Look And See (John 1: 43-46; Matthew 13: 10-13) 7/29/12

          Look and see! Come and see!  How many times have you heard these sayings? Why? Why do we use two verbs? Are these separate actions? Look and see. Come and see. What’s that all about?

The last several months, I have been waiting to have cataracts removed from my eyes. The first of those was removed this week. The lens in my left eye was replaced by a man made lens. Now several days later, the change in my eyesight is nothing less than miraculous. The detail is magnificent, the contrast striking, a kaleidoscope of brilliant color. I had no idea how much my sight had deteriorated. There is more beauty and color in a simple blade of grass than I ever thought possible. Clouds now paint sky pictures that make me stop to look…and to see.

That’s the point, you know. We look, but do we see? I think that is why we formed the phrase, because there is a difference between those two verbs. Look…and see. They are two different activities. We are always looking, but we don’t always see. There is sight, but that is a far cry from vision. We look, but do we see?

In the gospel of John, Jesus is at Cana. So is Philip and he has brought his friend Nathaniel. Philip comes to Nathaniel and says “We have found him! We have found him of who the law and the prophets spoke. It’s Jesus of Nazareth.” Nathaniel laughs. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he says. “Come and see,” says Phillip. Nathaniel approaches Jesus and he knows. He is lucky. He has the eyes to see. He asks Jesus how he knows him. Jesus just says “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” And Nathaniel knows that everything has changed. He calls Jesus the Son of God and for Nathaniel, his understanding of the world will never be the same. Nathaniel came and he saw.

For four months, I have known that I had cataracts. They were attached to the back of the lenses in my eyes, forming a gray cloud over everything that I viewed. It happened gradually over a period of several years. Once I had been diagnosed, I tried to make it a point to remember how I saw, because I knew it was going to change and I wanted to remember the difference. I didn’t realize how much I was missing. This week I rediscovered things I had forgotten or could no longer see. I have hair on my arms, lots of gray in my beard, a wife even more beautiful than I saw the week before. I saw crepe myrtle trees and oak leaves almost as though I had never seen them before. I had forgotten how lustrous is this world that God has given us for a playground.

In the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, nestled among a series of parables, Jesus tells his disciples the purpose of using parables. Jesus says: You (the disciples) get to know the secrets of the kingdom, but they don’t. You have listened, so you get to hear more. To the one who does not listen, even what he has will be lost. “…seeing, they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand” [12: 13]. Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah, saying that “their eyes they have closed.” For those who do not listen to God’s Word, they are like the cataracts that covered my vision in a shroud of fog until I no longer saw what was there in plain view. After a while, even what I saw, I didn’t really see any more.

It’s a funny thing the way God works in our lives. He has certainly been working on me the past few years. This last year, it is as though my eyes finally opened. God had planted the seeds of change in my life and he has given me plenty of signs to confirm his direction for me. The question is not whether God has made himself known. The question is whether I am ready to lay down my need to self-direct and follow God’s clear and present lead. The fact that I have spent many years in one profession is no reason that I am intended to continue to labor there. The fact that I have spent many years in one location is no reason that I am intended to remain there. The fact that I had a plan for retirement is no reason that I am intended to carry out that plan. The vision is there, but I have to do more than look. I have to see.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul gives us his beautiful discourse on love in chapter 13. After telling us the attributes of love, Paul reminds us all that now he sees only though a “glass dimly”, or a “mirror darkly.” Then, he says, referring to when he meets God in heaven, then he…and we, will see face to face. Paul reminds us that even at our best, we see only a vague image of that which we will ultimately see. In Paul’s day, the Greco-Roman version of a mirror was some highly polished metal. There was no glass. That view sounds a lot like the way I have been seeing through cataracts. The vision is incomplete and veiled at best. That is what a “glass darkly” looks like.

My travels through the world of dimmed vision have been quite a revelation. I can’t help but think of Paul. Blinded in order that he might really see, the book of Acts tells us that “something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight” [9: 18].  The loss and restoration of Paul’s physical sight was only a metaphor for the main event. The real deal was that now Paul didn’t just look at Christianity. He saw it for what it was. From that moment on, Paul’s spiritual vision became a light to the Gentiles and still illumines all who read the Scriptures.

