible tragedy we see too often in our times?   People like us, even “good” and “smart” people, seem not to have a clue about the difference that small things make in their lives.   They seem to be completely “lost” and unable to realize the simple difference between what is “clean” and “unclean”, what is “right and what is “wrong”, what can give life, or what can destroy. 

Your baptism is supposed work like a sanitizer in your life.  It is supposed to be the moment you’ve decided to partner with God to work against all the deadly “germs” of immorality and sinfulness which can destroy your life, kill your spirit, or worst of all, even kill your soul.  When you take your baptism seriously, and you don’t play games with it and when you practice and live it out daily, it is amazing---no, it is miraculous, how such a single, seemingly, small decision to “be” and “stay clean” can have a such a huge, life-changing “effect” on the rest of your life. 

So, at it’s very foundation, John’s baptism was a baptism of cleansing and a step toward holiness.  John took one look at the world around him and realized what a mess it was in.  The Baptism he practiced was a call to a complete cleansing of the heart.   Until the heart was clean---and until we really want God’s holiness, then the future, as John saw it, was going to be nothing but chaos, fire, judgment and destruction.

BAPTISM AS LIVING YOUR WHOLE LIFE IN GOD  

Now we come back to our question:  If Baptism points to getting our hearts “clean” before God, why is Jesus submitting to it.   Jesus tells John that he wants to be baptized in order to “FULFILL ALL righteousness.”   Maybe we can begin to understand how Jesus “fulfills righteousness” by showing just how important it is for any and all of us, to keep our hearts clean before God.  But still, there is something else going on here in his baptism that should be going on in ours.

When Jesus was talking “fulfillment” of righteousness, he was also speaking about his “commitment” to join with the Father in what he was doing in the world.  To grasp what this should mean for our own baptism, consider how Jesus refers to “baptism” among his disciples.   In Matthew 20, we read the mother of two disciples, came to ask Jesus to favor her sons and allow them to sit next his throne in the coming kingdom.   The disciples then end up arguing over who was going to have the privilege of sitting next to Jesus on the throne.  That is how some of Jesus disciples still wrongly understand the meaning of baptism.   Many only see baptism as a ticket to heaven, a way to be part of God’s inner circle, or “right” to have special privileges.    

Considering what actually happened to Jesus, and what his baptism did come to mean, all this arguing over the throne seems quite comical and tragic.   It is misses the point of baptism altogether.   While the disciples are arguing over the privileges of discipleship, Jesus is preparing, not to sit on a throne, but to die on a cross.   Knowing this, Jesus turns to his disciples, and says rather sharply: “You don’t know what you’re talking about.  Are you able to drink the cup, I will drink?  Are you able to be baptized with the baptism I will be baptized with?” (Matt. 20:22).   Still not realizing what this means, they respond in complete ignorance: “Oh Yes, We are able!” “ Ok,” Jesus says rather sarcastically, “ You will indeed drink the cup and be baptized in the baptism I am baptized with, (in other words, you’ll get what’s coming to you) “but to sit at my right hand is not mine to give!” (Matt. 20: 23).

When I read all this, and how the disciples missed the whole point of the meaning of their baptism with Jesus, I’m reminded of how hard it still is for us today to understand, but that could change.   A couple of weeks ago, I told you about a Christian woman in Pakistan, who was about to be hung for her faith, because it was when she was defending her faith, it was claimed that she insulted the prophet Mohammed.   I also told you that a Pakistain governor was trying to get her released, but the hate against her was too strong.  If you were watching the news this week, the Pakistaini Governor who tried to defend her was ruthlessly murdered by his own guard.   Also, right now in Nigeria, a nation that used to predominately Christian, Muslim extremists are trying to take over and are threatening and killing Christians and pushing the nation toward anarchy.  Last week, the cost of Christian commitment came to Egypt, where there has been a large Coptic Christian community since first days of Christianity.  These Coptic Christians were worshipping Jesus on New Year’s eve, thinking they were protected by Egyptian law, when they were suddenly attacked by extremist Muslims and Christian worshippers were murdered.  

