Faith, Forgiveness, Identity and Ministry:

Jesus and the Dramatic Ceiling Entrance

(UCD Campus - October 7, 2008)

Luke 6:17-26

At the time of this story Jesus has been doing his thing for about a year and has become wildly popular. On this particular day he is teaching and healing in a house and it has become so densely packed that no more people can get in. There are these guys who have literally carried their friend to see Jesus and they will not be denied. So the passage begins with a dramatic ceiling entry. Entering a room through the ceiling is actually a narrative devise that is commonly employed by the story tellers of our culture. In particular, ceiling entries are a staple of Spy and Heist movies. Our culture’s iconic image of the ceiling entry has got to be Tom Cruise dangling in mid-air hacking the master spy list, a bead of sweat dangerously forming on his brow. But a more fun ceiling entry would be from Wallace and Grommet and the Wrong Pants where the nefarious penguin (disguised as a rooster by placing a rubber glove on his head) takes control of Wallace’s mechanical pants and uses the sleeping Wallace to stage a diamond heist.

But these activities have commonality with the people passing through the roof in Luke 6. They are in tenacious pursuit of something of absolute value that is otherwise inaccessible. And that is why Luke tells us the story of the ceiling entry. But it is the conversation that follows that is of primary interest. A disproportionate amount of spiritual insight emerges from the few sentences exchanged after the dramatic entry. This is some of the most theologically dense dialog anywhere in the book of Luke.

In the next twenty minutes or so I would like to try to understand this passage by zeroing in on four phrases.

1. ” Jesus saw their faith…” –What faith is
2. “Your sins are forgiven.” -What Jesus offers
3. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” –Who Jesus is
4. ‘So that you may know…’ -Jesus’ method of ministry


1. ” Jesus saw their faith…”

In the text we see a classic formula, which is at the center of Christian theology and that comes up again and again in Luke’s account of Jesus’ life: Jesus grants the forgiveness of sins in response to faith. The first half of Luke is a string of accounts of messed up people coming to Jesus with nothing but trust and hope and finding forgiveness. But one of the really interesting things that pops out from a careful reading of this passage is an unexpected insight on what faith is. How did Jesus know that these men had faith? He saw their faith. In this passage, faith is something Jesus can observe. Have you ever thought of faith in that way; as something that can be seen? I think that should affect our ideas about what faith is…and what it is not. It is not a private belief, an abstract idea, a warm feeling or a correct doctrinal statement. It is the confident and tenacious pursuit of Jesus. It is a lively trust that what Jesus offers is worth reorganizing you life for. It is going out of your way and pressing through obstacles to get to him

I think this undermines another misconception about faith. Some people think of faith as the opposite of doubt. That true faith exists only in the absence of doubt. But belief is not something you can muster by sheer willpower. God does not ask us to blindly ignore our doubts if we are to be forgiven. This is a common attack against the credibility of Christianity, that we force blind compliance because we threaten doubt with judgment. But, as defined in this passage, substantial, saving faith and doubt can coexist. Faith is not the absence of doubt, but a passionate pursuit of Jesus despite obstacles (including doubt itself).

I am a scientist. My wife works at a level one emergency room. Between my training in empiricism and my wife’s constant stream of stories of the worst kinds of suffering humans can endure, our home is not without doubt. But we are people of faith, not because we ignore our doubts but that we continue to pursue Jesus through them.

Some of you are struggling with doubt. Maybe, you have a particularly bombastic and antagonistic professor. Or more difficult yet, perhaps you have a particularly insightful professor that has challenged your world view. Maybe you have hurts that you blame God for or that were inflicted by Christians. Or maybe this is just your first time outside of your parent’s house, and you are trying to figure out if the God thing is really worth missing out on all of the sex and parties that college has to offer. Faith is not closing your eyes to these things and pretending they don’t exist. It is tenaciously pursuing Jesus through them.

2. “Your sins are forgiven.”

