by Worth Green, Th.M., D. Min.

We are talking about growing spiritually. We have a goal. In Ephesians 4 the apostle writes that we are to grow until we attain to “mature personhood,” until we reach, “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

Now, as Christians, we believe that growing spiritually means paying attention to what is important to Jesus. Last week we saw how a scribe came to Jesus and, asked, “Which Commandment is first of all?” And Jesus answered:

29 The first commandment is this…. ‘Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one, 30 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as your love yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

If these commandments are the greatest, it follows that these commandments are the first commandments we ought to keep.

What have we learned so far?

In Week 1 we saw that the heart stands for the whole person. It is the seat of the mind, emotions, and will, and it serves to keep all three in balance.

Last week we talked about the soul. We saw that like the heart it could stand for the whole person. It is the life force. The soul is also the center of the emotions. We saw how the soul can love, and hate. It can be happy or sad. We saw how the soul of was drawn in love to a young woman, and how the soul of the Psalmist longed for God. In the New Testament, we saw that in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus plead with his disciples to be watchful, and then confessed to them, “My soul is sorrowful, even to death.”

Last week we saw that the soul is the center of the emotions. Today, I want to point out that the mind is the center of thought.

I then want to say immediately, “Different strokes for different folks.” Some people are attracted and ruled by things that appeal to the the soul and some by things that appeal to the mind.

People who prefer to spend time cultivating the soul are drawn to the touching. We describe the touching as “warmth.” In his Journal for Wednesday, May 24th 1738. John Wesley wrote about his visit to a meeting of the Moravian Fetter Lane Society in Aldersgate Street in London. A brother was reading the preface to Luther’s commentary on Romans aloud when Wesley felt that he did trust Christ and Christ alone for his salvation. He wrote, “My heart was strangely warmed.” It seems like a small thing in the life of one person, but it changed the world. Many historians date the Methodist Revival, which they think saved England from a revolution like that which took place in France from that evening. Or what about this? In Luke 24 on Sunday afternoon two disciples meet the Risen Jesus on the Road to Emmaus. At first they did not recognize him. They tell him what had happened on Friday, about the crucifixion, and about how they had hoped Jesus would be the one to deliver Israel, and about the reports of his resurrection. And then Jesus begins to upbraid them and to teach them everything the scriptures of the Hebrew Bible had to say about the Christ. Then, at the end of the day, as they sat at table, Jesus took the bread and broke it, and “he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.” When the Risen Christ had disappeared they said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?” At minister’s conference one of our pastors told his story.  His family very poor. He was 9 or 10 years old. His father had died leaving his mother to care for six children. He was the oldest. One night his Mother was crying as served humble dinner. He asked why, “She said, it is the last of our food.” The next day he walked out the dirt road from his house that led to the highway. As he did he prayed over and over again that  God would give him some way to feed the family. “God help me help my mama,” he prayed over and over again. As he approached the highway he saw a car pass. It stopped and came back, and waited for him at the end of his road. The man in the car identified himself as a Methodist minister. He handed the boy a five-dollar bill—and he said, “The Lord told me to bless somebody with this money today, and I thought it must be you.” Another person attending the conference said, “You can build a faith on that story.” Many have built their faith on similar stories.

People who prefer to spend time cultivating the mind are drawn to the convincing. We describe the convincing as “light.” In 2nd Corinthians 4:6 St. Paul writes:

“For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

In the 4th Gospel Jesus says, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12) Light is a major theme in the Gospel of John. The word is used 23 times. In John chapter 1 the apostle sets the stage for the whole gospel when he writes of Jesus, whom he considers the Eternal Word of God robed in human flesh saying:

1:4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

So, how do we love God with all the mind? I believe we must look to the light. We need more light. Without doubt we will get more light as we study the life of Jesus.

The earliest life of Jesus to which we have access to is not found in the gospels. Remember the gospels were not written down at first because the early church thought that Jesus was coming back next Tuesday. The gospels were written down only after the first generation of witnesses started to die out. We know that from John 21. The earliest life of Jesus is tucked away in the epistles of Paul. Paul reproduces a great deal of what Jesus taught, sometimes giving Jesus the credit, sometimes merely echoing him. Paul also gives us an outline of the Master’s life. We read that Jesus had twelve disciples. We learn how, on the very night that he was betrayed, he instituted the Lord’s Supper. We read about how Jesus “ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.” We read how, Jesus was buried, and that on the third day, he was raised, and that he appeared. And Paul gives a long list of witnesses to the Risen Jesus, beginning with Peter, and ending with himself. And we read that the Risen Christ is going to appear again someday, and that when he does, he will be visible to all, to doubt and unbelief as well as to belief. And when Jesus Christ does appear in Glory those who have trusted him and followed him and going to appear with him in Glory! And we who have believed in him will participate in his Resurrection, and we will inherit his Eternal Life. Paul gives us the basics, a good outline of the life and mission of Jesus Christ.

Yet there is more. When Christ did not come back right away, people wanted to know more about what Jesus did and taught in his lifetime. The witnesses gave them four gospels, one to sure to appeal to every type of person. By the by, did you know that modern psychologists beginning with Carl Jung have identified just four basic personality types. I do not think the fact that we have four gospels a mere coincidence! Each appeals to a basic type. Let’s look at them.

Mark is the oldest, and shortest of the gospels, and it is thick with action. Mark’s gospel appears to people who want to do things right now. It has always been my personal favorite. In Mark Jesus does everything “immediately.” And Mark does not try to explain everything, for he is writing to those who know about Jesus and he is confident that his readers can fill in what he leaves out.

Matthew is the gospel for the traditionalist. Matthew relates all that Jesus said and did to something that takes place in the Old Testament. In the book of Exodus Moses goes up the Mountain and meets with God and the brings down the Law. In Matthew Jesus goes up the Mountain and then sits down, and begins to teach. In the course of his sermon he raises much of what Moses said to a higher power. He sums up his teaching when he says to his disciples, “Unless righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20)

Now let me speak to those of you who are dominated by the mind. Some people have difficult relating the God of the New Testament to the God of the Old Testament. If you fall in that category, it may be helpful to see that God revealed only as much of himself as people were ready to receive. Abraham got a little. Moses got more. Isaiah got more still, and some of the prophets were allowed to understand they were serving not themselves, or their generation, but the generations of those who would believe in Jesus Christ! (See 1st Peter 1:12). John the Baptist got more of the Revelation than any of the other prophets, and Jesus himself said that John the Baptist was the greatest of the prophets. Why was John the greatest? He was the greatest because he stood closest to Jesus. John looked at Jesus and said, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” (John 1:29) “He must increase, I must decrease.” (John 3:30)

God’s final revelation of God’s Self is Jesus Christ. That does not mean that God has nothing else to say to us today. It does mean that from the time of Jesus unto all eternity—which is without end, all further revelations of God will be Christ like.

