For a complete listing of the Lectionary scripture readings
for these Sundays, go to http://divinity.library.vanderbilt.edu/lectionary/
When one of the most faithful and devout young mothers in my
congregation told me that God was asking her, like Abraham, to offer up her
four-year-old son as a blood sacrifice, that got my full attention. Fortunately,
before she could act out her obsession, she had a total psychotic break. My
wife and I sat on either side of her in the back of a police car as it sped
through the night to the nearest county mental hospital.
That traumatic experience brought me face to face with the fact
that distorted concepts of God are not purely academic, but can have—and
have had—enormously damaging consequences. The Bible in which I have
immersed myself so deeply and lovingly all my life is not only “spirit
and life” but can be a “letter that kills” (John 6:63; 2 Corinthians
3:6). Reformed theologian A. van de Beek candidly admits, “The more one
wants to let all of Scripture speak for itself . . . the more unclear the
Bible becomes. The more we believe that the whole Word is revelation, the
less we know who God is.”1# Sensing that the reader may well be frustrated
by what appears to be a hermeneutic of theological nihilism, van de Beek asks,
“we could perhaps restrict revelation to certain events in the world.
We could restrict it to certain texts in Scripture. But then what is the criterion
for our selection?”2#
The Apostle Paul would answer in a flash: Jesus! “God was
in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19, NASB).
“In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Colossians
2:9). Mildred Bangs Wynkoop succinctly capsules Wesley’s Christological
hermeneutic when she says, “Christian love, revealed by God in Christ
. . . stands against any human . . . theory of God’s nature and His way
with man. . . . love as it is revealed in Christ.”3#
This is precisely the great revealing-teaching work of the Holy
Spirit: namely, to make the truth about God’s character and activity
revealed fully and finally in Jesus “known to [us]” (John 14:15-26;
15:26; 16:7-14). I cannot think of anything more important in preaching during
this ‘ordinary time’ in the Church Year, than celebrating the ‘extraordinary
truth’ that “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God”
can be seen in all its radiant splendor “in the face of Christ”
(2 Corinthians 4:6). “To see what God is like,” Philip Yancey rightly
says, “simply look at Jesus.”#4
I would like to invite you to join me on my “journey into joy” that
has been an all-consuming passion in recent years. Through preaching and teaching
I have been trying to wrap my mind and heart around that simple but infinitely
profound phrase, embodying a claim never made of anyone else in human history:
namely, “God was in Christ.” The first set of sermon suggestions
will seek to overcome the great divide between a holy God and a loving Christ.
We will endeavor to read the whole of Scripture through the lens of Christ.
In his inaugural address as Nazarene Theological Seminary’s
professor of theology, Thomas A. Noble asserted that the starting point in
forming a truly Christian theology is not what the Bible teaches about God
in general but what Jesus reveals about God in particular. “Theology
is . . . only truly theocentric if it is Christocentric. It is not, as Donald
Baillie reminded us, theism with Christology tacked on. There is no knowledge
of God except ‘through the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,
who is the Image of God,’ no knowledge of the Father except through the
Son, so that our theology then must be Christonormative.”#5
The charge often leveled at those who preach a Christ-like God
is that it tends to downplay God’s fierce wrath and judgment upon sin
and sinners. To the contrary, as we shall see in the second set of sermons,
“The Counter-Cultural Christ,” the very fact that God’s holiness
is wrapped in love sharpens and deepens the sense of sin. It was not before
his Damascus road encounter with Christ Alive that Paul made his astonishing
confession, “I am the worst of sinners,” but long after. Thankfully,
he goes on to say that he was “shown mercy so that in me, the worst of
sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for
those who would believe on him and receive eternal life” (1 Timothy 1:15-16).
PART I—“The Glory of God in the Face of Christ”
For reasons I can no longer recall, I had a visceral fear of
my maternal grandmother. When I would see her old Model A Ford kicking up
dust in our country home driveway, I would run into the house screaming, “Grandma’s
coming, Grandma’s coming” and dive under my bed! I inherited a similar
fear of a holy God that persisted into young adulthood—a God I perceived
to be peering down at me from His high and holy judgment bar, ever shaking
His head and saying, “That’s not good enough!” A God determined
to damn me to hell.