There are two possible reactions to this statement: ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ The first is to be underwhelmed. Jesus’ response could be considered ‘adventures in missing the point’. A paralyzed man goes through the trouble of being carried what was likely a significant distance, hoisted onto a roof and lowered through a mud hole, a maneuver that involved pretty significant risk for a man without the use of his limbs. And Jesus appears to look right past his real issue, waxing spiritual, but not providing the actual service they went through all that trouble for. His statement, ‘your sins are forgiven’ could be seen as a trivial response…an unverifiable response to what everyone can see is a very serious problem. I can almost see Andy Dufrane from the Shawshank Redemption looking at the warden in disbelief asking ‘how can you be so obtuse?’

But this is kind of the whole point of the story. By offering this man forgiveness, instead of healing, in response to his tenacious faith, Jesus suggests that we have misdiagnosed our greatest need. We, like those who were checking Jesus out in the gospel stories, come to Jesus for a variety of reasons, in response to a variety of felt needs. Sickness, helplessness, fear, guilt, and meaninglessness can all be reasons (among many others) that we develop a curiosity about Jesus. For most of us, these felt needs are far more trivial than the desire to walk. And Jesus cares about the things that trouble us. But in this passage, Jesus provocatively asserts that these are not our greatest needs.

Consider that you are watching my house while I am away. And while I am gone a bill comes for me and you pay it and tell me that you are not interested in being repaid. How thankful should I be…I actually have no idea how thankful to be. I have no idea how thankful to be until I know the value of the gift. Did a letter come with the wrong stamp and you paid the $0.03 postage due…was it my entire student loan…was it my mortgage? My gratitude will be commensurate with my need and the provision made for my need.[1]

And this is the tension of Jesus’ words in this passage. Those who were underwhelmed by his response ‘your sins are forgiven’ have not understood the value of the gift. They have misdiagnosed our greatest need. Jesus responds to the faith of the paralytic and his friends with the greatest gift possible. In doing so he subtly asserting that being reconciled to God is more valuable than walking. By looking past the paralysis and offering the man reconciliation with God in response to his faith, Jesus makes the case that our broken human condition, which separates us from God, is our actual greatest need.

I think the biggest reason we underestimate our need for forgiveness is because we tend to misunderstand what ‘sin’ is. It has become a word without meaning in our culture. In most of its cultural uses it actually has positive connotations…to describe things we enjoy. A couple that is enjoying sex before they are married playfully quip that they are ‘living in sin.’ An eight layer chocolate dessert is described as ‘sinfully delicious.’ Chuck Klosteman get at this idea in his review of the Left Behind series in which a dispensational, pre-tribulational rapture[2] leaves the world without Christians.

“The post-rapture earth initially seems like a better place to live. Everyone boring would be gone. One could assume that all the infidels that weren’t teleported into God’s kingdom must be pretty cool. All the guys would be drinkers and all the women would be easy and you could make jokes about homeless people and teen suicide and crack babies without offending anyone. Quite frankly, my response to the opening pages of Left Behind was ‘sounds good to me.’”[3]

This is a common sentiment. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard someone joke that if Heaven and Hell exist they are angling for hell because that is where all of the fun people will be.

Even when sin has a negative connotation it is generally though of as a set of mistakes. For some of you, when you hear Jesus say ‘your sins are forgiven’ you hear ‘I will overlook the mistakes you have made because I get it. It’s hard to be you. Everyone makes mistakes. No, really, it’s cool.’ But this is not how Jesus views or defines view of sin.

The ‘mistakes’, the individual ‘sins’ are just symptoms of a condition of rebellion and brokenness…of a fundamental self reliance. Sin is a condition not a series of event. It is a fundamental inclination of self interest that causes the individual ‘sins’ like lying, misuse of sexuality or indifference towards the poor.

