First Light

Mk. 1:14-20; 1 Cor. 7:29-31[1]

There aren’t too many things that Bible Scholars all agree on. That’s just as true of Jesus as any other subject of biblical study. But one thing about which pretty much all Bible Scholars agree is that the theme of Jesus’ “gospel” was that “the kingdom of God is at hand.” Now, of course, they don’t all agree about the significance of that message, but they do agree that’s what Jesus preached.

I find it strange that most people these days, if you asked them if the kingdom of God is here, would say no. In fact, I had some seminary students who did a research project on “the Kingdom of God in Jesus’ teaching,” and as a part of their research they did a survey of random people asking them that very question. And everyone they met answered the same thing—no, the kingdom of God is not here. I guess that’s why there’s such a strange silence in the church about the kingdom of God.

Part of the problem, as I’ve mentioned before, is that we just don’t get the whole “kingdom” bit. For us, a “kingdom” is a place where people suffer the injustice of having their basic civil rights denied them. Kings are tyrants who enrich themselves at the expense of their people. Kings exploit, they oppress, they enslave. But the “kingdom of God” has nothing to do with that. According to the Hebrew prophets, when the “kingdom of God” comes the whole world will follow God’s compassionate justice and everyone will enjoy life the way it was intended to be.

Jesus’ announcement of the good news that God is already working to redeem this world took place initially amid contradictory indicators. Like being “driven” by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (Mark 1:13). And like John the Baptizer being arrested and ultimately executed by Herod Antipas (Mark 1:14; cf. Mark 6:27). And if you took the time to read the whole gospel of Mark, you would notice “how quickly the powers of evil are mounted against Jesus.” [2]

All was not right with the world when Jesus made his announcement, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.” There were plenty of indications that the world was dominated by other kingdoms in that day. There was plenty of evidence to suggest that the notion that God had entered this world definitively to make all things new was a pipe dream.

We have the same problem today. Our faith still rests on the good news that in Jesus the Christ “the kingdom of God” has come—that God has entered this world definitively to set everything right and to make all things new.[3] And yet, if you look around, it’s probably much easier to see signs of the other kingdoms that dominate our world than to notice the signs of God’s kingdom. That might lead one to think that if the kingdom of God really was present during Jesus’ day, it must have disappeared somewhere along the way.

But there are signs of God’s kingdom in our world if we have eyes to see them. Take for example a person like Nelson Mandela. He resolutely stood against the power of an oppressive system, maintaining hope in the midst of despair, never giving in to bitterness but freely forgiving his oppressors.

Or we could think about Henri Nouwen. He was a catholic priest and university professor who gave up his academic career to work with mentally handicapped people. He lived his whole life with the pain of isolation, a pain that was inflicted initially by his own family. But in the midst of his loss, he found a capacity for joy that few in this world ever attain. And out of his pain and loss, he shared his joy with the rest of us in his writings, which will forever continue to encourage and inspire those of us looking for signs of God’s kingdom.

Or we could think about Mother Teresa, a woman who for 45 years offered love to those who are loveless. In a very real sense, she brought life from death time and time again as she and her sisters of charity served the crippled, the blind, the lepers, refugees, and victims of all kinds of natural disasters, not only in Calcutta but throughout the world.

I guess if you think of the “kingdom of God” exclusively in terms of a future world where all things are set right and all people are enabled to live the life they were intended to live, it would be easy to miss the signs of what God is doing in our world today. But the “kingdom” that Jesus announced as “the gospel of God” is one that is already among us.[4] When asked about this, Jesus himself pointed to the “signs” of the kingdom: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” (Matthew 11:5).[5] It is the good news that we celebrate during this season of Epiphany: in Jesus the Christ God has entered this world definitively to set everything right. And God is still working among us to make all things new.

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[1] © 2009 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 1/25/09 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Paul S. Berge, "The Beginning of the Good News: The Epiphany Gospels in Mark and John," Word & World 17(Winter, 1997), 97-98.

[3] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.2, 460-61: “in and with” Jesus as the “Bearer of God’s good news,” the kingdom came “in hidden but very real form.”