It was at a pastor’s retreat early in my pastoral ministry
that I made one of the most profound theological discoveries of my life. Dr.
Reuben Welch, long-time professor and chaplain at Point Loma Nazarene University,
was preaching on the text “God was in Christ.” He said something
that exploded in my mind and heart like an artillery shell: “God is like
Christ.” For days afterwards I was in a state of euphoria. Gradually,
the great abyss between a severe God and a loving Christ began to dissolve.
To see Jesus is to see what God is like. That pastor’s retreat marked
the beginning of a new awakening to the centrality of Christ in my mental
portrait of God, and in the way I would read the Bible.
The following sermon summaries, and full sermon manuscripts
at www.preachersmagazine.org, invite you to join me in the joy of proclaiming
the Good News that “the glory of God [is fully disclosed] in the face
of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). Our people need to hear that.
Rick Warren’s enormously popular 2003 best-seller, The
Purpose Driven Life, gave fresh impetus to John Calvin’s doctrine of
divine determinism: namely, that “God Is In Total Control.” As comforting
as that evangelical mantra may be, ascribing to God total responsibility for
everything is fraught with hazards and difficulties, not the least being the
unflattering and even grotesque image it paints of the Controller. If all
the heart attacks, crippling illnesses, diseases, accidents, divorces, wars,
and natural disasters that devastate and destroy human beings are God’s
doing, then who needs a Satan?
What is missing in Calvin’s portrayal of a despotic God
is the very heart and soul of the Christian gospel: namely, that “God
is love” (1 John 4:8; Psalm 145:8-9, 17). Calvin was right: God is the
sovereign Lord of the universe. Yet the radically new revelation about God’s
essential character in Psalm 145, exhibited in the cross-resurrection event,
and celebrated throughout the Bible, is that God’s sovereignty is the
sovereignty of love, a sovereignty that limits itself at the point of human
freedom. Love does not dominate but liberates. It seeks not to control but
sets the beloved free to become who they were created to be.
Because God’s love was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth,
we no longer see “a poor reflection” of God “as in a mirror,”
but “with unveiled faces” behold “the glory of God in the face
of Jesus” (1 Corinthians 13:12; 2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:6). Whatever we
say about Jesus, Total Control simply does not work. He showed no desire whatsoever
to micromanage anybody or anything. To the contrary, what He was supremely
interested in was not control but dynamic relationships. And relationships
can thrive only in a context of non-threatening and non-coercive freedom.
In this sermon we want to help our people understand that it
dishonors God to attribute to Him the negative consequences of living in a
fallen world under the shadow of sin’s curse. God does not “cause
all things,” but rather “causes all things to work together for
good to those who love him” (Romans 8:28, kjv). The good news is that
no contra-divine power “will be able to separate us from the love of
God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
A former student shared the sad story of his father, a dedicated
lay leader of an evangelical church, who in mid-life set out to read the Bible
through for the first time. He was first surprised, then shocked, and finally
outraged by the frequency and ferocity of divinely initiated and sanctioned
violence in the Old Testament. About halfway through the Book of Job he shut
his Bible never to open it again, and has not set foot inside a church since.
That man’s name is Legion. True, not all who have had a
similar experience leave the church or abandon the faith, but many give up
on the Old Testament altogether. And this is tragic, for apart from it we
cannot properly understand the Christ-event.
The purpose of this sermon is to celebrate the Good News that if God was uniquely
and fully disclosed in Christ, then Christians read the Bible not from Genesis
to Revelation but from Jesus backward and forward. In the words of St. Augustine,
“Jesus is in the Old Testament concealed, and in the New Testament revealed.”
There was no one of antiquity venerated more highly by the Jews than Moses.
