How to Approach an Empty Tomb

Delivered April 8, 2012

John 20:1-18

This sermon can also be viewed as video at this link: YouTube

In the Bible the Easter story takes place mostly in a graveyard. It has to do with a missing dead body and then appearances of the dead person to his friends. It is really kind of strange, which is probably why our culture has sanitized it.  American business doesn’t know how to market something like this. So they have tried to repackage it as having something to do with an Easter bunny, Easter baskets and Easter eggs. Or we talk about banalities like butterflies and flowers blooming. Some folks try to remake it into a Spring equinox celebration (the way people make Christmas into a winter solstice celebration), but that is tough to do because Easter often falls nowhere near that day. Consequently Easter is one of those days when if you aren’t religious, there is not much to do at Easter. 

Easter still attracts people to church. Not as much as Christmas my more but more than an ordinary Sunday. I am grateful for that and happy to see people, especially when families come together to worship. I know that people come to worship on Easter for different reasons and from different perspectives. That is what we are going to be looking at this morning. Today we are going to look at how three different people approached the tomb of Jesus on the first Easter morning: the disciples John, Peter and Mary Magdalene.

I. First we will look at the apostle John. He is the one who wrote this gospel and refers to himself in the third person in this manner throughout the gospel as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” or “the other disciple.” Mary Magdalene, the most prominent of the female disciples, came to the cemetery very early. She got close enough to the tomb to see that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. She may have even looked inside and seen that the body was missing. We don’t know that for sure, but she concludes that Jesus’ body is missing. Verse 2 says, “Then she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.”

At this shocking news Peter and John ran to the garden tomb. John, being the younger of the two, outruns the older man, but waits respectfully at the tomb entrance for the elder apostle before going in. While waiting, John took a peek inside the tomb but did not go in. Verses 4-5 say, “So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he did not go in.” Peter arrives and immediately enters the tomb and sees the burial clothing and how it is all positioned, but he did not see Jesus anywhere. Then verse 9 says that John went into the tomb and saw the same thing as Peter, but it says “and he saw and believed.”

Peter and John saw the same evidence in the tomb; perhaps Mary did also. They all saw that Jesus’ body was missing and the burial cloths lying in the tomb, but only John believed. In this story John is the BELIEVING DISCIPLE. What did he believe? He believed that Jesus had risen from the dead, even though the next verse makes it clear that “For as yet they did not know the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead.”  John believed without seeing the risen Christ and without knowing that the OT Scriptures taught that the Messiah was to rise from the dead. This is really a remarkable thing! Why did John believe this when no one else did? It had not entered into the mind of Mary Magdalene. Her conclusion drawn from the evidence of empty tomb was that someone had stolen the body.  Peter, as we will see, was not willing to jump to any conclusion yet. But John immediately believed.

How do we account for this? I think that God revealed this truth to John’s heart. There is a scene earlier in the gospels where the apostle Peter made his famous confession of faith in Christ. He proclaimed at that time: “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” Jesus replied to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” God had revealed this to Peter. I think that John knew that Jesus had risen from the dead in the same way that Peter had known that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. God revealed it to him. I believe that many people today believe in Christ and his resurrection in the same way. I might go so far as to say that the only way that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and has risen from the dead is if we have been convinced by the Holy Spirit. I don’t think the physical evidence alone can convince us of the resurrection.

I subscribe to a weekly email newsletter published by Skeptic magazine. The editor is the well-known atheist Michael Shermer. I enjoy the articles because they are often true. For example, last week’s edition was on debunking the evidence for UFOs, and I agree with them on that. I think UFOs are a bunch of malarkey. (Now don’t start sending me emails about how real UFOs are.) In fact I agree with Skeptic magazine on many issues, which the editors would probably be very surprised at. But a couple of months ago they had an article on the resurrection of Jesus. Gary Whittenberger argued that the most reasonable explanation for the early Christians belief in the resurrection of Jesus was that it was a mass hallucination experienced by the disciples. He actually argued a convincing case. He related how today people who have lost loved ones often report seeing their dead loved ones. I have had people tell me ghost stories like that a well. But I don’t think that is what happened on Easter. Not because I can produce a more objective rational explanation, but because the Holy Spirit has convinced me otherwise. Of course skeptics would dismiss the testimony of the Holy Spirit as imaginary, and I understand why. But I cannot dismiss the Holy Spirit.

When it comes down to the wire, we can explore all the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and not be able to come to a conclusion. After all, the resurrection of Christ happened 2000 years ago! Talk about a cold case! We cannot possibly expect find any physical evidence of the resurrection. You can visit the site of Jesus tomb in Jerusalem today, and you aren’t going to find anything. You can scientifically examine all the relics of the Roman Catholic Church having to do with Christ and not find any evidence. Even the Shroud of Turin (which purports to be the burial shroud of Jesus) has been proven to be a fourteenth century forgery, regardless of what the television documentaries say. There is no physical evidence remaining for the resurrection of Jesus.

The evidence is all based on the written accounts of the gospels. We have to decide whether or not they are reliable. Skeptics can come up for all sorts of reasonable theories for why these documents can’t be trusted. On the other hand biblical scholars make a convincing case for the reliability of the gospel accounts. If you don’t want to believe in the resurrection, you can find many reasons and theories to support your case. If we keep an open mind we can also find lots of literary and historical reasons to believe in the resurrection.  In the end this approach doesn’t convince anyone. It comes down to something much more personal and spiritual. John believed in Jesus resurrection, even though the only evidence he had at the moment was an empty tomb, because God worked in his heart to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. I think he works in people’s hearts today in the same manner. He might even be working in your heart today in this way.

II. The second person I want to look at is the apostle Peter. I called John the believing disciple. I will call Peter the CAUTIOUS DISCIPLE. To understand Peter’s perspective at the tomb on Easter morning we have to remember everything he had been through the last few days. He was Jesus’ right hand man - one of the three leaders of the apostles: Peter, James and John. He was the first to recognize Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. He expected Jesus to be acknowledged as the Messiah by the Jewish people, and that seemed to be happening on Palm Sunday. Peter pledged that he would always be at Jesus’ side no matter what, even if it meant dying with Christ.

