The Waking Dreamer: Incarnation

Showing posts with label Incarnation. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Making a Difference

Hebrews 4:14-5:10[1]

I believe most of us want to make a difference in this world. As we’re growing up, we try to figure out a way to do that with our lives. We choose a career based on our interests. Whether our job takes us in a direction that we feel like we’re actually making a difference in others’ lives, I would say that we do so just by the way we show up and treat people. Even if our job isn’t one that seems to “make a real difference,” most of us get involved in other activities like sports leagues or community clubs so that we can give back to the people around us. I think one of the challenges we face is that we have a hard time recognizing all the ways we contribute to the lives of other people. It seems to be wired into who we are as human beings to want to make a difference.

The most fulfilling experiences of my life have come from the opportunities I’ve had to make a difference in someone’s life. That’s why I started down the path of ministry at the ripe old age of 17. That’s why I’ve worked all my life to learn all I can about the Bible, Theology, History, Philosophy, and life in general. And that’s what still keeps me going over 45 years later. What energizes me is making a difference in someone’s life. It may sound strange, but that’s why I find it fulfilling to be with those who are hurting. Especially at the end of a loved one’s life. Yes, those times can be challenging and hard, but those are the times when I feel like I’m truly making a difference.

Of course, not everyone is called to be a pastor. We need all kinds of people doing all kinds of things for the world to work. But I think we all want to make a difference. One problem with trying to make a difference, however, is that when we put ourselves out there to help others, we’re putting ourselves in a position to wind up getting hurt. We’re opening ourselves to criticism, some of which may not be so fair or kind or respectful. Those who have been in a position where you’ve put yourself out there to help other people know what I’m talking about. Any time we try to make a difference in the lives of people around us, we’re at risk of our motives or our actions (or both!) being misinterpreted or perhaps even misrepresented. The bottom line is that whenever we try to make a contribution to others, we are likely going to have to endure some kind of unfair or hurtful treatment.

I think this aspect of our lives relates to our scripture lesson from Hebrews for today. It talks about how Jesus made a difference for all of us by what he did. In giving his life for us on the cross, he shows us who God is: the one who’s willing to take all the suffering of the world into himself. More than that, what Jesus did shows us what God is doing in the world: God is in the process of restoring everyone and everything. By dying on the cross, Jesus was fulfilling God’s desire for the whole human family to be restored to him. And in so doing, our lesson says that he has become the source of “eternal salvation” for all who turn to him in “trusting-obedience” (Heb 5:8-9 MSG). All that sounds good to us. But the lesson also says something that may sound strange to our ears. It says, “Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered” (Heb 5:8, NLT) That sounds more than strange. It’s shocking: why would Jesus need to “learn obedience”? Wasn’t his whole life, in fact his whole existence, one of obedience to God? So why did he have to “learn obedience”?

I think the answer has to do with what happened when the Son of God became a human being. It’s not like he was inherently willful and disobedient and had to be taught by the consequences of his actions how to obey God. The very act of becoming a human being was an expression of his obedience to God. But I think what Jesus learned was a first-hand experience of what it means to live as a fully human person.[2] And part of what that means is that anyone who wants to make a difference in the lives of others is probably going to suffer criticism, or undergo attack, or perhaps even in his case give up his life. There have been many who sought to make a difference in this world who have given up their lives because of it. In his obedience to God, Jesus had to learn what human suffering is like. And the ultimate expression of his trust in God as well as his obedience to God was to give his life for us all on the cross.

While it’s not necessary to restrict what our Scripture lesson says about Jesus to this one event, it’s natural to think of Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane. I find it wonderfully reassuring that, when faced with one of the cruelest methods of executing a person ever devised, Jesus asked God to deliver him from it! It’s hard to imagine Jesus being truly human and not facing the cross with feelings of anguish and praying “with loud cries and tears” (Heb. 5:7). And yet, the end result of his prayer struggle in that garden was that he decided to go through all of it in order to fulfill God’s desire to make a real difference in all of our lives.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the lessons for us to take away here is that the process of God becoming flesh in Jesus of Nazareth is not just about showing us who God is, it’s also about showing us that God is working to restore us all. Throughout the ages many have wondered why God went to all that trouble. Why not just “say the word” and make everything right again? I think one answer to that question is that the only way to truly make a difference in human life is to take the risk of getting involved that person’s life. The only way to truly help anyone is to enter fully into their experience and pour into it the love that can change them. That’s what Jesus was doing on the cross. As one of our confessions of faith puts it, he went into the abyss of human suffering in order to redeem all of us who have been trapped there.[3] There’s no depth of suffering in human experience that Jesus did not reach. And the profound love he poured out for us all at the cross changes everything! By entering fully into our experience, Jesus truly made the difference for us all.

I think it’s part of our identity as human beings that we all want to make a difference. But making a difference will very likely cost us something, just as it cost Jesus. When we doubt whether Jesus makes a difference in our lives, I think we should remember the friends and loved ones who have made such a difference in our lives. While we may not be able to relate to Jesus as directly as we can to them, we can remember what he went through, and that he did it precisely to make a difference for us. It’s a bit like the way the friends and loved ones we’ve lost still make a difference in our lives today. And when we doubt whether we’re making a difference in anyone’s life, we should also remember the friends and loved ones we’ve lost and how much we miss them. No less than they did when they were with us, we all make a difference in the lives of others just by being who we are.

[2] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 1.2:158: “the New Testament has treated the vere homo [truly human] so seriously that it has portrayed the obedience of Jesus throughout as a genuine struggle to obey, as a seeking and finding.”

[3] The Study Catechism, 1998, q. 45.

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

High and Humble

Isaiah 57:15, Hebrew 4:12-16[1]

I’ve told you recently about some of my favorite Bible verses. Another one is Isaiah 57:15: “Our holy God lives forever in the highest heavens, and this is what he says: Though I live high above in the holy place, I am here to help those who are humble and depend only on me” (Isa 57:15, CEV). I love the way that verse combines two important aspects of who God is: God is both far beyond our ability to comprehend, and also as close to us as the very air we’re breathing right this minute. I like this verse because I’m not so sure we do a very good job holding those two essential concepts together. We’re comfortable with a God who “lives away up there,” but I’m not so sure we’re comfortable with a God who “walks beside me day by day.” At least I would suggest the way we live our lives indicates we’re happy to keep God at arm’s length, or perhaps more!

Think about it: we want a God who’s bigger than our problems. And we want a God who’s bigger than our problems to help when we ask. But we really prefer to live our own lives, thank you very much, when it comes to all the other aspects of life we think we can “handle.” I’m not sure we really want a God who gets involved with every aspect of our lives. If he does, it means we have to surrender every aspect of our lives to God. As much as we may say we want to do that, I have a sneaking suspicion that most of us prefer to stay in control. For some of us, I would say we might prefer that God would simply mind his own business and stay out of ours!

