Two Half Sermons

When God created the universe, and when He created this world, he had a very specific plan in place for how things would work. He created the earth, filled it with plants, and animals, and eventually people, and He declared it to be “Very good”. When He placed humankind on this planet, God’s plan would have allowed a few billion people to live together in this paradise He had just created, and to do so peacefully, and even joyfully. And at the core of this plan was love. God, in His wisdom, knew that the only way that a world full of people would be able to live together and to maintain this paradise that He had created, would be if people loved each other; but humankind fell into sin; or more accurately, humankind chose to fall into sin. We sinned when we decided to love ourselves more than we loved others. When we believe in the necessity of “Looking out for number one” we lose sight of the necessity of loving others equally, and in the process of this failing to love others, we find that we lose out on the opportunity to get to know them, and in the process of not getting to know them, we find that misunderstanding and distrust abound, and we lose the capacity to care about the welfare of others. We fail to care about whether or not they are fed, whether or not they are well, and even whether or not they are happy. None of these things affect us, so none of these things concern us.
It’s not like God didn’t know this was going to happen.
Fortunately for us, God also already had the plan in place for leading humankind back to the paradise for which we were originally created. This plan was revealed to us over the span of a few thousand years, beginning with the giving of the 10 commandments, then through the work and writings of a number of prophets and authors who, inspired by God, expanded and clarified the law, and finally through the example of God Himself, who lived among us in the fully human, yet fully divine person of Jesus.
Our Jewish brothers and sisters were the ones through whom God chose to reveal Himself, and the Jewish people were known throughout the ancient world as a peculiar people who followed the law of their God down to the minutest detail. So meticulous were they that the ancient Hebrew men used to wear a box bound to their forehead; a box… on their forehead. The box would contain a Bible verse, or verses. Why? (Have someone read Deuteronomy 6:6-9). Well son of a gun, the Bible DOES say to take God’s commandments and bind them on our forehead, doesn’t it? In fact, the Rabbis wrote commentary after commentary explaining exactly how a faithful Jew should follow the commandments and laws precisely.
This is something that I’ve confessed in this pulpit before and will now do it again. I am a Facebook addict. I spend WAY too much time reading Facebook and WAY too much more time commenting and responding. A while back I was involved in a discussion and I was accused of being un-Christian. Hey, it happens. In this instance however, the person accusing me quoted a passage that I really didn’t think applied to my situation, and I really didn’t think the person had a theological basis for their complaint. I no longer remember the specific infraction, nor do I remember the passage quoted, but I know well what my response was. Believing that the passage had been misapplied I replied from the heart, and ended up saying something that I’ve known for a long time, but had never really put into words. I said “God’s Law is not a list of rules and regulations to be followed blindly. God’s Law is a description of what the human heart is supposed to look like”.
Our purpose is not to go through life following an exhaustive list of rules and regulations. Our purpose in life is to learn to love others at least as much as we love ourselves. We don’t follow God’s Law in order to gain something in this life (Not that there aren’t benefits to following God’s Law in this life). But we follow God’s Law because we are in training. (I was going to have Daniel cue the theme from Rocky here but I suppose we will skip that part). The lesson that we learn from the life that Jesus lived is that loving God and loving others is the very essence of our faith, and indeed the very reason for our existence.
Now, I don’t have to tell you that this is an extraordinarily difficult thing. Loving others more than we love ourselves would be difficult even if everyone else was loving us more than they loved themselves, but when the majority of the people in this world are definitely in that “Looking out for number one” mode, loving others sacrificially is nearly impossible. And yet it is that to which we are called.
Over the last few weeks Rev. Rack has been speaking of some of the difficult sayings of Jesus and how those sayings caused many of His followers to turn away from Him. When God asks the seemingly impossible of us we need a pretty darn good reason to follow Him and it’s not exactly like He’s meeting us on the street corner giving us instruction and encouragement. There is a lot that we are asked to accept on faith, and the simple truth is, faith is hard. Does anyone remember the words of the father who brought his child to Jesus to be cleansed of an evil spirit? (Have someone read Mark 9:23-24). Even when we do believe, faith can be hard. But faith may not be exactly what we think it is either. (Have someone read Hebrews 1:11). Faith is more than wishful thinking or hoping against hope. Faith is a real, tangible thing that springs from evidence. And so, instead of getting one whole sermon today, you’re going to get two half sermons, because in addition to talking about the necessity of love today, I’d also like to talk about the reasons why we should love. I hear a lot of arguments about there being no proof for God’s existence. If I hear the phrase “The invisible man in the sky” or hear God referred to as my “Imaginary Friend” I think I will lose it! It’s like these folks expect that the evidence for God’s existence or for the veracity of the claims of the disciples will fall down from the sky and smack them in the head. Like pretty much anything else in life, if you want to discover the evidence for God’s claims, you have to look for it. If you need a reason to love, it takes a little work to find one. Today’s good news is though, that I’ve done some of the work for you.