At the Garden of Gethsemane when the temple authorities came to arrest Jesus, Peter tried to defend him with the sword. He even wounded the servant of the High Priest. But he was told by Christ to put his sword away. As Jesus was taken away by the temple guard, Peter followed at a distance and waited in the courtyard while Jesus was on trial. There in the courtyard Peter was asked three times if he knew Jesus, and three times he denied Christ. Then the rooster crowed; Peter realized what he had done and wept bitterly. Then his Lord was convicted, whipped brutally and crucified. But Peter was too ashamed and afraid to even show his face at the cross.

Peter had been on an emotional roller-coaster ride. Jesus was dead and buried, and Peter thought the whole adventure of that last three years was over. Then early on Sunday Mary Magdalene came knocking on his door with the news that Jesus’ tomb was open and his body missing. He ran to the tomb to see for himself, and found the tomb as Mary had said, with the body gone and the grave clothes still in the tomb. What was Peter to think?  It is difficult to get into someone else’s mind, but I think that Peter was being cautious now. He had been through a lot in the last couple of days. Now he didn’t know what to think about Jesus, so he was taking it slow.

People today are in this same situation. There are a lot of people who have been through tough times with religion and the church. They have been burned. They have been disillusioned. They have been disappointed in church people and church leaders. They don’t know what to think about church, Christianity or even Christ any more. I have met a lot of people like this during my ministry. In fact I have been one of them. I have been burned. I was burned out, and I left the ministry intentionally for a year. I took a year Sabbatical, and ended up being away from ministry for a year and a half. During that time I reexamined everything about my faith - every doctrine, every belief. I examined carefully everything from my belief in God to my faith in Christ. I came out of that year convinced of  the gospel – and in fact I am a much stronger Christian for having been through it. Although I am much more wary of religion than I ever was before. I am still much more cautious than before about everything religious.

Perhaps some of you are in this same situation.  You have been through an emotional or spiritual rollercoaster ride when it comes to your faith, your relationship to the church, or even your belief in God. You don’t know what to think any more, just like Peter did not know what to think when he came to the tomb that Easter morning and saw it empty. Maybe empty is the best word to describe your feelings. I am here to tell you this morning that it is alright to feel this way. Easter was about the empty tomb before it was about the risen Christ. In fact many scholars think that Mark’s gospel originally ended with only the empty tomb and no resurrection appearances. All the Easter accounts in all four gospels start out with a period of time when there is just the empty tomb. The empty tomb is space to think, space to question, space to ponder, space to explore the possibilities. I hope that this church is also that type of place – that here you would feel free to be cautious like Peter. I also hope it is a place where eventually your questions will be answered in the risen Christ. But that might come later. At the empty tomb we do not hear any exclamation of faith from Peter, as we do from John. Peter at this point did not see and believe. He just saw and wondered what it meant.

III. The third person at the tomb in John’s account of Easter morning was Mary Magdalene. She is the most important character in this account. I call her the LOVING DISCIPLE. I could call her by other titles. I thought of calling her the weeping disciple or the grieving disciple or the waiting disciple. But I have decided to call her for this message the loving disciple. That is because the reason she weeps is because of her love for Jesus. The reason she grieves so strongly for Jesus is because she loved him so much. The reason she lingers at the tomb is because of her love for Jesus. After Peter and John left the grave to go back home, Mary remains at the tomb. That decision made all the difference. If Peter and John had not been so quick to go home, they would have seen what Mary saw. But they couldn’t wait around for no reason. They did not see the point of sitting around crying, so they returned home. But Mary stayed at the tomb, and she wept.

After a while she took a second look inside to see again where Jesus had lain; this time the tomb was not empty. This time there were two angels sitting where Jesus’ body had lain. “They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” Notice that Mary did not yet believe that Christ had risen. She still thought he was dead. She was simply grieving the loss of her Lord that she loved so much. The scripture says, “¹⁴ Now when she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.”¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him,^[a] “Rabboni!” (which is to say, Teacher).

She sees the risen Lord. The reason she got to see him whereas the men didn’t was because she waited. And the reason she waited was not because of her faith but because of her love. There is a message here for us. Love is more important than faith. The apostle Paul said in the faous love chapter of I Corinthians 13, “So faith, hope, love abide, these three. But the greatest of these I love.”  Such love will lead to faith. This morning we are celebrating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. That is unbelievable to many people. Even good church people struggle with the idea of a physical resurrection of Christ. That is alright, as long as you love Jesus. That is what matters. I believe that if we love, then the faith will come. Mary did not believe Jesus had risen when she waited at the tomb. She was not even thinking about such a possibility. It was so far from her thoughts that Jesus stood right in front of her and she didn’t recognize him. But she loved Jesus, and so when he called her name, then she knew him.

It is the same with us. That is why I do not try to argue anyone into believing in the resurrection of Christ. I figure Christ can convince people that he is alive, just like he did with Mary. I don’t need to do that. The Holy Spirit can convince people that Christ arose like he did with John. But I do encourage you to love him. Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart and to love others. If we love God we will love his Son. And if we love his Son, then one day we will turn around and hear him call our name. Then like Mary, we will know that Christ is risen.

Divine Mathematics

Delivered April 1,2012

Philippians2:5-11

 See the video of this message at this link on YouTube

We all had to take arithmetic in school. Some of us were good at it and some of us weren’t. I don’t know how far you got in math. I was pretty good at it at first. I even enjoyed algebra. But when I took geometry, for some reason I had some trouble with it. Then came trigonometry and calculus, and I was out of my depth. Fortunately in religion we don’t have to use math much. The most I use numbers these days is when I balance my checkbook, monitor my retirement funds, and do the Sudoku puzzles in the newspaper. When you run across numbers in the Bible, most of the time they are symbolic or hyperbolic. Unless you are into calculating years in biblical prophecies until the end of the world or the return of Christ (which I am definitely not into doing) then the only time a pastor needs to use mathematics is when it comes to church budgets. So why entitle a sermon “divine mathematics?” Just to allay your fears, I am not going to delve into the murky waters of numerology. There was a book in the 1990’s entitled “The Bible Code” which purported to discover secret messages encoded in the Hebrew text of the Bible. I think that type of stuff is a bit crazy. Even though numbers have regular symbolic meanings in the Bible, I don’t believe in secret messages or mystical formulas.

