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6. "Christian Faith and Grief" —January 31, 2010
5. "Jesus’ Mission … and Ours" —, January 24, 2010. It’s based on Luke 4:14-21.
4. "Who Is Jesus? Jesus Is … the Son of God" — December 13, 2009
3. "To Tell the Truth" — was presented, November 15, 2009.
2. "God Comes First" - September 20, 2009
1. "Hallowed Be Thy Name" —, October 4, 2009. Based on Exodus 3:13-15 & 20:7, and Colossians 3:17, it’s the third sermon in a series on the Ten Commandments.
"What’s in a name?" As a matter of fact, quite a bit! Names matter. If you’re getting ready to open a new restaurant, for instance, you’ll lie awake at night going over all the possibilities so that you can give it a name that’s just right. Your own name matters. How do you like it when your name is dragged through the mud by some malicious gossip? Or worse yet, when you’re the victim of identity theft, your name and personal information taken from you and misused?
The third commandment, like the other commandments, is a boundary. It’s a life-giving boundary, like those landing lights at the airport that guide pilots coming in with a plane filled with people. Here is a boundary we might not be expecting. Like the first two commandments, it’s about the Lord our God. Like them, it’s a boundary set up to keep us from going wrong. That is, it’s given to us as a negative, "thou shalt not."
"You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God." We’ll have to do some work to understand and appreciate this commandment. But when we do, there will be a great payoff for us. So stay with me!
What’s in a name? A lot! Names are important, whether it’s our own name, the name of a business, the name of a car, the name of a soccer team, or the name of God. When God spoke to Moses out of a burning bush, Moses wanted to know what to say when the people would ask him, "who sent you?" God said, "I am who I am." God went on to say, "thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you’ ... Yahweh, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’"
This personal name of God, which was probably pronounced "Yahweh," was revealed to Israel. It’s written as LORD in capital letters in our English Bible. The reason is that the name of God was so sacred to the Jews that over time, they would not even utter it or write it. They knew that the name of God is more than a name. It carries with it a sense of God’s power and character and holiness.
What’s in a name? If we’re thinking of the name of God, a lot! The third commandment concerns the name of God. This commandment forbids wrongful use of the name of God, and it announces punishment for all who misuse God’s name.
The Lord God brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt and revealed his name to them. This redemption made them a covenant people, a people with a unique relationship to God. The first two commandments called Israel to be loyal to God alone, and to refuse to reduce God by using images in worship. This third commandment builds on the first two, and calls for the people to honor the name of God with appropriate seriousness. This commandment is a boundary meant to keep them from trivializing the name of God.
Walter Harrelson translates this commandment as, "you shall not lift up the name of Yahweh [the LORD] for mischief" (The Ten Commandments and Human Rights). Don’t use God’s name for mischief. This mischief can take many forms. For instance, the third commandment is telling us not to use the name of God to curse another person. To curse someone in the name of God is to make mischief. Or making a promise in the name of the Lord, and then breaking it. When you do that, you’re saying that God doesn’t really matter. The commandment tells us not to use God’s name in sorcery or magic, which is using God’s power for selfish ends. The commandment is very broad and open-ended. It is broad for a reason, and that is to cover all the ways in which people make wrongful use of the name of God.
This commandment is quite broad, but like the other commandments, it is a boundary. It’s a boundary that keeps us from speaking or behaving as though God were not important. Wrongful use of God’s name is any way that we empty God’s name of its meaning. It’s speaking of God without a sense of who God is. It’s speaking disrespectfully or casually about God.
When I say the name of someone who means a great deal to you, that’s all I have to do to bring the essence of that person into your mind. For instance, if I say, "Abraham Lincoln," his person, character, and deeds come to mind. It will bother you very much if someone treats that name "Lincoln" with disrespect. It trivializes a man you revere. When we say "God" or "Jesus Christ," it should be done only with respect and love. If we love the Lord Jesus Christ, it hurts when we hear people use his name in a casual, flippant, or disrespectful way.
The third commandment forbids any speech that dishonors God. It includes profanity, which makes careless or disrespectful use of God’s name. Earl Palmer says, "What happens in profanity is that the name of the holy and righteous God is used as a term of ruin and devastation." That is, we’re using the name of the Creator to denounce the creation, which is terribly inconsistent.
But the third commandment is not only about using the name of God in profanity. It covers any way that we use God’s name for mischief. Profanity is only part of what it forbids. The essence of this commandment is "don’t reduce God." It’s very similar to the second commandment,which we considered last week.
We reduce God when we use God’s name to run down another person. We reduce God when we speak as if we have God doing what we want. We reduce God when we speak and act as though God were not important.
This commandment is given in the most serious terms. It says that the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. We may not sense that this is a very serious commandment, but it is. How we treat God’s name really matters. And we’re assured here that God will have the last word.