Personally, I deal with the difficult texts of the Old Testament by remembering that there are some things in Scripture that are Pre-Christ, and some things in scripture that are Sub-Christ. If you do not believe that, just read the Sermon on the Mount. Over and over Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said…but I say unto you.” “Let me give just one example. Jesus said:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ (Inferred from scriptures like 2nd Sam. 19:6; Psa. 26:5; Psa. 139:21, Ecc. 3:8) 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

Jesus raises our understanding of God to a higher power. It must never go lower!

That brings us to Luke. Luke has been called “the most beautiful book ever written.” Look to Luke for the story of the first Christmas, and for the story of the Good Samaritan, and for the story of the Prodigal Son. The Story of the Prodigal Son is my favorite parable. I love that part which depicts the prodigal at the end of his rope. He has wasted his inheritance in riotous living. He now has a job caring for the pigs of a Gentile, and he finds himself lusting over the slop he is feeding the pigs, and remembering a better time, in his father’s house. And the text declares, “When he came to himself, he said, ‘I will arise, and I will go to my father, and I will say, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you…’” “When he came to himself!” “When the best that was in him reared his head.”

You want to grow spiritually. Who are you? Are you the person you are when you are at your worst? Or, are you the person you are when you are at your best? The story of the Prodigal Son reminds us that it is the best in us that God wants us to remember. In once sense, growing spiritually means simply becoming the person that God saw in us in the beginning. God wants us to be “as beautiful as we were in the mind of God when God first thought of us.”

And now we are slam up on John. John is the gospel this is filled with advanced theology and images. Tradition says that John was very young when he followed Jesus and that he lived to a ripe old age and wrote his gospel—perhaps through a close disciple, in the last decade of the 1st Christian Century. John had had a lifetime to reflect on Jesus. John had a Ph.D. in Jesus; yet, in some ways, John’s Gospel is the simplest gospel and the easiest to read. I know several respected New Testament scholars who believe that John’s gospel was written down in pure, uncomplicated Greek so that children could read it. I believe that. It ought not to surprise us that the smartest people keep things simple.

The late Mervin Weidner, at one time the pastor of Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, encouraged me to keep it simple, and he told me a story of what happened to him early in his ministry at Bethlehem. He was trying to impress, and he was pulling out all the stops. He was giving sermons worthy of a seminary classroom. Then a well known professor who was a member of the congregation came to him with a request, “Pastor,” he said, “please put the fodder down where the sheep can feed!”

I recall an article I read thirty years ago in “The Nazarene Preacher Magazine,” which compared the preaching of Robert Schuler, of the Crystal Cathedral, and Rex Humbard, of the Cathedral of Tomorrow. Rex Humbard had an 11th grade education, and he spoke at an 11th grade level. Robert Schuler had a PH.D., and he spoke at a 6th grade level. John had a PH.D. in Jesus. That is why his gospel is so simple and sublime. How can you beat a verse like John 3:16? It is the sum total of the gospel, and all that really matters:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life.

I have a shelf of books by Karl Barth in my study. Barth lived to complete his “Dogmatics.” Perhaps you remember the off-told story of the reporter who asked the most sublime thing he knew? Barth must have been thinking of John 3:16 when he replied, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

There is a simplicity on the far side of complexity and the person who seeks to love God with all the mind will seek it. She will not avoid the complexity. She will face every issue, and she will try to grow through the issues, and get to the simplicity that is beyond the complexity. As Justice Holmes once said, “For that simplicity that lies on the near side of complexity, I would not give a fig; for that simplicity that lies on the far side of complexity, I would give my everything.”

Of course, Jesus is not confined the epistles of Paul, nor the gospels, nor the New Testament itself. There are passages in the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, that Christians have always insisted are about Jesus. One example is the story recorded in Genesis 14. Following his victory, Abraham pays tithes to Melchizedek, the King of Salem and the priest of God Most High. Melchizedek then brings out bread and wine. Small wonder that the writer of the Hebrews says that Jesus was a high priest forever “after the order of Melchizedek. Or what about Isaiah’s vision of the suffering servant?

Is. 53:4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Of course, confining Jesus to the pages of the whole Bible will not work. As the writer to the Hebrews says:

2 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

Did you get it? “Before him no creature is hidden!” Here the Eternal Word of God is ultimately not a book but a person, a living person who is active in us, and through us, and for us. We often learn of Christ as he speaks to us deep in our hearts, or as we see him living in the lives of others. As my mother is fond of saying, “The only Christ the world will see is the Christ it sees in you and me.” Christians have the virtue of seeing Christ in one another, and in those persons of the world that call us to his service. As Jesus himself said, “In as much as you have done it to the least of these my brothers (and sisters) you have done it unto me.” Jesus includes he prisoner, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick, the prisoner, among his brothers. (Matthew 25:31-46)

If we seek to grow the mind by seeking the light, we will find that we live in a world of light, not just everyone that we meet, but everything that we read reminds us of him who is the light of the world—whether science, or history, or theology, or biography, or politics. It all speaks of Him, and so it must, for he is “the Lord of all.”

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.

We are talking about growing spiritually. We have a goal. In Ephesians 4 the apostle writes that we are to grow until we attain to mature personhood, until we reach, “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

Now, as Christians, growing spiritually means paying attention to what is important to Jesus. Last week we saw how a scribe came to Jesus and, asked, “Which Commandment is first of all?” And Jesus answered:

29 The first commandment is this…. ‘Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one, 30 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as your love yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

If these two commandments are the greatest, it follows that these commandments are the first commandments we ought to keep.

Last week we talked about the heart: In the Hebrew scripture, the heart stands for the whole person. What the heart is the whole person is. A brave heart is a brave person. A willing heart is a willing person. A generous heart is a generous person.

For example, those older persons at New Philadelphia who are living on fixed incomes, and who have seen their fortunes reduced by the economic downturn, and who have continued to give at the same level, have generous hearts—-and they are generous people.

The heart is also the seat of the mind, emotions, and will. The heart stands for the whole that keeps all the parts in balance.