Today I am going to explore a famous passage of scripture in Philippians 2. It gives an overall view of the movement of Christ from heaven to earth and back again. I still remember how a New Testament professor of mine in seminary used to graph this divine descent and ascent by putting a parabola on the blackboard. I don’t know if you remember parabolas from math class. I will give you the official definition of a parabola: “In mathematics, a parabola is a conic section, created from the intersection of a right circular conical surface and a plane parallel to a generating straight line of that surface.” If you are like me, that is as clear as mud. Let me put it in words that even the mathematically challenged people like me can understand.  A parabola is like a big U. That is all you need to know to understand this sermon. That big U – that parabola – graphs the movement of Jesus’ life and our lives.

I. I have two points to this message this morning that follow this mathematical theme. The first one I am calling the PARABOLA OF GRACE. In our passage today the apostle Paul traces the movement of Christ from the heavens to the earth. In another passage he even takes Christ even further down into “lower places of the earth” and then back up to the heavens again. But this is much more than just a tour of the ancient three tiered universe, like Dante’s Divine Comedy. Paul speaks about the spiritual journey that Christ took, and then he invites to take a similar journey.

Our scripture passage today begins with the preincarnate Christ in heaven. Christian theology, following the direction of the apostles John and Paul, teaches that Christ’s life did not start in Bethlehem on Christmas Day. It teaches us that before Christ became a man in Jesus of Nazareth, he was God. Paul say in verse 6 of our passage that “Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God….”  In short this means simply that Christ is divine. This is where it gets tricky, because we are talking about the doctrine of the Trinity here, and that can be really confusing. That is where you really get into divine mathematics. If you think trigonometry is bad, just try to figure out Christian theology!  1 person of the trinity plus another person, plus a third: 1+1+1=1. One God in three persons.

Christ preexisted as God in heaven – one of the three persons of the Trinity. But he did not stay in his exalted position in heaven as God. Paul writes: “Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, ⁷ but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.”  The NRSV translates it: “but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” Those who know Greek much better than I do say this translation “emptied himself” is more accurate. God emptied himself in Jesus Christ. The eternal God emptied himself to become a human being. Exactly what that means is the million dollar question. How can God became man? It is impossible, and yet we confess that the impossible happened in Jesus Christ. In geometry it is like saying you can have a round square or a two dimensional cube. The words divine and human do not go together. Yet that is exactly what the gospel says happened in Christ.

Then it goes on to say that as Christ made this downward trajectory to earth that he went even further. Verse 7 says he took the form of a servant. Verse 8 of our text says, “And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.”  Not only did Christ become a man but be became a servant. He made that clear at the Last Supper when he washed his disciples’ feet, something only the lowest household servant did. And he died like a man, even though he was God. Not only did he die like a man, he died the worst death a man could die at that time and place. He died a disgraceful torturous death on a cross.

So we are at the bottom of this parabola now – the lowest of the low. In the trough of this U. Elsewhere the Bible takes us even further than Paul’s words here, talking about him being buried. In his letter to the Ephesians Paul talks about Christ in death descending to the lowest parts of the earth. This is the doctrine of the apostle’s creed where it says that Christ descended into Hades. I don’t want to run down that rabbit hole here today, but you get the point. The almighty eternal God lowered himself to the lowest level possible. The almighty became powerless. The immortal died. The King became a servant. The sinless one became sin. You can’t get any lower than that. The Bible says that the Holy One became sin for us. Again what that means is beyond my understanding. The holy God cannot become sin. Yet the gospel proclaims that is exactly what happened on the cross. He became sin, suffered the consequences of sin, and bore the punishment of sin for us. Theologically speaking this parabola of grace traces Jesus’ journey from the highest heaven to the deepest hell.

Then Jesus begins his return journey to heaven. That begins on Easter morning when the impossible happened again. The dead came back to life. Jesus rose from the dead. People hear this, and they scoff because we all know this can’t happen. And they are right! It can’t happen. Just like God can’t become a man, and 1+1+1 cannot equal 1. It is all impossible. In this same way the resurrection of Jesus is impossible. But Jesus said, what is impossible with man is possible with God. Scripture says that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to the disciples over a period of forty days and then bodily ascended into heaven. That is impossible also. How can a physical body go into the sky. Where would it go? We don’t live in the ancient three tiered universe. We know that heaven is not up in space somewhere and neither is hell at the core of planet earth. We are using earthly language to describe spiritual truth here. We use spatial language – up there and down there - descending and ascending – to refer to spiritual dimensions.  Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.  The traditional language says that he sits at the right hand of God the Father. Verse 9 says, “ Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name…” So the parabola of grace is complete. Jesus has returned to his heavenly place.

II. But our passage is about more than just what Jesus did. It is about what we do. That is my second point. To carry on this theme of mathematics, I am calling this point the EQUATION OF SALVATION. But I am not going to be giving you any algebraic formula. What is important is that we follow the path that Jesus has already taken – the descent and the ascent.

Paul starts in our passage: “ ⁵ Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus ….” We are to have the same mind as Christ. The path that he has trod, we are to trod. This attitude that he had is to be our attitude. The mind that he had is to be our mind.

We are to take this admonition very seriously. Being a Christian is not just admiring Jesus. It is not just having him as our model and example. It is to have the mind of Christ. There is another passage where Paul uses the same phrase. He says in 1 Corinthians: “For “who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” We are to be Christlike in our thinking, our attitude and in our behavior.

This means that just as Christ humbled himself, we are to humble ourselves. Christ got off his throne in heaven to come to earth to take the role of a servant. So are we to do. To get off our high horse, as my mother used to say. When I was a kid and was acting arrogantly, she would scold me and tell me to get off my high horse. I never understood what horse she was talking about, but that was the expression. To humble ourselves means to get off our high horse, get off our high thrones that we sit on judging everyone and everything, and humble ourselves and take the form of a servant – to be a servant of God and a servant of others. That is what the church is about. We are to be a community that serves God and serves others in the name of God. That is our mission.

If we think we are better than anyone else we do not have the mind of Christ. If we think we are more righteous then others because we are Christians then we do not have the mind of Christ. Even on Palm Sunday when Jesus rode into Jerusalem he did not come in on a white horse as a mighty king. The gospels describe his attitude as lowly riding on a donkey, and not even an adult donkey but a foal. He could not have appeared any more humbly and still made his point on Palm Sunday that he was Messiah. We are to have this same mind.