I actually think that a lot of the art generated by our culture gets this point pretty right. Even completely secular people look at the human condition and conclude that there is something fundamentally wrong with us. Malcom Muggeridge was talking about this phenomena when he said ‘The doctrine of human depravity is simultaneously the most unpopular and the most empirically verifiable of all the Christian beliefs.’ This observation that there is something fundamentally wrong with us that needs some sort of fix is the most noticeable theme in Linkin Park’s three major albums. Consider:

I'm my own worst enemy
I've given up, I'm sick of feeling
Is there nothing you can say?
Take this all away, I'm suffocating
Tell me what the f@#$ is wrong with me
___
Crawling in my skin
These wounds, they will not heal
Fear is how I fall
Confusing what is real

There's something inside me that pulls beneath the surface
Consuming, confusing
This lack of self control I fear is never ending
Controlling

I can't seem
To find myself again
My walls are closing in
I've felt this way before
So insecure
___
In this farewell,
There's no blood,
There's no alibi,
'Cause I've drawn regret,
From the truth of a thousand lies.
So let mercy come, and wash away...

What I've done,

or if the hybrid scene is not your thing The Arcade Fire (opposite genre, same desperate longing) echoes the same theme.

“And there’s something wrong in the heart of man,
you take it from your heart and put it in your hand!”

I think these lyrics actually articulates a central theme in the message of Jesus and those who came after him. We are fundamentally broken. We have an inclination towards self interest and self centeredness that is more than jus the sum of all our mistakes. It is a condition. It is rebellion and it separates us from God. Being forgiven and healed of this condition is our deepest and most desperate need and the great gifts Jesus offers. He knows that the greatest need that any of us has is a heart corroded and misshapen by misuse and turned away from God. And he offer forgiveness in response to faith.

3. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

So I said there were two possible responses to Jesus’ offer of forgiveness. The first is to be underwhelmed…to feel like he is missing the point. But the opposite reaction was the one actually recorded. The Pharisees, who were the popular religious leaders of the time, were actually upset at the audacity of the claim. They quietly wondered ‘Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ One could make the case that this question is actually the thesis statement of the passage.

First a word about the Pharisees. This is the first time they appear in Luke’s story. Up until this point Jesus had attracted large crowds of common people who were attracted to his spiritual authority and accessible teaching in metaphors of their daily lives. At this point, however, he had gotten popular enough that the religious leaders felt the need to check this guy out. It says they came from all the surrounding towns in an organized effort to evaluate and eventually to discredit Jesus. The next two chapters record a series of encounters in which Jesus is teaching the common people and the religious leaders engage him in debate, trying to undermine his popularity.

But here is the thing about their question in this passage: ‘Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ It is precisely the right question. They were incensed at his offer of forgiveness because they knew that this was something only God could do…and they were precisely correct. Physicians had significant social status in Jesus’ day. The author of this account, Luke, was himself a doctor. The realm of human healing was one that was not well understood but was at least open to human efforts and attempts. But forgiveness of sins; that was God’s alone to grant.

In making this audacious claim Jesus rejects the common misconception that he came as an enlightened teacher or prophet. His coming was not just educational, improving us with good advice. His coming was a cosmic event…nothing less than the visitation of God himself. The point of his coming was not access to his teaching, but access to Jesus himself as the redemptive agent of God. In this passage Jesus claims to at the very least, have God’s authority. As he unfolds his actual identity over the course of his ministry we learn that he has God’s authority because he is God. If this is a new idea to you it could be potentially shocking. It was for those who were there that day. They had come to see a magic show, and they heard a man claim to be God. But this is the only reason the could claim to offer the forgiveness that we all so desperately need.

I think that CS Lewis framed this idea pretty well in what is likely his most famous quote:

'I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about (Jesus): 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.[4]'

4. ‘So that you may know…’

Jesus makes an act of mercy and restoration the conduit of his message of cosmic forgiveness. The forgiveness of sins is not empirically verifiable. You can not test or prove it. There is no sin CAT scan that you can put the man into and evaluate if there is still sin or if it has all been expunged. But Jesus accompanies this message of forgiveness with a tangible act of compassion and service that can be verified empirically. In essence he makes the forgiveness of sins verifiable by accompanying it with a shocking act of compassion.