But that’s not the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God who brought the children of Isael out of slavery in Egypt and then again brought them home from exile in Babylon. It’s not the God who came to live among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and who fed the hungry, embraced the outcasts, and got down and played with little children. Yes, God is the one who “lives forever in the highest heavens.” Yes, God is the one whose love for us and whose work on our behalf is infinitely beyond anything we can even dare to imagine (Eph 3:20). That also means that God is the one who is living and working in all our lives all the time. We may not even be able to dare to imagine what God is doing in and through us right now, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Bible insists God is indeed working in us, giving us “the desire and the power to do what pleases him” (Phil 2:13, NLT).[2]

That brings us to our Scripture lesson from Hebrews for today. We see a reflection of this belief that God is always at work in our lives in the statement that “the word of God is alive and powerful.” We may not always be aware of God’s living and powerful work in our lives because we’ve come up with so many ways to pay attention to anything but that. Again, I would say part of the reason why we prefer to distract ourselves from what God is be doing in our lives is because we’re really not all that comfortable having God that closely involved in our lives. If God’s word truly “exposes our innermost thoughts and desires” as our lesson says, we may want God to keep his distance. We may prefer a God who “lives away up there” because we really don’t want to get that close to the God who is more powerful than we can imagine and who works in our lives to accomplish his will, not ours!

But our scripture reading from Hebrews emphasizes that God’s powerful work in and through us right here and right now is not something we should fear. And that’s another lesson we learn from Jesus. Just as we believe that Jesus came in person to show us what God is truly like, so also we can trust in the image of God that Jesus shows us. Last week we saw that image reflected by playing with children. This week our lesson from Hebrews reminds us that, because he was willing to become like us and suffer for us, Jesus shows us the depth of God’s compassion and mercy. As our lesson puts it, Jesus “understands our weaknesses” because he “faced all of the same temptations as we do” (Heb 4:15, NLT).

While that statement is truly comforting, it’s also one that can be confusing. We have a hard time understanding how God can be both bigger than we can imagine and also intimately involved in every aspect of our lives. Our Scripture lesson today holds those two seemingly irreconcilable affirmations together by referring to God in terms of approaching “the throne of grace.” On the one hand, clearly God is depicted as one who exercises authority and power from a “throne.” The Bible consistently portrays God as the one who reigns over the entire created order. Not just what we can see, but all the galaxies that exist throughout the universe. God is the one who reigns over all the nations, and over each of our lives. God sits on a “throne” with authority and power.

And yet on the other hand, the Scripture lesson speaks of God’s throne as a “throne of grace.” The Bible reveals to us a God who empathizes with our struggles and sympathizes with our plight, a God who shares our pain and our suffering. The image of God revealed by Jesus Christ, the crucified savior, is one of compassion, and mercy. One aspect of our understanding that God became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth is that his experience of our full humanity reveals to us that God really and truly understands what we’re going through. It’s easy to think that God is so far “up there” that he really can’t identify with or understand what we have to go through in this life. But the lesson reminds us that Jesus “faced all of the same temptations as we do.” That means God cares deeply about us and empathizes with us so that God is intimately involved in every facet of our lives. For this reason, our Scripture lesson today invites us to turn in our time of need to the “throne of grace,” confident that when we do so we will find compassion and mercy.

That brings me back to the verse from Isaiah 57:15. In the version we heard earlier, the translation implies the fact that God is both exalted and compassionate are in tension with one another: “Though I live high above in the holy place, I am here to help those who are humble and depend only on me” (Isa 57:15, CEV). But I find it interesting that in the New Living Translation, those two aspects of God’s character aren’t in tension at all: “The high and lofty one who lives in eternity, the Holy One, says this: ‘I live in the high and holy place with those whose spirits are contrite and humble. I restore the crushed spirit of the humble and revive the courage of those with repentant heart’” (Isa 57:15, NLT). The “high and holy place” where God lives is precisely with “those whose spirits are contrite and humble,” precisely with us. God’s exalted power is displayed precisely in his willingness to humble himself in order to get involved in our lives, in every aspect of our lives.[3] And, of course, the ultimate purpose of God’s willingness to get involved in our lives to that extent is to transform us into the joyful and free people he created us to be, so that we might share his love with others and finally enjoy that love in his presence forever.

[2] Cf. Philippians 2:12-13 in The Message: “Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.”

[3] Cf. William C. Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God, 19: “God’s power is the power of love. … in freely loving, God is most of all who God is, most exemplifying the kind of power God has.” Cf. similarly Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1:159: “In His high majesty He is humble. It is in this high humility that He speaks and acts as the God who reconciles the world to himself.

Tuesday, October 08, 2024

Stamped

Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-10; Mark 10:13-16[1]

When it comes to parenting, the debate about nature versus nurture is an old one. The question is whether children are “stamped” with their personality from birth or whether their personality is shaped by the nurture they receive from their families. I think it’s always been a combination, myself. I think children have their own identities from the start, and that parents can either enhance or short-circuit that identity. Of course, at the end of the day, everyone makes their own choices, including our children, and those choices also have a way of defining our life path as well as who we are and who our family is.

One of the aspects of “nature” in this discussion has to be family resemblances. It’s not hard to see the likeness between my oldest son Derek and me. My daughter Carolyn likes to say that he’s a “clone” of me. I like to say, not that he’s a “mini-me,” but rather he’s a bigger and better “me.” He is 6’2”! You can see that family resemblance, not just is appearance, but also in mannerisms, in my son, myself, my father, my grandfather, even going back to my great-great-grandfather! About 15 years ago I stumbled upon a genealogy site run by a guy in Omaha who had some ties to the Brehm family. He had a picture of my great-great grandparents that I’d never seen. But when I took a good look at my great-great grandfather’s eyes, I saw my own, and my son’s as well.

We also take on the image of those who are influential in our lives. Those who are our mentors, whether family or teachers or supervisors, tend to influence how conduct ourselves. Sometimes those mentors can be more influential than our families. One of my professors in Seminary asked me to work with him as a graduate assistant, and I did that for three years. I graded his papers, and I taught his classes when he was away. It should come as no surprise to you that the way I taught my classes as a professor looked a lot like the way he taught his classes.

Our Scripture reading from Hebrews for today talks about a “resemblance” that’s even stronger than that. It talks about the way in which Jesus shows us what God is like. The Scripture describes Jesus as “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb 1:3, NLT). The language used in the Greek text calls to mind the idea that Jesus is a ray of light from the very being of God. He’s the “radiance of the glory of God.” It also suggests that, like a coin is stamped in the image of the one who issues it, Jesus is “stamped” in the image of God. He’s the “exact imprint of God’s nature.”

What the author of the letter to the Hebrews is talking about is Jesus’ nature as the “Son” of God. And we cannot help but think about the notion of the “incarnation” of Jesus when we hear this language. In these days there are some who think themselves too sophisticated to buy into antiquated concepts like God being incarnate in a human being. But the doctrine of incarnation is not about the biology of where children come from. It’s an affirmation that Jesus really and truly does show us what God is like.[2] We can look at Jesus, his life, his teaching, his mercy, his justice, and we can be confident that we’re seeing a true likeness of God. Or as the author of the letter to the Hebrews puts it, Jesus is “the exact imprint of God’s very being.”