I think that as a church it means that we go to people rather than expect them to come to us. A lot of churches want people to come to them. But Jesus came to us, and called his disciples to go out to others. Our mission is to go to the people outside of these walls. And when we do, then people will want to come in to see what makes us go out and serve others. It is humility that draws people. We naturally resent the proud and haughty and arrogant. We are attracted to the humble and loving and caring. An arrogant Christian is the worst advertisement for the gospel. And I have known my share of arrogant Christians, and I am not innocent of exhibiting my own type of arrogance as well. But the mind of Christ is to empty ourselves of ourselves. My mother also used to regularly tell her kids that we were ‘full of yourself.” It is a good expression. We are often full of ourselves. The solution is to empty ourselves as Christ emptied himself and took the role of the servant.

Our passage says: “⁹ Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, ¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, ¹¹ and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” One of the ways that we humble ourselves and empty ourselves is by exalting Christ. We don’t humble ourselves by putting ourselves down; that is false humility. We don’t humble ourselves by denigrating ourselves or thinking we are worthless. That is just low self-esteem. We humble ourselves by acknowledging that there is one higher than ourselves, and putting ourselves under him by calling him Lord. When we bow the knee to Jesus Christ we humble ourselves.

And Jesus tells us that those who humble themselves will be exalted. And our ultimate exaltation is heaven, the end point of this parabola of grace. We don’t get to heaven by climbing the ladder to heaven - getting everything right, putting all our ducks in a row – right doctrine, right behavior, right worship, - get everything right and we are righteous and our reward is heaven. No, that is self-righteousness. That is not the equation of salvation. We are exalted in God’s eyes when we have the mind of Christ and humble ourselves as Christ humbled himself. Then “at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and  every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

The Next New Thing

Delivered March 25, 2012

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Video available at YouTube 

Time Magazine recently had a special annual issue on the “Ten Ideas that are Changing Your Life.” They dealt with things like technological, sociological, and environmental changes in our society. Number four on the list dealt with religion. I don’t think the topic they choose was particularly new. I have been reading about it for years. It is a variation on the “spiritual but not religious” theme that religious professionals have been talking about for the last twenty years. What is new is that this trend is growing.  The article notes that the fastest growing religious group in America is those who say they have no religious affiliation. This article calls them the Nones – not the Catholic sisters nuns, but N-O-N-E-S. When asked in surveys what their religious affiliation is their answer is ”none.”   Their numbers have doubled since 1990. They now make up 16% of the population. These people are not atheists or agnostics, which make up 4%. The nones believe in God, pray, and many will even participate in spiritual practices, but they are not involved in traditional religious organizations.  The emergent church movement of the last few years is one aspect of this phenomenon. It is reinventing Christian spiritual community. It is the next new thing in religion.

In my mind it is not really new. The prophet Jeremiah was talking about something like this 2500 years ago. Jeremiah prophesied about the “next new thing” in religion in his day. He called it a new covenant. I think it is the heart of true Christian spirituality. It is what causes periodic reformations in the Christian church. There is a phrase from the 17^th century Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda: The church reformed and always  being reformed. (Dutch Reformed theologian, Gisbertus Voetius, 1589–1676) It was understood that the Protestant reformation of the 16^th century was not a one-time event, but that the church needed to continually be reformed. This was not understood as the church reforming itself; it was understood that God would undertake this reformation in each generation. Christianity easily falls into legalism and dogma. It continually needs to be revitalized. This is what Jeremiah was talking about concerning Hebrew religion in his day over 500 years before there was a Christian church, and it is what I would like to talk about this morning using his words as my format.

Jeremiah talks about a new covenant that was different than the old covenant. He says,  “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah — ³² not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord.” Christians understand this prophecy to refer to the new covenant established by Jesus. Jesus used Jeremiah’s phrase at the Last Supper, “For this is My blood of the new covenant.” The Letter to the Hebrews calls Jesus the mediator of the new covenant. This new covenant needs to be a continually renewed covenant; otherwise it just sinks back into the old legalism and dogmatism. Jeremiah describes four aspects of this new thing – this new covenant.

I. The first is INNER GUIDANCE. Jeremiah says in verse 33 “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts….” Jeremiah is talking about the difference between outer religion and inner religion. The old covenant was about following external rules. It was Law. Laws are not bad. We are a nation of laws. Our country has countless laws and ordinances at the federal, state, county and local level. Congress seems to love passing more and more laws. And the judicial branch of government interprets these laws, and the law enforcement enforces these laws. We Americans are in love with laws. If we think something is wrong with the world, we will pass a law. We assume that every problem can be solved by new laws and regulations. We are a nation of legalists. There is no wonder that there are movements in our country devoted to trying to get government off our backs.

Religion tends to follow the same pattern. We think that spiritual and moral problems in life can be solved by following moral laws and religious rules. Jeremiah is saying that when it comes to spiritual matters there is a need for something new. God says, “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts….” Jeremiah is saying that true religion and morality is from the inside out rather than from the outside in. It is internal and not external. This does not mean that there is no right and wrong – or that everyone decides for themselves what is correct. The Bible describes the period of lawlessness in the OT called the time of the Judges as a time when “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” That is not what Jeremiah is advocating.  He is not advocating anarchy or moral relativism. He was saying that God’s guidance had to come from the inside of the human being and not be imposed from the outside.

When it comes to practical application for us it means that we do not surrender our moral responsibility to external religious authorities. We are not children who need to be told what to do by religious organizations or institutions. We don’t follow a religious rule book. We follow God’s law written on our hearts and in our minds. It means that we trust God within us more than those religious authorities who say they speak for God.

II. The second point Jeremiah makes is in the rest of verse 33 “and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” My first point was about Inner Guidance. This second point is about INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP. True religion is about a real relationship with God. Evangelicalism talks a good game when it comes to this point, but I don’t think it has always practiced what it preached. My experience being a pastor of churches – both mainline Protestant and evangelical - is that many people who talk the most about the importance of a personal relationship with God don’t really have much more of a relationship than those who don’t talk about it as much – traditional Protestants.

A lot of people don’t have what one would call a close relationship with God. I don’t know this for sure; I can’t see into anyone’s heart. Only God knows. But I know what people have confided to me in private moments over 38 years of ministry. Many people have a belief in God. They believe God exists and that he got the universe going sometime in the distant past, but they don’t really feel connected to him. God is not directly involved in their lives. Others have spiritual experiences and strong emotions connected to religion and are very faithful to a religious tradition, but it can’t really be called a relationship. Jeremiah is describing something more. He is describing an intimate relationship.