Paul’s experience with God is not unique. It happens to all of us who come to see God. And in this case, seeing is believing!  My own experience is like that. How ironic that God would bring me limited physical sight at the very time he was opening my heart to see him more clearly on a spiritual level. I am grateful for the physical vision that is being restored to me, but I’m much more grateful for the vision that God has planted in my heart, for that is the place where we really see.  That is the place where the Holy Spirit meets us and fills us with the faith that lets us turn our lives over to God.

In 1895 while living in Dubuque, Iowa, Clara Scott penned the hymn “Open My Eyes That I May See.”  The first verse goes like this:

          Open my eyes that I may see 

Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me;

Place in my hands the wonderful key

That shall unclasp and set me free.

Silently now I wait for thee,

Ready my God, Thy will to see.

Open my eyes, illumine me.

Spirit divine!

Illumine me. Illumine us. Let those who have eyes to see, see what God has in store. Let the film be removed, let the scales drop from our eyes. The vision that awaits each and every one of us is nothing less than miraculous!      

Putting On Christ (Galatians 3) 7/22/12

          We have been taking a look at the Book of Galatians. Galatians is thought by many scholars to be the oldest published work of the apostle Paul. Except for the book of James, Galatians may be the oldest book in the New Testament, written about 48 A.D. Paul wrote it as a letter to the churches in Galatia, a region in Asia Minor that he visited during his first missionary journey. In our first lesson, we noted that Paul was upset about the false gospel that he said was being spread by Judaizers. It was a teaching that encouraged these Gentile Christians to observe and follow the rules and customs of Judaism, including circumcision. Paul angrily and emotionally appealed to his converts to follow the only true gospel. In our second lesson, Paul continued to remind his flock that the law—or works—cannot get us to heaven. Paul argued that the only way to salvation was to be justified by faith through the grace of God. In that way, it would be just as if we had not sinned. We become justified.

          Today, we look at the third chapter of Galatians, a chapter rich with ideas. Theologian William Barclay divided it into five major subsections in his Study Bible series in an attempt to analyze its many points. Barclay’s divisions are the gift of grace, the curse of the law, the covenant that cannot be altered, shut up under sin and the coming of faith. We could easily spend several lessons just on chapter 3 of Galatians, so this message is nothing more than a highlight reel.

`        Chapter 3 of Galatians is of great importance to understanding the Christian faith and of understanding the call of God to all his people. Paul speaks of the Abrahamic covenant. It was a dual promise of seed and nations. The nation of Israel had looked to it for hundreds of years as its sacred birthright. Abraham was to be the father of nations! His seed is traced by Matthew all the way to Jesus. From Abraham came Isaac. From Isaac came Jacob. From Jacob came the twelve tribes of Israel. You know the rest of that story. By the time of the Exodus, the male heirs of Abraham numbered over four hundred thousand! And yet in Galatians 3, Paul declares that the seed to which God referred is not genetic at all, at least not in a bloodline.

Paul tells us that the covenant of God with Abraham was much bigger even than the one to which the Jewish nation had been wedded.  Paul says that the real covenant was a covenant of faith. The admission ticket to coverage under God’s covenant is not blood. It is not lineage. It is not ethnicity. It is faith.  And Paul says that this covenant is and always has been just what he describes. As surely as Abraham could not and did not reach God through his acts or even his obedience, but rather through his simple faith, so then, faith is the heritage passed down and made available to all people.

Paul argues that the offspring of Abraham is not all the generations of Jews, but Christ and Christ only. He goes on to remind us that the covenant preceded the law. The covenant was a unilateral promise from God and it came before and stayed long after the law. Where is the inheritance? asks Paul. The inheritance is God’s promise. It was made to a man, but not dependent on any act of that or any other man. The promise is from God. It is binding and unbreakable.