What kind of “image” of God do we see in Jesus? In the Gospels we see him embracing the ones nobody else would embrace. We see him confronting the religious people with the falseness of their self-righteousness. We see him forgiving sinners and restoring people to themselves and to their communities. We see him teaching people to follow the commandments by loving God whole-heartedly and loving others sincerely. And in today’s Gospel lesson we see Jesus welcoming little children.

Most of us are familiar with this story. We cherish it, but I think we also sterilize it a bit. Think about the children in your lives. They are energy personified. They have the capacity to laugh, cry, dance, and shout—all without any inhibitions whatsoever! As much as we love our children, however, we may have trouble fully seeing them as human beings. After all, what do children do? When they’re not sleeping or eating, they play. Many adults think that they’re too busy to waste precious time playing with children.

That’s why I think we sterilize this story. The typical “Sunday School” image is of calm, smiling, obedient children gathered around Jesus, admiring his presence, listening attentively and soaking in all that he has to say. But we know that most children aren’t like that. At least my grandchildren certainly aren’t! They’re fidgety, they’re impulsive; they can actually speak out of turn and interrupt what’s going on! I think if we’re going to do justice to this Gospel lesson, we should imagine Jesus interacting with real group of children—active, exuberant, noisy! What do you do with a group of children like that? You don’t try to make them “be still” so you can teach them a lesson. You jump right into the middle of the fray and play with them!

Does Jesus really show us what God is like by playing with children? Is something so seemingly mundane really an aspect of what it means that Jesus is “the exact imprint of God’s very being”? Surely it must be incidental, simply a part of the narrative “coloring” that keeps us interested in the really “important” stuff. But in our lesson for today Jesus says that children define the character of what it means to be a part of God’s kingdom, God’s saving reign, God’s new creation. I think he most definitely showed us who God is when he played with those children!

The author of the letter to the Hebrews insists over and over that Jesus shows us what God is like. He’s like a ray of light from God’s very being. He’s “stamped” with God’s image like a coin is stamped with the image of the one who made it. But because we’re also made in the image of God, as our lesson from the Psalms for today reminds us, then there’s a sense in which Jesus also shows us what we’re created to be. We’re not only “stamped” with certain character traits, habits, and quirks that we inherited from our families or learned from our mentors. We’re also “stamped” with the image of God. And as we follow Jesus more and more faithfully, we are more and more transformed into his image (2 Cor 3:18). As we learn to practice the ways of God’s kingdom, the ways of faith, hope, and love, the ways of peace, justice, and freedom, we become “stamped” with Jesus’ image ourselves. And the more we become like him, the more we reflect the image of our loving God to those around us.

[2] Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 114-118, says that the incarnation is part of the “eternally self-communicating love of God” that constitutes the “foundation of the new creation,” or the “perfecting of creation.”

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Unfailing Love

Psalm 89; Luke 1:26-38[1]

I think there’s a lot of confusion out there about love these days. We say, “I love you,” but what we really mean is “I’m lonely and I want you to comfort me.” Or “I think you’re incredibly attractive and desirable.” Or “Will you please just do what I want?” Or “I’m really excited to have such a great looking guy/girl with me; my friends are going to think I’m important.” Love is about wanting, desiring, or having. I think part of the reason for this is that we associate “love” so completely with romance. As a result, love has everything to do with feelings of infatuation or attraction or desire. That approach to love has many people spending their lives running around looking for their own personal holy grail of “love.” But when we do that, we tend to lose sight of any aspect of love as a choice, love as a gift you give to another person.

I think part of this confusion comes from the various “myths” about love that are out there. For example, there are many who live their whole lives looking for “the one.” You know, the single solitary individual out of the population of the world, which consists of enough people to fill roughly a thousand cities the size of the Chicago metro area! Another “myth” about love is “happily ever after.” It’s the fairy-tale ideal that when you find “the one” you’ll spend your lifetime in honeymoon bliss. I do think that people can live happily ever after, but it doesn’t look like “honeymoon bliss.” One of the silliest love-related myths I’ve ever heard comes from the tagline to the 1970 film “Love Story”: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” What in the world does that even mean? If you’re human, you’ll always be in a position of needing to say you’re sorry. If anything, love means you continually say you’re sorry, and you keep coming back and saying you’re sorry no matter what!

The Bible teaches us about love in many ways— through its practical teachings, through the stories of God’s love for a wayward people, and most importantly through the life of Jesus, who gave himself completely for the sake of us all. Our lesson from the Psalms for today begins with a celebration of God’s love: “Your unfailing love will last forever. Your faithfulness is as enduring as the heavens” (Ps 89:2, NLT). As we’ve seen over the past weeks, affirmations like this in the Psalms are often set in the context of the disappointments, the hardships, and the afflictions the people of Israel suffered. Their faith enabled them to confess that God’s unfailing love lasts forever specifically in those times when their circumstances could have led them to conclude that God had “forgotten” them. But the truth of who God is in the story of the people of Israel is that God never forgot them. His love for them never failed, even though their love for God failed time and time again!

The clearest demonstration of God’s love for us all in the Bible is found in Jesus: his birth, his life, and his death for us all. As you may know, there is some serious theology behind this statement. Theology that took centuries to formulate, and to some extent is still being shaped to this day. We call it the incarnation, the belief that in Jesus, God somehow came to share the fullness of our experience with life, including its joys and sorrows. Just the fact of Jesus’ birth as the Son of God demonstrates God’s love for us, because God chose to enter this world as one of us. But there’s more to it than that. Because the idea is that everything Jesus did was a reflection of who God is. And that includes dying on the cross. If the one who died on the cross is God incarnate, then that means God took into himself everything that prevents us from being the people he created us to be. That kind of love as expressed in the fundamental affirmation of our faith that God demonstrates his love for us in the birth of Jesus may be hard for us to grasp.

Our faith in Jesus as God incarnate is an important basis for understanding God’s love for us. But I doubt seriously that most of us come to the place where we truly believe that God accepts as we are through learning about theology. I think most of us learn about God’s love for us because somebody at some point in our lives showed us that kind of love. That’s where the Bible’s practical teachings about love come in. One of the clearest practical statements about love comes from the Apostle Paul: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful” (1 Cor 13:4-5). I know, we use this Scripture primarily at weddings. But Paul’s not talking about love only in the context of marriage. He’s talking about love as a way of life, love as a basic attitude toward other people, love as a commitment to following Jesus’ example.[2]

That’s easy to say, but as we know, it’s incredibly difficult to practice consistently. How do we follow Jesus’ example by loving each other the way he loved us? How do we give our lives away for the sake of the kingdom of God and for the sake of others without losing ourselves entirely? I think at least part of the answer is that we can only give ourselves away in love when our lives are grounded in God’s unfailing love. We can only practice this kind of love for others when we know that God loves us unconditionally and irrevocably, always has and always will. Even with that foundation for our love, I think we have to admit that loving others in this way doesn’t come easily for us. To be sure, we can love our families this way, but I think we also must admit that we all have to learn to love other people the way Jesus did.