Yet the author of Hebrews states unequivocally that there was a qualitative
difference between Moses and Jesus: “Jesus has been found worthy of greater
honor than Moses.” After acknowledging that, “Moses was faithful
as a servant in all God’s house” he goes on to say, “Christ
is faithful as a son over God’s house” (Hebrews 3:3-6). Jesus outranks
not only Moses and Joshua but also the angels: “So he became as much
superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs”
(Hebrews 1:4; see 1:5-14; 3:1; 4:8-10; 5:4-6).
That is certainly what Paul claims in our Scripture passage.
And that is what we want to develop as we explicate this text. In light of
his new understanding of God, implicit in the Old Testament but now made explicit
in Jesus, Paul exults, “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the
Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing
glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
For Paul and for us, there is no news greater than the “good news”
that God is like Christ.
In this passage, perhaps more than any other, Paul draws a sharp
distinction between what Kathleen Norris calls “the Monster God”
of “hard-edged fundamentalism,” and the “God of compassion”
who is “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:3). Our Scripture
lends itself naturally to an expositional outline that makes the contrast
clear:
1. God deals with us not according to justice, but according
to mercy (1:3a). If God dealt with us according to the strict standards of
justice, we would all have perished long ago. In defining God as the “Father
of mercies” (nasb), perhaps Paul had in mind the Mercy Seat that graced
the top of the Ark of the Covenant. “And there I will meet with you,
and from above the mercy seat . . . I will speak to you” (Exodus 25:17-22).
Where does heaven touch earth? Not at the judgment bar but at the mercy seat!
Where does divinity intersect humanity? At the mercy seat! Where does a holy
God meet unholy humans? At the mercy seat!
2. God does not afflict us, but comforts us (1:3b-7). Over
against the prevailing neo-Calvinism of our time, Paul never charges God with
“child abuse.” To the contrary, no fewer than 10 times in these
four verses, he uses the word paracletos. This is the word that Jesus used
to describe the Holy Spirit. Who is God? He is our comforter, our helper,
our counselor, and our encourager when we are battered by the fierce winds
of this fallen world’s life.
3. God is not a killer, but the one who raises the dead
(1:8-10). In the beginning, there was no death. In the new heavens and earth,
“there will be no more death” (Revelation 21:4). Death came into
the world through sin (Romans 5:12-19). Death is “the last enemy to be
destroyed” (1 Corinthians 15:24-28). The God revealed in Christ is one
who would rather be afflicted than afflict, would rather be destroyed than
destroy, would rather die than damn . . . and did!
Our people need this kind of a sermon to exorcise deeply imbedded
negative concepts of a Monster God—a God who is not our deliverer but
the one from whom we need to be delivered! As Reuben Welch likes to say, “God
is the kind of Father who could have a Son like Jesus.”
On what basis does Paul—and indeed all the New Testament
witnesses—make the absolutely astonishing and incredible claim that in
the human being Jesus of Nazareth, “all the fullness of deity dwelt in
bodily form?” (Colossians 2:9). His answer is that “[Jesus] was
declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according
to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 1:4, nasb).
Since every Sunday is Easter Sunday for Christians, it is always
appropriate to preach on the resurrection. The uniquely Christian claim that
“God was in Christ” was validated by God himself when He raised
Jesus from the dead. Jesus’ resurrection is not one bead of truth on
the string of the gospel story, but the string itself. “If Christ has
not been raised,” says Paul, “our preaching is useless and so is
your faith. . . . And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile;
you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:14). It is the axial truth
of our faith around which all other claims about Christ orbit.
After celebrating the centrality of the resurrection in the
gospels and the revolutionary impact the resurrection had upon the church—and
then subsequent world history—it is vitally important to show our people
how the resurrection makes a monumental difference in our lives in the here
and now.
1. The resurrection validates Jesus as Lord (Acts 2:32-36).
In an increasingly pluralistic society, Christianity has one claim that no
other religion makes: namely, that God has declared Jesus as Lord by raising
Him from the dead.
2. The resurrection gives me hope for the future (1 Corinthians
15:20-26). When I descend into the dark abyss of death, there is only one
thing that will matter to me, and that is the one who said, “I am the
resurrection and the life . . .” (John 11:25).
