Life -- And Then Some
Sermon
Ashes To Ascension
Second Lesson Sermons For Lent/Easter
The words of the text express clearly the central theme of 1 John. The author has dealt with many themes, and his mind has wandered in several directions. But he has always kept his main theme in mind, which he now states clearly in these closing verses: "Whoever has the Son has life." He states unequivocally that his overall purpose for his writing is "that you may know that you have eternal life." There is no doubt that 1 John through the centuries has nourished souls, kindled faith, and inspired love. Keeping these thoughts in mind, let us pursue the subject a bit further.
Life Is God's Gift
To be a live human being, to breathe, to think, simply to be, is a glorious thing. Walter J. Burghardt in his book Preaching the Just Word says that life is glorious because it is a gift. Not merely a gift from our parents, life is a gift "from above." It is a gift from God who gives all that is good, as James reminds us in 1:17: "Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." The gift of life is a sharing in God who is life.
Human life is a glorious gift because it is a gift of love. Burghardt has pointed out that God has not just fashioned you to be, but you are a special kind of existence. You share "being" with stone and star, with sea and sand. You share a form of life with winter wheat and quivering aspen leaf. Along with robins, lions, and dolphins you can see and hear and touch and taste and smell.
But what makes you human is a twin power you alone of earth's creatures share with God. Whatever your blood, skin, or accent, male or female, you come into this world sharing two of God's precious perfections: You have the power to know, and you have the freedom to love. You are someone; you are a person; you are like God (Burghardt, p. 27).
Thus, life is good because it is from God. All that God creates and gives is good.
Life With A Purpose
Archdeacon Paley argued that if you examine the intricate mechanism of a watch, you cannot fail to believe that it has been produced by a purposeful agent, namely, a watchmaker. He went on to reason that by analogy when one reflects on the world with all of its wealth of natural resources, beauty, and orderliness one cannot help but to conclude that there must be a world-maker, a creator God. The glaring weakness in Paley's argument is that God is not only transcendent, but immanent. The God who is revealed in the struggle with the Hebrew people in their nomadic trek from slavery to freedom, the God revealed in the life of Jesus Christ is a God of immanent feeling and identification with all that God created. God is not only over creation but God is within it. The biblical narrative strongly presents a God who became incarnate in the midst of life, that in Christ the Word became in-fleshed in history and suffered in history and the Holy Spirit still groans in travail with the world, seeking to bring to birth the children of God. As one scholar has pointed out, "The purpose of God for the world is not realized by some effortless decree issuing from the heavenly places, but demands God's presence and God's very self in the midst of the world" (John Macquarrie, Christian Hope, p. 83).
All of us have some purpose for what we do and how we live. But we need to have a main purpose, a central, all-consuming purpose that holds life together when other things begin to erode and fade away. Tillich called this main purpose an "ultimate concern" which embraces and coordinates all the little purposes. Can we believe that God has a purpose for the whole creation, a purpose that gathers up, purifies, and deepens all our finite purposes? Jesus believed that there was such a purpose. He called it the Kingdom of God. Within the life and teachings of Christ we discover the nature, the purpose, the meaning, and the demands of this Kingdom upon our lives. The purpose of the Christian life is to seek first the Kingdom of God. This brings direction, purpose, and meaning to life.
If the creator was no more than a "pure mathematician," as Sir James Jeans once described God, then God might have been content with a universe of galaxies and stars and planets, of physics and chemistry intricately ordered, and that would certainly be a universe to fill our minds with awe. But God, Christians believe, is more than a pure mathematician, the universe is more than a machine, more than an overwhelming esthetic creation. God is a God of love, whose purpose in creation was not to bring into being a fascinatingly beautiful universe, but to be confronted with an "other" who could respond to love with love, who could live communion.
-- Macquarrie, ibid.
So life emerges in creation. This life has direction and purpose. In the life of Christ we can then begin to understand God's purpose for creation. This is uniquely expressed in Jesus' teaching and preaching regarding the kingdom of God. The more we become Christ-like, the more we become part of the kingdom, the more our life acquires meaning and purpose. "I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10b).