Now, I want you to know that I’m not an alarmist.  I’m do not hate Muslims.  I respect all religions that are sincerely seeking the truth.   I think Christian can live in peace with other faiths and we all seek God.   But I tell you all this, because of what an Egyptian Christian attending Fuller Seminary, wrote this week in a letter to Egyptian leaders, demanding they take a stand against extremism in Islam.  Ayman Ibriham wrote:  “Muslim fundamentalists want to destroy Christians and to form a completely Muslim nation.  They want to destroy all others they call “infidels”.  He called upon Egypt’s leaders to save Christians from Muslim fundamentalists.”  (http://www.ethicsdaily.com/egypts-president-needs-to-ensure-egyptian-christians-safety-cms-17243)

What we need to realize today, more than ever before is that there are evil people in this world who totally committed to evil, to hate, to murder and to destroying anyone who doesn’t agree with them.   They are totally committed and will die for what they believe.  I wonder, today, just how committed we are to just the opposite?  How committed are we to love each other, to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God, even do the most impossible task of loving our enemies?   What Coptic Christians, Nigerian Christians, and Pakastani Christians know very well, is that their baptism is not some kind of privilege or status, but it is serious business, and it is a gift and a it is a true calling of God to live a life of love, of compassion and of service to Jesus, in life and death. 

This is what “baptism” has always meant, but somehow, some keep missing it.  Even some who go to church, hold back their heart of full commitment to Jesus, and they keep making “baptism” only what they want it to be, rather than submitting to what God has called them to be.  I keep wondering, how and why this happens?  Why do some Christians taking their baptism so lightly when others in the world take their own faith so seriously?  How could this happen? 

Maybe some people are confused by the differing traditions and practices in the churches.  Some churches celebrate the baptism of Infants, celebrating the birth of a new baby and the faith of the parents that these children will someday be confirmed in their faith in Jesus Christ.   I don’t see anything terribly wrong with this, even though it is not our tradition.   I think God can work this way, if people really want him too and if our hearts are in the right place.   Other churches, like ours in the Baptist tradition, celebrate the baptism of a coming of age child, or of a repenting adult, who decides to accept Jesus as their personal savior.    This can also be wonderfully used of God to point us to Jesus, but even in this very biblical tradition, we can still miss the whole point of what baptism means.  Even if we think we are doing baptism “right”, we can still do “baptism” wrong.   Whether we “sprinkle” water on infants or “dip” children or adults under water, we can we can still miss what those first disciples were missing about their own baptism.    

What we must understand is that our baptism must mean what Jesus’ baptism meant: a full and total commitment of our life to service and faith in Jesus Christ.   If we mean anything less, than that our full commitment to Christ, it will not take long for other “powers” of uncleanness to take over.  Evil is real, and what we all know too well, is that evil also uses religion to destroy, and it can even use a false form of Christianity that does more harm than good.    Any kind of Christianity that is not of our “whole” heart will not does bring healing to our souls, but it can makes us weaker, sicker, or even meaner, and it is a baptism that doesn’t have the power to save us from anything because it doesn’t mean anything! 

At his baptism, Jesus committed his whole self to God, even if it killed him.     And this is exactly what Baptism is supposed to do. It’s supposed to “kill you”!  In Paul’s letter to the Romans (see 6:1ff.) baptism means nothing less than total commitment, even a commitment to “death.”  It meant death to sin, death to the old self and the old life, and it also meant taking your new life so seriously, that everything else in your life would take a back seat and would die so that you could live fully and completely in God’s fullness until the very last day you lived.    

Today, I wonder how many of us still take our baptism with that kind of “dead” seriousness?   As I look at the evils lurking in our world, the roaring lion of Satan that still “seeking whom he may devour,” I’m concerned about how lax many have become in living their baptism and what it might mean for our future.  I wonder and pray about what we can and should do to renew our commitment to follow Christ with all our lives.  When I reconsider Jesus’ baptism today, as see how he entered those “baptismal” waters in the Jordan, I realize that he knew very well that this was not a “baptism” to try to be a “better person” nor, merely get a ticket to God’s heavenly throne.   When Jesus entered those “baptismal” waters, he was fully committed to live his life for God, even if it killed him.   And it did!  And that is how we are all saved.

Today, I ask you to consider again what your baptism means to you?  Is your baptism one that both kills the old you and offers you new life at the same time?   Is yours a baptism lived every day that makes real demands upon your life, but also gives you the deep joy and peace that is fully known in your heart?  That’s what baptism should be, but what a shallow substitute we can make of it?  Our baptism is supposed to have God’s voice of affirmation, saying in our hearts: “This is my beloved child, in whom I’m well pleased.”  Who doesn’t need that kind of positive voice in their head and heart every day?   Who doesn’t need a life of forgiveness, not guilt; a life lived in hope, not despair, and a life lived for truth and justice, not with lies and regret.  This is what your baptism should be, and must be, if you want the life Jesus gives.   This is what God meant as you were baptized with water and with his Spirit.  What did you mean?  Amen. 