Last week I gave you a graphic word picture. We considered the example of the heart as a wheel made up of three perfectly sized and joined pie-shaped pieces, the soul, the mind, and the strength. If pieces all grow at the same pace we roll smoothly down the road of life. If one piece grows and the other do not, or if one pieces shrinks through neglect, the ride we call life becomes bumpy and the road far more difficult. I know this is a cartoon like image, but consider it an editorial cartoon. It makes a critical point.

Now, today we want to talk about the soul. In the Scripture, the soul, like the heart, can stand for the whole person. It is the life force. If the soul lives, the person lives. If the person dies, the soul dies.

That is not the whole picture. The soul has particular association with the emotions, or the feelings. Consider these few examples.

In Genesis 34:3 “And (Shechem’s) soul was drawn to Dinah the daughter of Jacob; he loved the maiden and spoke tenderly to her.” The soul falls in love.

In Leviticus 26:43 God speaks about rebellious Israel saying, “Their soul abhorred (or hated) my statues.” The soul not only loves, it hates.

In Psalm 42 the Psalmist says:

1 As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?

In the same way, in Genesis 34:8 Shechem’s father said that the soul of his son longed for Dinah.

The soul also “longs” for God, or for someone, and the soul wants to be in the presence of God, or someone. Finally:

In Mark 14:34 Jesus says to his disciples, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.”

The soul is the seat of the emotions, the feelings. If we are to love God with all the soul we must master our emotions.

This is not easy. It is not easy because it is possible to feel our way into a new way of acting.

When good people are making great progress down the highway of life, and suddenly take a detour, most of the time, it can be blamed on the emotions, aka feelings. Peter said that he would follow Jesus to death if need be. Then Jesus was taken captive and Peter was fearful and afraid. That is why he denied Jesus, not once but three times. In Colossians,  Demas is a companion of Paul mentioned right alongside Luke, the beloved physician. Sometime later the bright lights and the big city blinded  Demas. In 2nd Timothy 4:10 St. Paul writes one of the saddest lines in the New Testament. He writes, “Demas, in love with the present world, has forsaken me.”

Sometimes we act on a feeling and get off easy. When our feelings run amuck we often buy automobiles, and houses, and expensive vacations that we cannot afford.

Sometimes the penalty is more severe. Out of control feelings have turned the lives of some good people upside down. All of us can think of politicians, and preachers, and people from all walks of life that have made shipwreck of their families, their careers, and their lives because they fell in love even though they were already in a marriage.

Let me point out that love and falling in love are two different things. Falling in love is a feeling that leads us into a new way of acting. Love is an action that leads us into a new way of feeling.

Falling in love is the emotional equivalent of the sex urge. It is a feeling and it is not completely rational. It involves the collapse of the ego boundaries. Each person gets inside the head of the other. Each does crazy things. That is why the old song sung by Frank Sinatra says,

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,
And so I come to you my love,
My heart above my head.”

Feelings can be so powerful that if allowed to run unchecked they exercise an almost demonic control over their victims. I shall never forget a woman that I married to an unlikely groom several years ago. Several weeks after the marriage, she came into my office and said, “It was not me who married that man. I don’t know who it was, but it was not me.” I was reminded of another song by another Sinatra. I think it was Nancy Sinatra who sang:

“We got married in a fever,
Hotter than a pepper sprout,
Bout the time we hit Jackson,
That’s when the fire went out.”

As great as it is, I believe that God meant for the feeling of “falling in love” to be experienced in short doses. Khalil Gibran the Christian mystic was right when he advised two lovers saying:

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
for the pillars of the temple stand apart,
and the oak and the cedar do not grow
in one another’s shade.”

According to the New Testament love is not a feeling at all, it is an action, or a series of actions. In 1st Corinthians 13 we read:

4 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Does that mean that Christian marriage is incompatible with “falling in love.” No it does not. In the best marriages the husband and wife fall in love, in small doses, over and over again. If you want that in your own marriage then you need to know this:

Not only can we feel our way into a new way of acting; we can act our way into a new way of feeling.

I have a friend who came to me saying that he had fallen out of love with his wife. He said they were empty nesters, and with the children gone, they did not have a good reason to stay together. He told me there was nobody else, and I believed him. My friend was a very successful man. I asked him how much time he was spending with his wife. He said, “Not much.” I said, “Why don’t you spend time with her? Why don’t you send her flowers, and ask her on a date, and write her notes telling her how much you love her?” He said, “It would be a lie.” I said, “It might be a lie in the beginning, but you can act your way into a new way of feeling. If you act like you love her, you still will. If you say you love her often, it will become a reality.”

The wonderful thing about love is, that we can act our way into a new way of feeling.

And what about our relationship with God?

Some people feel that love. They are like Zinzendorf when he stood before the picture, Ecce Homo, and saw the Artist’s depiction of the crucified Savior, and read the inscription, “All This Have I Done for Thee, What Hast Thou Done for Me?” Zinzendorf said from that moment on he belonged to Christ and Christ alone. He felt his way into a new way of acting, and the heroic Moravian mission followed.

Some people must act their way into a new way of feeling with God.

Scot Peck says, “We spend time with the people and things that we love. ” The reverse it also true. “We love those people and things with whom we spend time.”

How do we show our love for God? Let me suggest these things.

First, we can spend time with God in prayer and in the reading of scripture. I have a friend who has a theory about reading the scripture. He said to me:

“I read one chapter and find it boring. I read two chapters and it is not as boring. I read three chapters, and I am interested. I read four chapters and I cannot put it down.”

Several years ago, I determined to read straight through the Bible in a year. I wanted to finish the Old Testament by September, and the New Testament by Christmas. I finished the Old Testament by the end of May, and the New Testament by the end of the summer. Once I started reading it was hard to stop. It drew me closer to God. It was a remarkable year.

Second, we can spend time with God’s people. I love that line from the 8th Psalm.

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; yea I have a goodly heritage. As for the saints in the land, they are the noble in whom is all my delight.

Spending time with God’s people is a great way to spend time with God.

OOPS! This sermon comes to an abrupt end because I often rewrite my sermons on the fly as they are preached. I took vacation on Monday following the preaching of this sermon, and can’t remember the changes. It will be rewritten when the audio becomes available.

Temporarily Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D. Min.

For the next several weeks we will be talking about growing spiritually. We don’t age into spiritual maturity. It is not a generational thing. We all know older Christians who have root canals, and new knees, and replacement hips that have stopped growing spiritually long ago. And we all know very young people who, like the twelve-year-old boy Jesus in the temple, possess a spiritual maturity that is way beyond their years.