Life Finds Purpose In Community
In our text the author declares, "Whoever has the Son has life." The author is not speaking as a voice in the wilderness, isolated and alone. He is speaking as a member of the first century Christian community. It is from within this community that he has gained such insight to life, and it is this community that has nurtured this new life in Christ, and it is this community that empowers him to make such a proclamation. The claim of the New Testament writers is that this community of faith is where the new believer is welcomed, accepted, trained, nurtured, and saved. These new human communities have been described by scholars not as escapists but rather as fragile societies organized in response to the Jesus event, who were trying to provide a home for widows, aliens, immigrants, displaced workers, the poor, and others who were in need. They were multilingual and multicultural creations of a new humanity who sought the power of healing, love, and justice. Keith Russell has pointed out that the early church rejected the culture of privilege and power.
The emerging church was not a subset of the dominant culture. Its dramatic growth did not come about because it was favored or protected by the state. It was not a tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization. It was a sect existing on the edge of the Roman society, often outside societal laws and mores or at least substantially at odds with them ... The early church grew rapidly in part because, like other sects, it offered its adherents love and acceptance within the community; that is, the church became a primary place of belonging in urban areas in time of severe social dislocation. The church provided a welcoming home and a place of acceptance for aliens, exiles, and displaced people all over the Roman Empire. It was a new family, a new community that claimed a new unity in response to Christ.
-- The Living Pulpit, July-September 1995, p. 10
As then, so now, conversion to Christ is a concession to the community of faith -- the Church. One's acceptance of Christ and admission into the community is attested to by public baptism. Baptism is a public confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and a declaration that one has now decided to become a member of this community called the Church. This act of confession, repentance, and baptism promises a new sense of self and a new sense of purpose. That is, it provides new life.
Choose Life
The text declares that by choosing Christ one has chosen life. One theme that the author of 1 John has consistently followed is that the abundant life that Jesus offers, which is life born of the spirit of God, is life in which the love of God is expressed in love for other human beings. "Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love" (4:8). "... if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us" (4:12b). "Little children, let us love, not in word and speech, but in truth and action" (3:18). By choosing Christ we have accepted an ethic of love, and now our judgments of one another in regard to what is right and wrong can be spoken by seeing God in one's neighbor. Jesus told Nicodemus that the second birth is not from flesh and blood, but from the Spirit. It is also true that those born of God's spirit are born into love and respect for human life. This is the central message of 1 John -- the author is emphatic that "whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love" (4:8b). Again he states, "The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also" (4:21). To choose life is to choose compassion, justice, healing, but above all -- love.
Life Is God's Gift
To be a live human being, to breathe, to think, simply to be, is a glorious thing. Walter J. Burghardt in his book Preaching the Just Word says that life is glorious because it is a gift. Not merely a gift from our parents, life is a gift "from above." It is a gift from God who gives all that is good, as James reminds us in 1:17: "Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." The gift of life is a sharing in God who is life.
Human life is a glorious gift because it is a gift of love. Burghardt has pointed out that God has not just fashioned you to be, but you are a special kind of existence. You share "being" with stone and star, with sea and sand. You share a form of life with winter wheat and quivering aspen leaf. Along with robins, lions, and dolphins you can see and hear and touch and taste and smell.
But what makes you human is a twin power you alone of earth's creatures share with God. Whatever your blood, skin, or accent, male or female, you come into this world sharing two of God's precious perfections: You have the power to know, and you have the freedom to love. You are someone; you are a person; you are like God (Burghardt, p. 27).
Thus, life is good because it is from God. All that God creates and gives is good.
Life With A Purpose
Archdeacon Paley argued that if you examine the intricate mechanism of a watch, you cannot fail to believe that it has been produced by a purposeful agent, namely, a watchmaker. He went on to reason that by analogy when one reflects on the world with all of its wealth of natural resources, beauty, and orderliness one cannot help but to conclude that there must be a world-maker, a creator God. The glaring weakness in Paley's argument is that God is not only transcendent, but immanent. The God who is revealed in the struggle with the Hebrew people in their nomadic trek from slavery to freedom, the God revealed in the life of Jesus Christ is a God of immanent feeling and identification with all that God created. God is not only over creation but God is within it. The biblical narrative strongly presents a God who became incarnate in the midst of life, that in Christ the Word became in-fleshed in history and suffered in history and the Holy Spirit still groans in travail with the world, seeking to bring to birth the children of God. As one scholar has pointed out, "The purpose of God for the world is not realized by some effortless decree issuing from the heavenly places, but demands God's presence and God's very self in the midst of the world" (John Macquarrie, Christian Hope, p. 83).