If we don’t want to reduce God by misusing God’s name, what, then, is the positive alternative? What are we to do? Joy Davidman in her excellent book on the Ten Commandments, Smoke on the Mountain, says that we will use the name of God "in earnest." The alternative to using the name of God in a wrongful way is to use God’s name in a good way. We’ll speak of God with respect and with love. We’ll seek to live in a way that honors the name of God. Above all, we’ll call on the name of the Lord in worship.
The Christian alternative to misusing the name of God is found in Colossians 3, where we’re told, "whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Live with a sense of the presence of the Lord. Seek in every facet of your life to honor the Lord Jesus. Don’t dishonor his name through speech or deeds that deny who he is.
We pray in the name of Jesus. And we speak and act in the name of Jesus. We bring honor to his name by the way we live. His reputation in the world rises and falls depending on how we live. The third commandment calls for us to do more than get rid of certain forms of profanity. It is a call for us to honor God as God, by what we say and by what we do.
Each of the ten commandments is both a boundary and a promise. The third commandment is a boundary against emptying the name of God of its meaning for us. This is a serious boundary. It comes to us with a solemn threat of punishment. Yet it is also a promise. It is a promise of words and deeds that bring honor to the name of God. It is a promise of a life in which things are in their rightful place, where God comes first, and is loved.
Bill Hybels, speaking on the third commandment, reminds us that when you’ve been deeply affected by another person, you can’t talk about that person in a casual fashion. You can’t help but speak fondly of that person. Like the people of Israel long ago, we’ve been set free. The Lord Jesus Christ has set us free from sin and death. His name, his power, his person, his reputation mean everything to us.
So we don’t trivialize or misuse the Lord’s name. Instead, we join in Paul’s great hymn to Christ, found in Philippians 2, praising the name of Jesus with these words: "Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." The third commandment calls us away from the misuse of the Lord’s name, and invites us to use his name in earnest, with love, respect, and worship.
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"God Comes First" Based on Exodus 20:1-3 and Mark 12:28-34,, September 20, 2009.
Everyone’s heard of the ten commandments. You may remember how these words created a good bit of controversy when a judge in Alabama insisted on having them posted in his courtroom. I would like to take a closer look at the ten commandments, not as a source of controversy over their display in public places, but as a gift of God for our well-being.
To get us started, I want to give you an image to keep in mind, a picture of what the ten commandments do for us. If you go by the airport at night, and look at it from the right angle, you’ll see long rows of colored lights. Have you ever noticed those lights? These are landing lights that guide pilots to the runway when they’re landing a plane at night.
Can you imagine a pilot who has landed at Sky Harbor hundreds of times, and has gotten thoroughly bored? After all, the runways here go in the same east-west direction, and this pilot has seen all there is to see. So he decides to ignore the landing lights and create his own path. He’ll come in diagonally! Better yet, he’ll make it up as he goes!
What happens to a pilot who ignores the landing lights? He’ll see some sights he hasn’t seen before. But he probably won’t live long enough to make too many creative landings without using those lights.
You could complain that those lights are too constraining, that they take all the fun out of landing. But those lights are actually boundaries that protect life. They direct the plane to the path that leads to life. Ignore those lights, and you lose that protection.
We need boundaries in life in the same way that pilots need those lights. Without boundaries, anything goes, and it may kill us. There are people who try to do without landing lights, because, they say, there are no absolutes, only personal preferences. But when we act according to that opinion, all hell breaks loose.
We may not like boundaries because they seem too rigid. But deep within us we know that we need them. We have this deep conviction that in order for life in a community to be possible, boundaries are required. Some things are just out of bounds. To land the plane, you have to stay in line with the landing lights. Let’s keep this image in mind as we examine the ten commandments.
Long ago, the Lord God with a strong and mighty arm delivered a band of people who had been slaves in Egypt. God spoke directly to those freed slaves, giving them "ten words" or, as we know them, "ten commandments." There are ten, one for each finger, thus easy to remember.
God was giving these freed slaves the moral equivalent of landing lights. The ten commandments are boundaries. They are given to Israel after the people have been set free. Now that they’re not in Egypt, they need some boundaries. What is acceptable? What is not acceptable? How will they live together as a people who have been redee
The ten commandments are boundaries. They don’t go into great detail. There is a lot that is not said. They are short and to the point. One writer says they’re more like the Bill of Rights than the United States Code. There is a lot of room to move freely within these boundaries, but they are still boundaries. They are still commandments.
And let’s face it — we don’t like commandments. The famous media mogul Ted Turner dislikes the ten commandments so much that he’s written his own. He calls his version "ten voluntary initiatives." God’s ten words, though, aren’t voluntary initiatives. Nor are Sky Harbor’s landing lights optional for pilots who are in the mood to receive guidance. They’re more like rock solid commandments for pilots who would live to fly another day.
