Adapted from a
sermon shared with First Presbyterian Church, Spring City, TN, January 8, 2017. This is a longer post because I took time to build a basic picture of some key stories behind Isaiah's declaration.
Please read the Isaiah passage. I can distill the message of this passage to
its three points:
(1) God is merciful
and steadfastly loves us as his people/children,
(2) God embraces us as our
savior; and
(3) God is/was with us and sustains us in spite of ourselves.
If I
do it that way, it would leave you cold unless you knew the stories of the Lord’s gracious
and praiseworthy deeds that stirred in the mind of Isaiah.
Many people aren’t as bible-literate these days and
it is highly likely a significant number of people who read this post do not
know the stories that form the basis of Isaiah’s declaration. Isaiah remembered
the old stories because they define the Hebrew people, - the Hebrew people are their stories. In the sense that Paul says, we are brought into
the covenant with God through Jesus, that is, we are grafted to the tree of
Israel, they are our stories.
Among those stories are the time God honored the righteousness and
faith of Abraham, when Jacob fled from his enraged twin brother Esau and made
camp for the night by a stream. He wrestled through the night with a man who
was God in disguise getting the better and not letting him go without a
blessing. He got the blessing but God lamed him in his hip and
changed his name to Israel, “the man who struggled with God.” Israel named the place Peniel – the face of
God.
Isaiah
remembered the story of Joseph being rejected and abandoned by his brothers
only to become the advisor to
the Pharaoh and saving Egypt from famine so that the Hebrews became a great nation
within Egypt; and the later story when new Pharaoh forgot these deeds and
enslaved Israel. Then God told Moses to tell the Pharaoh to “let my people go!” and then
led them from captivity into the wilderness, constantly struggling right up to
possessing the Promised Land with a stiff-necked people who continued
their struggle with the God who does not break promises.
Isaiah remembers the story of the people in the
Promised Land who could not follow the Law of their Divine King and demanded of the judge Samuel that
he anoint a human king. He recalls the
first three kings, Saul, David, and Solomon whose death precipitated the division of the twelve tribes
of Israel into the ten northern tribes of Israel and two southern tribes of
Judah.
Isaiah and the other prophets saw and recorded the stories
of the misdeeds of kings and the wealthy Israelites that distorted or ignored
the Law and built fortunes by disregarding or abusing of the poor and aliens living
among Israel and Judah. (Much like today.) Prophets foretold the destruction and
scattering of Israel’s ten tribes across the Mediterranean Sea and deserts of
the Middle East so that today there
is no trace of them except their story.
They foretold the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple as
Judah fell to Babylon and the Jews were taken into captivity.
Do the Hebrews remember the story of Jeremiah telling
the Judeans to go willingly into
Babylonian captivity and take wives and husbands there becoming part of their
culture? Or, remember how Isaiah told the Judeans a remnant will return
to Jerusalem and join all people who choose to embrace God and worship in
the Temple of the Lord; and the sad story of what happened when that remnant
returned to the Promised Land? Nehemiah persecuted all Judeans who wished
to worship their God in the Temple that he rebuilt unless they abandoned theforeign wives or husbands that Isaiah told them to marry, and their children.
Then the story of the Hebrews went silent until the
time of the subjugation of Palestine by Rome when John’s magnificent Prologue (1:1-18) comes to us. It
announces the reconciliation of God and humanity founded on the very essence of
God’s eternal compassion for humanity.
I am not sure a human has the power to write the
story contained in the words of the Prologue that I read on Christmas Eve, or
that it came from a human mind at all. It is a sweeping story of the love of
God for His creation and a masterful summary of the wonderful deeds of the Lord
that as Isaiah described. The Prologue is not just a story. It is the capstone
story of God's relationship to humanity.
It contains an intentional parallel to the creation
story of Genesis that reveals the full power, significance and relationship of
Jesus and God. John tells us this the man Jesus is the form of God who reveals
to us who God is. Hear it as an ancient hymn – see Philippians 2:5-16 for another
similar, very old hymn.
The Prologue reveals its message in the last three
verses, 16 – 18, that I
paraphrase this way, "No human has seen or knows God and no human except
Jesus who is the incarnate Revelation of God to us, can reveal God's glory.
Jesus revealed God through the grace and truth we have received as the gift of
eternal life. Even though the man Moses looked upon the face of God, he could
only reveal to the Israelites the Law given by God.
The Prologue has four major sections. I encourage you
to read the Prologue in its
entirety and then read my paraphrase below that attempts to clarify its story. It
is a powerful story.
Part 1.
1:1-2 para: Jesus was present as the (Word) revelation of God eternally,
before all things began.
Part
2. 1:3-5
para: Jesus is the
irresistible light shining into the darkness that preceded creation that
brought all life into being. èthe
revelation of God
Then
a pause to clarify John the Baptist is not Jesus. 1:6-9 para: A man named John testified to the truth of this of life and announced
it is coming into the world as revelation of God to everyone. - Oh by the way,
John the Baptist prepared the way, but is not Jesus.