What If God Where One of Us?

A sermon based upon John 1: 1-18

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin

Second Sunday of Christmas, Jan. 2, 2011

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

It’s good to be back with you after my foot surgery.  The doctor says I’m making good progress and all is healing well.  Of course, I’m somewhat limited.  Next week I get to start putting weight down and the cast comes off is three weeks, then I’ll be out in a walking boot.  I’m excited about that.  

Speaking of where I’ve been, let’s think about where we are today.  This is the first Sunday of the New year, 2011.  But even more than that, even though some of you have already taken down your Christmas tree, on the church calendar this is considered the 2^nd Sunday of Christmas.  So, even though it’s New Years, it’s really still Christmas.  Remember that song, the 12 days of Christmas?  Christmas is supposed to begin Dec. 25^th and then end on January 5^th.  That’s the 12 days of Christmas we sing about, and it’s the way the religious calendar is set up.  But of course, some of you have been christmassing too long already, and you are ready to get finished with it.   

I’m not knocking when or how you have celebrated Christmas; the main thing is to celebrate.  But I do want to for us to pause for a moment today and make sure we got the main message we’re suppose to get.   We all know that Christmas is not centrally about a certain season of the year.  We also know that Christmas is not about eating too much at holiday parties, though we’ve probably done that.  We also know that Christmas is more than the decorations, the receiving gift or drinking eggnog.   Again, I’m not criticizing any of these fun things, but I still want us to reflect once more on what Christmas really means at the very heart.   The church calendar won’t let us move on without looking at Christmas through the lens of John’s gospel.

Amazingly, when you look at Christmas through John, we also don’t get most of the so called sentimental “religious stuff” most of us associate with Christmas.  We not only don’t get the commercialism, we also don’t get Christmas story of Luke or Matthew.   In John’s gospel, we get Jesus, but we don’t get Jesus a manager with the Shepherds and the angels.   We also don’t get the Wise men following the star.  Almost none of those wonderful images we normally associate with Christmas are not found here in John.  Jesus is never a “baby” in John’s retelling of the gospel story.

I don’t know how many of you had time to watch the Sing Off on NBC.  It was wonderful entertainment as talented amateur acapella voices competed for the top singing prize.  The competition was exciting. The music was compelling.  And of all things, a Christian group from Alabama won top prize.  They were incredible.  One thing I remember in the competition is when the judges and major competitors to share what was their favorite thing about Christmas.  One of the judges, Nicole Schezinger shared that her favorite thing about Christmas was the “baby” Jesus.  I guess that’s how you speak of Jesus when you were once one of the pussycat dolls.  Again, I’m not criticizing Nicole at all, because I think she was attempting to speak about her faith in a way that would not been overtly religious.   But her comment reminds me of the deeper truth John is trying to tell us.  The heart of Christmas takes us beyond the baby.   What John wants us to see at Christmas is not a “manager” but a tent.  

John’s wants us to know Jesus is the one who was born, not just to be a baby, but to grow into manhood and even more than this to be the “the word, (that) became flesh and dwelt among us, (so that) we beheld his glory, full of grace and truth.” 