We may not like to be commanded, but here it is: God sets us free and then gives us boundaries for our own good. One writer calls his book on the ten commandments Signposts to Freedom. If you want to live a truly free life, he says, the ten commandments show you the way.
But we’re Christians, you say. We’re not under law but under grace. Christ did away with all the legal requirements. How can an ancient set of commandments given to the Hebrews have any claim at all upon us? We may even be relieved that public school classrooms no longer have the ten commandments prominently displayed, because we don’t find them binding or relevant.
But along comes Jesus who seems to think that the ten commandments are still a pretty good idea. In fact, in his dialogue with an earnest scribe, he identifies two commandments as the greatest of all: love the Lord, and love your neighbor as yourself. These two great commandments basically summarize the ten commandments. The ten commandments begin with commandments that call us to love God , then they move on to commandments that call us to love our neighbors.
Jesus says, "Do not think that I have to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17). We still need boundaries. Those freed slaves needed God’s word to show them how to live as a free people. We who have been set free by Jesus Christ also need boundaries in order to live the free life. Christian freedom isn’t trying to land a plane without landing lights. It’s freedom to move within the boundaries that God has graciously provided us.
I agree with the wisdom of Luther and Calvin, who taught the ten commandments as God’s word to Christians. We need the guidance that these boundaries provide if we’re going to live faithfully as the people redeemed by God. The ten commandments were not spoken to the world as a whole, but to God’s own people. The ten commandments aren’t first a universal law for everyone but reliable guidance for the people of God. And these words that God gave to those freed Hebrew slaves speak also to us.
The first commandment is, "you shall have no other gods before me." This commandment comes first because it holds the other nine within it. This is the foundational commandment. God has redeemed us, and now demands our full allegiance. God is to be our first priority. God comes first.
That sounds very simple, but it isn’t at all easy to pull off. Ancient Israel needed this commandment because the Lord had a lot of competitors. The surrounding nations had their gods. There was then a strong appeal to worship the Lord and their gods too. Our temptation today isn’t to worship the many gods of the nations. We’re tempted to worship no god at all. Or to worship ourselves instead.
While the gods of Egypt and Canaan may not have much appeal for us, there are many ways that we can violate the first commandment today. This happens when anything other than God becomes the center of our lives, when anyone or anything takes the place that rightfully belongs to God alone.
There are so many things that can take the place of God today: public opinion, money, sex, power, pleasure, work, the list goes on. Martin Luther says, "That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is, I say, really your God" ("Larger Catechism," Book of Concord, p. 365). What does your heart cling to? Sometimes we have to admit that it isn’t God, but other things of our own choosing.
The commandment is to have only one God. This commandment is first a boundary. It draws the line, and demands that only the God who created us and redeemed us be the center of our lives. Only the true God is worthy of our worship. Anything else is unworthy of our devotion. Good things, like relationships, our jobs, our families, our 401(k) plans, are not the center. They are good gifts of God, but they are not the number one priority in our lives. God alone comes first.
This may seem like a very narrow, harsh commandment. But think it over. These other things can and do let us down. They make promises, but sometimes they don’t deliver. Relationships come to an end, sometimes a very painful one. Work can go sour on us. When we reach our goals, we are often disappointed that they don’t give us the emotional payoff we had hoped for.
This commandment is a boundary that is intended to keep us from going down a dead-end street. But it is also a promise, a good promise from God. This commandment is a promise of an undivided life of loyalty to God. It is a promise of freedom from dead ends, freedom to serve the one true God who has redeemed us.
In this first commandment, we are at the starting point of spiritual life. God comes first. That is the foundation of spiritual life. In fact, if God doesn’t come first, then commandments two through ten don’t make sense.
What does it mean for God to come first in our lives? What does the first commandment look like in everyday life?
For God to come first in our lives means that there is no dividing wall. There is no area of life that is walled off from the will of God. When God comes first, we open our work life, our relationships, our bank account, and our free time to God. We say to God, "nothing else will come first. I want to do your will in each aspect of my life."
What does it look like for God to come first? We’ll seek to do God’s will in every aspect of our lives. As we work through the commandments in future sermons, we’ll be looking at God’s claim upon us in the different areas of our lives. But the first commandment comes first for good reason. This is where we decide what our first loyalty really is.
There is a striking phrase used in some traditional wedding vows: "forsaking all others." When you marry, you’re saying something important, that your loyalty is to one other person. You’re saying "no" to all others. But in that "no" is great freedom. Now you’re free to give yourself to the one you’re marrying.