Now I know something about covenants. The law is full of covenants. Contracts are basically a recital of covenants. My law school professors taught me that a covenant is a promise; that a contract is a promise for a promise. They taught me that no contract can be enforceable unless there is mutual consideration. There must be a thing for a thing.  So a covenant given unilaterally -–from one person to another with no consideration—is a non-binding contract. It’s like saying that there must be some condition to be fulfilled in order for a covenant to work. Well that is certainly true in the civil law, but God needs no law for his covenants to be binding. God needs no conditions to hold him to his word.  Paul reminds us that God is not like us. God can covenant with himself. He doesn’t need a mediator to stand between him and us.  He has no need of our agreement or even of our faithfulness. He can and does supply it all.        Man-made covenants need consideration. There must be a trade-off of some sort. God-made covenants have no such needs.

So the law becomes a method of revelation. If you don’t have a set of rules of some sort, a guideline, a manual, then how do you know when you have crossed the line? If no line is ever drawn, there is no place we may not cross, no limit beyond which manners or courtesy or tact or humanity draws us back. In faith Abraham followed God. In faith, Moses delivered from God to us a set of ten rules of life. In their search for the proper application of these broad rules of life, the Israelites codified them into hundreds more man-made regulations. Before we get too stuffy about those silly religious regulations, we might want to see what we Gentiles have done. The new Book of Order in PCUSA numbers 217 pages and there are about 60 more pages of Appendices. My law office contains about twelve board feet of shelving just to house the North Carolina General Statutes. Man’s attempt at self-governance is noble but severely flawed.

What is Paul’s answer? It is not by the law that we are saved. It is not by its knowledge, nor by its application. To know the law is to recognize something about what it is we are not to do. To know God through faith in Christ is to recognize what it is we are to do.

I love the seasons. They are the annual promise of both constancy and change. Here in the upper South, we can normally enjoy a real taste of each and every season not only on the calendar, but also on the thermometer. Judging by my wife Cindy, I think women may relish the change of seasons even more than men. For me, fall is football and gathering leaves, winter is a taste of snow and the Super bowl, spring is newness all around and flowers and birth to all creation. Summer brings the heat, and mowing and the green of summer. It is vacations and picnics and trips to anywhere with water, from the lake to the river to the ocean. For Cindy, it is all that, but it is also a change of wardrobe. Closets exchange their inhabitants as sweaters and coats make way for sandals and shorts.

The apostle Paul could certainly have appreciated all this fuss about the change of seasons. He was a man on the move and weather more than once made him change his plans or even spared his life. But when it came to faith, there was only one change of clothing for Paul. Paul said to his beloved Galatians as he says to us as well, that when we are baptized into Christ, we have “put on Christ.” The Greek verb here is enouw which, in addition to meaning “put on,” means “to clothe.” When you are baptized, when you believe, when you have faith, you clothe yourself in Christ. It is your uniform.  Neither Jew nor Greek. No more male or female. Neither slave nor free, says Paul. One in Christ. No more ethnicity, no more gender, no more class system.  We share a common faith. That is the real promise of God, revealed all the way back to Abraham! By faith we are saved through grace. No matter how many times we say the words, they become no less miraculous, no less loving. And that, friends, makes us all heirs—heirs according to the promise. Isn’t it nice to know that you are included in His will! 

KNEEWALKING (Galatians 2) 7/8/12

          In the cotton mill, one of my bosses was named Fred. Fred was my favorite boss, but then, he was just about everyone’s favorite. The years I worked in the mill were a time of construction. Everything was being updated or replaced or added on to. My department had many work crews, and they would get into disputes about how to do a job. Fred would come out to troubleshoot the problem. Usually, it was more about psychology than construction. Fred would tell a story. At the end, he had everyone laughing. I can’t remember him ever actually offering a particular solution. He just got everyone cooled off and they saw what they needed to do.

          In the second chapter of Galatians, the apostle Paul tackles a number of issues. He points out the unity of leadership that arose from the famous Jerusalem conference. He states his own case for independence from group opinions. He takes on the behavior of Peter himself at Antioch. He ends by emphasizing the doctrine of justification by faith. I think Paul could have used my boss Fred in his dealings with the apostolic fathers and the Galatian churches. Paul got so passionate, he couldn’t keep his cool.  I don’t want to minimize the great struggle about the true gospel that Paul articulated so well. He probably single-handedly pre-empted the idea of a works-required approach to faith. I use this opening just to emphasize that even the great theologian of the New Testament had so much passion for the true gospel that sometimes he just could not muster very much tact. It must have been really tough at times to work with him.