[4] Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 95-96: “The gospel is not a utopian description of some far-off future. It is the daybreak of this future in the pardoning, promising word that sets people free.” He continues, “God’s present, liberating and healing activity points beyond itself to the kingdom of freedom and salvation. But through God’s lordship, the coming kingdom already throws its light ahead of itself into this history of struggle.”

[5] Cf. also Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.2, 460.

Greater Things

Jn. 1:43-51[1]

The basic idea of last week’s sermon—that you don’t have to have a vision of Jesus standing 900 feet tall in order to have a genuine encounter with God—is one that’s really not so hard for most of us to swallow. For the last 300 years at least, “cultured” observers of religion have made faith into something abstract, something intellectual, something private. Initially I think that was a way of dealing with the embarrassment that the Scriptures that serve as the foundation for our faith contain many accounts of supernatural incidents.

As I mentioned last week, one way to deal with stories of floating axe-heads and chariots of fire is to take them at face value. But the other way is the one we’re more likely to take—to assume that those kinds of things don’t happen. Unfortunately, that can undercut the basis for Christian faith, so all that we really have left is our own “personal” convictions. Since they aren’t really open to observation, we take our “faith” and retreat with it into unassailable privacy.

But John’s Gospel will have no such thing! John’s Gospel, a supposedly more “spiritual” account of Jesus’ life, is actually incredibly concrete about faith! Whereas the other Gospels say that the Baptizer was practicing his ministry on the other side of the Jordan, John’s Gospel says that it was specifically “at Aenon near Salim” (John 3:23). And this supposedly “spiritual” Gospel is one that insists that Jesus’ claims are supported by a host of witnesses: by John the Baptist, by the Scriptures, and by God in the working of incredible miracles.

So where do we go with that? Do we suspend our judgment and simply go along with the claim that everything in Scripture is factually true? Or do we insist that such things don’t happen and retreat to the privacy of our personal convictions? Notice, in our Gospel lesson for today, that Nathaniel responds with skepticism to Phillip’s initial invitation to “come and see” him “about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote” (John 1:45). Jesus does not chide him for lack of insight, he tells Nathaniel “you will see greater things!”

The strange sounding description of these “greater things” might elude us at first because it is based on another hard-to-swallow story from the Bible. Jesus alludes to the story of Jacob’s dream at Bethel, where he saw angels “ascending and descending” and experienced God’s presence at Bethel. And Genesis tells us that Jacob did the only proper thing to do at that time—he marked the place as the “house of God” and the “gateway to heaven.”

Of course, Jesus wasn’t trying to say to Nathaniel that he was going to lead him on some fantastic, Indiana Jones-style adventure to recover the original place where Jacob had his dream. No, he was trying to help Nathaniel—and the others—understand that the place where God’s presence was revealed uniquely on earth was not a place at all, but a person: Jesus himself.[2] Jesus himself was part of the “greater things.” In effect, throughout John’s Gospel Jesus promises to demonstrate that he is who he says he is by the “fulfillment of the most extraordinary of expectations in the most tangible of terms.”[3]

I’m not at all sure that we have any “extraordinary expectations” any more. I’m not sure we have the capacity to walk up to Jesus of Nazareth and say to him, in effect, “show me that God has entered this world definitively to carry out the work of redemption and renewal.” The truth of that claim is demonstrated time and time again in Scriptures by “greater things” of all kinds. But for our part, in our rush to jettison supernatural superstition, we have turned our “faith” into something utterly incapable of demonstrating “greater things.”

What we need is eyes to see the “greater things” all around us. This week we commemorate the deaths of the “Five Martyrs of Ecuador,” who made contact with a savage tribe known to kill strangers on sight, and were massacred. But the “greater thing” is that a few years later two of their family members had actually taken up permanent residence among them. In 1995 the son of one of the martyrs returned with his wife and children to live among the tribe and help them develop their church. Greater things, indeed.

We don’t have to go around the world to find “greater things.” This week we also remember Martin Luther King, Jr, a brilliant and flawed man who led African Americans to patiently show a nation its blatant hatred for people of color and altered the course of our nation. Greater things.

We can also look to our own community for the “greater things” that are being done among us, because they are all around us every day. What we need are eyes to see the greater things, and hearts that are ready to respond to the call to go out and be instruments of the “greater things” God is still doing through Jesus the Christ.