 In this part of the Christmas story we get to what Christian scholars call one of greatest claims of the gospel.   This baby that was born is God’s true voice, or as John puts it, “the word putting on flesh.”  Officially, this is called the message of Incarnation.   This is the claim that in Jesus, God put’s on a human face and lived among us in this world.  The Incarnation is the truth of Christian message at the very core.  It is the truth that Jewish leaders could not stomach, and still struggle with, at least its purest form.   For the Jew, the Incarnation contradicts  what they believe in the Shema prayer: “Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God is One.”    Thus, for the Jew, they see no way God could be 3 in one, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.   To them, God can’t have a human face. This is also a truth that Muslims cannot tolerate either.  They can see Jesus as a miracle working prophet, but not as God with a human face because they cry daily in their daily prayer: "La elaha ella allah"  which means: “There is no God, but Allah.”  Differing from Jews and Muslims, Hindu’s have no problem calling Jesus God in the flesh, because they also have 6 million other gods who have done the same thing.   It’s just no big deal.  But finally, in Buddhism, the whole idea God becoming flesh is not necessary at all.   The point in their religious message is not for God to become flesh or human, but for you in your flesh to become nothing.  This “becoming nothing” is,  according to Buddha is enlightenment, as close to God as anyone can get.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing other major religions.  Each of them can reflect a sincere search for God and have some good religious points to make.   For example, in Buddhism, to learn to suffer and to deny yourself is very close to Jesus call to “deny yourself and take up the cross and to follow Jesus.    In their best humanized forms, most all major world religious have more in common with Christians that they have differences and they all call for living ethically, becoming your best self, and respecting God, yourself and others.   There’s nothing wrong with that, but what I want you to see today is how John’s message of Christmas makes Christianity different from any other religion.   This claim of “incarnation” is radical, unique, and even astounding, just as it is offensive and scandalous.  It is also the most brilliant religious challenge ever given to humanity in the history of the world.   

Before we continue with what John says in the opening of his gospel, there is one passage of Scripture I want us to consider, which was also from John; 1 John 4: 2, which reads:  ² By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,

 ³ and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world.

 (1Jo 4:2-3 NRS).  That’s pretty strong language.   When those words were written, there was a certain religious teaching which actually denied that Jesus was a real human being.   This is why John wanted his first readers to know, right from the beginning, that you can’t have true Christianity without “confessing” that “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh”.  This is why in John’s gospel he tells us how sensual and “fleshy” God is.  God washes dirty feet, smells extravagant perfume, makes lots of wine, had his guts twisted in anger, raised a dead, putrid and stinking Lazarus, asked a friend to put his hand in his side and God ate grilled fish on the seashore.  This is the earthly, sensual, fleshly Jesus of John who is “God in the flesh”.  John is adamant Incarnation.  If you are really Christian, you will be too.  John says you can’t even be called Christian without believing in God this way.    And since it is this important, we need to review this great truth every year. 

JESUS IS GOD WITH A HUMAN FACE

Well, to make this simple, listen again to what John says: “the word became flesh and dwelt among us.”    The best commentary on this is found In another place; where  John is not writing deep theology but explains in a letter to his congregation.  Listen to these words from opening of John 1:    We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life-- ² THIS LIFE WAS REVEALED, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to YOU THE ETERNAL LIFE THAT WAS WITH THE FATHER AND WAS REVEALED TO US--

 ³ we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly OUR FELLOWSHIP IS WITH THE FATHER AND WITH HIS SON JESUS CHRIST.

 ⁴ We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

 ⁵ This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that GOD IS LIGHT AND IN HIM THERE IS NO DARKNESS at all. (1Jo 1:1-5 NRS)

One line at the end of verse 2 is worth repeating over and over as to what Incarnation means:  “the eternal life that was with the Father was revealed to us….”   But how do get behind these words?  It’s not that hard.  Let me ask you: How do you find your way through life?  How do you come to grips with both living and dying? How do you decide what is right and what is wrong?  How do you know what matters most in life?  The truth is, unless God has spoken to us uniquely and surely in Jesus, we are all in the dark.   Is there a light in Islam?   We all know the darkness that hovers around the extremes of that religion which murders infidels.  Is there a light in Buddha?  In order to seek enlightenment he abandoned his wife and new born child?  Does that sound like the purest of a person?   I think Buddha teaches many good things, but even as a person seeking enlightenment, he was nowhere close to Jesus. 

Jesus is one of a kind.  He was God’s very own voice.  But of course, even though Jesus is God’s voice, Christianity that follows and proclaims Jesus is not perfect and sometimes we fail miserably.  There have been all kinds of misrepresentations of Christianity through history and in the present, which has strayed away from the light.  But what John wants us to know is that in him, in Jesus, in the true understanding of the Christian message, we have seen the light, the truth, and we can encounter the very word we all need for living and dying.   In Jesus, we hear what God wants us to hear, we see what God wants us to see, and we come to know what God wants us to know.   In Jesus, we meet God, his presence, his personality, and his essence. 

I know in this modern and post modern world, many people struggle with the teaching of any kind of religion.  It’s call secularization. Since the mid-1700’s many learned and educated people haved claimed that we can only know what we can.see.   Since God is invisible, they say, and since the world and life is not always orderly and fair, and so much appears to happen by accident or for no reason, then God does not exist.  Interestingly, even some Christians have fallen into this “secular” trap, only living by what they want or what they can see too.   In other words, we may say we believe that Jesus is God in the flesh, but we don’t live like we believe or like it matters.  