And this is actually the idea that is at the heart of College Life vision for this year…that we would bring the message of the forgiveness of sins to our campus and community, but that it would not be a purely theoretical offer…that it would be, accompanied by tangible acts of service and grace. This is the whole idea behind the growth group projects. That we would verify the reality of the offer of forgiveness by demonstrating

Some of you may be struggling with this idea a little bit. Historically evangelicals have been wary of mixing the proclamation of the gospel with acts of compassion. The argument goes, if the forgiveness of sins is the most important thing, as this passage seems to assert, we should not waste our time serving people’s physical and emotional needs. But here’s the thing, Jesus does not seem swayed by this. He lives a life of proclamation and service and this phrase ‘so that you may know’ seems to indicate that he sees the latter as authenticating the former. And lest you think this is an isolated event, Jesus’ compassion, healing and interest in the poor, oppressed and marginalized is generally considered by most commentators to be one of the major themes of Luke’s gospel. Our acts of service demonstrate the transformational nature of the gospel as much or more than our personal ethics. In our culture, breaking out of an insular, self centered existence to serve others is often more likely to bring attention to the gospel than the fact that we don’t drink or have extramarital sex.

Sometimes I feel like Bible believing Christians are too busy trying not to be Liberal to take Jesus’ words about compassion, mercy, the poor and works of general service seriously. Some of us need to be more concerned about trying to be like Jesus than trying to be conservative.

Let’s face it, acts of compassion were easier for Jesus. It would be tempting for us to look at his ministry and say, “if God would do miracles through me I’d be willing to act on behalf of the suffering, but without miraculous power it is really hard. Jesus can’t expect us to undergird the message of forgiveness with compassionate action if it is so hard.” But I don’t think the fact that it was easier for Jesus gets us off the hook.

So, there it is. The story of the dramatic ceiling entry provides us with insight about faith, forgiveness, the identity of Jesus and his ministry methods. Just a few sentences of dialog offer a high density of spiritual insight. But the fundamental thrust is to press into a confident and tenacious pursuit of Jesus. He is worth the trouble.

____________
[1] Illustration borrowed from Dr Martian Loyd Jones
[2] A strange (if popular) theology which I consider unbiblical.
[3] Chuck Klosterman “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs”
[4] CS Lewis Mere Christianity

Why I am Still a Christian

UCD – 4/06

Note: I gave this talk a couple years ago to a UCD college ministry. If you are interested in the topic, it gets much better treatment (in free downloadable MP3 format) by Tim Keller here and in his new book. You will recognize some of the material and quotes from past and future posts on my main blog. In retrospect, I’d change a lot of stuff and completely redo or abandon the first point. But for what it is worth, here is my 20 minute summary…

During a recent event, several students erected an enormous wall on the UC Davis campus. In an exercise in sanctioned graffiti, listening and, occasionally dialog, they encouraged their peers to cover it with their response to the statement: ‘Why I am not a Christian.’ Here is a sample of the responses.

There is one Christ yet so many denominations. If they’re all Christians, then why don’t they get along?

Churches have a feel of a social club whose members are “by invitation only”

Too many people have been slaughtered in Christ’s name. (a sobering accusation that must be taken seriously)

Used to promote heterosexist white male privilege.

Evolution, it is real.

-Historically inaccurate
-Scientifically inaccurate
-Logically and internally inconsistent

I love my sin! (I give this person credit for self awareness)

Bush

And let me give you one more response…a little more articulate and well put together, from the most famous answerer of this question: Bertrand Russell, author of the famous book ‘Why I am not a Christian’. He says:

“purposeless (and)…void of meaning is the world which science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That man is the product of causes which had no pre-vision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”[1]
…

All of this raises the obvious question, Why on earth am I still a Christian? Why would I voluntarily choose to be associated with the crusades, the inquisition and the Religious right. Am I just contrarian, a revolutionary, defy all odds, against the flow of public opinion kind of guy. Well, yes, but I could have chosen any number of more socially acceptable world views that satisfy the contrition nature. No I am a Christian because I believe that despite the checkerd past of associated institutions the way of Jesus Christ is still the most compelling paradigm under which the data of life falls into place. It is a worldview with challenges to be sure, but, I believe in the final analysis it has more explanatory power and, fewer weaknesses than other available options.