The first commandment is a call to forsake all others. We forsake anyone or anything else that would claim our worship. The first commandment is a strong word. If it sounds harsh or narrow, it’s harsh or narrow in the same way that Sky Harbor’s landing lights are harsh or narrow. Those lights stay where they are so that you can have life. The first commandment is given us for our good. It is a boundary that says, here is life, when God comes first.
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"To Tell the Truth" — was presented, November 15, 2009. Based on Exodus 20:16 and Ephesians 4:25-32, this is the ninth in a series on the Ten Commandments.
Several years ago, while I was living in Cincinnati, I was called for jury duty. For three days, I sat on a jury for a criminal case. After the trial ended, we the jury had an opportunity to meet with the judge. We got to ask all sorts of questions about the case and about the justice system in general. Judge Winkler made a comment I will never forget. He said that in his courtroom, witnesses solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, then proceed to tell lies. He said, "if you work in this courthouse, you have to get used to the fact that people lie every day."
Get used to it? What an outrage that people routinely swear to tell the truth, and then lie. It is a terrible thing when truth goes out the window, especially when so much depends on finding out the truth, as it does in a court of law. What a terrible thing to suffer from the lies of another person. I
If you’re a witness, you have to swear to tell the truth because false witness is so destructive. And it has always been destructive. Hundreds of years ago, when God gave the Israelites ten words, one of them dealt with the danger of false witness. Their legal system, though different from ours, depended on witnesses being truthful. When someone bore false witness, everything came to pieces.
So we have the ninth commandment: you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. All of the commandments are boundaries. They are boundaries designed to protect. The ninth commandment protects the individual who would be harmed by a false witness. And false witness does great harm. But this commandment also protects the community as a whole, because false witness will unravel the fabric of the community like nothing else.
The ninth commandment was given with the legal aspect of life in mind. It first spoke to anyone called to be a witness, warning them not to be false. But the ninth commandment speaks to false witness that can plague every area of life. People lie on the witness stand, but we don’t confine our lying to that one place. We lie everywhere, all the time.
There is a book called The Day America Told the Truth. It’s based on a huge confidential survey that asked people a lot of nosy questions. They asked people if they ever lied. 91% of Americans acknowledged that they lie regularly. One in five lie every day. But most disturbing of all, two in three people believe that there is nothing wrong with telling a lie.
Lying is widespread. And it’s destructive. Lying destroys trust. When someone tells you, "I’ll be there at noon," and never shows up, you will have a hard time trusting that person in the future. A friendship can’t last long if one or the other has a habit of lying.
Lying is not always as simple as a young child saying, "I didn’t hit my brother!" when it’s obvious that someone did it. Lying can take many forms. There is appearance management, when we carefully ration out portions of the truth with the purpose of making ourselves look good and making others look bad. Then there is the strategic silence, when we say nothing to correct a false impression that someone is holding. There is innuendo, when we say something we know will mislead. Sometimes we use a lot of words as a smokescreen that don’t reveal, but conceal, the truth.
False witness is widespread and destructive, and it takes a variety of forms. The ninth commandment is not merely, "you shall not bear false witness." It is, "you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." The word "against" is very important. False witness is against another person. False witness isn’t only a violation of principle. It is a violation of a person.
This commandment has to do with our relationships to our neighbors. When we’re false, we’re doing something against the other person. You could say that when you lie, it’s a form of killing. No wonder we get angry when someone lies. We feel disrespected, violated, wounded.
False witness, however, doesn’t only destroy the one who hears the lie or the one who is the object of the lie. False witness destroys us when we practice it. When we speak falsely, we become false.
Maybe you’ve seen it. People lie so much for so long that they forget how to tell the truth. They get so caught up in their web of lies that even when they try to speak truthfully, they can’t do it. Lying becomes so natural that it’s the only way they can speak.
When we lie, whatever form our lying may take, we not only hurt others, we hurt ourselves. We become false. And we become part of this world’s pattern of speech. We are no different from those identified in The Day America Told the Truth when we make lying a habit. The lie destroys. It destroys people. It destroys relationships, our relationships with people and our relationship with God.
God gives the ninth commandment because our words are so important. Words can kill. but they can also give life. The book of Proverbs says that life and death are in the power of the tongue. The New Testament book of James tells us that the tongue is like the rudder of a ship, something small that makes a huge impact. Or like a tiny spark that starts a vast forest fire.
I appreciate Paul’s words in the letter to the Ephesians: "putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another." This is an expansion of the ninth commandment. Put away falsehood. But don’t stop there! Now speak the truth. We are members of one another. Telling the truth is important because we belong to each other. We destroy each other through lies. But we love each other through telling the truth. Paul is thinking especially about life in the church. We’re members of one another, fellow participants in the covenant community, called to speak truthfully.