If we pay attention to the way Jesus’ first disciples learned to love, I think we will discover that the way we learn to love like Jesus did is by coming together as a fellowship of people who are trying to learn how to follow Jesus’ example.[3] Whether it’s feeding the hungry, or clothing the poor, or comforting the sick and dying, or just listening to someone enough to really hear him or her, to love as Jesus did means to give of yourself without thinking about “what am I going to get out of this?” 500 years ago, the translators commissioned by King James translated the Greek word for love, agape, with the word “charity.” They were following the lead of ancient scholars who translated the Bible into Latin, and who used the word caritas. While “charity” has implications in our day that may be misleading, the basic idea is one of relating to other people with genuine, heartfelt care and compassion.

As with the other lessons of Advent, we may look at our world today and wonder where that kind of love can be found. It’s there in many ways, but the disturbing truth is that the way we humans treat one another all too often has very little to do with love. The promise of Advent is that God came into this world in the birth of Jesus to show us how much he loves us, and that he always has and always will love us in that way. If it sounds impossible that God could come into the world in the birth of Jesus, I’ll remind you what the angel said to Mary: “nothing will be impossible with God”! The fact that God would go to such lengths to show us that we are all loved, that we always have been and always will be, is the definitive demonstration of God’s unfailing love in the midst of a long and wonderful history of God showing us that God’s love for us never fails. And it’s that love that God shows us, throughout history, in the life of Jesus, and in the lives of our friends and family, that teaches us how to follow Jesus’ example of love. That unconditional and irrevocable love, that assurance that God always has and always will love us in this way sets us free to share love with others.

[2] I like Jürgen Moltmann’s definition of love in The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, 255: Love means combining “respect for the other person’s freedom” to be an individual “with deep affection for him or her as a person.”

[3] Cf. Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, 232. He says that the actions that define love “are learned patterns of behavior that must be cultivated over time in the context of a community that models and supports such behavior.”

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

The Gift of God

John 4:5-42[1]

There are some aspects of our faith that seem to be clear enough. God loves us; he always has, and he always will. There are other aspects of our faith that we may never understand until we are face to face with Jesus. How can God be one God who is three? How could Jesus be fully God and fully human? How can this world created by our loving God be so filled with pain and wrong? These are questions that the believers have wrestled with for centuries, and I’m not sure we’re going to understand any possible answer we might receive because God’s ways are infinitely higher than ours! In a time when people want simple answers, that can be a problem.

One of the aspects of our faith that I’ve wrestled with for over 40 years is “eternal life.” Part of it is straightforward enough: it’s the promise that God chooses to be God-who-is-with-us, and that means God chooses us to be with him for all eternity. But “eternal life” in John’s Gospel has another aspect to it. This “gift of God” is something that Jesus came to bring here and now. It’s the message from the start of John’s Gospel: “in him was life and the life was the light of all people” (Jn 1:4). It’s the claim that Jesus himself makes: “just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (Jn 5:26). And it’s the promise of John’s Gospel: Jesus would be “lifted up” so that everyone who believes may “have life” in him (Jn 3:14-15). Not in eternity, but right here and right now. I’ve wrestled with what that means all my life. And I’m still not entirely sure!

Let’s back up and take a closer look at our Gospel lesson for today. One point of the story is that Jesus, by his very presence, offers the Samaritan woman, along with the people of her village, eternal life. Again, not in some far-distant future, but then and there. In fact, the rather unexpected encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman (unexpected particularly for his own disciples) did not happen by chance. Rather it was something Jesus “had” to do (Jn 4:4): it was a part of his mission, part of him doing what God had sent him to do. As I mentioned last week, the reason why Jesus could offer “eternal life” to her and the people of her village was because Jesus, as the “Word” of God become flesh, makes God’s presence available to everyone in such a way that they may receive eternal life through their faith in him. As we look closely at this encounter, we find that “eternal life” was something he was offering them right then and there.

Jesus initiated this encounter by an unexpected request: he asked the Samaritan woman for a drink of water. That just wasn’t done in that day. So we can understand when she reacts with surprise: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jn 4:9). Jesus’ response is one that I think we are beginning to see was characteristically puzzling, at least in John’s Gospel. He said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (Jn 4:10). Just as he did with Nicodemus, Jesus used a phrase that could be understood in two ways. And just like Nicodemus, this woman misunderstood Jesus. She thought he had access to some hidden source of “flowing water,” which is one way to understand “living water.” But what he meant was that this “water” was life-giving. Jesus said it this way, “The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (Jn 4:14). Jesus had come there to bring “eternal life” as the “gift of God” to her and the people of her village. Not in some far-distant future, but right then and there.

I don’t think she understood Jesus any better than we might if we had been there that day. But one thing this Samaritan woman did: she kept engaging Jesus with questions until her faith awakened. What we should bear in mind is that she was not likely to be picked by anyone to be the example of what it meant to believe in Jesus. And yet she kept responding to him in a way that he was able to lead her to faith. At first, it began to dawn on her that she was dealing with more than a Jewish man asking a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. Her journey to faith didn’t happen immediately. It was a gradual process. That’s the point of the dialogue between her and Jesus: Jesus was drawing her step by step to faith in himself so that she could receive the “gift of God.”

Toward the end of their discussion, she says that when the Messiah comes “he will proclaim all things to us” (Jn 4:25). Perhaps she was saying more than she knew. I certainly don’t thing she expected Jesus to respond, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you” (Jn 4:26).This reminds us that the key affirmation of John’s Gospel is that Jesus is the one who was “with God” and “was God” in the beginning and who became a human being (Jn 1:1, 14). In John’s Gospel, Jesus makes God’s presence available to everyone in such a way that they may receive eternal life through their faith in him. Again, not in some far-distant future, but right here and right now. That’s what Jesus meant when he said that the “hour is now here” (Jn 4:23): the gift of God is available now because Jesus is the “Word” of God made flesh.

This is something that that I’ve struggled to understand all my life. Part of the reason for that is that many who preach this message make it out as if Jesus is promising us everything we can hope to find when we come face to face with Jesus right here and right now. That just doesn’t line up with my life experience. After all these years I’m still left trying to answer what it means to have “eternal life” right here and right now. Let’s start with the part that seems straightforward. Having “eternal life” as the “gift of God” here and now means we can know that everything that had to be done to secure our destiny in God’s loving presence forever has been done.