Of course, atheists don’t think I have a real relationship with a real God either. They would describe God as my imaginary friend. Like children growing up have an imaginary friend, they think Christians simply haven’t outgrown our childhood imaginary friend. They don’t think God is real; they think I am just making God up and believing a figment of my own imagination. They might be right. But I never had an imaginary friend as a child, so I wouldn’t know what that was like. I didn’t believe in God as a teenager. I never had a relationship with God until I was in my twenties, and this connection with God I have now certainly feels real to me. I believe that I have a real relationship with God. And I don’t think I am unusual. I believe that anyone can have such a relationship. This leads me to my next point.

III. Third, Jeremiah says that in his new covenant there is INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. He says in verse 34 “No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord.” How do you develop an intimate relationship with God? It is more intuition than objective knowledge. There are things we know physically with our five senses. There are things we know mentally through deduction and reasoning. For me God is not like that. I do not know God through my senses because he is not physical. I do not even know God through reasoning, even though I think it is reasonable to believe in God. I don’t think you can logically prove the existence of God. That is why I do not get into the Intelligent Design arguments for the existence of the Creator.

I know God through my spirit, which is just as real to me as my mind or body. I know God through intuition. I know his will through conscience. I commune with God in my heart. The way to have a real relationship with God is to cultivate this dimensions of your soul. There is no three or four step formula for this, any more than there is for any relationship you have. You have to find your own way and develop your own relationship with God - like with any human relationship . But if we desire a relationship with God we must devote time to that relationship. Spend lots of time thinking about God. Spend lots of time with God. I am not just talking about formal prayer or printed devotions. Those are fine to do, but what if the only time you spoke with your spouse or your friends was when you read something that someone else wrote, then you will not have much of a relationship.

I am talking about cultivating a continual awareness of God – living in the presence of God. Living in God like we live in this world. Breathing God like we breathe air. Swimming in God like a fish swims in the ocean. If you asked a fish what water was he couldn’t tell you because he lives in it. In the same way we live in God. “In Him we live and move and have our being” the Scripture says. The key to a relationship with God is to direct our attention to our intuitive awareness of the presence of God. God is here now. That is not just a doctrine of the omnipresence of God. It is experienced reality. All we have to do is use our intuitive knowledge to notice that reality. We can do that right now. Sense the presence of God right here right now. It is obvious. In fact it is so obvious that we often miss it. We take it for granted like the light around us. Developing a relationship with God is taking the time to pay attention to the God you can sense is here and foster a conscious awareness of this Presence throughout the day.

IV. I want to move on to the fourth point that Jeremiah makes in this passage. It is TOTAL FORGIVENESS. The last line of our passage says, “For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” Forgiveness has historically been the main focus of Christianity. There is a lot more to Christianity than the forgiveness of sins, but forgiveness is the heart. This is exactly why some people don’t like Christianity – there is too much talk of sin and forgiveness. But this is an important dimension of our human condition which needs to be addressed. That is what the gospel does. It takes the reality of sin seriously and deals with it directly. It doesn’t explain sin away psychologically or sociologically. It doesn’t downplay it or minimize it. It acknowledges that guilt is real and needs to be addressed.

The Christian gospel frees us from the power of guilt and sin. A lot of people think that Christianity is all about making you feel guilty. It is just the opposite! It gets us to acknowledge guilt and then eliminates it, so that it does not control us. It is a powerful spiritual and emotional freedom! We can be free from the bondage of the things that we have done wrong and the things that people have done wrong to us. We can experience complete forgiveness and have the ability to completely forgive those who have harmed us. That is the power of the gospel. If you don’t sin and have never been sinned against, then you don’t need the gospel. But if you have ever wronged a person and if a person has ever wronged you then you need the gospel. We can go through all the counseling and psychotherapy we want to. I am a believer in counseling; it does a lot of good in helping us to emotionally deal with psychological harm that is done to us. But we also need a spiritual solution to the spiritual problem of sin and guilt.

That is what the gospel does. It does it through the Cross of Jesus. I can’t explain very well how it does it. The theology of the Cross can get very complicated, theoretical and philosophical very quickly. I don’t think we need a new philosophy. We need the inner assurance that our sins are completely dealt with and forgotten by God. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” We need the power to be able to forgive people for the things that they did that we can’t forget. That is what the Cross provides. Somehow by the power of God, Jesus dealt decisively with sin by dying on the Cross and rising from the grave. That is what the gospel says. This power of forgiveness can be appropriated into our lives and experiences through faith in Christ. That is the bottom line. We can spend a lifetime trying to understand it, but it only takes a moment to accept it and experience it.   That is the new covenant that Jeremiah prophesied, and that is the new covenant that was established by Jesus Christ.  

Snake on a Stick

Delivered March 18, 2012

Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21

See the video of this message at: http://youtu.be/m-4KqUq5qhY

You have had ice cream on a stick and candy apples or caramel apples on a stick. Perhaps you have even had the misfortune of having a corn dog on a stick. Well today I am going to talk about a snake on a stick. Thankfully it is not a new culinary delicacy. It is an ancient symbol. You have likely seen the image pictured on ambulances. Actually there are two very similar symbols; one is called the Rod of Asclepius, also known as the asklepian. It is a single snake entwined around a staff. It is associated with the Greek god Asclepius, god of medicine and healing in Greek mythology. A similar symbol is called a caduceus. This symbol has a staff with two snakes wrapped around it and facing each other; another difference is that the staff has wings on top. It is also a medical symbol today, although originally it was the symbol of Greek god Hermes, the messenger god, hence the wings. There is a Biblical symbol that looks like this as well. It is called in the Nehushtan, and like the Rod of Asclepius, it is a single snake on a staff. It predates the Greek symbol and is also associated with healing. We in the West have inherited the symbol from both the Greek and Hebrew traditions. Today we are going to look at the Biblical story behind the symbol.