So I understand that you had a week of ‘You talk, I listen, but if you have another 20 minutes of listening in you I’m plan to use the time I you’ve given me this evening to hit 3 reasons that I am still a Christian. Now this will be to a certain extent anecdotal and personal as one could not hope to give a comprehensive statement of the faith in so short a time. But the core of the reasons that I am still a Christian involve:

1. Christianity Motivates Heroic Lives
2. Christianity Provides the Most Compelling and Comprehensive Explanation of Reality
3. Christianity Responds to the Universal Experience of Suffering

Let's start with what I will call the pagmatic test...

1. Christianity Motivates Heroic Lives

Most worldviews in our culture are asked to pass a pragmatic test before they are ever allowed to respond to the philosophical or existential queries. People want to know if something works before they will entertain the idea that it might be true. Therefore, in my mind one of the first and most damaging accusations brought against Christianity is the charge of hypocrisy, that it actually does not result in significant personal or institutional transformation and, in fact, its institutions have themselves directly perpetrated crass evil. This is, on many counts, a fair charge. But I am unwilling to fully cede this point.

I would argue, first of all, that much of the evil perpetrated in the name of the church actually support a fundamental Christian doctrine – that the human condition is broken at the core and will use any idea or institution, no matter how noble, be it Islam, Hinduism, Communism, nationalism, Christianity or even Darwinian evolution (if you’ll recall social Darwinism and the robber barons of the industrial revolution) to gain power, pleasure or self interest. There are very few worldviews that have not been tarnished by the abuses of wicked men. However, I would assert that aside from the abuses we have a historical record of the Way of Jesus Christ being exceptionally fertile ground for the development of heroic lives. Where rightly applied the Christian worldview equips individuals to live functional, even inspiring lives…lives that ‘work.’
Biblical Authors and early church figures were calling for care for the poor and action on behalf of the oppressed before it was trendy and increased one’s social status to purport such things. And these words were not always ignored the way they often are today. In the 4th century, the Roman emperor Julian failed in his efforts to suppress Christianity – “He told his officials, “We ought to be ashamed. Not a beggar is to be found among the Jews and those godless Galileans (what he called Christians) feed not only their own people but ours as well, whereas our people receive no assistance whatsoever from us.” Similarly William Dyrness asserts that Christians had lower mortality rates during the early medieval plagues because the spurned the risks and provided each other basic nursing care. It was their understanding that this world was not the final destination that equipped them to live heroic lives of love and courage. And the story of Christ and his people is littered with lives that inspire, from Francis of Assisi to Teresa of Calcutta, heroic lives of love, courage and beauty, virtues nearly universally esteemed…Lives that, if you will, ‘work.’

The institution and idea of the Church has been systematically and diabolically abused by corrupt men. But the Way of Jesus Christ has produced countless lives of beauty and courage. If beauty and courage can be viewed as appropriate metrics of evaluation, Christianity does - in fact - work.

And from there I’ll move from a pragmatic test to a test of correspondence with reality.

2. Christianity Provides the Most Compelling and Comprehensive Explanation of Reality

I generally reject pragmatism and the premise that something is true if it works. Does the Way of Jesus Christ actually provide a paradigm that accounts for the observed phenomena of human existence? If someone asks me why I am a Christian expecting a one sentence answer, my answer is something like this: The Way of Jesus Christ provides the most comprehensive and compelling organization of my understandings of my world and myself. In other words, it describes me and my world in most precise agreement with my observations of both.

First, to borrow from Ravi Zechariahs, Jesus Christ diagnoses my condition most precisely. He articulates clearly the things that are apparent to me about me. That I am somehow intrinsically good and valuable yet fundamentally broken and bent on self service. It is the Christian narrative of creation and fall that accounts for both of these aspects of the human condition, a condition simultaneously capable of such sublime beauty and diabolical wickedness. Malcom Muggeridge unpacks this point well. He says "(human) depravity…is at once the most unpopular of all dogmas, yet the most empirically verifiable" Any worldview that asserts either that I am fundamentally good or that I am fundamentally evil (including those that say I am some sort of biological automaton bent only on self service and genetic propagation) do not correspond to my self understanding. Jesus Christ diagnoses my condition most precisely.