Here is something I want to challenge you with for the New Year:  Does your life really show that you believe that Jesus is God in the flesh?  Does it make a real difference in how you believe and how you understand what is most important in life?   I don’t know whether you’ve heard of Anthony Flew.  He was once one of the most popular Atheists in the world.   A brilliant and learned scholar, he once wrote a book denying the existence of God and denying the reality of the resurrection.  Interestingly, Flew is now a believing Christian and do you know what changed his mind?  To explain it simply, it was in own mind that changed his mind.  He continued to search for the truth until one day he realized that his ability to seek the truth was, in fact, the very image of God in him.  He realized that if there was no God, there would be no truth, no interest, no search or care for truth, and finally, he would not even being denying God, in the first place.   He realized that is own energy to try to deny God was proof that there is much too much “mind” in the world, or too much complexity in the world, for there not to be a great mind behind it.  Everything there is shouts the glory and mind of God.   It’s the only way life can be logically explained.  If we humans have a mind and can think outside of ourselves, then, Flew realized, there must be a greater mind outside us, it’s as simple as that.  Isn’t it amazing how “smart” some smart people can become?  In the end, it was his own “honest” logic and his own “sincere” seeking the truth, which finally brought him into the light.  Now, Dr. Flew is sharing that news with the world. 

Of course, to think about God in logical, philosophical terms doesn’t mean much to those of us who have believed in God all along.  But here is the challenge for us.  We say we believe in God.  We say we believe in Jesus.  We say we believe that God has spoken the truth in the flesh.  But now comes the real test of faith: do we live what we believe?  Does the word become flesh in us? Does the word become flesh in who we are as people and as a church?  That is where the “spirit” still must get into the“flesh”, we could say. 

JESUS AS THE FACE OF TRUE HUMANITY

John says, “the eternal life that was with the Father was revealed to us….”   Now we come to what is much more than just God talk religion or words.   True Christianity reminds us, more than anything else, that if our faith, our religion and our beliefs does not impact our lives, in some very real ways, then they mean nothing.    This is something else John was very specific about.  In his letter, whicht puts the Incarnation in some very understandable language, John also says plainly:  “²⁰ Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. ²¹ The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (1Jo 4:20-21 NRS).  

John’s logic is the most wonderful logic in the world.  It’s what makes Christianity the answer of faith for the world.   Religion, of any kind, even the best kind, and even the right kind, is no good unless those who say they believe, end up loving those we do see and live with in this world.  Because Jesus’ life was so full of compassion and love, and because his number one commandment was “love”, we can rest sure that we have not only the right religion, but the right way of living out our faith in life.  True faith can only be “true” when it is lived, and we don’t live our faith unless we love God by showing our love to each other.  This means true religion, isn’t true unless it’s also loving.  When religion loves, it is true religion, even if it some other failures or flaws in it.  And this is what a Christian is suppose to be about.  The love of God is supposed to show up in us, in our life, our service and our sacrifice, just like it showed up in Jesus’ life, service, and sacrifice.  Jesus shows us the face of God and the face of Love.

How can you know this to be true?  Just try it.  Some of you know what you feel when you have shown love and compassion to someone less fortunate this Christmas.  Maybe you helped an elderly person put up a Christmas tree, you took a meal to someone, or you sang Christmas carols, or you simply paid a visit or made a phone call.  That is where it starts, but not where it ends.   This sharing of hope, of grace, of love and help to those in need and to each other is what the “word becoming flesh” means.   Our religion must “put on flesh” and it must “get real” addressing real issues and touching the lives and needs of real people or our faith is just a mirage.  But when we do “God” things in very “human”, “ordinary, and compassionate” ways, we are being Christian and we are practicing the heart of Christmas.  And guess what?   Being Christian is how Christmas can happen anytime and all year long.  When God’s becomes flesh in us through loving deeds, as He did in Jesus; God becomes flesh and this is true religion.

Think about it this way with this question:  How close is God to us in this world?  How do we know God is still “Emmanuel, God with us?”  Well, the truth is God is as close as you want him to be when you “see” “who” God sees, when you “care” like God cares, and when you “love” like God loves.  When the people of God live out the image of God in our own flesh, and when we live the “humanity” we see in Jesus, then God is as close to us as we are in living like him.