To grow spiritually we need to think young! John Calvin said there is a sense in which a truly mature Christian maintains “a perpetual adolescence.” We remain open, and eager, and teachable. We want to learn more of God.

We don’t have to worry about running out of things to learn. We can never stop learning and growing, for our goal is a lofty one. According to Ephesians 4, we are to grow until we attain to “mature personhood,” to “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

Now this series is written specifically for Christians. Someone recently challenged me to explain how we become a Christian. According to Romans 10:9 “If you confesses with  your lips that ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.”

What does that mean? Let me see if I can flush it out by sharing my personal experience with you.

People talk a lot about being saved, or converted. Some say that religious conversion is a crisis. Others say that it is a process. In my personal experience, I am inclined to think that conversion is a process that leads to a crisis followed by a process.

I grew up in a Christian home. I am a child of the covenant. There is infinite value in that, more than we can imagine. I cannot tell you when I became a Christian in the eyes of God. By contrast, I can tell you when I consciously made a decision to seek God’s will and follow the Risen Lord. It happened just after midnight on a day in the summer of 1973. I had been troubled by a verse from book of James. Luther called James an epistle of Straw, but this verse hit me like a hammer. The text went something like this:

A wise man does not say, “I will go into this city and buy and sell and get gain,” but “if the Lord wills, I will go into this city and buy and sell and get gain.”

I had never concerned myself with the will of God. Hitherto I had only been concerned for what I wanted. Now, whether waking or sleeping, it completely dominated my thinking. After several days of struggling with that question, I got out of bed in the middle of the night, went to the living room of my apartment, which was located just two blocks from the San Diego harbor, knelt down and said, “O.K. God, if you are real, just touch the tip of my finger, and I will follow you anywhere. I will do what you want me to do.”

I have told you before: There was no touch; no bursting vision of light; no shaking of the foundations. Despite the lack of a dramatic display, I was utterly convinced that God, and a whole new life were just beyond the tip of my extended finger. I said, “O.K., God, I will do it your way. I will do it by faith. I will put my faith in your son, Jesus Christ.” Then I stood up and went to bed. The next day, I ate lunch in the Officer’s Club at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, with my friend from Texas, 1st Lieutenant Paul “Sonny” Kyle.  As we ate patty melts and drank free champagne, I told Sonny that I had become a Christian.

I think God provided that champagne for the celebration. Why not? The angels in heaven were rejoicing over one who had been lost and now was found. Of course, I was 25 years old, and God only provided one glass. It was not like that time that Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding at Cana. Yet even Sonny Kyle knew something was happening. I had gone on record. Though the words may not have been ideally correct, I had confessed the Lordship of Christ.

Since that time in San Diego, I have been growing spiritually. I am on a journey. Sometimes I take two steps forward, and one step back. Some will say that because I take a step backward from time to time my journey is a failure. I don’t accept that at all. There are detours on every journey—times when we misread the map, or take a wrong turn, or get delayed by an accident. We lose our way. We fall back. That is o.k. God does not let us go. Sometimes he loves us back on the right path. As the apostle says, “Do you not know that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4b) Sometimes God disciplines us, and prods us until we get back on the road. What does the scripture say, “For the Lord disciplines him who he loves, and chastises every son (or daughter) he receives.” (Hebrews 12:6)

And that brings us to the heart of this sermon series. I am basing it on Mark chapter 12:28-31. In this text one of the scribes comes up to Jesus, and asks him a question:

“Which commandment is the first of all?”

Jesus answers:

“The first commandment is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Growing spiritually means nothing more and nothing less than growing in our love for God, for our neighbor, and, believe it or not, for ourselves. Love ourselves? Yes! God intends that. Yet, the problem with many of us is that we pamper ourselves, but we do not truly love ourselves. Love is disciplined.

Jesus says to love God in a four-fold way. He says that we are to love God with all the 1) heart, 2) soul, 3) mind and 4) strength.

Jesus mentions the heart first. That is understandable. It goes right to the “heart of the matter,” pun intended. In the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, the heart stands for the whole person: The heart is the center of the mind—and all thinking; it is the center of the soul—-the life force and all emotions , and it is the center of the person’s strength—-which is as much a strength of “will” as it is a strength of “muscle.”

According to various Biblical authors the heart can be hard, willing, obstinate, frightened, and deceived. It can also be true, faithful, generous, and brave. In every case, what the heart is, the whole person is. If you have a brave heart—you are a brave person. If you have a generous heart—you are a generous person. If you have a willing heart—you are a willing and helpful person.

The heart is the unifying principal, the seat of the mind, emotions and will. The heart is the thing that helps us maintain a proper balance. Let me explain that.

Imagine that you are like a perfectly round wheel that is made up of three perfectly proportioned pie-shaped pieces. Some people cut their pies in 6 pieces, and some in four; but I like to cut my pies in three pieces, and that is appropriate here.

You start your Christian journey perfectly round, because you have a proper balance of mind, emotions, and will. You are in balance because the gospel appealed to you at every level. It appealed to you intellectually—it made sense; it seemed superior to every other alternative. And it appealed to you emotionally—you were touched by the lives of those who allowed their hearts to be broken by those things that break the heart of God. And it must have appealed to you volitionally, because, in an act of will, you decided to seek and do God’s will and be a follower of Jesus Christ.

Because you are naturally “well rounded” your initial journey is a smooth one. You go rolling down the road with little resistance.

Then, for whatever reason, you (or I!) get out of balance.

Perhaps we become so interested in “theology” that we read all the theological greats from Augustine and Anselm to Zinzendorf and Wesley. Our minds—that is our understanding of the faith, grow dramatically. Unfortunately, we fail to get our faith out of our heads and into our hearts. That is a signal failure, particularly for Moravians. Do you know the one essential according to “The Book of Order of the Moravian Church?” It is “a heart relationship with the Triune God who reveals God’s Self as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” There is a lot of theology packed into that statement. But it is not about the theology—-It is about the relationship. If we get the relationship right, the rest will be o.k. But when we have a big head, and miss the element of the heart,  0ur spiritual journey becomes disconcerting and downright uncomfortable. As our wheel rolls down the road we bounce up and down like a bicycle bumping down the center of a railroad track. And we go: WHAPTY, WHAP, WHAP, WHAP. WHAPTY, WHAP, WHAP, WHAP.