          Fourteen years in the field. If you were in the army, you would be wearing three stripes by then. That’s plenty long enough to prove your credentials.  That’s when Paul finally went up to Jerusalem to talk to the leaders of the Jerusalem church about his work with the Gentiles. He had formed churches in Asia Minor, been shipwrecked, run out of town, thrown in jail and beaten. He had earned every one of those stripes. So when he came to town with Barnabus and Titus, his opinions and his beliefs were well formed and tested. Paul says he went up because of a revelation. In other words, he was not summoned by church leaders, but called by God. Titus, his Greek helper, seems to have been the focus of some attention. The Jewish faction, the Judaizers--Paul calls them false brothers--wanted to see Titus circumcised. Paul’s position prevailed, apparently with support from Peter, James, and John. By the way, the James about whom we read here is not James the apostle, but rather James, the half brother of Jesus and leader of the Christian church in Jerusalem.

Even here, Paul is not happy with the church fathers. He claims that they added nothing to the decision about Titus. Yet his declaration is still one that seems to echo unity among his apostolic peers. Paul identifies their differences in terms of audience. His is the uncircumcised-the Gentiles, while Peter evangelizes the circumcised, that is, the Jews. But Paul acknowledges that Peter is indeed entrusted with the gospel just as much as he, Paul, is.

          Though the “pillars,” as Paul referred to them, had extended him the right hand of fellowship and had endorsed his ministry to the Gentiles, this did not stop Paul from a public censure of Peter in Antioch. Apparently, Peter had come to Antioch and was taking meals with both Jews and Gentiles without observing the ritual purity laws. You will remember that Peter had a vision which convinced him that such laws should not prove a stumbling block to the spread of the gospel. Yet when certain church leaders showed up in Antioch and complained of his liberality, Peter backed down and ceased eating with the Gentiles. Paul erupted. He called Peter a hypocrite.  He said Peter was not in step with the gospel. So much for tact.

          Are you? Are you in step with the gospel? If Paul were here, would he eat dinner with you or call you out in public and label you a hypocrite? He was right, you know. Peter was acting like a hypocrite.  He was a Jew living like a Gentile, yet as Paul said, he dared to ask Gentiles to live like Jews. Poor Peter. He is our example in more than one way. He took giant steps of faith. But he also took giant falls. In this case, I think God provides us yet another view of how human and frail are even the best of us. If Paul is our role model, Peter is our brother, standing beside us, looking for the truth as he tries to preach it.  

Paul is a shining light of courage and commitment here, but his story is much more complicated. This is the same man who stood by earlier in his life and watched Stephen being stoned in the name of Christ. Paul’s hands are clean only by the grace of God. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Just as if I had not sinned.

In the rest of this passage, Paul gives a summary of the theology that he more fully develops in the coming chapters. While the first part of the chapter is an assertion of unity, of independence, even of Paul’s challenges of the patriarchs of the church, the balance of the passage is laced together with humility. Paul has spent a lot of time kneewalking. He knows what God looks like from the ground up and his point of view takes dead aim at everything that is important to the understanding of the gospel.

Kneewalking is not a technical term. I googled it and turned up a few references to a new kind of dance. It hasn’t caught on anywhere, so I think the term is up for grabs. To me, it describes a state of mind, of communication, maybe even a state of grace---in which the kneewalker has spent a lot of time in prayer---on his or her knees. It’s different down there. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it. It helps get rid of a lot of distractions.

Paul articulates the central theme of the letter. You could argue that it is the central them of Christianity. Justification by faith. Just as if I had not sinned. It is the belief whereby we are transformed from sinners without hope to believers who share in God’s righteousness. Paul uses words like “death” and “crucified” to describe the process by which his fleshly, selfish existence has undergone a life-changing metamorphosis. It is every bit as powerful in its effect as that which occurs when an ordinary caterpillar emerges a beautiful butterfly from its cocoon. Kneewalking can get you there.