3. The resurrection gives me help for today (Romans 8:31-39). Death does
not wait for the undertaker. It comes in many ways and forms. For those who
are in Christ, beyond every death is a resurrection. Beyond every ending a
new beginning.
One need not be an expert in parable exegesis to “get it”
as to what is going on in this parable of the importunate widow: God is the
reluctant judge, we are the persistent widow, and we ought to pray hard. Thus
saith all the commentaries and preachers, including Bill Hybels, pastor of
the Willow Creek mega-church, in a recent sermon.
I have a problem with the traditional interpretation of this
parable. While portraying God as cold, distant, and heartless fits most people’s
image of who He is, it flies in the face of everything that Jesus teaches
us about God as our merciful and compassionate heavenly Father. Jesus asked
the rhetorical question, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good
gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give
what is good to those who ask him?” (Matthew 7:11).
So, how do we go about solving the puzzle of this parable? Art teachers will
sometimes encourage students to look at a landscape upside down, through their
legs, in order to gain a new perspective. I thought I would try that with
this parable, and I was shocked at what I saw. First, while the description
of this judge as one who “neither fears God nor respects man” simply
does not work when applied to the God refracted through Jesus Christ, it fits
me to a “T.” I tend to be judgmental and hard-hearted, shutting
my eyes and ears to the plight of the poor, the powerless, the disadvantaged.
Second, what would happen if we cast God as the importunate
widow? Would that work? Who is it that is constantly trying to get our attention,
pleading the cause of widows, of the vulnerable, the marginalized? Is it not
our compassionate God?
So, why pray? We pray not to get God’s attention but so that He can get
ours. Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Prayer
is listening to the plaintive voice of the Master. It is our willingness to
let our hearts be broken by the things that break the heart of God. It is
hearing His voice calling us to be attentive to the hungry, homeless, sick,
imprisoned; the disadvantaged, discouraged, and despondent.
This Isaianic servant song became the key that unlocked the
disciples’ understanding of Jesus, this strange Messiah who would rather
be “stricken” than strike, who would rather be “smitten”
than smite, who would rather be “afflicted” than afflict (53:4).
It opened a window into the very heart of God that is as surprising as it
is wonderful. In preaching what scholars believe to be the most eloquent,
elegant, and profound hymn in the Hebrew Scriptures, we want to let its music
play upon the strings of our hearts. It divides naturally into four stanzas:
1. The Sovereignty of the Servant (52:13-15). The unusual aspect
of this servant song is that it begins with the end of the story, the glorification
of God’s servant who is “raised and lifted up and highly exalted.”
It was not so much the resurrection but the cross that the disciples could
not understand. If Jesus was God’s Messiah, then why couldn’t He,
like King David of old, simply crush all Goliaths and deliver His people from
all tyrants and oppression forever without undergoing the agony of suffering
and death?
2. The Suffering of the Servant (53:1-3). Sovereignty separates,
but suffering unites. Suffering is the great leveler. It creates empathy and
draws us to the one who is wounded. It was not Christ’s sovereignty but
His suffering that bridged the “infinite qualitative distance between
God and man” (Soren Kierkegaard).
3. The Sacrifice of the Servant (53:4-6). The servant not
only suffers with us but for us: that is, the suffering servant is also our
sin-bearer. Through His voluntary suffering and death, Jesus fulfilled His
messianic destiny of reconciling us to God (2 Corinthians 5:19).
4. The Submissiveness of the Servant (53:7-9). The suffering
servant of God accepts His fate without complaint or recrimination. He understands
that God is working out His great redemptive plan through His sacrifice.
5. The Satisfaction of the Servant (53:10-12). Beyond suffering
is the joy of the dawn of a new day in which all sorrow and suffering and
pain are past.