Or perhaps we have grown emotionally. Though we don’t know the name of Kierkegaard but understand intuitively that he was at least partially right when he said that faith is rooted in our religious feelings. Perhaps we major in worship, and we rush from congregation to congregation delighting in our experience of worship. But we never learn that in the New Testament worship takes two forms: The first is proskenuo—the act of prostrating ourselves before God. It also takes the form of latero—which means service. If we worship without serving we miss the point. As Jesus himself said, “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.”

The scenario is not so far fetched. In the last several weeks I talked to two people who attend two very different large traditional churches in our state that have added contemporary worship services alongside their traditional services. In order to add those services they have spent a lot of money to put on church for people. And when the people come, they don’t ask very much of them. They haven’t gotten very much either. Both these people told me that, though hundreds of people are attending these services, the have left the old guard in the two churches, the traditionalists if you will, to pay the bill.

I think this is a pretty common problem. For instance, I know of a church with over 800 giving units, and fewer than half of those 800 giving units actually make a pledge and support the church. These folks are great. They have the mind. They have the heart. The only thing they lack is the will. They too have become flat on one side. And when they roll down the roll of life the bounce up an down like a man on a bicycle riding down the center of a railroad track and they go: WHAPTY, WHAP, WHAP, WHAP. WHAPTY, WHAP, WHAP, WHAP.

They need to do something. They need to be like a man I knew who decided to tithe. He did not know how he was going to do that, because he was in business for himself, and his business was relatively new, and he did not know what he would make. He took a chance. He sat down and wrote 52 checks, and dated each one for the appropriate week in the year. And then the gave those checks to the church treasurer, and said, “You cash them as soon as the dates are appropriate.” The treasurer cashed 52 checks, and not one of them bounced. Then, at the end of the year, the man sat down and wrote a 53rd check, and it was a big one!

Some will say, “Worth, you have tricked us. You have said you are going to talk about growing spiritually, and you have sneeked in a stewardship sermon. “ It is no trick at all. I want to keep you and me rolling smoothly down the road, and that is not possible unless we are brave, big, generous hearts properly balanced, between the mind, the soul or the emotions, and the strength, or the will. If we don’t get the balance we are like a man riding a bicycle down the center of a railroad track. You know what that sounds like. It feels worse than it sounds.

Finis

Our Stewardship theme for 2012 is “Generations of Generosity.” This has started several of us thinking about passing the torch of Christian discipleship from Generation to Generation.

We need mature Christians! Unfortunately, Christian Maturity is not just about our chronological age. It spans the Generations. On the one hand, we all know young Christians who possess an amazing degree of spiritual maturity, like the boy Jesus in the temple. On the other hand, we know those who become more immature with each passing year, and never grow up mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. Growing spiritually takes intentionality on our part, and a willingness to accept God’s help!

During our Stewardship Emphasis month I intend to preach a short series of sermons based upon the idea that Christians can choose to grow spiritually. My text is based on a saying of Jesus with roots in the Law of Moses: ”

“‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’” Mark 12:29

• The first sermon is entitled, “Growing Spiritually: The Heart.” In the Bible the heart is the center of the mind, emotions and will. Jesus is talking about maintaining a proper balance between all three. Oct 14
• The second sermon is entitled, “Growing Spiritually: The Soul. This sermon is about controlling and using our emotions. In the Hebrew Bible the soul is the center of the emotions. We are drawn to the touching. We give to those people, organizations, and causes that touch us emotionally. Oct 21
• The third sermon is entitled, “Growing Spiritually: The Head.” Like Jesus our task is to grow in wisdom even as we grow in stature. The pursuit of wisdom is a lifelong occupation. John Calvin the great Reformer said that the mature Christian remains in a state of “perpetual adolescence,” meaning that we are always ready to learn. Oct 28
• The fourth sermon in my series is “Growing Spiritually: Strength of Will.” It does no good to have a warm heart, and a wise head if we are not learning to act on those things that we feel and know. God desires not just talk from his people, but a walk, a way of life. Nov 11

Some will notice that I have skipped November 4th, but we have not. On that Sunday Pastor John Rights will preach on, “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.” John’s grandfather was a Bishop Elect who died before he was concecrated. His father is a Bishop of the Unity. John is a pastor, and his son, Matthew is just a child. However, both his grandfather, who belongs to the Church Triumphant in Heaven, and to “the great cloud of witnesses”, and his father, who is very much a part of the Church Militant, the church at work in the world, would like nothing better than for John and Matthew, and the rising generations to exceed them in every achievement! DON’T MISS THIS SERMON.

I am really excited about this series. I hope you can be a part of it all.

Blessings,

Pastor Green

Photo by Bill Ray III

(Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.)

This week my high school class is getting together to celebrate our 45th High School Reunion! This has made me think about my old classmates a great deal. I would mention one in particular.

His name is J. At our 25th High School Reunion, which seems like yesterday, Jimmy had everybody talking. He drove up in a flash car, something like a red Corvette. He was dressed in a white suit like the one John Travolta wore in Saturday Night Fever, and he had a beautiful young lady on his arm. It was pretty obvious to all concerned that she had even been born when Jimmy and the rest of us were in high school. Everybody jumped to the conclusion that Jimmy was an eligible bachelor, extremely wealth, and the buzz in the room was that was a drug dealer.

He was an old friend, so, late in the evening we stepped outside, and I asked him flat out. “J, are you doing anything illegal?” And he responded, “No, I import high end stereo equipment for a living; but I haven’t told anybody that, because the moment I tell somebody that, they start talking about a discount of their dream system and all meaningful conversation goes out the window.” Then he told that he told me that he was just like everyone else. He was still looking for someone to marry, and he wanted to have a family, and live a good life. I am happy report that eventually he found someone to marry, and she was a great gal, and a lot closer to J’s own age, and it was my privilege to baptize their first child.

When J and I were in highs school, we were quite close. Neither of us made grades that we were particularly proud of, but we ran the mile together on the track team—he was a lot better than I, and on those long bus rides to and from meets we used to make up “wise sayings. “ We figured if Ben Franklin and Little Richard—or is that Poor Richard, could do it, we could do it. It is harder was harder than we thought it would be. If we did manage to come up with a pithy saying, it invariably turned out to be a rerun of what someone else had said. This should not have surprised us.