But in John’s Gospel it means more than that. Because Jesus embodied the life of God in himself, he is able to give that life to us. Not “when we all get to heaven,” but right here and right now. That means that can have a different “quality of life” here and now. And in my experience, what that boils down to is that we can know that God has loved us from before the foundation of the world. It means that God showed that love for us by coming among us to heal our brokenness in the person of Jesus Christ. And it means that we have nothing to fear from whatever may come our way because nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. While we may not fully understand all that “eternal life” means for us here and now, I think we can follow the Samaritan woman’s example. We can continue to ask our questions in the assurance that Jesus will keep leading us to faith, and will keep giving us the “gift of God.”

[1] © Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/12/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Sunday, January 03, 2021

Grace Upon Grace

John 1:1-18[1]

It’s not hard to understand the sentiment that putting 2020 behind us is “good riddance.” It has been a hard year for all of us. We who enjoy being around people have struggled with the isolation. For some of us, 2020 has been positively brutal. The longer the pandemic goes, the more likely we are to know someone who has had the virus. Even worse, the longer it goes, the more likely we are to know someone who has died from the virus. For many reasons, we have experienced the losses of this year more deeply than perhaps ever before.

When we go through hard times like this, we can respond in a variety of ways. I’m concerned that some of us are hoping that changing the calendar will somehow make it possible for us to “go back” to the way things were before the pandemic. And while I look forward to the day when we can gather freely again, based on my experience I would say that “going back” is never really an option in life. In truth, who really wants to “go back” to major cities clogged with traffic and smothered in smog? Who really wants to “go back” to a way of life that can fairly accurately be described as a “rat race”?

Our Gospel lesson for today is about another major change in human experience: the “Word” who was with God in the beginning and who is God became “flesh.” And he did so in order to reveal the truth of God’s amazing grace and unfailing love to us all. That’s a hard concept to wrap our heads around. How can God really become human? I can’t explain it, and I don’t know that anyone ever has or ever will. But I believe it. Not because of philosophical reasons or a biological miracle. I believe it because at the heart of our Gospel lesson is the message that the God whose very nature is love entered our world in the person of Jesus in order to share that love with us all.[2]

If there’s one word in the New Testament that summarizes the gift that God has given to us in his son our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, it’s grace. And so it comes as no surprise to us when our Gospel lesson says that the first Christians saw in Jesus “the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:14). More than that we are told, “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (Jn. 1:16).

Because we’ve heard words like this from the Bible so many times, it’s easy for us to overlook the fact that John’s Gospel goes “over the top” to describe the gift we have received in Jesus the Christ. I’m afraid that phrase “grace upon grace” gets lost in our hearing. In fact, our translations have a hard time putting it in words. Some of them, like the NIV and the NLT, render it with “one blessing after another.” I prefer Gene Peterson’s translation in The Message: “We all live off his generous bounty, gift after gift after gift.” In this first chapter of John’s Gospel, the meaning is clear: Jesus comes to us as the one who brings God’s grace. And he brings so much of it that all you can call it is “grace piled on top of grace.”[3]

John’s Gospel uses other words like light and truth and life to describe the gifts Jesus brought to us. But there’s one very important aspect of this gift that is clear in John’s Gospel. The divine Word became human in the person of Jesus in order to make God known to us (John 1:18). The NT doesn’t offer a lot in the way of explanation about what “incarnation” is or how it took place. But it does have some definitive things to say about what it means for us. And one of the central affirmations of the NT is that the loving and grace-filled God whom Jesus reveals to us truly is God.[4]

If you’ve been joining us in reading through the Bible this year, you may have some question about that. The image of God in the book of Numbers is a very different one—if “common” Israelites got “too close” to God they would be struck dead. The image of God in Deuteronomy is equally troubling—anyone who sins must be executed in order to prevent an angry God from destroying the people. I struggle to make sense out of those ideas. About the best I can come up with is that they must have had something to do with how people understood God in a very different time and place.

But that is definitively not the God whom Jesus came to “explain” to us (John 1:18, NASB). Jesus shows us the God who showers us all with “gift after gift after gift,” with “grace piled on top of grace.” That may be hard for us to see in our actual lives this year. It may be even harder for us to grasp that everything we’ve been through has been accompanied by God’s grace. If we look at it from that perspective, I think the truth of our experience this year is not one of trying to “go back,” but rather one of moving forward into the new life that God is creating for us all. It may be hard to accept 2020 as a “gift” from God, but if we can look at it through the lens of “grace upon grace,” perhaps we can see it as an opportunity to grow and learn to live in better ways than ever before.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 114, where he describes the incarnation as an expression of the “eternally self-communicating love of God.” Cf. also ibid., pp. 120-22.

[3] Cf. Christine D. Pohl, “Homeward Bound,” The Christian Century (Dec. 27, 2005): 19. Cf. also Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.3.1:236, who speaks of it as “inexhaustible, victorious grace which can be followed only by more grace.”

[4] Cf. Gail R. O’Day “The Gospel of John” New Interpreters Bible IX:524, “John 1:14-18 is not theological speculation about the character of the incarnate Word, but the testimony of those whose lives have been changed by the incarnation.”

Thursday, April 04, 2019

God was in Christ

2 Corinthians 5:16-21[1]

Through the ages, the images preachers and theologians have used to depict God have created some significant problems. One example is Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741). It was required reading in my Sophomore American Literature Class in college. Edwards drew the picture of God dangling sinners over the prospect of an eternity of punishment like someone might dangle a spider over an open flame. Personally, I’d have to say that seems cruel even for a human being, let alone God. It certainly doesn’t convey the idea that God is gracious and compassionate, full of mercy and unfailing love!

Unfortunately, when it comes to Jesus’ death on the cross, many of us have some ideas that are not consistent with the biblical witness. It’s common to think of Jesus, who loved us enough to give up his life for us, standing in the gap for us with God, who is angry enough with us for our sins that he is willing to consign us to eternal flames. Jesus may come off in a positive light from that perspective, but that kind of a God is someone I think we’d want to keep our distance from, rather than embracing as a loving father who will not let anything in all creation separate us from his love.

Then there’s the question of Jesus’ cry of agony from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” I would say that most people take that statement both too literally and not seriously enough. Jesus was quoting the first line of Psalm 22, a psalm that expresses both anguish over afflictions and also trust in God to sustain us. The same Psalm that begins with “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” also affirms, “he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me” (Ps. 22:24). If we really take Jesus’ cry seriously, we have to include this affirmation of faith in our understanding of it.

Again, we have to consider the implications for our image of God if we really believe that God abandoned Jesus on the cross. The New Testament presents Jesus as fulfilling the ultimate act of obedience to God’s will by dying on the cross. Paul said it this way: Jesus “became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). If God abandoned Jesus at the moment of his greatest obedience to God’s purpose, then what possible hope could you or I have that God will sustain us in our hour of need? I’d have to say that’s also not a very inviting image of God!

I think our lesson from St. Paul for today might help us here. As we find in the consistent witness of Scripture, Paul does not set an “angry God” over against a “forgiving Jesus.” Rather, Paul says that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Now this could be read in a couple of ways. We could read it to say that God accomplished the work of salvation through what Jesus did on the cross. That would be entirely consistent with the message of Scripture elsewhere. But we could also read it the way the King James Version rendered it, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” In other words, if we take the idea of the incarnation seriously, that God became a human being in Jesus, then God was the one who was hanging on the cross. In Jesus, God was the one who died for our sins. In Christ, God was the one who gave himself up for us that we might have life.