The Old Testament account takes place during the 40 years that the Hebrews wandered in the wilderness before they were allowed to enter the Promised Land. The people of Israel had been bittten by what are called ‘fiery serpents,” which means poisonous snakes. Many of the Israelites died. Moses prayed for a cure, and God told him to make a replica of the fiery serpent out of bronze and lift it up on a pole. When the people looked upon the bronze serpent, they were healed. That is the story in a nutshell. This snake on a stick means four things.

I. First it is a symbol of suffering. The poisonous snakes in this story caused suffering and death in the people who were bitten. So first of all the snake in the story is bad – the source of poisonous evil, suffering and death. The snake symbol in the Bible often represents evil.  That is not true in all religions and cultures, but it certainly is true in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The first time a serpent appears in the Bible is in the Garden of Eden; there the serpent represents the tempter and deceiver. That is true throughout the Bible all the way to the Book of Revelation where the dragon is called “that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan.” We are conditioned to think of a serpent as the symbol of evil which causes suffering and death. These fiery serpents in this story in the Book of Numbers are creatures that are causing suffering and death.

This throws us headlong into the whole theological question of the source of suffering and death in the world. It is too simple to attribute all suffering to an evil force in universe, as our story makes clear. Verse 6 of the story says “So the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people….” The serpents are the instruments of God in this story. This complicates matters. I wish the problem of evil and suffering was so simple that we could blame all suffering and evil on the Big Bad Guy - the devil. But we know that is not the case. Even the ancient Hebrews who wrote this story knew that. In the story of Job, Satan can do no bad thing to Job without the permission of God. God ultimately permits everything bad that happened to Job. Job knows that and spends almost all the book struggling with that and yelling at God. And we never really stop struggling with that problem of suffering and evil. It is one of the most difficult theological problems.

Ultimately in the Bible the buck stops with God. As Christians we do not have a theological dualism – two equal celestial beings - a good god and a bad god battling it out on the cosmic stage. Satan is not divine in the Scriptures, nor is he described as equal to God in any way. Ultimately we have to trace everything – good and bad - back to God. President Truman was famous for the sign on his desk in the oval office which read “The buck stops here.” We could use more of that in politics these days. It seems to me that today every politician wants to blame someone else, especially the other political party, for everything that goes wrong in our nation and our world. No one wants to take responsibility. Politics is increasingly one big blame game. Theology is not. Picture God at his heavenly desk with a sign that reads, “The buck stops here.”

You can blame some suffering on natural causes if you want. You can blame some on human choices – our freewill – if you want. But ultimately God made the natural world and free human beings. The buck stops with God. Christian apologists mean well when they try to get God off the hook – explaining that it is not God’s fault when bad things happen to good people. Even here in this story you could point out that the bad things are happening to bad people. The people admit they did wrong in our story and it prompted the snakes. In verse 7 they confess their sins to Moses, saying, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord that He take away the serpents from us.”  But you still have to deal with the fact that in the story God sends the snakes to bite the people as well as heal the people of the snake bites. The snake on the pole represents suffering and death.

II. The snake on the pole also represents judgment. In the story, the serpents are sent as a divine judgment on people for their disobedience. That is another very difficult issue in Christian theology. Judgment is a very unpopular topic. We do not like the concept of God as Judge. We like God as the kindly Father. In fact we prefer God as the kindly Grandfather in the sky. I am a grandfather. We have two grandsons, and soon we will have another grandson due to be born on Easter Sunday. It is so much easier being a grandfather than a father! A father has to discipline his kids. I don’t have to worry about that. I am not expected to discipline or punish them. I can spoil them. The parents have their own ideas on what is appropriate or not when it comes to discipline; I am fine with that. I still have my opinions on the subject of discipline. We used to spank our kids, and it didn’t do them any harm physically or psychologically. But I keep my opinion to myself, and I will not lay a hand on the tender backsides of our grandkids. We may scold them and instruct them, but any stronger form of discipline is for the parents to administer.

That is the type of God people want - a grandfather God who spoils us, and never disciplines us. But the Bible presents God as a Father who disciplines his children. The Book of Hebrews says: “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, ⁶ because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.” ⁷ Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?”

Our story in Numbers goes beyond discipline to judgment. That is a much harsher concept. The whole concept of divine judgment is very difficult for people today. When it comes to religion, we say, “Judge not lest ye be judged” and we think that applies to God as well. But the fact is that as a society we believe in judgment. We have courts and judges and juries who judge people and exact punishment on people – all the way from fines to imprisonment to capital punishment. So we believe in judgment; so judgment is not really the issue. So let’s get over our self-righteousness – our feigned righteous indignation at the concept of divine judgment. We judge people as an American society, as does every society that has ever existed. Why would we think that God’s kingdom would be any different? Why wouldn’t God judge, especially when human courts fail in their administration of justice? When the guilty get away with murder in our society, we hope God will hold them accountable them in a higher court. So we need to get over our reluctance at seeing God as Judge. There is nothing inherently wrong with that idea. Here in this story the snake on a pole is a symbol of divine judgment.  

III. Third, the snake on the pole represents healing and salvation. It is amazing what the Bible does with this symbol! It takes this symbol of suffering, death and judgment, and reinterprets it to mean something healing, salvation and life. This is how the apostle John interprets this story. Our Gospel Lesson says, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” Then comes that most famous verse in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John sees the snake on the pole as a symbol of salvation representing Jesus on the Cross.

The parallels between the two symbols – the snake on the pole and Christ on the Cross - are striking. Like the snake is a symbol of evil in the OT, the death of Jesus on the Cross was a great evil. No greater evil has ever been done than when human beings killed the Son of God on the Cross. They executed an innocent man. We read and hear today of cases when an innocent man was unjustly convicted of a crime he did not commit. Years later DNA evidence reveals that the man is innocent, and he is set free. It makes us wonder how many innocent people have been executed by our legal system for crimes they did not commit. Jesus was an innocent man, yet he was executed by guilty men. He was executed for no other reason than thatt they could not stand to have a perfectly righteous man in their midst. His very presence among them judged them for their sins. When you feel judged, people judge in return. And that is what they did. They tried, judged and executed Jesus unjustly.

The snake on a pole was a symbol of suffering and death. So is the Cross. The Roman cross was an instrument of torture and execution. It was a disgraceful and painful way to die. On the Cross Jesus suffered and died. We sing the hymn: “On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the symbol of suffering and shame.” Symbols are important nowadays. Corporations spend lots of money to get just the right graphic to represent their business or product. Religious denominations have symbols. The symbol of the United Methodist Church (one of our two denominations) is a black cross with a red flame of fire coming from the base. It is supposed to represent the cross of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. But a survey was done some years ago, and it was found that more people thought it was the burning cross of the KKK than the Methodist Church. Methodists obviously have an image problem.