In that same letter to the Ephesians, Paul calls us to speak the truth in love. Love for the other person will shape the way we speak. But you might hear Paul’s call to speak the truth, and become your own "truth squad," and wonder why you keep losing friends! Speaking the truth without love can be just as destructive as speaking lies. We can use the truth as a weapon. We can brutally say what we think with no concern for the other person. Speaking the truth in love is more of an art, an art in which we grow throughout our lives, one in which we need the work of the Holy Spirit.
Remember, the ninth commandment is a part of the ten words God spoke to people who had been freed from slavery in Egypt. These commandments are boundaries for living the free life. By heeding these words, the people of Israel would stand out from the rest of the world.
The ninth commandment is saying, then, that redeemed people will have redeemed speech. Instead of speaking death, we will speak life. Instead of lying, we will tell the truth. Instead of using words to conceal reality, we will use words to reveal what is true. Instead of striving to make ourselves look good, we will make our neighbors look good.
False witness is a word against another. The positive alternative is to speak for our neighbor. Commitment to truth is commitment to your neighbor, and to God, and to yourself. Redeemed people are called to be true. Our words and our lives will ring true. We’ll be people of integrity and fidelity.
The rock-solid foundation of the ninth commandment is God. God is truthful. In God there is nothing false, no deception. Jesus says of himself: "I am the way, the truth, and the life." We belong to a God who is true through a Savior who is the truth. The ninth commandment invites us to be people of truth, speaking the truth in love.
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"Who Is Jesus? Jesus Is … the Son of God" — December 13, 2009 (The Third Sunday of Advent). (Scripture: Psalm 2 and Mark 1:9-11).
Who is Jesus? This question has intrigued people for centuries. Who is Jesus really? It’s still a live issue. Books appear every year that promise an answer. I began this sermon series with a quotation from Karl Barth. He says, "tell me how it stands with your Christology [that is, your view of Jesus], and I will tell you who you are." The whole Christian life is based on the person of Jesus Christ. "Who is Jesus?" is not only an interesting and intriguing question for us. It is the greatest matter of all. Yet today there is much uncertainty and confusion around the question of who Jesus is.
Each week, I am asking, "who is Jesus?" and then offering a partial answer. We first saw how Jesus is a prophet who speaks the Word. Then we found that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one expected by the Jews. As the Christ, Jesus is the "answer" to our deepest yearnings. Today we go further and deeper: Jesus is the Son of God. The New Testament frequently calls Jesus "Son of God." But what does this mean? Is Jesus God’s Son in the same way that I am my father’s son? Or is there some difference? If Jesus is Son of God, is he therefore something less than God? If we’re all children of God, does that mean that Jesus as Son of God is not really all that much different from us? With questions like these buzzing around in our minds, we would like greater clarity about who Jesus really is. Not only clarity in thinking rightly about Jesus, but also greater enjoyment of the benefits that come to us because Jesus is the Son of God.
To help us gain greater clarity, today I turn to the first gospel that was written, the gospel of Mark. The gospel of Mark is all about Jesus. Mark wants to show us that Jesus is the Son of God. In talking today about how Jesus is the Son of God, I want to show you what Mark includes in his book.
The very first words of the gospel of Mark are "the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." Mark doesn’t leave us in suspense. He tells us the most important thing right at the beginning. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Then Mark tells us the story of Jesus’ life and death. At three key moments, there is an echo of those opening words, in which Jesus is named Son of God. The first of these key moments is Jesus’ baptism, when a voice from heaven says to Jesus, "you are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." The second is the transfiguration of Jesus, when Jesus is changed and even his clothes dazzle. That same voice speaks now to the three disciples who were there, saying, "this is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" And the third key moment is at the death of Jesus on the cross. The Roman centurion, a soldier who had watched Jesus suffer and die, said, "truly this man was God’s Son!"
Here is what is happening in the gospel of Mark. Mark begins by telling us that Jesus is the Son of God. Then at these three important moments — the baptism, the transfiguration, and the crucifixion — we hear again that this is who Jesus really is. He is the Son of God.
Mark shows us that Jesus is the Son of God. But what does it mean for Jesus to be Son of God? At the baptism of Jesus, we are shown that Jesus is fulfilling the expectations that are found in Scripture. The voice from heaven says, "you are my Son, the Beloved." This echoes Scripture, such as Psalm 2:7, which says, "you are my son; today I have begotten you." Psalm 2 speaks of a present king. It was probably written originally for a king’s coronation. But Psalm 2 also looks to the future. There is more here than an ordinary king can fulfill. Thus, Israel expected a coming one, a great King who would be son of God. And when the voice from heaven said, "you are my Son, the Beloved," it’s saying that Jesus is that unique Son of God whom Israel was expecting.