Paul contrasts grace from law. The law is insufficient. It is man-made, man-interpreted. It is not the Ten Commandments, but rather the 631 regulations that make up the Jewish law.  Grace, on the other hand, is from God. It is John 3:16 faith. Believe in Jesus Christ. Believe what he did and why he did it. That is God’s gift and it is for those who believe. It’s that simple.

Of course, with belief comes acknowledgment. Or maybe it’s the other way’round. I must acknowledge my sin and my inability to come to God on my own. I must accept his invitation. When I, like Paul, hit my knees and put God in charge and thank Jesus for the day I have been given, I can feel the grace.

Paul, like the apostle John, says that Christ lives in us. Think about that. Christ lives in us. If you can accept this, and heaven can’t help you if you can’t, then you can understand that feeling to let go. You can understand why those hairs bristle up the back of your neck or up your forearm when a certain hymn is played or a child gives you a kiss or hug. You can understand that those good things, those good feelings, don’t really belong to you at all. You don’t earn them. God gives them to you. Just as if you had not sinned.

If Christ lives in us, we are the house of God! No work of man can bring about that end. And that is precisely the point Paul makes. Work is done, all right, and the work is God’s. We are God’s handiwork. In fact, we are his masterpiece. Just as if I had not sinned. That is what happens when we believe. We die to the sinful life and are reborn as the adopted children of God. Oh yes, we still sin. We always will. But it is different when you are God’s child. Sin no longer holds the fascination that it once did. Pride and accomplishment no longer hold your attention like they did before.  You find it oddly painless to go kneewalking when looking for the Master.

             Perhaps at the end of the day, it is fitting that Paul got so hot under the collar. What if he had been more concerned with getting along and had compromised his beliefs in justification by faith? What if he had not taken on Peter and the other church fathers? Would we be reading a different Bible today? Would we be reading a Bible at all? Thank God, we don’t have to answer that question. Paul fought that fight for us with the church fathers and with the early church. He was certainly not by himself. Others were to take up that banner. But Galatians is, if nothing else, a primer on the doctrine of justification by faith. Stay tuned for next week.

 

One Gospel (Galatians 1) 7/1/12

Remember when you left home; when you went off to college or the military or that first job? Remember when you started sowing some oats or getting in with the wrong crowd? Remember that letter or phone call from your mother or father? You know, the one that reminded you who you were and where you came from. We all have memories like that. My parents saw where I was headed and they loved me enough to try to re-point me in the right direction. Thank God for parents who don’t meddle, but never leave us completely alone.

Several of Paul’s letters are like that, trying to re-direct his followers down the right path. Galatians is perhaps the most pointed. Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia is not an exercise in tact and diplomacy.  It is, rather, an indictment of his flock for their poor judgment.

  Galatia was a region that Paul visited during his first missionary journey. These were Gentiles brought to the saving knowledge of Christ by Paul himself. Paul loved these people and felt directly responsible for their conversion to Christianity.  The book of Galatians is an appeal to these same people to take a hard look at what, and whom, they are following.

Paul wastes no time. He states his credentials in the very first line of the letter, saying that he is an apostle called not by men but by Jesus Christ and God the Father. He says that he speaks from personal revelation, the same as the twelve apostles. He offers grace and peace to the churches on behalf of God. Having observed the niceties, Paul then skips the thanksgiving that we customarily see in his letters and goes immediately to the heart of the matter. His agitation and alarm are more apparent as the letter unfolds.

Astonished, deserting, turning away, distort, accursed. These are some of the verbs that Paul uses next to describe the state of affairs in the churches of Galatia. He is angry and hurt and perhaps even more, he is anxious for his flock. He knows that their decision to follow the Judaizers takes them away from the real gospel. To do so is a breach of faith. Paul is passionate here. He realizes that the future of this church hangs in the balance.

The Galatian churches had been infiltrated with Judaizers; people who told them they were welcome to worship with the Jews if they would submit to circumcision. Apparently, there was some merit for these so-called church leaders to bring Gentiles into worship with the Jews. On its face, that didn’t sound so bad, but the Gentiles had to submit to Jewish ritual, including circumcision, in order to come in to the church.