All of us have some purpose for what we do and how we live. But we need to have a main purpose, a central, all-consuming purpose that holds life together when other things begin to erode and fade away. Tillich called this main purpose an "ultimate concern" which embraces and coordinates all the little purposes. Can we believe that God has a purpose for the whole creation, a purpose that gathers up, purifies, and deepens all our finite purposes? Jesus believed that there was such a purpose. He called it the Kingdom of God. Within the life and teachings of Christ we discover the nature, the purpose, the meaning, and the demands of this Kingdom upon our lives. The purpose of the Christian life is to seek first the Kingdom of God. This brings direction, purpose, and meaning to life.
If the creator was no more than a "pure mathematician," as Sir James Jeans once described God, then God might have been content with a universe of galaxies and stars and planets, of physics and chemistry intricately ordered, and that would certainly be a universe to fill our minds with awe. But God, Christians believe, is more than a pure mathematician, the universe is more than a machine, more than an overwhelming esthetic creation. God is a God of love, whose purpose in creation was not to bring into being a fascinatingly beautiful universe, but to be confronted with an "other" who could respond to love with love, who could live communion.
-- Macquarrie, ibid.
So life emerges in creation. This life has direction and purpose. In the life of Christ we can then begin to understand God's purpose for creation. This is uniquely expressed in Jesus' teaching and preaching regarding the kingdom of God. The more we become Christ-like, the more we become part of the kingdom, the more our life acquires meaning and purpose. "I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10b).
Life Finds Purpose In Community
In our text the author declares, "Whoever has the Son has life." The author is not speaking as a voice in the wilderness, isolated and alone. He is speaking as a member of the first century Christian community. It is from within this community that he has gained such insight to life, and it is this community that has nurtured this new life in Christ, and it is this community that empowers him to make such a proclamation. The claim of the New Testament writers is that this community of faith is where the new believer is welcomed, accepted, trained, nurtured, and saved. These new human communities have been described by scholars not as escapists but rather as fragile societies organized in response to the Jesus event, who were trying to provide a home for widows, aliens, immigrants, displaced workers, the poor, and others who were in need. They were multilingual and multicultural creations of a new humanity who sought the power of healing, love, and justice. Keith Russell has pointed out that the early church rejected the culture of privilege and power.
The emerging church was not a subset of the dominant culture. Its dramatic growth did not come about because it was favored or protected by the state. It was not a tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization. It was a sect existing on the edge of the Roman society, often outside societal laws and mores or at least substantially at odds with them ... The early church grew rapidly in part because, like other sects, it offered its adherents love and acceptance within the community; that is, the church became a primary place of belonging in urban areas in time of severe social dislocation. The church provided a welcoming home and a place of acceptance for aliens, exiles, and displaced people all over the Roman Empire. It was a new family, a new community that claimed a new unity in response to Christ.
-- The Living Pulpit, July-September 1995, p. 10
As then, so now, conversion to Christ is a concession to the community of faith -- the Church. One's acceptance of Christ and admission into the community is attested to by public baptism. Baptism is a public confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and a declaration that one has now decided to become a member of this community called the Church. This act of confession, repentance, and baptism promises a new sense of self and a new sense of purpose. That is, it provides new life.
Choose Life
The text declares that by choosing Christ one has chosen life. One theme that the author of 1 John has consistently followed is that the abundant life that Jesus offers, which is life born of the spirit of God, is life in which the love of God is expressed in love for other human beings. "Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love" (4:8). "... if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us" (4:12b). "Little children, let us love, not in word and speech, but in truth and action" (3:18). By choosing Christ we have accepted an ethic of love, and now our judgments of one another in regard to what is right and wrong can be spoken by seeing God in one's neighbor. Jesus told Nicodemus that the second birth is not from flesh and blood, but from the Spirit. It is also true that those born of God's spirit are born into love and respect for human life. This is the central message of 1 John -- the author is emphatic that "whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love" (4:8b). Again he states, "The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also" (4:21). To choose life is to choose compassion, justice, healing, but above all -- love.