But there is another angle. It was a Roman who spoke out when Jesus died. He said, "truly, this man was God’s Son!" This was an extraordinary thing for a Roman to say, for at that time the emperor was the only one who could receive such praise. Yet the centurion dares to say that this condemned man who died on a cross was the true Son of God. Jesus is something that the emperor is not. Jesus alone is worthy of such a title. It took a great deal of insight and courage for the centurion to say what he said.
For Jesus to be Son of God, it means that he fulfills Jewish expectations, and it also means that he is in a higher position than the Roman emperor. Mark has put his gospel together in a way that will speak about Jesus to Jews and Romans alike. He does this by making it clear at those key moments that Jesus is the Son of God.
I want to go back and take a closer look at what was happening at the baptism of Jesus. Like countless others, Jesus went out to be baptized in the Jordan river by John the Baptist. But two unusual things took place: Jesus saw the heavens being torn open with the Spirit descending like a dove on him, and he heard the Father speaking to him. At the baptism of Jesus, the Father is speaking to the Son, affirming who Jesus is and saying how pleased he is with him. Later, at the transfiguration, when the Father speaks again, he says the same thing about Jesus.
In the story of Jesus’ baptism, we are given a glimpse of the intimate relationship between Jesus and his Father. For Jesus to be Son of God, it means that he has a unique relationship to the Father. Further, the Holy Spirit comes upon him like a dove. In this simple story of Jesus’ baptism, Mark is taking us out into the deep water! He is letting us witness something of the relationship between Jesus and the Father. When we say, "Jesus is the Son of God," we are saying that within the being of God, there is a relationship. The Father can speak to the Son. The Spirit descends and comes upon the Son. This is a hint of the doctrine of the Trinity. It took a long time for the church to fully develop the doctrine of the Trinity. They were trying to make sense of passages like this one. For here we are shown that in the life of the one God, there is a relationship of love.
The Nicene Creed was produced by the church in the fourth century to keep us from going astray in our thinking about Jesus as the Son of God. It says, "we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made." These words are telling us that Jesus as the Son of God is fully God. The doctrine that the church carved out in the early years is that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human. He is one person with two natures.
It’s good to be clear about what we believe, it’s good to hold on to sound doctrine. I am glad that we have statements, such as the Nicene Creed, that those who came before us hammered out. But we also want to know how that good doctrine shapes our lives today. Or does it? In this case, there is a close connection between then and now. The connection is baptism. It was at Jesus’ baptism that the Father spoke clearly to name Jesus as Son of God. There is a strong link between Jesus’ baptism and ours. As he was named Son of God at his baptism, so are we named children of God when we are baptized. Baptism declares that the one who is baptized is part of the family, an adopted son or daughter of God.
F. Dale Bruner puts it like this: "This is my priceless Son: I am deeply pleased with him. All the kindness heard in the Father’s Voice for his only true Son is conveyed to us in baptism, in adoption. The church believes that the most surprising gift of God is that human beings can have the favor with God that Jesus himself enjoys as God’s unique Son. The church calls this favor ‘adoption’ or ‘grace.’ In our baptism we are allowed to hear the words spoken at Jesus’ [baptism]: ‘You are my priceless child; I am deeply pleased with you’" (The Christbook: Matthew 1-12, p. 112).
The difference between Jesus and us is that he has always been the Son of God, the "only begotten," while we are adopted children of God. Through Jesus Christ, the unique Son of God, we are made children of God too. We are adopted members of the family of God.
This doctrine, then, that Jesus is the Son of God, has a real payoff for our present life. Because Jesus is the Son of God, today we have a relationship to God. We are not abandoned. We are adopted as beloved sons and daughters. We are members of the family. Through Jesus, we have access to God. We enjoy the privileges that come to children of God. So we find something surprising. When we answer the question, "who is Jesus?" by saying "Jesus is the Son of God," we find out who Jesus is, and we also find out who we are. Since Jesus is the Son of God, we are beloved children of God.
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"Jesus’ Mission … and Ours" —, January 24, 2010. It’s based on Luke 4:14-21.
This reading in Luke is, I think, the perfect one for us to hear today on the occasion of our church’s annual meeting. It’s the story of Jesus returning to his hometown of Nazareth. He goes to the synagogue where, all his life, he had joined with the rest of the community in worship. Now he’s given the privilege of selecting a passage of Scripture to read aloud, and then saying something about it.
Of all the passages of Scripture that Jesus could have chosen to read aloud on this occasion, this section of the book of Isaiah is the one he zeroed in on. I wonder why. Did he resonate with it in some unusual way? Did he read it, and have the response, "that sounds like what I’m all about"?
Companies have mission statements to guide them in their work. Employees have job descriptions to keep them doing the most important things. Is this passage Jesus’ mission statement? If it is, does it fit?