In Ecclesiastes 1:9 we read:

…what has been done (or said) will be done (or said) again; there is nothing new under the sun … Ecclesiastes 1:9

We do not invent wisdom; we discover it. It is the God who created all things who created wisdom. In Proverbs 8:22 Wisdom itself speaks saying:

22 The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.

Wisdom goes on to say:

“I was there when God established the heavens, and drew a circle on the face of the deep, and made the skies above, and set a limit to the waters, and marked the foundation of the earth. “

Wisdom says:

“I was beside (God), like a master workman; and I was daily (God’s) delight, rejoicing before him always.” (Proverbs 8:30)

There can be little doubt that the author of the 4th Gospel looked back to this passage when he wrote about Jesus of Nazareth, saying:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. He was in the beginning with God; 3 all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. John 1:1-3

And then, in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth….”

The author of the Epistle of James has at least the Proverbs passage, and perhaps the gospel passage in mind, when he wrote:

…the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity. James 3:17

I first planned to write on the whole verse. Then I broke it in half. Then I recognized that each word or combination that described “wisdom from above” was worthy of a stand alone sermon.

Let’s spend a few moments this morning thinking about the first statement in that verse. The text declares that the Wisdom from above (i.e. from God) is first “pure.”

The Greek word here translated “pure” is “hagnos.” In Classical Greek thought “hagnos” means “pure (or holy) enough to approach the gods.” In the case of the New Testament, “hagnos” means “pure (or holy) enough to approach God.” Or, to reverse the reference, “pure (or holy) enough for God to look upon.” For God cannot look upon sin without wanting to do something about it!

What does it mean that wisdom from above is pure? It means that the author of James cannot imagine any thing being truly wise which is not also truly moral.

I think that is true of all the Biblical writers. Thus, in John 14 when Jesus says, “I am the truth,” he is not saying that he is the truth about mathematics, or the table of elements, or the laws of relativity, or the Big Bang Theory. When Jesus says, “I am the truth,” he is talking primarily about his relationship to God. He is the revelation of God. In John 14:7 Jesus says, “If you have known me you have known my Father, also, henceforth you know him, and have seen him.” So, too, Jesus gives us the opportunity o have a relationship with God. In John 14:23 Jesus says, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” John 15:10 Jesus says, “If you love me keep my commandments.” The truth that is Jesus is primarily a moral, saving truth. And the wisdom that comes down from above is first and foremost a moral wisdom that puts us in a right relationship with God, with ourselves, and with one another. That is why the Psalmist declares, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom!” (Psalm 110:10)

Does this mean that scientific wisdom is necessarily immoral? Of course not! Without the advances of science our world would be a pretty sorry place to be. Where would we be without Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine that saved millions? Or, where would we be without Thomas Alva Edison who invented the phonograph and a practical electric light bulb? Or where would we be with out Alexander Graham Bell who invented the iPhone 5? I realize that in this last question I have collapsed the process of discovery. I realized that I am cutting quite a few inventions and quite a few inventors out of this discussion, but the truth is that we could not have a complete discussing about even the most popular and far reaching advances of science if we committed to be here for a week.

What would you mention in such a discusion? Would you mention antibiotics, modern plumbing, the printing press, the automobile, and plastics? Your remember the man speaking to Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate,” and saying, “One word: plastics!”

That leads us to a larger question: What is the right relationship between faith and science?

I do not think it is the role of faith to dictate facts to science.

Take the case of Galileo. He taught that the earth resolved around the sun and that we live in a heliocentric universe. The Catholic Church said, “No, so, for the Bible teaches that the earth, not the sun, is the center of creation.” Authorities urged Galileo to recant upon threat of excommunication, and though he did recant, and they buried in an unmarked grave. They learned to regret that. In 1734, ninety-two years after Galileo’s death, they dug up the body and buried him in a mausoleum in the church, marking his new resting place with his name. Really accepting Galileo’s work took longer. It was not until 1744 that his book was released in a censored version, and not until 1835, 202 years after the death of Galileo that an uncensored version of his book was released. It was three hundred and fifty years after Galileo’s death, when Pope John Paul II said in 1992, that Galileo suffered unjustly at the hands of the Church and praised Galileo’s religiousness and his views and behaviors regarding the relationship between science and religion.

Some people say, “Worth, doesn’t this worry you?” Well, it makes me worry about the church—Protestant and Catholic, but not the Bible. I do not believe that God intended the Bible to be a scientific textbook. It is hard to convince some people of this. When I went to seminary my grandmother told me that if I did not accept the fact that God created the world in 6 literal days I had to give up all claim upon the Bible. Imagine my chagrin when I finally studied the book of Genesis in a seminary classroom, and discovered that the sun and moon was not created until the 4th day. How then were those literal days marked? Dare I say that my grandmother was wrong? You betcha. Of course, I later discovered that my grandmother did not say to me what she said based on her knowledge of the Bible. She said it because her favorite TV preacher had said it. That preacher forgot something very important, which many do. He forgot that God did not originally address the Bible to the people of the 20th and 21st century. If we take Moses as the author—or at least the contributor of the Pentateuch, God addressed the Bible to people who lived as many as 3500 years ago. That reminds me of a conversation I once had with a scientist.

He came to me, and said, “Worth, I am a Christian. My faith has seen me through a war, and the death of my wife, and the death of a son to a horrible disease. Worth, I am a scientist, and I am having a hard time reconciling the early chapters of Genesis to what I know about the creation of the world which I think started in a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. Can you help me reconcile the two?”

I said, “I am not sure reconciliation is necessary. Let me explain. Suppose you are writing another scientist, and you assume another vocabulary and write to him anything you please?”

He said, “Yes

“Suppose you are writing his son,” I continued, “could you assume the same vocabulary and write to the same level?”

He said, “No, of course not.”

“Now suppose you are writing both the scientist and his son, to what level would you have to write?” I asked.

“Why I would have to write to the level of the son,” he answered.

I then told him that is precisely what God was doing when he addressed the Bible to humankind in its adolescence. He assumed those of us who are more mature intellectually and spiritually could understand what he had written to those who were less mature intellectually and spiritually.

Of course, the problem is that we are often more mature intellectually, and less mature spiritually. We have science and understanding, but we misuse it. A theory or an invention can be the best scientifically wisdom available in a certain time and place, and it still might be immoral.

The role of faith is not to dictate to science, but to confront science when it becomes immoral.

Take an obvious example of splitting the atom. It is one thing to split the atom for the sake of creating an unlimited source of power. That might be wisdom from above. But it is quite another thing to split the atom for the sake of creating a weapon of mass destruction and nothing more. That is not wisdom from above.