When it comes to Jesus, the word that most clearly describes
His essential nature is not Sovereign but Servant. Servant is more than a
title or a role that He assumed. Careful attention to the Greek word Paul
uses to describe His servant-nature, morphe, clearly reveals that the word
servant expresses who Jesus really is. When Jesus “took upon himself
the nature of a servant,” He was not role playing but doing what came
naturally. In His pre-existence with God the Father He was a servant. After
His ascension He continued His servant ministry as our intercessor. As verses
9-11 clearly indicate, “God has highly exalted him” as Sovereign
Lord, but His is a sovereignty of servanthood, of self-giving, cruciform love.
This profound insight into Jesus’ essential nature begs
to be taken to a higher level. If Jesus is the full and final revelation of
God, then it can only mean that our God has a servant’s heart. His way
of being in the world is not that of an all-controlling despotic Sovereign,
but of a servant. He exercises His sovereignty through the lowliness, the
non-coerciveness, and the nonviolence of a servant.
If God has the heart of a servant, He does not afflict weak
and fallible humans with ceaseless guilt, terrifying fears, and a fate of
unspeakable horrors. God is not an omniscient designer, an omnipresent threat,
an omnipotent enforcer who pursues His grand “hidden plan,” as Calvin
maintained, regardless of how many cities are destroyed and people are exterminated
in the process. He is not one who manipulates history unilaterally, nor does
He impose His will coercively.
The Creator with the servant’s heart is a God of redeeming
love, mercy, and grace. He does not stand at a distance over against us but
is “Immanuel . . . God with us” (Matthew 1:23). He is present among
us in and through His Holy Spirit who is our paracletos, advocate, comforter,
and encourager. The omnipotence of God is the sovereignty of love. God limits
His sovereignty at the point of creation/creature freedom. It is His holy
love that wills the good of all creation, and the wellbeing of every person.
In The Sermon: Dancing the Edge of Mystery, Eugene Lowry tells
us that in preaching the parables of Jesus we are not dealing with discovery
but revelation. Discovery is what we do when we exegete Scripture. Revelation,
however, is that paradoxical truth, that mystery of the kingdom that cannot
be deduced from what we know. It is the strangeness we find in Jesus’
teaching where He says that “the last will be first, and the first last,”
and “whoever shall save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his
life for my sake and the gospels shall save it.”
So, in unraveling “truth dancing at the edge of mystery” in Jesus’
parables, how do we go about positioning ourselves to be surprised by the
joy of revelational insight?
1. We must immerse ourselves in the text, wallow in it,
crawl inside it, and look at it from every possible angle. When I did that
with this parable, I found many points of identification with the hapless
wedding guest, the quintessential outsider.
2. We look for trouble. In this parable trouble is not
hard to find. Whoever this hard and heartless king is, he bears no relationship
to the God revealed fully and finally in Jesus. Could it be that he represents
what God looks like to the one who has been excommunicated? And who projects
his rejection by people upon God?
3. We must position ourselves to be surprised. One way
to facilitate this process is to see who or what is not in the story that
should be there. I noticed that even though this is supposed to be a wedding
banquet for the king’s son, the son is not mentioned. Could it be that
he is still out on the “highways and byways” looking for lost sheep
like the hapless wedding guest?
I then looked at the parable through a wide-angled lens. I noticed
that it is the last of Jesus’ parables spoken before the cross. And it
is preceded by another parable where the tenants kill the landowner’s
son. Who is it that stood “speechless” before King Herod? And who
was cast out by the official spokesmen for God? Could it be that in the hapless
wedding guest we see a stark demonstration of the depths to which Jesus plunged
for our sakes?
PART II—“The Counter-Cultural Christ”
Shortly after the United States invaded Iraq, a reporter asked
George W. Bush whether he had ever prayed for Saddam Hussein. Stunned by the
audacity of the question, the President said nothing for a long moment. Finally
he admitted, “No, I have not. I haven’t even thought about it.”
No one would fault the President for failing to take the love
ethic of the Sermon on the Mount seriously, for everyone knows that you cannot
use the teachings of Jesus in making national policy. How, after all, do you
love people who hijack airliners and fly them into tall buildings, killing
thousands of innocent people? To “turn the other cheek” in the War
on Terror—or any other war for that matter—would be the epitome
of craziness. If a President were to try and implement Jesus’ love ethic
in any kind of literal way, he would be impeached in a heartbeat.