Similarly, expanding from the person as a microcosm to the world in general, a world created purposefully by God but fundamentally broken by a cosmic fall provides the most compelling description of the world I see out my window each morning. I reject Beauty and Justice as social constructs. They are too universal in their acceptance. I will talk shortly about how a Christianity like other world views must respond to the problem of evil. But there is a flip side to that problem, a problem of beauty. A worldview must be comprehensive enough to handle the world as it is with its great beauty and undeniable evil. The non-theistic worldview has trouble with beauty. Russell himself said “No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?.” The materialist has trouble with beauty. Why should a glaciated, uplifted, plutonic intrusion generate the transcendent sense of awe one experiences walking through the Yosemite valley or why should we respond to art at all, a human artifact that does not aid our propagation as a species. Christianity handles beauty very well, and says that our capacity to recognize beauty is part of being created in the image of its source. We respond to created beauty because we resonate with its source.

Likewise, Christianity explains the universal requirement for justice as a reflection of our Creator’s fundamental nature. This is far more compelling to me than any materialist explanation for the surprisingly universal moral affirmations. A naturalistic explanation of social evolution, ‘nature red in tooth in claw,’ really struggles to underpin why we should care about poor inner city schools or why ethnic cleansing or rape are wrong. Both of these latter examples though especially diabolical, are particularly problematic as they both serve the interests of genetic propagation. But Christianity rejects what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls the biologization of the human person.

Now I want to be very clear here. I am not saying that since society would fall apart if we embraced a truly naturalistic view of the world and therefore we shouldn’t. I’m with Nietzsche and Russell in thinking that if this were the true state of affairs we should get on with it and create a society based on these principals (a society incidentally, that I think would look very different from ours). What I am saying is that this is not the human experience. The human heart cries out for justice in all languages. Russell himself claims that Christianity is immoral, Derrida demanded vehemently that an individual was simply wrong for profiting off his work, both suggesting a fundamental standard by which oughtness can be evaluated.

Finally, under correspondence to reality, I will invoke the strongest of Aquinas’ 5 arguments for the existence of God: what has come to be known the teleological argument, or the argument from design. There is plenty of talk in the news about design these days. It is a debate I’m not particularly interested in here. Because, beyond the pedantic debate of how it was created, as a scientist I am basically convinced that it is not what we don’t understand that make the case for a creator, not the remaining mysteries of the universe that require us to invoke something magical, but what we do understand that points to purposeful involvement. I was often told to be careful of science, particularly biology and geology, because they would damage my faith. I of course paid no attention to this, in part because I was a punk kid, but mainly because I had no interest in holding a worldview that was not robust enough to handle the best observations of the secular mind. What I found in the sciences, rather than the ruin of my faith, was a great call to worship. I found the study of natural revelation, the careful observations of our world, to be almost as worshipful as the study of specific revelation, the scriptures themselves. And I am not alone. When I was a graduate student in Wisconsin the Christian Fellowships hosted a debate with the local Atheist clubs in commemoration of the great Russell/Copelston debate. They went after their top choices for both sides of issue and got them. William Lane-Craig For the existence of God (an able thinker and retoratician with multiple doctorates) and Anthony Flew (widely recognized as Craig’s intellectual superior) for the dissenting position. Several thousand people came to the debate. So I read with interest a couple years ago when Flew issued a statement that he was no longer an atheist. The reason he gave for his public switch was that he was “convinced by the scientific teleological argument”.

The teleological argument has had its problems but it is most convincingly cast in the form of the ‘fine tuning argument’ or the ‘anthropic principal.’ Francis Collins, the long time director of the human genome project, summarizes this well:

‘Now that the origin of the universe and our own solar system has become increasingly well understood, a number of fascinating apparent coincidences about the natural world have been discovered…Altogether, there are fifteen physical constants whose values current theory is unable to predict. They are givens: the simply have the value they have. The list includes the speed of light, the strength of the weak and strong nuclear forces, various parameters associated with electromagnetism and the force of gravity. The chance that all of these constants would take on the values necessary to result in a stable universe capable of sustaining complex life forms is almost infinitesimal. And yet those are exactly the parameters that we observe. In sum, our universe is wildly improbable.” (The Language of God)

There has been a healthy amount of philosophical debate on this issue, but the naturalistic explanations of these phenomena are rich with faith commitments.