Part
3. 1:10-12 para: Jesus lived in the world as the
revelation of God, and was unknown or denied by many even among his own people,
but to those who believed he gave grace to be God’s own children.
Then
a pause to clarify this new birth as a child of God. 13 para: that is, those who become God’s children do
not become so by human means but by the will of God.
Part
4. 1:14 para: Jesus lived among us fully as a man yet also as the revelation of God
that the children of God see and share the full glory of a compassionate God
who loves us as if we were a father’s only son.
Another pause to remind Jesus was not
John. 15 para: This man John testified that Jesus is the Revelation who existed before
all things came into being.
Part 4 continues: 1:16-18 para: No human has seen or knows God and no human
except Jesus, the incarnate Revelation of God, can reveal God’s glory. Even the
man Moses who looked upon the face of God could only reveal to the Israelites
the Law given by God. Jesus is the grace and truth of God, he has brought that
grace and truth of God to the world.
We have received this through him. (As grand hymn: “how about that!”)
Is the Prologue the last story? Do the stories of
God’s gracious deeds end with the crucifixion? The magazine, “The
Christian Century” began at the opening of the 20th century
with the optimism and conviction every story had been told and that the era of fulfillment
of the Kingdom of God is at hand. All
the work of science and religion would culminate in the world-wide spread of
the knowledge of Christianity. But, within
forty years WWI swept the world, the world economy collapsed, WWII brought us German
death camps for Jews, the advent of atomic weapons and the Cold War between the
forces of Russia, China and the West. In the closing decades of that century we
observed first-hand the decline of the Church as a force of God’s purpose in
the world. Many wonder, has Christianity died, or at best, is it stuck in the
mud of Modernity? Rather that doubt God
is acting in the world we ought to ask how is
God acting in the world? Where are the stories of God’s present glorious deeds
and praiseworthy acts?
We cannot deny this fact that Isaiah drives home: We
are our stories. Our stories reveal God’s present glorious deeds and
praiseworthy acts, the story of 21st Century Christians - unless we
think Christianity is dead and give up.
I think the Spirit has left many places. To a tragic degree the organized Church has
become a body more concerned with its own stability and wealth rather than its
call by God to be a sail
boat in the world testifying to God's glory in the world and seeking
people everywhere who feel the spirit and call to work for the glory of God, as
John describes in the Prologue.
The Gospels have two ideas about the end times
(eschatology) and the Kingdom of God. One thread waits for the kingdom of God that
will come when Jesus returns. This is the apocalyptic version of Christianity
called a future eschatology. This can be dangerous if it seduces us to think we
must work very hard to change the world to build the Kingdom of God. It is seductive
because it encourages us, even subconsciously, to embrace the mindset that we know
the mind of God and can act on His behalf because God is not. We can convince
ourselves that we have a better idea than God for what God plans to do. This is
a heresy or false teaching some call functional
atheism. However, it is a healthy motivation to work for the Kingdom of
God for those who favor the other idea. (Functional atheism is not always a
conscious intention but a subconscious thinking that we alone have the power to
change the world for God. It does not
respect either conservative or fundamental theology or liberal theology.)
The other idea says the Kingdom of God is already
here. The kingdom of God is at hand. This
is called the realized eschatology. John’s
Prologue proclaims this message very directly, the very existence of Jesus as a
man in the world revealed to humanity who God is and through Jesus we see
finally the face of God and his kingdom. That revelation marks the beginning of
the kingdom of God on earth. We know who God is through Jesus. I embrace this
way of thinking. Don't need no ticket just get on board…
Don’t get me wrong. Evil in the world still struggles
against the Light and the time after our end will be one of greater joy;
however, our path to eternal salvation was sealed when Jesus Christ entered the
world. But the revelation of God through Jesus tells us how to live well day-to-day
in the kingdom of God. Believing the Kingdom of God is at hand does not mean “look
for a comfortable chair to sit and wait for our end.” Rather as James says; our faith fuels
our obligation to act as Christians using our own hands to spread that glory of
God that the Prologue describes.
Christianity is not dead in Spring City. First Presbyterian Church is alive and filled
with the Spirit, but we are not in a rose garden. We are called to the hard but joyful work to glorify
God, but how to do it?
Jesus said God is the God of the living. Our own
stories of living faithful lives speak of the gracious deeds of the Lord. Our every
story that glorifies God testifies to a gracious deed.
How do we write our story? First, we need to acknowledge
our stories are about the failures and successes of those who came before us.
They give context to living to glorify God. Their stories do not tell the world
what they did or how they did it, they tell the world why they did it. Today, we must tell our story the only way we can,
by living it to reveal to the world why
we are Christians. Second, we do not tell
our story, we live it. Our actions are our story, our children will write
it down and retell it again and again.
I would like to challenge all of us to let our lives become
the stuff of story tellers about the words and deeds glorifying God that are so
powerful that they are remembered and told by our fellow-Christians, our
children. Get out and live the Christian life. You will make new stories of
deeds we have yet imagine about the Spirit within this congregation that
inspires gracious and praiseworthy deeds of the Lord. Amen.
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