The Roman cross was a symbol of punishment, torture, suffering, and death. Christianity has reinterpreted it to mean a salvation and eternal life. That is what God did in our OT Reading. God told Moses to make an image of the snake that was killing people and make it into an image that healed people. Whoever looked upon that bronze serpent on the pole would be healed and not die. The apostle John says that the Cross does the same thing. When people look upon the Cross of Jesus Christ in faith, then they are spiritually healed and given spiritual life. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” It is a symbol of salvation.

IV. There is one final meaning of this symbol of the snake on a stick. It is more of an interesting postscript than a point. This bronze snake on a pole makes another appearance in the OT. It seems that this bronze serpent on a pole that Moses made was preserved. The Hebrews didn’t just throw it away after it had served its purpose in this chapter. They kept it. After the temple was built in Jerusalem, it was stored there in the temple. At some point it was taken out of storage, erected in the temple, given the name Nehushtan and worshipped, in direct disobedience to the command in the Ten Commandments not to make an image and bow down to it and worship it. Centuries later King Hezekiah carried out some religious reforms in Jerusalem. At that time it says in 2 Kings 18 that he destroyed this bronze serpent on a pole because the people had burned incense to it and worshipped it. This symbol of salvation had become an idol.

This serves as a warning to us about our religious symbols.  Anything can become an idol. Even the cross – as central as it is to Christian theology - can become an idol. Our theology can become idolatrous. As soon as we think that only we have it right, then our theology has become an idol. Our theological interpretations of the cross can take the place of the spiritual power of the cross. Our doctrines about Jesus can take the place of Jesus himself. Instead of knowing and serving the living risen Christ, we can create a designer Jesus the way we want him to be and worship our man-made Messiah. We need to follow in Hezekiah’s footsteps and tear down the idols so that nothing takes the place of the living Lord Jesus in our lives or our church.

Moses crafted a snake on a stick. Those who looked upon it were healed and did not die. It served as a prophecy of the one who was to come – a man on a cross, so that whoever looks to him and believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life. 

Playing the Fool

Delivered March 11, 2012

I Corinthians 1:18-25
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There was a time when fools had a place in society. It was not exactly an honored place, but it was role that allowed them to make a living and even move in high social circles. I am talking about jesters who were a part of court life. In Medieval times jesters were a common sight in royal courts, and in Renaissance times aristocratic households employed them. The stereotype of such a fool is a man who wore a distinctive colorful costume with a three-cornered hat with bells on the ends. They were regarded as court mascots, who not only provided some comic relief, but were supposed to speak the truth when others were afraid. They were expected to criticize their master or mistress and their guests. In fact Queen Elizabeth I is said to have rebuked one of her fools for being insufficiently severe and critical of her. Excessive criticism, however, could lead to a fool being punished, or even executed, if the royal family decided the fool had overstepped his bounds. So it could be a precarious position to hold; you had to play the role of the fool wisely.

Today there are no such wise fools that I can think of. We have comedians who make fun of the powerful, it is not quite the same. In the Bible we find the word fool used most often in the book of Proverbs where the fool is contrasted with the wise person. The word fool is used to describe the one who departs from God’s ways. The Psalms go so far as to declare, “The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” In fact the term “play the fool” comes from the King James Bible. It is from a scene where King Saul, who was a bit crazy, apologizes to David, whom he is trying to kill. He says to him, “I have sinned. Return, my son David. For I will harm you no more….  Indeed I have played the fool and erred exceedingly.”

In the New Testament Jesus tells the parable of a rich man who stores up possessions on earth, and neglects his spiritual life. When he dies, God calls him a fool. But in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus warns, “Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.” You would think that Jesus’ admonition would cause his followers to delete the word from their vocabulary, but we haven’t. The word fool is regularly used to describe those we wish to criticize in the harshest fashion. To be called a fool is the harshest putdown.  No one wants to be thought a fool. As the saying goes, we do not suffer fools gladly. No one wants to be made to look a fool. And that brings us to our Epistle Reading for this morning. The apostle Paul uses the term fool in connection to the message of the cross. He describes how the gospel is viewed by people and how he views it. There are three things he says about the message of the cross.

I. First, he says the message of the cross is foolishness. He says in 1:18 “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” He says in verse 23 “we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness.” The heart of the Christian gospel - the cross - is considered foolish to many people today. As a pastor I have come across this very many times. I am considered a fool by many people for what I believe, and you would be considered fools also, and not in a light-hearted jesting way. The so-called New Atheists, who would be more accurately described as antitheists, make it clear that they consider Christians to be fools for believing what we do. It goes to show that things have not really changed in the two thousand years Paul penned these words. The message of the Cross is still considered foolishness. Why?

The message of the Cross is considered foolishness because the existence of God cannot be proven. This is the one argument I keep hearing over and over again. We live in a Western society that considers science to have the final word on all truth. The scientific method can only speak about the physical world. It can say nothing about the spiritual realm. God is not an object somewhere in space and time in the material world. God is not an energy field that can be measured.  By definition God is Spirit who transcends the physical world. Therefore science has nothing to say about God one way or the other. Those who dismiss God on scientific grounds have assumed that the only reality is that which can be measured with scientific instruments or deduced from scientific data. Their presupposition is that nothing else exists. That assumption cannot be proven. Science cannot prove or disprove God; God is outside the domain of scientific investigation.

The message of the Cross is considered foolishness because Jesus – especially his nature as the Son of God and his resurrection from the dead - cannot be proven. That is true. Jesus lived 2000 years ago. You can’t even use the word “prove” when it comes to ancient history. You can only look at the archeological and written evidence. When it comes to ancient personages, the life of Jesus is better documented than any other life. Of course the events of his life were not recorded by impartial historians using the modern methods of gathering and confirming information. There was no modern discipline of historical science back then. But Jesus’ life, works, deeds, and even his resurrection are better documented than most other events in the ancient world.