Also, what are we to make of a gospel that scandalously proclaims
that God loves sinners—gays, abortionists, adulterers, alcoholics, pornographers—the
very people who are taking our country down the road to ruin? What would Jesus’
saying that “the last will be first, and the first will be last”
do to the competitive spirit that is not only the operative principle of capitalism
but virtually all aspects of contemporary life including education, sports,
and the church? What Nazarene Credit Union could survive for even one day
if it embraced as its operative principle, “Give to everyone who asks
you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back”
(Luke 6:30)?
Jesus’ teachings were nothing if not counter-cultural.
No wonder people violently spewed Him out of their mouths. Never had anyone
appeared whose teachings were more outrageous, more threatening to the establishment,
and more challenging to the status quo.
In this series of sermons we will ask ourselves the hard question
as to whether we are willing to risk taking Jesus’ life and teachings
seriously. It is easy to wear a WWJD bracelet. It is quite another thing,
however, to not only ask “What would Jesus do” but do it!
History is full of ironies, but none greater than the one where
Luke puts Caesar Augustus and Jesus Christ in juxtaposition (Luke 2:1). This
little verse, buried so deeply in the Christmas story that nobody pays the
slightest attention to it, offers a perfect screen for projecting the stark
contrast between contemporary moral and cultural values with the life and
teachings of Christ. It follows a simple two-point outline:
1. Caesar was the best, the brightest, the most successful
that the world had to offer. He was the embodiment of all that is celebrated
and highly praised in society today: a man of driving ambition, innate skills,
inbred genius, and macho leadership. He put the stamp of his personality upon
his world as no other. He powerfully shaped the political and cultural history
of the West for another thousand years. All democratic forms of constitutional
government owe everything to Caesar Augustus. The values he personified are
those that drive the mighty engines that have made the United States the military,
commercial, and cultural super-power it is today. Now let’s set that
in contrast to—
2. Jesus is the best that God had to offer. In virtually
every respect, Jesus was Counter-Caesar. The differences could not be sharper.
What Caesar was, Jesus was not. And vice versa. Jesus’ life and death
made scarcely a ripple in the world of His day.
How different things look two thousand years later. The Roman
Empire that Caesar seized and ruled with such passion has long since perished,
but the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed is alive and well. Only a few
crumbling remnants of Caesar’s great buildings, coliseums, and construction
projects still stand. Buildings erected in honor of Jesus of Nazareth, however,
grace every city, town, village, and hamlet in the Western world, and in much
of the rest as well.
The birth of Jesus was a tiny, obscure, insignificant footnote
in the reign of Caesar Augustus. Now the reign of Caesar Augustus is a tiny,
obscure, insignificant footnote in the story of Jesus. Oh, what a difference
a few years makes. And a resurrection from the dead.
For the Jews of Jesus’ day, and for those of us committed
to “traditional moral values,” the most troubling and radical of
Jesus’ teachings is that God loves sinners: that is, He has boundless
compassion for those whose behaviors and lifestyles do not conform to our
understanding of morality. He loves them so much that He warmly embraces them
even before they confess their sins and demonstrate their repentance by changing
their ways. The scandalous revelation that God loves sinners is the clear
message of the three pericopes in our scriptural passage. To see how offensive
Jesus’ attitudes and actions were to the pious Jews of His day we must,
first of all, remind ourselves of:
1. The religious Jews’ attitude toward sinners. They
were convinced that God hates not only sin but also sinners. And for this
conviction they had weighty scriptural support, including Isaiah’s warning
about the “cruel day” of the Lord’s “wrath and fierce
anger” when He will “destroy . . . sinners” (Isaiah 13:9-13).
