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Foundry United Rev. |
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Discerning the
Heart of God Sunday, December 21,
2008 |
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John 1: 16-23 Rev. |
Sometimes
these kinds of questions become very personal and existential. A test result comes
back positive. A loved one begins to lose his or her memory and intellectual
coherence. A relative leaves for Why is
the world the way it is? Almost
from the very beginning human beings have wanted to understand God’s way of
thinking…God’s logic. What was the Creator thinking when he/she/it created a
world with tsunamis and earthquakes and ice ages? What was he/she/it thinking
when he/she/it began a process of life that would include bubonic plague,
tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS? So many questions humanity has had about whomever
or whatever is responsible for the world in which we find ourselves. At the
time the Gospel of John was written philosophers were already searching for a
premise or theory that would help them understand the mind of God – what the
Creator was thinking? They called this premise or idea or theory the logos…God’s logic…the way God thinks
that caused God to create the world the way it is created. We may
not like lots of things about the way the world is, like disease, disaster,
and death, but it would help if we could understand why they exist…what God
was thinking. Thus the human search for some sense of God’s logic – the logos. The
life and death of Jesus Christ had such an impact on the lives of the first
generations of Christians that they said – some of them – that Jesus was the logos become flesh. In Jesus’ life and
teachings they found an answer to the question of the purpose and meaning of
existence. This is
what John says in the first 18 verses of his gospel. The Word – the logos – became flesh and dwelled among
us. Yet it
is still true what Isaiah said; Isaiah has God say: “My thoughts are not your
thoughts, my ways are not your ways, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 55: 8) There is
still more that we do not understand about life and God than we do
understand. So what
was it that these early Christians saw in Jesus that helped them make sense
of life, in spite of all its confusions and perplexities? Well, it really
wasn’t an idea or a philosophy or an intellectual theory. It was
not intellectual enlightenment that the early Christians found in Jesus,
although the followers of Jesus valued the life of the intellect and Jesus
changed the way they thought. John
concludes the prologue to his Gospel by saying this: “No one has ever seen God;
It is God the only [child], who is close to [God’s] heart, who has made [God]
known.” What
Jesus showed us, John is saying, is not God’s logic as much as God’s heart. Which
then helps us live with God’s logic. Here is
the question: Does God love us or hate us or is God simply indifferent toward
us? Is the universe the Creator created fundamentally trustworthy? Does my
existence have meaning even if I don’t know what it is? Something
about the way Jesus lived his life caused the first generation of Christians
to believe that, despite the experience of disease, disaster, disappointment,
persecution, hardship, oppression, that creation was an act of love, that God
means well for us, and thus, pain is worth enduring and overcoming, our
struggles have meaning, our joys are good gifts that it is okay to enjoy. Jesus’
life and teaching helped the first Christians to trust that God is benevolent
rather than either mean or arbitrary or uncaring. And
that can make all the difference in the world. Our theology matters. What we
believe about the source of creation, the source of life, the source of my
life matters. And there is no way to know. “No one has ever seen God.” There
is no way to know. “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” It is a
choice really. We need to choose. Do we believe life is fundamentally bad or
good? In the face of disappointment and discouragement, should we withdraw
from life or can we trust life? Is God for us or against us? Is the universe
for us or against us? There
were a small group of people 1900 years ago – they were mostly poor, they
were powerless and persecuted – but Jesus, by the way he lived, had convinced
them that God valued them, that God had not forgotten them, that God was not
indifferent…that God loved them, that God was pulling for them. They
refused to accept defeat or discouragement. Every challenge, every defeat,
every disease, every death, was an opportunity to live with courage and
conviction that a better, more just, more inclusive world was on the way. Because
they believed in the goodness and love of God, they transformed the world. Matthew
and Luke’s Christmas stories are all trying to say what John said: You poor
shepherds, you gentile magi, you teenaged peasant girl Mary, you old man
Simone, oddball old woman Anna, all of you. God has not forgotten you. There
are lots of things you and I don’t understand about our world and our lives.
But Jesus has shown us God’s heart. We may not be able to comprehend God’s
thoughts but we can trust God’s heart. www.foundryumc.org |
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