If this is something like a mission statement for Jesus, then he’s telling everybody that he has come to do something for people who are in trouble. There are four groups of people who are named, or maybe four different ways of describing the same people. They are the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed. That’s quite a list, isn’t it? Within each of these four, there are many variations. For instance, the blind. There is more than one kind of blindness. There is the literal kind and then there is another kind that you could call moral blindness.
Jesus has come to change things. He cares about human life as it’s actually lived. You see this in his mission statement, and you see it also in his words and deeds. He changes things for a lot of hurting people. In the words of that passage that he read from the book of Isaiah, with him it’s "the year of the Lord’s favor."
That was then. What is happening now? Is this still Jesus’ mission? If it is, how does he carry it out? If he isn’t walking around as he did in those days in Galilee, how is Jesus able to bring good news to the poor and recovery of sight to the blind? Short answer: he does it through us!
Here is my key move today: I think that we can take these words that Jesus found in the book of Isaiah as a picture of what he is about, and also as a picture of what we’re about.
Here is my logic: this is what Jesus is all about, this is his mission statement; we are his disciples, enlisted to follow him; therefore, this is our mission too, to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.
Let’s think some more about this. What do you think are some of the ways in which people today are:
• Poor?
• Captive?
• Blind?
• Oppressed?
How can a church, any church, bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, and let the oppressed go free? When you start to unpack each group that Jesus’ reading identifies — the poor, the captives, the blind, the oppressed — you can’t help but be overwhelmed. Just consider all the people who are in captivity to substances like alcohol or crystal meth. How on earth can a church do anything about something so vast? It seems to be impossible!
Unless, that is, it’s still Jesus on a mission. He says, "today this scripture has been fulfilled," then he starts doing all sorts of things. He brings good news. He lets the oppressed go free. Has he stopped doing these things? Does he just let life go on its own way? Or has he merely changed strategies, now utilizing people like us to get the job done? His strategy today is the church. His mission is unchanged. His method is now to work through people like us.
But, we say, we’re not worthy! We’re too weak, we’re too few in number, we’re too poor, we’re too tired. This mission is … well, it’s "mission impossible"! Where does our adequacy come from? We’re inadequate in ourselves. We are adequate in Jesus, because he has called us to join him on his mission. That’s the reason that Westminster Presbyterian Church is here. We’re here to join Jesus in his mission, to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.
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"Christian Faith and Grief" —January 31, 2010 (Scripture — Lamentations 3:1-6, 16-24 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).
A wise and experienced pastor, Bryant Kirkland, told our class of future pastors that we ought to preach every year on the topic of grief. He pointed out that, within the congregation, there will always be someone who is in the very midst of grief. I’ve forgotten a lot of Bryant Kirkland’s tips, but I do remember this one. So today I take up this difficult part of human life that we call grief. I hope that, in some small way, it’s helpful for us.
I’ll start with a working definition of grief: grief is the normal human response to any loss. When you hear the word "grief," your first thought may be the experience of losing a family member or a friend to death. That is certainly a major occasion of grief. But I return to my working definition of grief: grief is the normal human response to any loss. Everything I say today about grief pertains to the various losses that we endure. When a marriage comes to an end — that is a loss accompanied by grief. When your house is broken into and a piece of jewelry that has been in your family for three generations is missing, there is grief. When the job you were counting on vanishes into thin air, that too produces a sense of loss. Grief is the normal human response to any loss.
There is a lot of information on grief available to us now. Many books have been written that tell about the various stages of grief. These can be very helpful. There are also classes and support groups for people who are experiencing grief. Again, these are very helpful. A single sermon on the topic of grief is in no way a substitute for these resources. Rather, today’s sermon is an attempt to listen to the Word of God concerning grief. I can’t duplicate what the books and the support groups offer. My aim is different, to place our grief in the light of the great Biblical story, the story of
creation and redemption. Bringing the difficult human experience of grief into the world of the gospel will work a change in us. Our sense of loss can be transformed by the message of Christ.
Among the sixty-six books that make up our Bible, there is one that is all about grief. That is literally true — it is all about grief. This book is tucked away between the two great prophetic books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and it’s usually unnoticed. It is called Lamentations, and that is exactly what it is, a series of five laments, five poems of grief. Lamentations is all about grief. God’s people are in deep grief. They are grieving over the loss of Jerusalem. The city is in ruins. The temple itself, where they have experienced the presence of God, has been desecrated. Their elite leaders have been dragged off into exile in Babylon as prisoners. Out of that devastating experience of loss comes the book of Lamentations. Five poems of extreme grief have been put together to make up this book. These dirges give voice to the people’s intense feelings during those dark days.
They are experiencing the judgment of God. For long years, they ignored the prophets’ warnings, and now the blow has fallen. The book of Lamentations acknowledges the justice of God. They had it coming. Even so, there is still a sense of loss. They are grieving the loss of their leadership, their temple, their beloved city Jerusalem, everything they knew. The book of Lamentations unfolds the raw emotions of grief. Lamentations is the people "venting." In great detail, they pour out their sense of loss.