Jews divided their world into Jew and Gentile, righteous and sinners, clean
and unclean, sacred and profane. Over against this general loathing of sinners
by the “moral majority” of His day and ours, must be set—
2. Jesus’ attitude toward sinners. In the healing
of the paralytic, we see that Jesus accepts sinners “warts and all,”
even before they confess their sins or show any fruits of repentance. We have
here a wonderful demonstration of John Wesley’s doctrine of prevenient
grace, “the grace that goes before” repentance and confession of
sins.
3. God’s love for sinners is clearly disclosed in
Jesus’ calling of Levi, a despised tax collector, and in His willingness
to fraternize with those beyond the pale of “traditional moral values.”
In refusing to discriminate against certain groups of people because they
failed to live up to contemporary standards of morality, Jesus demonstrates
that God’s love knows no limits or boundaries. It is sobering to note
that after He declared God’s love for the morally reprobate, and that
human wellbeing is more important than Sabbath regulations, “the Pharisees
went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus”
(3:6).
When someone preaches a sermon that incites the congregation
to try to kill him, one can safely conjecture that the preacher has touched
a sensitive nerve. Such it was for Jesus when He delivered His first sermon
to His own people in His hometown. His listeners, who initially praised Him,
became so furious that they seized Him and tried to throw Him over a cliff.
What was it that Jesus said to precipitate such a spasm of spontaneous mob-violence?
Jesus dared to challenge some deeply rooted and long-treasured
notions about God. In His reading and exposition of Scripture, He began a
critique of Judaism’s theology of what Rene Girard calls “sacred
violence.” Furthermore, He called into question their deeply-rooted sense
of religious elitism as God’s chosen people. He opened up an entirely
new way of perceiving the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—so radical
that the good folk of Nazareth could not handle it.
First, Jesus’ selection and emendation of the Isaiah reading
challenged deeply-rooted Jewish ideas concerning God’s vengeance upon
sinners.
Second, to illustrate God’s love for those considered “beyond
the boundary” of conventional morality, Jesus cited two examples of God’s
rich mercy and boundless favor to the most unlikely sort of people, the Sidonian
widow and the Syrian general Naaman.
This was too much for the solid citizens of Nazareth. They were
not ready to hear about a God who bears no grudge toward the historic enemies
of the Israelites, who has no interest in balancing the scales of justice
by an avalanche of destructive wrath, and who makes no distinction between
men and women, married and widowed, Jew and Gentile, friend and enemy. They
could not comprehend a God whose love is universal and without limits, whose
care includes the lowliest of women and the smallest pagan child, and whose
healing touch reaches, embraces even untouchables.
Jesus pulled aside the curtain that had for so long hidden God’s love
and acceptance of all peoples—a God who is not interested in destroying
but saving human life.
It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that Jesus
never used His supernatural miracle-working power to hurt, coerce, conquer,
or kill. He was, rather, the embodiment of God’s Servant who “will
not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he
will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out” (Isaiah
42:2-3). It is not holy warriors whom Jesus called “sons of God”
but “peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9).
The sign that “God was with [Jesus]” was that He did
not wound and destroy. Rather, “he went around doing good and healing”
(Acts 10:36-38). Over against numerous prophetic portrayals of God as full
of fury against sinners stands the Golden Text of Christian devotion and theology,
“For God so loved the [sinful and wicked] world that he gave his one
and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal
life” (John 3:16).
As the full and final embodiment of God’s nonviolent nature,
it is not surprising that Jesus forbade the use of violence of any sort. He
sent His disciples out on their preaching and healing mission as “lambs
among wolves.” He instructed them to carry no staff for self-defense.
They were to pronounce peace upon whatever house or city they entered. They
were to be bearers of “good news” and agents of healing. If they
were not welcomed, they were to leave without recrimination. When reviled,
they were not to retaliate but bless (Luke 9:1ff., 10:1ff.). In the face of
violence, Jesus counseled neither “fight” nor “flight,”
but what Walter Wink calls the Third Way of Nonviolent Resistance: that is,
of overcoming evil with good. A careful exposition of our scriptural passage
gives concrete examples on how this can be done.