It was the work of Albert Einstein that enabled the United States to split the atom and make the atom bomb that ended World War II. Many scholars and historians think that dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki not only saved tens of thousands of American lives, but an even greater number of Japanese lives. They say that if we had invaded the Japanese homeland the Japanese would have fought to the last man, the last woman, and the last child. We would have been forced to commit genocide. In that sense, the bomb was merciful. Still, Einstein himself ever after regretted that we had to drop the bomb on Japan. As his life neared the end he wrote, “I made one great mistake in my life…when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification – the danger that the Germans would make them.”

What is true of science could be true of science, or politics, or anything else. A thing might be the very best financial wisdom attainable, and it might still be immoral. A bank which charges an extra fee on a certain kind of transaction just because it can, is no more moral than a loan shark which charges exorbitant interest on a loan just because he can. So, too, a thing might make very good political sense, and still be immoral because it does not truly serve the nation in question, or the community of nations of which it is a part. I recall starting out some years ago to vote for a particular candidate. As I left my driveway on the way to the polls I was listening to the radio. His campaign chairman said, “People ought to vote for my candidate instead of the other guy because my candidate only told little lies while the other guy told great big lies.” That was not what I wanted to hear on the way to the polls. I ended up doing a right in for a man of integrity, though some would say that I threw away my vote.

In this world there are always some who will say, “The Ends justifies the means.” The Bible puts the lie to that kind of thinking. The Bible teaches that God has the end of a thing in mind from the beginning. The Bible teaches us that God trust us not with the ends, but with the process that leads to the ends. It teaches that the wisdom from above is first of all pure.

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.

48 (Jesus said) ” I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh….56 He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.” [58 (Jesus) is the bread, which came down from heaven. (This bread) is not like the manna the generation of Moses ate (in the wilderness) and died; those who eat (this true bread of heaven) will live forever. ]* John 6

In John 6, I think it is beyond doubt that Jesus is talking about the way that he shares himself with us in the Holy Communion. The author of the 4th Gospel whom we call “John” assumes that his readers know about the Holy Communion. He assumes that we know about either from the practice of the churches we attend where it has been common from the earliest Christian times to the present day, or from one of the other gospels, or from Paul (1st Corinthians 11). Yet John himself never mentions it. In John’s version of the Last Supper there is a foot-washing, but there is no Holy Communion. You can look for it until the cows come home; but it is not there. In the 4th Gospel the next mention of blood is when the soldier pierces the side of the crucified Christ and blood and water issues forth, biologically correct, theologically more correct, symbolizing the Holy Communion and Baptism.

Why does John leave something so important out? There are at least three reasons. First, because most of his readers are insiders; they already know the story of Jesus. Second, because it does not fit John’s time heavily weighted theological time frame; but this is another, longer sermon. Third, because John is a masterful writer, who was inspired by the Holy Spirit to set down the story of Jesus in such a way as to draw his readers into the story, making us virtual contemporaries of Jesus.

Some of you will say, “Wait a minute. How can that be, Jesus lived in the 1st century, we in the 21st?”

That is true, yet in the context of the 4th Gospel, and in the context of the Christian faith, we know that Jesus has Risen from the dead, and is “in the bosom of the father,” (John 1:18; John 20, John 21) and through the power of the Holy Spirit, (“another comforter/counselor,” John 1 4:16) he continues to be with us, and always will. In this sense Jesus is already our contemporary.

Now one of the ways that John draws us into the presence of Jesus is through a literary device known as “dramatic irony. “ In dramatic irony those who read the story, or hear it read, realize that they know more about what is happening in the story at a particular juncture in the story, than the characters in the story themselves. Let me demonstrate.

In John 6 there are three groups of characters who are a part of the story with Jesus.

1. The first group of characters in the story consists of those disciples who are about to leave him. They were in the synagogue in Capernaum, and heard Jesus say, “I am the bread of life.” They heard him speak of “eating his flesh and drinking his blood, “ and they were offended by his words. The whole thing sounded a lot like cannibalism, and as good Jews who could not even touch a dead body without becoming “unclean,” and being isolated from the community until they were ritually purified (Number 9:13, etc.), they could not abide even the thought of cannibalism. Therefore they “murmured” against Jesus, just as the Children of Israel once murmured against Moses.
2. The second group of characters in the story consists of Simon Peter and “the twelve.” At this juncture they, too, are almost completely clueless about what Jesus is really talking about, and it will be several years before fully understand it. For according to the chronology of the 4th Gospel this incident takes place a full year before the Last Supper that Jesus at with his disciples which, according to (Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul) was the occasion when Jesus instituted the Holy Communion. However, unlike the first group, the twelve do not murmur. They do not murmur because they have seen more of God in Jesus than they thought possible on this earth, and they trust Jesus, and they are prepared to go forward with him, in trust, for as long as he will allow it.
3. The third group of actors in this story consists of all those who read this text, or hear it read, and know immediately what Jesus is talking about, because we know about the Lord’s Supper, or the Holy Communion from other sources. For instance, when we read this story, and hear about eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus, we remember that just before his arrest Jesus ate a final meal with his disciples. And we know how Jesus took the bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “This is my body which is given for you.” And how, after supper, Jesus took the cup, and shared it with his disciples saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you and for many; for the remission of sins, this do in remembrance of me.” We know that Jesus is talking about the Holy Communion.

Still, the graphic nature of this passage raises the question of how Jesus is present in the Holy Communion. It is a memorial, a simple remembering? Or is it what the Lutherans call consubstantiation with the body and blood of Jesus spiritually in around and through the elements? Or is it what the Catholics call transubstantiation wherein the bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus, though the accidents remain the same? There are other ideas about the Holy Communion. We Moravian say that Jesus is present like a 300 lb. canary—-any way he wants to be!

Jesus addresses all three groups, but most especially this third group to which we belong—because it is the living contemporary Christ who speaks. Jesus says, “No man can come to me unless the Father draws him.” And that explains why some people have rejected Jesus, and some people have accepted Jesus, and it reminds us that faith itself is a miracle, and “the gift of God.” This is why we Moravian pray:

“By our own reason and strength we cannot believe in the LORD Jesus Christ or come to him, but You, O, God, call us and enlighten us by your grace.”

It is after this incident in the synagogue that many of those who followed Jesus drew back and “no longer went about with him.”

And it is after this epic desertion that Jesus spoke to the twelve and to us, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered for all believers in all times when he said:

68 “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

Now we have come down to the nitty-gritty, the twelve came to Jesus because they had seen God at work in him. And they stuck with Jesus because Jesus partially opened for them the curtain that separates this life from the next. He alone had “the Words of Eternal Life.”