Immanuel Kant, an able and influential philosopher who set out to systematically undermine Thomas Aquinas’ 5 proofs for the existence of God said that there were only two things that he could not get past ‘the starry host above and the moral law within.’ Beauty, brokenness, justice and purpose. Christianity provides a compelling paradigm that organizes the data of life.

3. Christianity Responds to the Universal Experience of Suffering

The great weakness of the teleological argument or the argument from design is that it is hard to credit a God which is the great source of justice and beauty with a world that is so widely characterized by injustice and suffering. Here we face the problem of evil, a quandary that I am sure that you, in your careful listening to your peers, have encountered again and again: How can a good and all powerful God allow such desperate suffering. It causes one to question either his goodness or his power.

Now there are many responses to the problem of evil, some of them quite helpful. I do not have the time to do this justice. It would take much more time and, likely, a more appropriate speaker. But just briefly a couple of approaches include:

i. a careful discussion of the metric of goodness – that it may be something other than happiness by which a good word is evaluated

ii. Certain goods require adversity to be fully realized: generosity in response to need and bravery in response to danger

iii. Plantinga talks about the possibility that the best of all possible worlds is not, in fact, a utopia of our imagining but a world of volitional moral agents with the ability to choose God or rebel.

These approaches and several others each have strengths and weaknesses. In the end they are sufficient but not overwhelming. These are reasons I am not not a Christian.

What I do find compelling, however, and one of the reasons that I am, in fact, a Christian is the Christian response (not explanation but response) to evil. It is clear that God allows evil, for whatever reason we choose to explain or not explain it – it is also clear that He is not OK with it. It is the Christian God who take evil and suffering seriously…seriously enough to stand in solidarity with those who suffer. It is the Christian God who is the suffering God. It is the Christian God who is the crucified God. In this beautiful and broken world that we live in he becomes the present co-sufferer. In the Christian narrative God experienced the God-forsakeness of suffering in the person of Jesus Christ.

In summary, I believe that it is because Christianity is true that it reflects the fundamental nature of empirical reality with all of its complexity, beauty, justice, evil and suffering. This is why I am still a Christian. And to return to the pragmatic question, does it work, I would say that a worldview that takes seriously the fundamental goodness and brokenness of our world and our condition prepares one to take on life as it truly is and respond heroically. I think G. K. Chesterton sums this up well. This quote is particularly poignant for me since it is one my brother quoted at my Father’s funeral: several days after our Father had been killed by a reckless driver and a couple days before the birth of my brother’s first child…a time when the beauty and brokenness of our world stood in stark proximity. The Christian world view is robust enough to embrace this complex reality. The arms of Christ reach far enough for this embrace. Chesterton says:

"For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening.
No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist?"[2]

This is what the Way of Jesus Christ offers. A fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent and a God who so passionately stands in solidarity with us in both the joys and the sufferings as we work to mend the brokenness and look to a final mending. This is why I belong to Jesus Christ. This is why I am still a Christian.

[1] Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not a Christian Second page of “A Free Man’s Worship”
[2] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, “The Flag of the World”

The Simplicity of the Carefree Life

(At FBC 3/26/2006)

Mp3 here

Hidden and Ultimate Value:

The Parable of the Treasure in the Field
Matthew 13:44-46

(At: The Lighthouse Ministry 8/17/2008)