This is an image that might sound strange to us. How could God “die”? We’re used to the idea of God all-powerful as the one who rules over all things, not the one who allows himself to be mistreated at the hands of lowly mortals. We’re used to thinking of God as “above it all.” It may be difficult for us to think of God allowing himself to be humiliated in this way. We’re also used to believing that God is too pure to be tainted by our failures. How could God take on our sins? All this may strain our ability to make sense out of how to hold together God’s love and Jesus’ death on the cross.^{^[2]}

But the two are completely consistent with the Gospel message in the New Testament. As our affirmation of faith for today puts it, when Jesus died on the cross, he “was never more in accord with the Father’s will. He was acting on behalf of God, manifesting the Father’s love that takes on itself the loneliness, pain, and death that result from our waywardness.”^{^[3]} The Study Catechism puts it a little differently: through Jesus’ death on the cross, we see “how vast is God’s love for the world — a love that is ready to suffer for our sakes, yet so strong that nothing will prevail against it.”[4] The Good News is that Jesus completely fulfilled God’s will for us in his death on the cross.

I think sometimes we would like our faith to be easier. We embrace the good news of God’s love for us. But we shrink back from the full implications of that love. It is a love that will not leave us where we are. It is a love that enters into our brokenness in order to bring us new life. And because “God was in Christ” on the cross, we can also be assured that God’s love is a love that nothing can separate us from. Just as God never abandoned Jesus, so God never abandons or forsakes us in his love. Because “God was in Christ” on the cross, he continues to draw us all into the eternal life he wants to share with us.

[2] Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison. The Enlarged Edition, 360-61: “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matt. 8:17 [quoting Isa. 53:4] makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering … Only the suffering God can help … That is a reversal of what the religious man expects from God.”

[3] Presbyterian Church in the United States, “A Declaration of Faith,”117th General Assembly (1977), reissued by Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 1991, 4.4.

[4] Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), “The Study Catechism,” 210th General Assembly (1998), question 8.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Abiding Presence

John 14:15-21, Acts17:22-31[1]

One of the questions that has occupied the attention of the human family, especially in the modern era, is one that haunts us: “Are we alone in the universe?” Some think that we are, or at least that there is a relatively small chance that other worlds capable of sustaining intelligent life exist. Others think that the probabilities based on the sheer number of galaxies in the universe demand that there are many planets out there with intelligent life. We may never know the answer to the question “Are we alone” viewed from this perspective.

But I wonder if the fact that this question has been framed almost exclusively from a scientific point of view has kept us from finding an answer. The message of Scripture is that we have never been truly “alone.” It’s the point of our faith in creation: a God beyond our understanding created all of the worlds that are and us along with them as an act of love. This means that by definition, this creator God seeks a relationship with us. Beyond that, it’s also the point of our faith that Jesus is “God-with-us.” The incarnation teaches us that God does not choose to leave us on our own to try to grope in the darkness for some kind of meaning to life. And the ongoing work of the Spirit in each of our lives reminds us constantly of God’s promise of his abiding presence with us.

Our Scripture lessons for today reinforce this promise of God’s abiding presence. In St. Paul’s sermon to the Greeks in Athens, he uses the fact that they had a shrine dedicated to “an unknown God” as an opportunity to proclaim to them the God who must have seemed very strange to them: a God who is both exalted and yet intimately involved in the lives of ordinary people. Paul begins by insisting that this “unknown” God whom he wants to make known to them is “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth” (Acts 17:24). This must have seemed to be a strange God indeed, for the Greek deities were thought to be powerful, but they were hardly concerned about humanity.

But the “unknown” God whom Paul seeks to introduce to the people of Athens is a God who cares very much about all creation, humanity included. In fact, the whole reason why this God created humanity was to have a relationship with them. The Apostle puts it this way: “he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, ... so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him” (Acts 17:26-27). The idea is that from the orderliness and beauty of nature, as well as from the mystery of their own experience, somehow people would be able to discern that behind it all stood a creator who loved them.

And to emphasize the point, he quoted one of their own poets: “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). This was something that most people of his day and time very likely didn’t believe. They believed the “gods” lived on Mount Olympus, beyond their reach, but close enough to meddle in human affairs. But St. Paul presents the God of the Scriptures as one who is intimately involved in human life. As one contemporary observer puts it, we live in a “God-bathed world.”[2] The God in whose presence we constantly live is the one who cares for and nurtures all creation.

Jesus offered the same message to his disciples in our Gospel lesson. In this section of John’s Gospel, Jesus is preparing his followers for his imminent departure. Part of that preparation was a challenge, and part of it was assurance. The challenge was that those who follow him and who love him will “keep his commandments” (John 14:15). When we put his teachings into practice in our day-to-day living, then our love for God and for Jesus Christ truly define who we are. But this can seem to be an impossible challenge to those of us who realize that we are fallible mortals.

Fortunately, it’s not a do-it-yourself project. Jesus promised the disciples that “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (Jn. 14:26). The Spirit is with us always to help us fulfill our commitment to follow Jesus by putting his teachings into practice. Not only does Jesus promise to give them the “Spirit of Truth” who will live in them, he also promises that his presence will be with them as well. Then he makes what must have been an astonishing statement to a group of Jewish fishermen: when he comes to them they would know “that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (Jn. 14:20). In other words, not only would they enjoy his continued presence in their lives. They would also share with him in the relationship he had with the Father. And that is a presence that abides with us constantly.

Jesus promised that through him we can enjoy the abiding presence of the Spirit. He is the one who makes it clear that our God is as close to us as the air we are breathing. The idea that we mortals could possibly have a relationship with the “Lord of heaven and earth” is one that is just as astonishing today as it was then. And yet it is entirely consistent with the witness of the Scriptures. The promise of the Spirit is that the breath of life fills us always. The promise of our Creator is that there is no place that is outside the realm of God’s loving care. The promise of our resurrected Savior is that wherever we are, he is with us, drawing us into the joy of God’s life and love. We are never alone in the universe. Every moment of every day we enjoy the abiding presence of our God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

[2] Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, 61, 78, 90.

Monday, June 13, 2016

Not Forsaken

John 14:7-14[1]

If you listen to some of the voices in our world, it would seem that if God exists at all, he abandoned this world long ago. There is a significant strain of skepticism in our culture that sees all that’s wrong with this world and concludes that we’re left out here in the middle of the galaxy on our own. The message of doubt and despair seems to overwhelm any hope or faith altogether. The only realities are buying and selling, winning and losing, living and dying. And from this perspective, since death has the final word on all of our lives, then all that we do is ultimately meaningless. It is an approach to life that fundamentally mistrusts everything and everyone, because we are ultimately God-forsaken.