You all know that I am a history nut, and an archaeology nut, and there is an archaeological find that is so new that it hasn’t been published yet, but it has been leaked, and it is exciting. But first, a little background.
At the turn of the 20th century, when the 1800’s turned into the 1900’s there was a group of scholars who began to study the earliest Bible manuscripts in a new way. They called their new method of study “Form Criticism”. And to explain Form Criticism, I need to ask a question. By a show of hands, how many have actually read Shakespeare? For those who have, how many wished that there was an English translation available? Yes, Shakespeare wrote in English, but the English of his day is archaic compared to the English of today. Many word meanings and word forms have changed, many words are no longer used or have been replaced with different words and different syntax. 2000 years from now an archaeologist studying our society and finding a book of Shakespeare with a copyright date of 2018 will likely know that the book wasn’t actually authored in 2018 because they will recognize the fact that the usage of the language doesn’t at all fit our time period. It is these linguistic differences that the Form Critics studied. They tried to use linguistic cues to determine periods of authorship for the books of the New Testament. Unfortunately, the Form Critics approached their research with what appear to be some preconceived notions and they came to a conclusion that the earliest New Testament books were not authored until the mid-300’s of the common era. Though few people know about this group of scholars, or the name they gave themselves, the results of their research and their opinions about dates of authorship have come to be incredibly pervasive. I can’t tell you how many discussions in which I have participated (Yes, on Facebook) where people state with conviction the fact that the New Testament is unreliable because the books were authored 300 or more years after the fact and are full of exaggeration and legend as a result. The discovery of the John Ryland’s Manuscript in the 1930’s has done little to change this prevailing opinion. The Ryland’s Manuscript contains a fragment of the Gospel of John that most scholars believe is dated no later than the year 130. Unfortunately, this date is derived from evidence and not from verifiable fact, and skeptics have proposed a date for the manuscript well into the 300’s and so, even though the best guesses lean towards the earlier date, there is no general consensus, and no real hard and fast proof.
Why does this matter? The claims of the disciples are pretty hard to take at face value. Turning water into wine, healing the sick, restoring sight to the blind, walking on water… these are all hard to accept, but raising people from the dead, and eventually being crucified and then coming back to life? These things strain the bounds of reason pretty much to the limit. And yet how important is the resurrection to our faith? (Have someone read 1 Corinthians 15:13-14). Our preaching is useless, and so is your faith! The Bible claims that the resurrection was central to the teachings of the apostles, and that the apostles preached this message to literally hundred of eyewitnesses to the events. If it can be shown that the Gospels were in fact written by eyewitnesses and presented to an audience of eyewitnesses, it becomes much more likely that the text is reliable, because a document that is written and in circulation at a time when eyewitnesses of the events portrayed are plentiful will not be accepted unless it is factually accurate, which brings us to our exciting new discovery.
Most of us have seen pictures of the elaborate sarcophagus of King Tutankhamun (King Tut for short). Some of us may even have seen it in person since it toured the US many years ago. We are accustomed to seeing the jewel encrusted gold death masks of the Egyptian Pharaohs, but what we may not know is that death masks were extremely popular in ancient Egypt. Now most Egyptians couldn’t afford the fancy gold masks, and so for the common folk the masks were made of paper mache, or more accurately, papyrus mache, and for many people even the papyrus to make the mask was prohibitively expensive, so they made their masks from used papyrus. Recently, scientists have devised a way to dissolve the glue in these masks without damaging the papyrus or the ink that is written on them. In one of these disassembled masks, reliably dated to the 80’s through a combination of radio carbon dating and evidence from other documents recovered from the mask, one of the pieces of papyrus contained a fragment of the Gospel of Mark. For hundreds of years conservative scholars have dated the authorship of Mark in the early 60’s. The dating of this fragment makes that date highly likely; and since the letters of Paul preceded the synoptic Gospels by at least 10-15 years, this places the New Testament into a time when eyewitnesses would have indeed been plentiful. The testimony for which 7 of the 11 remaining disciples gave their lives, along with Stephen, James, and Paul can no longer be written off as legend or embellishment. These were words that were preached to people who would have known instantly whether they were true or not. We read in 1 Corinthians that after appearing to the 12, Jesus appeared to over 500 believers. Paul later encourages people to ask the living eyewitnesses to corroborate his message.
My friends, Jesus is a real person who lived in first century Palestine, a man whose name was mentioned by 21 separate, non-Biblical, late first or early second century sources. The story of His life has been revealed in four separate Gospels, written by men who it is becoming increasingly more apparent were actual eyewitnesses and followers of Jesus, many of whom were executed by the Romans for their testimony. Let’s stop to think about that for a moment. The world has never been at a loss for people willing to die for their beliefs, but there is a world of difference between giving your life for something you believe, but have no proof of, and giving your life for something of which you were an eyewitness.
We read in 2nd Peter: “6 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”[b] 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.”
If the resurrection of Jesus is real, then we can trust His words when He says that He will come again and receive us that where He is, we will be also. If our resurrection is real, then we are indeed in training; preparing for that glorious day when His love is made complete in us.
Amen.