Let us spend a few minutes talking about “Eternal Life.”

Human beings have long believed in life after death. William Jennings Bryan said that the best evidence for life after death is the blazing dissatisfaction of the human race with any other solution. We human beings view ourselves as so important in the scheme of things that we cannot imagine not being. Consider these few examples of belief in eternal life.

The Ancient Greeks spoke of a paradise that they called Elysium. Elysium was “the isle of the blest,” where heroes and righteous men relaxed on mossy beds by crystals streams. They believed that the residents of Elysium are forever protected from all the woes of this life including, hunger, thirst, pain, suffering, and death. Even the great philosopher, Socrates, retained an optimistic view of life after death. In fact, just before he drank the hemlock that took his life, Socrates told his companions how he was looking forward to his soon to take place conversations with those great figures of history who had lived and died before he was born. .

Or what about the idea of reincarnation? Plato wrote of reincarnation, and the idea of reincarnation has entered into our popular culture through personalities like General George Patton, who believed that he had been a legionnaire with Julius Caesar in Northern Gaul, and an English knight during the Hundred Year’s War. And, of course, the actress Shirley McLain, who says that she was once “a harem girl in Turkey,” and “a Muslim gipsy.” Even Mitch Miller taught us to sing, “Be kind to your friends in the swamp, for that duck may be somebody’s mother.” Arguably, even some minor characters in the New Testament seem to believe in incarnation, though it is certainly never countenanced. (Mark 8:28 etc.)

That said, when we think of reincarnation, most of us think of the Hindu faith. Hindus believe in karma. People make their own karma, good or bad. They also believe that when someone dies, they are reborn into a new life. The nature of that new life is determined by how well they live the present life. In India there is a rigorous caste system. It is hard to move up in the world. According to the doctrine of reincarnation people of the lower caste, even untouchables, who live a good life may be reborn to a higher caste. Of course, it can work the other way, too. People of a higher caste who live selfish lives may be reborn as untouchables, or worse. Today many people romanticize the idea of incarnation, but Hindus who have lived under the tyranny of it for many centuries do not. The goal of the devout Hindu is “Nirvana, “which is “the state of the snuffed out candle.” The devout Hindu wants only to get off the wheel of human suffering.

And what about the ancestors of Jesus, the Jews? There were deep differences of opinion about life after death among the Jews. We know from the New Testament that the Sadducees did not believe in life after death. They did not make a division of the body, mind, and spirit or soul, it was all  one piece. They believed that the death of the body was the death of the person. Some have suggested that, like many Reformed Jews of our day, their idea of heaven was a happy, prosperous life surrounded by family and community and a good Sabbath Rest. They enjoyed their heaven right now, on earth, one day out of seven. Other devout Jews, like the Pharisees, were more optimistic. Like the Sadducees the Pharisees believed that when the body was dead, a person was dead. However, they also believed that, God’s justice demanded that at the end of history as we know it, there would be a Great Resurrection Day, and God would raise the righteous dead to eternal life and the unrighteous to judgment.

A great many 1st century Jews were comforted by this doctrine of resurrection, and have been ever after. In his book, This Is My God, the famous novelist Herman Wouk talks about the faith of his grandfather, a Rabbi. He said that the Rabbi believed so much in the power and goodness of God that he found it easier to believe that God would raised the dead than to believe that God would forget him. I believe that David was getting at the same thing when he said:, “(O, Lord) You will not abandon my soul to Hades, or allow your holy one to see corruption.” (Psalm 16:10)

You and I tend to think that the doctrine of resurrection and eternal life permeates every part of the Bible. It does not. In John 5:39 Jesus said to the Jews, “You search the scriptures because in them you think you will find Eternal Life, and they are they which testify of me.” In other words, “The idea of eternal life is there, in the scriptures, but you have to search for it, and when you find it, it speaks of me.”

I wonder which passages Jesus was talking about that spoke of him? Certainly he was speaking of certain psalms, and passages from the prophets, and of Job 19:25 wherein Job confesses, “I know that my redeemer lives, and without my flesh I will see him.” These texts contained powerful promises; but these isolated hints of life after death remained disconnected, and disjointed, and not easily understood, until that time when Jesus came speaking “the words of eternal life.”

In the 4th gospel the phrase “eternal life” appears 17 times, often on the lips of Jesus. The word “life” appears an additional 30 times by itself, and it often refers to eternal life.

John 3:14-15 declares:

14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

You know John 3:16:

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

And some of you will remember John 3:36:

36 He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him.

And what about John 11. Lazarus has died, and Jesus has just arrived at the house of his sisters, Mary and Martha. Mary is busy elsewhere, and Jesus talks with Martha. Martha says to him, “If you had been here my brother would not have died.”

Jesus responds saying, “Your brother will rise again.”

And Martha says, “I know he will he rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

And Jesus says:

“25 I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

This question, “Do you believe this?” is an extension of the question in John 6, “Do you also wish to go away?” Disciples are those who do not go away, and come to believe that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. Not long after this conversation, Jesus he stood before the tomb of Lazarus, and wept, and cried out, “Lazarus come forth.” You know that story, and you know the rest of The Story. You know that Jesus not only brought the words of eternal life, and performed miracles, and raised the dead. Like the author of the 4th Gospel, you know that Jesus is Word of God who became flesh and lived among us that he might demonstrate that had the power to lay down his life and the power to take it up again. (John 10:17)

Dietrich Bonheoffer says that apart from Jesus Christ we live in the anxious middle: We don’t know where we have come from, and we don’t know where we are going. We can see the womb at one end of life, and the tomb at the other, but that is all. We cannot see beyond either. In Christ, we see that we have come from God, and we are going to God. And we hear it, too, for it is the Risen Christ, our contemporary, who says to us as he once said to his disciples:

1 Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
John 14:1-3

Finis
Notes:

* Translation my own; amplified within the context of the passage. Please remember that the original manuscripts give translators a few very unique problems. They contain a sea of letters running together with no punctuation, and no division between words, sentences or paragraphs. Sometimes, especially in John’s gospel, it is hard to distinguish between when Jesus is speaking and when the author of the gospel is speaking. When Jesus uses the 1st person, we know it is him; however, he sometimes speaks of himself in the third person, as does, of course, the author of the gospel. In verse 58 I have chosen to translate as if the author of the gospel is speaking, though there are certainly reasons why the RSV translates as if Jesus were speaking, including the fact that the movement between Jesus speaking of himself in the first person and the third vacillates back and forth.