This outlook on life flies in the face of the biblical message. In fact, it would seem that some of those who have contributed most significantly to this kind of pessimism have taken the biblical message and turned it on its head. But the fact remains that the Bible insists that we live in a world that is filled with the presence of the loving God.[2] It may be difficult for us to sense God’s presence, and it may be even more difficult for us to grasp that God is with us. But that is one of the most important reasons why Jesus lived and served, to make it clear to us that God is with us.[3]

One of the problems with this is that, obviously, Jesus is no longer physically present with us. This seems to be a problem that has troubled faithful believers from the very beginning. If we read between the lines as we’re reading some of what the NT has to say about this, it would seem that Jesus’ physical absence was difficult for the first Christians to bear. They looked for him to return in their lifetimes. And when some of the faithful started passing away, those who remained were confused. It would seem that some of them wondered if Jesus had abandoned them.[4]

In our lesson from the Gospel of John for today, that is the question that Jesus addresses with his disciples. In this section of the Gospel, Jesus is preparing them for his departure. If we pay attention to the questions they ask him, we can tell that they themselves—Jesus’ very own followers—were puzzled and even dismayed by what Jesus was trying to tell them.[5] How could Jesus leave them? They had come to believe that he was the Messiah. How was it that he was going away? In their minds, the Messiah wouldn’t go away, he would stay and ascend the throne of David and usher in an age of peace and justice.

Our lesson for today is preceded by Jesus’ announcement that he was going to go to prepare a place for them in his father’s house, assuring them that they knew the way to the place he was going (John 14:1-4). In response, Thomas very likely voiced what many of the others were thinking: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (John 14:5). I think he was only voicing the questions they were all asking. They had been with him, they had followed him, they had learned from him, and it now seemed barely believable that he would leave them. In fact, it would seem that this problem serves as the backdrop for much of what Jesus had to say to them in this chapter of John’s Gospel.

In response to Jesus’ answer that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Philip asks Jesus to “show us the Father” (John 14:8). Jesus answers him by re-emphasizing what he has already asserted time and again: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). One more time, Jesus goes over the basic lesson of his life and ministry: that he had come to make it clear that God’s grace and God’s truth are always with us.

But beyond that, Jesus addressed their concerns by telling them “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever” (John 14:16). The translation “Advocate” is probably not one that communicates with most of us. It has also been translated “Comforter,” “Counselor,” “Helper,” and “Friend.” The truth is that the concept that Jesus was trying to convey probably includes all of those ideas.[6] I think the main point is that the one Jesus was sending to them would be with them in the same way that he had been with them.

This comforter, counselor, helper, and friend that Jesus promised to send is “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:17). He is nothing less than the Holy Spirit of God, the one who makes God’s presence in our lives a reality. But the interesting thing about the way Jesus speaks of the Spirit here is that it seems that the Spirit also makes Jesus’ presence in our lives a reality. In fact, just after our lesson, Jesus assures them that he would not abandon them. The implication is that the Spirit continues Jesus’ presence with those who have trusted in him.[7]

This is a message that starkly contrasts the counsel of despair that says we live in a God-forsaken world.[8] It flies in the face of those who would say we’ve been abandoned and left to our own devices. This message is one that resonates throughout the Bible: God rejoices in his creation. And that means that God will never, ever forsake us. One of the most important reasons why Jesus lived and served and taught as he did was to make it clear to us all that through him, God is with us. And even though Jesus is no longer present physically, we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit because he makes Jesus’ presence with us just as real as he did for the first disciples. The Spirit has been poured out on “all flesh” as a declaration that we never have been and never will be forsaken.

[2] Cf. Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, we live in a “God-bathed world.” Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God, 9: “Through the energies and potentialities of the Spirit, the Creator is himself present in his creation. He does not merely confront it in his transcendence; entering into it, he is also immanent in it.”

[3] Cf. Gail R. O’Day, “The Gospel of John,” New Interpreters Bible IX:744: “the incarnation changes everything for the Fourth Evangelist, because through it humanity’s relationship to God and God’s relationship to humanity are decisively altered. The incarnation has redefined God for the Fourth Evangelist and those for whom he writes, because it brings the tangible presence of God’s love to the world.” Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 114-118, says that the incarnation is part of the “eternally self-communicating love of God.” Cf. also Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 240, where he reminds us that the idea of the incarnation is not just a matter of God “pretending” to be a human being, but rather of God fully entering our reality and fully sharing our humanity in order to redeem every aspect of human experience.

[4] Cf. O’Day, “Gospel of John,” NIB IX:749, where she says that the question that occupies this portion of John’s Gospel is, “Can the disciples still love him, when he has gone?” She continues by saying that this passage “answers yes to this question, but it may be a yes that surprised even Jesus’ first disciples. The disciples can still love Jesus, but neither by clinging to a cherished memory of him nor by retreating into their private experience of him. Rather, they can continue to love Jesus by doing his works (vv. 12-14) and by keeping his commandments (vv. 15-24). That is, when they move outside of their own private experience of Jesus, when they live what Jesus has taught them and demonstrated in his own life, then they will find themselves once again in his love.”

[5] On the Disciples’ lack of understanding, cf. G. R. Beasley-Murray, John, 252; and O’Day, “Gospel of John,” NIB IX:741-42.

[6] Cf. O’Day, “Gospel of John,” NIB IX:747, where she points out that the Greek word transliterated “Paraclete” is based on a verb that “has a wide range of meanings that include ‘to exhort and encourage,’ ‘to comfort and console,’ ‘to call upon for help,’ and ‘to appeal.’ The noun form can mean ‘the one who exhorts,’ ‘the one who comforts,’ ‘the one who helps,’ and ‘the one who makes appeals on one’s behalf.’ The Fourth Evangelist seems to draw on the whole range of meanings in the variety of functions attributed to the Paraclete.”

[7] Cf. Raymond Brown The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI, 644: “the Spirit of Truth is a Paraclete precisely because he carries on the earthly work of Jesus.”

[8] Cf. Gerard S. Sloyan, John, 178, where he paraphrases Jesus’ assurances in the beginning of John 14, “The pain of life, separation, and cross cannot last forever. Live in hope. The present will yield to the future because I will see to it.”

Monday, April 04, 2016

Empty?

Philippians 2:5-11[1]

I think it’s fair to say that a life of service in the name of Christ is not an easy path. After all, his path led him to a brutal execution. If we set out to follow him expecting to experience only joy and blessing, I’m afraid we may be deeply disappointed. The reality is that many who serve others in the name of Christ can find themselves facing not only frustration and discouragement, but also exhaustion and burn-out. This is true not only for pastors but also for anyone who takes seriously the call walk in Jesus’ footsteps. When you give so much of yourself to so many people, you can find yourself feeling empty at the end of the day.