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[1] © 2009 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 1/18/09 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Peter J. Gomes, “John 1:45-51,” Interpretation, 1989, 285; cf. also p. 286, where he says that Jesus’ statement to Nathaniel points to “the saga of the new creation that is about to unfold” and adds, ““Such cosmic transitions are always attended by angels who minister between realms.”

[3] Gomes, 286.

Veiled Disclosure

Ps. 29; Mk. 1:4-11[1]

In 1980, Oral Roberts claims he saw a vision of Jesus looking him straight in the eye. Mr. Roberts was alone at the time, meditating in his prayer tower about the funds he needed to complete his “City of Faith” Medical Center. His “vision” of Jesus occurred as he was looking out the window. Of course, that meant that Jesus was standing about 900-feet tall! When he made that claim I don’t think I knew a single person who believed him. But apparently Mr. Roberts had plenty of believers, because he raised the entire amount—all 120 million dollars—through contributions from his followers.

Now, it’s not too hard today to see through that kind of claim. The “City of Faith” went defunct only 8 years after it opened. Regardless of the outcome, the idea that somebody would see a vision of Jesus standing 900 feet tall is simply ludicrous! So what made it possible for Mr. Roberts to convince so many people that it was true?

In part, it’s because the Bible has many stories of supernatural events. Some of them, like the resurrection of Jesus, are central to our faith. Others, like floating axe-heads and chariots of fire, are not. The question is, which ones do you believe? For many, it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. Either you have to suspend all reason and common sense and take at face value some pretty incredible stories, or you assume that everybody knows those kinds of things don’t happen, and refuse to believe any of it.

Some in an earlier day resorted to “rational” explanations of the unusual events in the biblical stories—Jesus didn’t walk on the water, he was standing on a hidden sand bar, etc. But that fails to take the Bible’s claims seriously. For example, while we might be tempted to overlook some of the more “unbelievable” elements in Jesus’ Baptism, they are central to the story. The opening of the heavens, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus, and the divine voice all point to the message Mark conveys to us all from the very outset of his Gospel—this story concerns “the son of God” (Mk. 1:1).

Ironically, however, what Mark conveys with his account of the baptism of Jesus is something that no one else in the story ever recognizes—not the Jewish religious leaders, not the political power brokers, not even Jesus’ own disciples. The only person who recognizes Jesus as the “son of God” in Mark’s Gospel is the Roman Centurion at the cross!

And that calls attention to the inherent problem in Mark’s Gospel. Jesus is the son of God in that he serves the least, in that he is rejected by many, in that he suffers and dies for us. That was certainly not what anybody in that world was looking for in a “son of God.” “Sons of God” are supposed to do miraculous deeds, draw huge crowds of followers, enjoy tremendous success, be recognized by one and all! But this “son of God,” when it came right down to it, did none of these things. Yes, he is said to have worked many miracles. But when his reputation as “son of God” was on the line, indeed when his life was on the line, he refused! Jesus was an unlikely “son of God”; he was an unconvincing messiah, an improbable savior.[2]

During the season of Epiphany we celebrate the unveiling of Jesus as the savior; we celebrate the light that shines in the darkness and the voice that speaks truth over the tumult. But we have to recognize that the light and truth of God in our world is not nearly so “majestic” as the Psalmist proclaims—breaking cedars and stripping the forest bare and shaking the mountains! The fact is that the light and truth of God is easy to miss! The reality that we call salvation is one that is amazingly inconspicuous. God’s work in this world is not obvious.

Recognizing the light and truth of God, recognizing Jesus as “son of God” and savior, always has been and always will be a matter of faith, which always involves “a leap into the darkness of the unknown.”[3] Karl Barth asks what it was that drew the men and women of the Bible “out and on to the edge of all experience, thought, and action, to the edge of time and history, and impels them to attempt to leap off into the air, where obviously no [one] can stand.” His answer is their encounter with God.[4] I don’t think that means that they saw their own visions of a 900-foot Jesus! But they did have a genuine encounter with God. [5]

I think that’s what Paul meant when he said, “The God who said, ‘Out of darkness the light shall shine!’ is the same God who made his light shine in our hearts, to bring us the knowledge of God's glory shining in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). Whatever language you use—whether it’s the somewhat supernatural language of the Bible or the more “sophisticated” language of modern philosophers and theologians—it’s the same reality of God that encounters us today.[6] If we look with eyes of faith, we can see God’s light already shining in the darkness—because it’s shining in our own hearts. If we hear with ears of faith we can hear God’s truth over the din of all the voices competing for our attention. It’s the voice that tells us that there is nothing we have to do to make God love us any more that God already loves us, and there’s nothing we could do to make God love us less.