Even people in the first century thought the idea of Jesus’ resurrection was foolish. There is a scene in the book of Acts where the Apostle Paul has the opportunity to present his case before the distinguished philosophers of Greece at the Areopagus – Mar’s Hill in Athens – a gathering place for thinkers located right below the Parthenon at the Acropolis. The intelligentsia of the time listened respectfully to Paul until he mentioned the resurrection. Then they began to mock and heckle him. It is the same today. People today often dismiss Jesus’ resurrection out of hand, saying it is silly to believe this because it is obviously impossible for a man to come back to life after really being dead from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning. Yes, of course it is! That is the whole point of the resurrection of Jesus – it is a once-in-history event! If it was commonplace or scientifically repeatable in the laboratory, it would have no historical or theological significance! Of course, you can’t prove it two thousand years after the fact. But the historical scientific method can’t say it didn’t happen either, only that it is highly improbable – which is the Bible’s point. You have to weigh the historical evidence. As far as Jesus’ divine nature is concerned, of course you can’t prove that Jesus is the Son of God. But it is a reasonable inference if the New Testament documents are reliable in what they say about his life.

II. I want to move on to my next point - that the Message of the Cross is a Stumbling Block. Again verse 23 says, “but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness….” The Greeks thought it was foolish to believe the Christian gospel, but to the Jews it was a stumbling block. Someone asked me after worship last month why most Jews do not believe in Jesus as the Messiah. The answer is the Cross; it is a stumbling block. The Greek word used here is skandalon, from which we get the word scandal. Literally the message of the Cross is scandalous. Again, why?

It is scandalous for two reasons. First because Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. That was and is blasphemous to monotheistic faiths like Judaism and Islam. It is considered idolatry to say that a human being is God. This is why Jesus was crucified according to the four gospels in the NT, because he claimed to be the Son of God. At his trial Jesus was interrogated by several authorities secular and religious. As you follow his trial in scripture there was no case against him until he admitted he that was the Son of God and the King of the Jews. One was blasphemy to Jews and the other was treason to the Romans. For that reason the Sanhedrin condemned him and Pilate gave the order for him to be executed.

Today in many spiritual traditions it is not scandalous for a man to claim divinity. There are all sorts of gurus and avatars who claim to be divine. There are religious philosophies that teach that we all are divine. In fact they preach that salvation is waking up to this self-knowledge that we are all God. Claiming divinity is not likely to get you crucified today; indeed it is likely to get you a following with TV appearances and a best-selling book. What is scandalous today is to claim that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. That is seen as intolerant and exclusivist. One will be labeled narrow-minded or fundamentalist other pejorative terms. The message of Jesus as the only begotten Son of God is still scandalous to people; it is still a stumbling block.

The other reason the gospel is considered scandalous is because this Messiah Jesus, this only begotten Son of God, was crucified. It was scandalous to the Jews at the time because they expected the Messiah to be a national hero of great strength and power who would conquer the enemies of Israel, not be killed by them. No one likes weakness any more than they like fools. What if one of our presidential candidates advocated weakness as a virtue for our nation? What if he advocated loving our enemies and turning the other cheek even if it meant being our death as a nation?  Any chance that person would be nominated or elected president? Of course not! Likewise there is no chance such a person would have been hailed as Messiah - which was a political and military role - by first-century Jews. That is why a crucified Messiah was and is a stumbling block.

The crucified Jesus is still a stumbling block today, but for another reason. Today it is considered scandalous to say that it was necessary for Jesus to die on a cross for us to be redeemed from sin. People don’t have a problem with Jesus the Teacher, Prophet or even as Martyr for truth –like a Hebrew Socrates. But to say that he intentionally offered himself as a Sacrifice for sins is not very popular, even in many Christian circles. And to say that God the Father wanted this is scandalous. The New Atheists describe God the Father as a Cosmic Child abuser. The Cross is too violent for people to accept as God’s plan. It feels primitive and messy and wrong. The idea of Christ as an Atonement for sin is uncomfortable.

People do not understand why it is necessary. Why couldn’t God just be a nice Guy and just forgive with a snap of his divine fingers. God as Harry Potter – a wave of the divine scepter, say the magic words and everyone is forgiven. That is what people want. That is the type of popular deity that people make in their own image. To present Jesus Christ as a Sacrifice for sin is offensive. It is scandalous. It is a stumbling block in our post-modern religious world as much as it was 2000 years ago.  What the apostle Paul says is still true. “¹⁸ For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” “we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, ²⁴ but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”   

III. This brings me to my third point this morning – that the message of the cross is revolutionary. By that I mean that it turns everything upside down. To most people the Cross is foolishness and scandalous, but to us it is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

It is the power of God. The cross looks like weakness. On Good Friday it looked like Jesus and his movement was defeated. The Leader was executed and his followers all fled in fear. What else could this be but weakness and defeat? How else could the world possibly see it? But in fact with eyes of faith it is seen as the power of God at work.  The Cross was part of God’s plan. It was not a mistake or an unforeseen development. The gospels make it clear that it was Jesus’ plan to go to Jerusalem and die. At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry John the Baptist pointed to him and declared, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” The Cross is divine power clothed in weakness.

In the Cross something happened that could not be accomplished any other way. On the Cross it was not just a man dying. It was death dying. It was the power of sin dying. It was evil being defeated. This is why I call it revolutionary. It was exactly the opposite of what everyone thought was happening. Everybody thought this was the end, but it was only the beginning. Everyone thought this was the end of Jesus life, but he was just getting started. That would not become clear until Easter morning, but it was already true on the cross. The cross of Jesus looks like death, but it is life. It looks like condemnation, but it is salvation. It looks like judgment, but it is mercy. It looks ugly to the world, but to us it is beautiful. It looks like the triumph of hate, but it is actually the victory of love. It is the power of God for those who have been called by God.

And it is the wisdom of God. “we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, ²⁴ but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”   Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah in our passage, saing, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”²⁰ Then he says, “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? ²¹ For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.”

Christianity is viewed as foolish by those who consider themselves wise. Christians are characterized as ignorant by those who consider themselves educated and intelligent. Religion is seen as a crutch for the weak and feeble-minded. The resurrection is viewed as a myth to be believed only by the gullible and superstitious.   The gospel is ridiculed as a self-deception accepted only by the foolish and the weak. But scripture says, “we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.”   Therefore I will gladly play the fool, and I invite you to play the fool with me.