JESUS AS OUR ONLY TRUE HOPE

But there’s one more thing we need to understand about the Incarnation and about the heart of the Christian and the Christmas message.   Listen to that one word from 1 John 1: 2 again when he says:  -- THIS LIFE WAS REVEALED, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to YOU THE ETERNAL LIFE THAT WAS WITH THE FATHER AND WAS REVEALED TO US.   Do you hear what John says and how he describes the heart of the Incarnation:  It’s not just about who God is, who we are to be, but it is finally about why all this matters: “the Eternal life that was with the Father was revealed….”   Through Jesus, God has made hope clear to us:  In Jesus he has given us not just the gift of life, but the gift of eternal life.   For the Christian, hope is not real unless it is Eternal.

Over Christmas I had several discussions with German friends and one of them recommended a movie for me to see.  It was a German movie, in German which was called “Cherry Blossoms”.  In many ways the movie was very strange.  A wife dies and the husband grieves and in his grieving he finally goes to Japan, where his wife always wanted to go, but didn’t.  This is how he finally comes to grip with “where she’s gone.”   He goes to Japan, dresses in her clothes and goes to die at the foot of Mount Fuji.  I told you it was a little weird.  But at the heart of the movie was the big question.  What happens after we die?  What happens to those we love?  What will happen to us?   In that movie, the only answer was that life was beautiful like a Cherry Blossom in Japan, but you’d better enjoy it now, because tomorrow,  like the blossom in spring, soon it will be gone.  There’s certainly truth here, but it’s not enough truth and it misses the greatest truth the world has ever been offered: Eternal life.   This is what Jesus offers.  This is what God reveled in the flesh:  GOD did not let the flesh of Jesus see corruption, but he raised him up, AND SO God will also give us that gift, when we trust him.  This is our only true hope.  It is much better than a Cherry Blossom, no matter how beautiful they are.

So, now, what is the Incarnation?  One of the most powerful expressions of the incarnational aspect of Christmas, is a play that was written by a German Lutheran minister. His name was Guenter Rutenborn. The play was written in 1945 as Germany was reeling from the impact of the terrible World War II, and Pastor Rutenborn was struggling with the question on so many people's minds back in that day, namely, who was responsible for the terrible agony that the world had experienced through World War II. And so the play begins with a group of refugees, displaced persons, milling around, asking who's to blame, and the various answers that were in the air were voiced there.


Some said Hitler was to blame; others said, "No, it was the munitions manufacturers who financed him." Others said it was the apathy of the German people, but then suddenly a man comes up out of the crowd and says, "Do you want to know who is really to blame for all the suffering we've been through? I'll tell you. God is to blame. He is the one that created this world. He is the one who has let it be what it is." And everybody catches up the chorus. They turn with one voice to say, "God is to blame. God is to blame."


And so in the play, God is brought down on the stage and is put in the dock, and God is tried for the crime of creation. He is found guilty and the judge says, "The crime is so severe that there are going to have to be the worst of all sentences. I hereby sentence God to have to live on this earth as a human being." And the three archangels are given the task of carrying out the sentence.


The first archangel walks to the end of the stage and says, "I'm going to see to it when God serves His sentence that He knows what it's like to be obscure and to be poor. He will be borne on the backside of no where with a peasant girl for His mother. There will be a suspicion of shame about his birth, and He will have to live as a Jew in a Jew-hating world."
The second archangel starts out and says, "I'm going to see to it when God serves his sentence that He knows what it's like to fail and to suffer disappointment. No one will ever understand what He is trying to do."   The third archangel said, "I'm going to see to it when God serves His sentence that He knows what it's like to suffer. I'm going to see to it that He has all kinds of physical pain. At the end of His life, He's going to be absolutely executed in as painful a way as possible."


And with that the three archangels disappear. The houselights go down, and it suddenly dawns on you that God has already served that sentence. He knows what it's like to live as a human being, which means there's nothing you face today that is going to be strange to God  (From John Claypool in a sermon "God Became Who We Are" .http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/claypool_3812.htm).


Therefore, the great message of Christmas is that God became like us, so that we could understand better who God is, and we could believe with all our hearts that God understands what we are, and he has shown us how to love each other.  This has still got to be Good News which came to to us at Christmas! .Amen.