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[1] © 2009 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 1/11/09 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 102; cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 164.

[3] Karl Barth, Romans, 98-99.

[4] Karl Barth, Word of God and Word of Man, 76.

[5] Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, ?, says that faith “stretches far beyond the limitations of one’s own psychological strength, for it is anchored not just in the soul of the individual but in God’s self-disclosure in history.” Faith “is grounded in the historic Christ-event which is understood as a definitive breach in the deterministic chain of human trial and error, and as a dramatic affirmation that there is light on the other side of darkness.”

[6] Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember, 29-30, says, “The ancient myths and dreams of a power beyond power and a love beyond love that hold the cosmos itself, hold all things in existence reflect a reality which we can deny only to our great impoverishment; and the dream of a holiness and a mystery at the heart of things that humankind with all its ingenuity and wisdom can neither explain away nor live fully without goes on being dreamed.”

In Memoriam--Douglas Simonds Brehm

In Memoriam--Douglas Simonds Brehm 12/13/1964 to 5/8/2009[1]

It’s very difficult to know how to properly eulogize someone like my brother Douglas. He was born with a mental handicap in a time before we as a people discovered that we should have a “conscience” regarding the mentally handicapped. As a boy, I think I felt what everybody who cared about him felt—grief and compassion for his difficulty, mixed with embarrassment that he was not “normal,” mixed with resentment toward those who made fun of him. I’m not sure I ever really knew him because I was too distracted by my own feelings.

And so it is that I come to this day with a mixture of gratitude and regret. I regret that it took me so long to discover that Douglas was indeed not just “normal”—he was a gift. I am grateful for the gift that God gave to us all in him. In a very real sense, he was one of those special people that God puts on earth to fulfill the promise of making all things new—the promise of making all things into God’s kingdom of mercy and peace. Like the sower in the parable who sows the seeds of the kingdom wherever he goes, those who took the time to see Douglas for who he was went away from that encounter with the seeds of Christ’s compassion growing inside them. Like the proverbial leaven that works its way throughout the dough and forever changes it, all who opened their hearts to Douglas could not help but be more sensitive toward the suffering all around them.

It was not we who sought to care for Douglas who blessed him—it was he who blessed us. (As Henri Nouwen says) People like Douglas are the presence of Christ in this world. (And as Jon Sobrino puts it) In his weakness Douglas was the true saint—simply by being who he was, a vulnerable, needy, frail human being, he pointed us all to the kingdom of God.

I think Douglas—again by his very being—also presented a challenge to all of us who claim to follow Christ. In this society where the weak and the vulnerable—the “abnormal”—are routinely ignored, people like Douglas are the presence of Christ, calling us to cut through all our religious verbiage and do more to show God’s love to “the least of these.” I am also grateful for having had that challenge. In that respect, my brother was one of the most influential people in my life—and I am a much better human being for it. You did your work very well, Doug.

I am grateful—grateful for the privilege of having Douglas for a brother. I am grateful for the time we had together over the last few years. And I am grateful to my wife, Kristi, for helping me rise above the feelings that distracted me from knowing that privilege for so long. And I am grateful to my Aunt and Uncle, David and Zora Simonds, for faithfully accompanying us on our outings with Douglas—whether he was having a bad day, or whether he was having a good day, as he did the last time we were with him just three days before he died. And I’m especially grateful to the wonderful people of Tejas Management who cared for Douglas in ways that we could not—even to the very end of his life. Douglas felt safe and at home with you all, and I will always be grateful to you all for that.

But mostly I’m grateful for Douglas——for the gift that he was, for the presence of Christ that he was, for the blessing he gave to us, and for the challenge he gave us to care for the “least” among us.

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[1] A Eulogy delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm at the memorial service for his brother, Douglas Simonds Brehm, on May 18 2009.