Perhaps these leaders actually believed what they were selling. Perhaps they were only courting the favor of the religious establishment. Either way, this infuriated Paul. Paul saw the gospel as God’s promise of justification by faith alone. For Paul and for us as well, this was the whole point of the atonement of Jesus. The thought of circumcision was to him a departure from faith. It was a return to the law, to a faith that depended on works of some kind. This was nothing short of apostasy, of betrayal of the very heart of the gospel message.

The Judaizers thought that Paul had made it too easy to become Christian. Where were the rules? Where were the rituals and regulations that set them apart from pagans? As Paul begins to speak to the issue, he first addresses his converts, the members of the Galatian churches. He calls them deserters, accusing them of turning to a different gospel.  He reminds them that there is only one gospel. He reiterates in the strongest possible terms that the only acceptable gospel is the one they received from him, the one that he received from Jesus himself.  Understand that it is not Paul’s gospel. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of Jesus Christ, to which Paul is referring.

          Paul says there are those who trouble and want to distort. Do you know anyone like that? The bookstores and newsstands are full of peddlers of half-truths. Today, the prosperity gospel is preached and hawked as though it will transform our lives to material wealth and prosperity. Others preach equally distorting messages far from the real truth of the gospel. The gospel to which Paul refers is not composed of observance of a set of don’ts. It is one of love returned for love; servanthood practices and redemption received. The grace of the Lord supplies all the entrance requirements. We have only to accept the love that has been offered.

          But what if the gospel proponents are famous politicians or university professors? What if they are religious leaders? What if they are the teacher of your class or your favorite writer? Paul says that if they say something different from what Jesus has handed down, then they are frauds. Does that happen? A seminary friend of mine told me of being welcomed into her Presbytery not too long ago. An area religious leader and Presbyterian minister called himself “Christian,” but said he didn’t believe in the resurrection. And Paul says “even if an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.”

We don’t have to worry today about being circumcised. We don’t even consider that as a religious act. We look at it rather as a medical procedure routinely performed on infant males. But we are constantly barraged in our culture to be self-reliant, to look after number one, to save for a rainy day. Sometimes our religious practices run afoul of others’ freedoms. Sometimes democracy or science or relativism seem to become the new religion. The voices of many teachers echo through our classrooms and living rooms as we seek to find the filter that will bring us in line with the truth.

Is there still truth in the world? Of course there is. The great truths of this world are changeless and timeless. Paul reminds us the greatest truth of all is the gospel. He reminds us that while there may be many wanna-bes, there is only one gospel. The gospel is not about rules and regulations. It’s not about observation of all the ways to do wrong. It’s not about debits and credits. That’s accounting. If that is what we must do to get to God, we are lost before we start. The gospel is not really about restraint at all. It is much, much more about empowerment.  The gospel is servanthood. It is the good news of Jesus Christ, not the good news of Paul or the Pastor, and the good news of Jesus Christ is that he has already saved us if we will believe that he is who he says he is.

The Judaizers and the apostle Paul had something in common, though it was hard for them to see it at the time. They both were talking about what it takes for us to form lasting relationships between ourselves and God. How can you find peace with God? How can you live in harmony with him? The answer, as Paul correctly discerned, is through faith, not through an additional layer of  man-made requirements. The message of the gospel is simple, but the practice of it is far from easy. Which would you rather do? Be circumcised and observe a list of requirements, through which you can grade yourself and present your report card to Jesus? Or live by faith, all day, every day, never knowing what God will have you to sacrifice in his name, never knowing where he may send you, to what lengths or depths you will be called in his name. No, the gospel of which Paul talked has but one requirement, but it is far from easy. Take it from a lawyer. Legalism is not the way to God. It appeals to pride, and that gives us something to crow about. Faith, on the other hand, gets self out of the way. Then, the glory of the gospel can shine right through the cracked vessels that we call our lives.

Do you believe? Do you believe in the one gospel? It’s right here. You can read it for yourself. The message is strong and powerful and as new today as it was at Pentecost. There is but one gospel. “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.”