The trouble with grief is that it causes us to question the very foundations of our lives. We may even wonder about the reliability of God. As the book of Lamentations puts it, "He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace, I have forgotten what happiness is" (3:16-17). Grief can be so powerful, so all-encompassing, that all the things we have counted on to make sense of our lives are squeezed to one side. The sense of loss can be overwhelming.
What is the book of Lamentations doing in the Bible? Perhaps it is here to show us that grief is part of life. Perhaps it is meant to show us what to do with our grief. When you read this book, you notice that it is obsessed with God. The lamentations speak about God, how God has become their enemy and has allowed these terrible things to happen. But from time to time, the lamentations stop speaking about God and start speaking to God. They turn into prayer. This is something important to learn from the book of Lamentations, something you can take home and put into use right away. Don’t settle for talking about God. Talk to God. It is good and wise to take our complaints directly to God, to bring our grief before God in prayer.
But in the very middle of the book of Lamentations, something surprising happens. In the midst of venting their deep grief, the people come upon something completely unexpected: hope. All of a sudden, the grieving person says, "but this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope." It goes further: "the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness" (3:21-23). Somehow, the people who are bringing all their grief before God come to the conviction that God is still loving, still faithful. They find themselves living with hope. They can see a better tomorrow.
Now you could criticize them along these lines — nothing has really changed. The city is still in ruins. Their leaders are still doing hard time in Babylon. They would be hard-pressed to prove that God is faithful. Yet that is the conviction that we find right here in the middle of the book of Lamentations.
Lamentations isn’t the only part of Scripture that deals with grief. In the New Testament, the first generation of Christians was also acquainted with grief. In the city of Thessalonica, in the midst of a culture that had a hard time maintaining hope for the future, the church was grieving. They were grieving their Christian brothers and sisters who had died. That first generation was living expectantly. They were anticipating the Lord’s imminent return in glory. But they wondered: what of those who die before that great event? As they thought about it, it seemed to them that these departed friends might miss out. They would not be present to greet the Lord Jesus. They would be excluded from the great reunion with the Lord and the Lord’s people. So it was that the believers in that place, like their non-Christian neighbors, were struggling with grief. In the face of death, they too were left grieving, grieving without hope.
So Paul writes to the Thessalonians about these things. He gives them something tangible on which to rest. He outlines a whole series of events that he says will certainly take place. He shows that their friends who have died will not be forgotten. In fact, when the Lord returns in glory, the Christian dead will "rise first." They will not miss out on the great reunion with the Lord. How can Paul be so sure? The real foundation of these future happenings is something that has taken place in the past. In Paul’s words, "since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep." Jesus died and rose again. Everything depends on that.
What Paul offers is a lot like the emergence of hope in the book of Lamentations. God’s love and faithfulness are being worked out in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection of the Lord is a promise being kept. God is faithful. The result of all this, says Paul, is that believers can grieve in a different way. His aim, he tells them, is "that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope." I take that to mean that, yes, we do grieve when we suffer a loss. Remember, grief is the normal human response to any loss. We grieve, though, as those who have hope. Grief and hope at the same time! The Thessalonians’ very real grief is infused with hope for a better future. Thus, Paul tells them, "comfort one another with these words." Remind one another of the reason that we can have hope even in the midst of grief. Tell each other the truth of the death and resurrection of the Lord.
Again, my working definition is that grief is the normal human response to any loss. And there are a lot of different losses that come our way, as you well know. When someone has to give up a house and move into a care center, that is a loss. Or making the difficult decision to stop driving, which means a loss of independence. Or the loss of a dream, and an income, when your job comes abruptly to an end.
The Scriptures affirm that grief is real and sometimes severe. But they also affirm that hope is real. Grief is not all that there is. Since the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, hope is pressed into our lives, even in times of loss. Our hope for a better tomorrow is based on the character of God. Since God is loving and faithful, we can live with hope for the future.
Let’s be honest. If you’re a Christian, you will still suffer losses. And, because you’re human, you will experience the normal response to loss, which is grief. We Christians grieve when we suffer a loss. After all, we’re human, and grief is the normal human response to any loss. But … this is not the whole story. In the very midst of loss, and the grief that accompanies it, there is hope. Because the Lord died and rose again, even our losses are infused with hope. You might say that grief is large, but hope is larger.
So, what is there for us to do? Paul tells his Christian friends in Thessalonica, "encourage one another with these words." In our words and in our actions, we remind ourselves and each other of what is always true. The steadfast love the Lord never ceases. We shall always be with the Lord. So let’s do what Paul says. Let’s encourage one another with these words.
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