The truth of the matter is that this is a feature of human life that is not restricted to the church. It affects people of all classes, in all walks of life, engaged in a variety of vocations. You give of yourself on behalf of those you love, or on behalf of those you work with, or on behalf of total strangers, and it can leave you feeling empty. When you stretch that kind of experience into days and weeks and months and years, it can make you begin to wonder why you even get out of bed in the morning. The simple fact is that life can be challenging and hard and draining at times. And there is no “free pass” that exempts those of us who follow Christ and trust in God from experiencing that emptiness.

I think, however, that our lesson from St. Paul for today might give us some inspiration here. In the context of this chapter of Philippians, Paul is trying to instruct the Christians about how to live together in community with one another. He urges them to “be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” and to “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves” (Phil 2:2-3).[2] Paul sums up the kind of relationships he wants to see in the church in terms of imitating the same attitude Jesus displayed (Phil. 2:5).

I find it interesting when Paul spells out what that looks like, he quotes what was probably an early Christian hymn.[3] In fact, the believers in the church at Philippi may very well have been familiar with this hymn. I also find it interesting that this hymn about Jesus only actually refers to two acts Jesus took: the act of “emptying himself” to become human, and the act of “humbling himself” to die on the cross. If we want to know how much we’re to give up in service to others, Paul points to these two acts that reflect the incredibly generous and giving heart of Jesus, as well as God himself.

Scholars have debated for centuries what exactly it was that Jesus gave up when he “emptied himself.” I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that question in this life. But it seems, however, the main point is that Jesus was equal to God, and rather than clinging to that status as something that was his by right, he gave it up to come among us as a servant in order to redeem us all.[4] If that were as far as it went, Jesus would be the most amazing example of self-sacrifice. And yet there’s more: not only did Jesus give up everything to come among us, he also “humbled himself” by obeying God’s will to redeem us all through suffering love.[5] Jesus chose to surrender himself to one of the cruelest means of death ever devised.[6] And so, at the end of his life as at the beginning, he made the choice to sacrifice himself in a way that surpasses our ability to understand or imagine.

If you’re like me, you may be thinking that’s a pretty hard act to follow. You may be wondering how any of us could ever hope to even come close to the kind of loving sacrifice that Jesus made not only by choosing to come as one of us, but also by giving up his life for us all. I must confess there have been times when I myself have asked God how I could keep sacrificing and keep serving when Jesus “only” hung on the cross for six hours. When you think about a lifetime of “taking up your cross” and following Christ in a life of sacrifice and service, it can be an intimidating prospect.

I think one of the practical questions we face is how we can maintain the energy and the motivation to continue following Jesus’ example, as demanding as it can be. I think our expectations may play a significant role in how we experience a life of service. If we expect recognition or reward for our service, we are probably setting ourselves up for serious disappointment, if not flat-out defeat.[7] Rather than expecting any kind of return for following Jesus’ example, I think at least a part of the answer to this question may be to view a life of service as fulfilling and meaningful in and of itself.[8] We don’t derive our sense of satisfaction with our lives from what we get from our service. We simply offer it because following Jesus is the way to find true life.

We can all face times in our lives when the challenge of living out our faith can seem overwhelming. That’s when we can look to Jesus for encouragement and inspiration. His willingness to give up his rights to come among us as a servant inspires us to do the same in our relationships with others. His death on the cross not only brings us forgiveness and new life, it also serves as an example for us to follow.[9] I will not pretend that seeking to follow Christ in either of these ways is easy or that it will bring any special recognition. We do it because that’s what Jesus called us to do. And as we answer that call and follow his example, we find that giving ourselves away in service to others can leave us not empty but fulfilled in a way that no other life endeavor could possibly match.

[2] Cf. Morna D. Hooker, “The Letter To The Philippians,” New Interpreters Bible XI: 515-16, where she summarizes Paul’s intent: “Those who confess Jesus as Lord should not be looking for status or power; nor should they be acting from ‘selfish ambition or conceit’ (2:3). Rather, they should be humbly considering others better than themselves. And because they are concerned with the interests of others (2:4), they will be of one mind and one purpose, ‘having the same love’ and of one accord (2:2). In stark contrast to the modern spirit of encouraging competition and giving rewards to individuals who get to the top, Paul insists on mutual concern and service.”

[3] Cf. Fred B. Craddock, Philippians, 39: “Paul is quoting a hymn which arose in another context to address another problem, perhaps a Christological question. Christological hymns and confessions are not uncommon in Paul’s writings and they seem, by internal structure and relation to their literary contexts, to be quotations from a common store of materials used in the worship of Gentile Christian churches (I Cor. 8:6; II Cor. 8:9; Col. 1:15-20, and others).”

[4] Cf. Hooker, “Philippians,” NIB XI:507. She points out that there is an implicit contrast with Adam in this part of the passage: “Christ, who was ‘in the form of God,’ might well have claimed the privileges of equality with God as his right, but did not do so. What Adam desired, Christ was content to forgo.” And yet she also rightly observes (ibid., 508), “Christ did not cease to be ‘in the form of God’ when he took the form of a slave, any more than he ceased to be the ‘Son of God’ when he was sent into the world. On the contrary, it is in his self-emptying and his humiliation that he reveals what God is like, and it is through his taking the form of a slave that we see ‘the form of God.’”

[5] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today’s World, 40: “Christ entered into this humiliation and this forsakenness so that he could become a brother for the humiliated and forsaken, and bring them God’s kingdom. He doesn’t help through supernatural miracles. He helps by virtue of his own suffering—through his wounds. ‘Only the suffering God can help’, wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his death cell. God always helps first of all by suffering with us. …The God of Jesus Christ is the God who is on the side of the victims and the sufferers, in solidarity with them.” Cf. also Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.1:164-66, where he summarizes the New Testament references to this theme. He says (ibid., 166), “The story of Gethsemane (like the story of the temptation at the beginning of the Gospels) shows two things: first, that we have to do with His genuine human decision; and second, that it is a decision of obedience. He chooses, but He chooses that apart from which, being who He is, He could not choose anything else.”

[6] Cf. Hooker, “Philippians,” NIB XI:509. She says, “More than two thousand years of Christian piety have obscured from us the shock and horror with which these final words would have been heard by their original audience. Crucifixion was the cruelest and most shameful of deaths, and there could be no greater contrast with the opening lines of the “hymn,” or with the exaltation that follows.”

[7] Cf. Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, reprinted in Ministry and Spirituality, 155-56. Nouwen warns that many of those who base their Christian lives on the search for visible results “have become disillusioned, bitter, and even hostile” to the faith “when years of hard work bear no fruit.” He advises that our ability to continue to serve others is not based on the results we see, but rather on the hope that is firmly grounded in Christ’s victory over death itself, which demonstrates “that there is light on the other side of darkness.”

[8] Cf. Craddock, Philippians, 42: “Christ acted in our behalf without view of gain. That is precisely what God has exalted and vindicated: self-denying service for others to the point of death with no claim of return, no eye upon a reward.”

[9] Cf. Craddock, Philippians, 42: “The central event in the drama of salvation is an act of humble service.”

The Waking Dreamer