What differentiated early generations of Christians was their
conviction that the call of Christ was not to conquer but convert, not to
fight but forgive, not to destroy but heal, not to beat the drums of war but
work ceaselessly for peace. Yet armed with no rhetoric other than the gospel
of peace and no weapons but love, these followers of the Prince of Peace conquered
Rome in three centuries without drawing a sword.
None of Jesus’ sayings are more difficult and yet more
important than His Third Great Commandment. There was nothing new about the
first two great commandments: both were cornerstone precepts of the Torah.
But when it comes to loving enemies, now that’s another matter. Neither
Moses nor any of the prophets of Israel, neither Confucius nor Buddha, nor
any other religious leader ever uttered anything so bizarre, so impractical,
and so impossible as that. Loving enemies cuts across the grain. It violates
every human instinct. It simply doesn’t make any sense.
Sometimes the best way to deal with difficult topics is to use irony, which
I do in developing this sermon. In all due respect to Jesus—
First, We need to speak In Praise of Hating One’s Enemies
and dealing with them severely—a position that Jesus admits has solid
scriptural support (5:43).
1. We have a moral responsibility to take a strong stand
against enemies.
2. We have a psychological need to identify our enemies
clearly.
3. Our survival depends upon confronting and vanquishing
our enemies.
4. To confront, engage, and defeat our enemies feels good.
5. God hates enemies and deals with them severely. On the
other hand—
Second, We need to speak In Praise of Loving One’s Enemies
and dealing with the mercifully. I can think of at least five good reasons
why Jesus’ way makes even better sense.
1. We must love our enemies because God loves His enemies!
This is the radical, new revelation about God brought to us by Jesus of Nazareth!
2. Retribution doesn’t work.
3. Retribution often misfires.
4. In loving our enemies, the enmity is destroyed.
5. In loving our enemies, we are set free from hatred and
bitterness that eats away at the soul like a cancer. Jesus, of course, is
our supreme example.
In a recent gathering bringing together over three thousand
evangelical pastors, Anne Graham Lotz, Billy Graham’s daughter, was introduced
to speak. As she walked up to the pulpit, several hundred conferees got up
and noisily walked out, while several dozen others turned their chairs around
as a form of protest. We need to be reminded of—
1. The demeaning face of patriarchy in Jesus’ day.
Women were denied an education, a voice or vote in any public assembly, and
were forbidden to attend that part of the synagogue service when the Torah
was read. They existed in a rigid subordination to men. According to the tenth
commandment, it was clear to the rabbis that God has ascribed to women the
status of a slave, an ox, or a donkey. Over against this stands—
2. Jesus’ magnanimous attitude toward women. He always
treated them with utmost dignity and respect as befitting daughters of the
Most High God. Women may have been forbidden to hear God’s Word in synagogues,
but they were welcome wherever He taught. Women were among His closest friends
and most devoted followers. The first Christian evangelist was a woman, as
were the first preachers of the resurrection.
3. Jesus championed women’s rights. This is especially
evident in His strong teaching against divorce, which then as now victimized
women and children. Luke, the only Gentile to author biblical books, must
have been especially impressed by Jesus’ extraordinary relationships
with women. In his Gospel he demonstrates the impartiality by which Jesus
dealt with both men and women by consistently linking stories about men with
stories about women. He carries on that sensitivity to the role and importance
of women in his account of the early church where he often links them together
with men.
In Christ all walls separating people by race, social class,
and gender are torn down. Or as Paul put it, “There is neither Jew nor
Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”
(Galatians 3:28). Clearly, women have never had a stronger defender or greater
advocate for full equality with men, especially in the church, than Jesus
of Nazareth.
1. A. van de Beek, WHY? On Suffering, Guilt, and God, trans. John
Vriend (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 274-78.
2. Ibid.
3. Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, A Theology of Love: The Dynamic
of Wesleyanism (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1972),
18.
4. Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 125.
5. Thomas A. Noble, “The Knowledge of the Glory of God,” in The Tower, Vol. 1 (1997), p. 19.