On September 6, 1622 a fleet of ships left the new world carrying copper, silver, gold, tobacco, gems, jewels, jewelry and indigo from Spanish port at Havana bound for Spain. Once a year a fleet of galleons sailed to Spain weighed down with gold, silver and jewlels plundered from the indigenous people of Spanish empire. The largest and most famous ship was called Nuestra Señora de Atocha. The fleet was six weeks behind schedule which forced them to leave during hurricane season. Sure enough, one day into their journey they ran into a severe hurricane, the hull was damaged and the ship quickly sank 35 miles off the Florida keys. There was so much treasure on the Atocha that the Spanish government went into debt and looked for the wreckage for years…but never found it. For 350 years it lay there, scattered across the pacific shelf. Then, in the early 1970’s a diver named Mel Fisher got a clue regarding its location. He collected a small group of friends and family and begin to look. Each day he would emerge from his cabin look up to the sky and say ‘this could be the day’. Day after day they worked long hours at spending a great deal of his own money. For 16 and a half years, he said, ‘this could be the day’. Finally on July 20, 1985 he was right. They found the Atocha and began to salvage 40 tons of silver and gold. They said that the bars of silver were stacked like chord wood. The total value of the treasure was $450 million. That is almost half a billion dollars. That is more than A-Rod will make in his entire career. I bet he got lots of questions: How long would you have looked? What made you look in that particular spot in that particular day? But I suspect that there is one question he never got: Was it worth the money you spent?

This morning we are going to look at one of Jesus’ shortest parables. 1 verse, two sentences. A very brief story with a great deal to say about value and priorities.

44"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. 45"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

But first it is worth noting what Jesus was talking about when he told these stories. The shorter the passage you are looking at the more important its context becomes. In Matthew 13 Jesus is in full story telling mode. He didn’t always teach like this, sometimes he taught in a more straight forward manner. But not here. In Matthew 13 he is in full on Parable mode. Matthew 13 breaks into 2 halves: the boat (parables for the crowd) and the house (parables for his disciples) – our passage is in the latter. What does that tell us about it? Jesus is talking to believers or at least the spiritually curious.



Then, let’s look at the first lines of the other parables in this chapter, see if we can pick up themes and see if we can figure out how our parable fits in:

v3 A farmer went out to sow his seed
v11 The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you
v24 The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.
V31 The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.
V33 The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough."
V44 The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.
V45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.
V47 Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish.

If you had to summarize what this chapter is about in a brief phrase, what would you say? The Kingdom. This was Jesus’ absolute favorite topic. He taught about the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God (which he uses interchangeably) more than any thing else. So what is it? It seems to me that it is worth knowing a thing or two about:

One of the biggest mistakes with interpreting the parables is to think by ‘kingdom of heaven’ he simply means ‘heaven.’ Jesus is not talking about some future blissful state – either a ‘spiritual’ ghostly state or a far away place with golden streets. It is the privilege of being one of God’s agents. I like to explain it with another parable. The kingdom of God is like a CIA agent. She lives in one country but her allegiance is to another. Her activities are as an agent of good for both countries but her marching orders come from her home country…an agent of the king living for his influence in a land that has not recognized his rule. You live in this other place, and while you desire good things for this place and people, you answer to a foreign power. The other parables in Chapter 13 are all about this mixing of kingdoms, this awesome privilege of being part of inserting God’s rule and influence into a broken world. The two short parables we are looking at are actually a little off topic. They are the only ones in this passage that are not on this mixing theme. In the middle of these parables about mixing, the teacher takes a little digression regarding how immensely valuable it is to be asked to take on this mission of infiltration and influence…of the kingdom:

The text is short, let’s read it again.

44"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

I would like to make three brief observations about this passage:

1. Spiritual Treasure is Often Hidden
2. The Kingdom is Free but Not Cheap
3. Two Words: “For Joy”

1. Spiritual Treasure is Often Hidden

So a guy is walking along in a field. Maybe he is a laborer or maybe he is taking a short cut through the local vacant lot for sale. It is probably a field that he has walked through many times before. But this time, he stumbles over something. He looks down to find a a firm piece of metal sticking out of the ground but barely visible under the surrounding vegetation. His curiosity peeked, he begins to dig, maybe expecting a tool or old piece of farming equipment. But the deeper he gets, the bigger it seems. Finally he realizes that it’s not a discarded tool or a lost piece of Roman armor. It’s a treasure, a treasure of great value.

But first, let’s ask the contextual question, why was the treasure in the field. Does this seem a little far fetched to you. I mean, Jesus’ parables drew from the events of ordinary life or current events. They tend to be rooted in the realities of first century Jewish life. Just think of the topics of the other parables in this passage: fishing, sowing, bread making. These are standard happenings in this culture. But think about this for a minute. There were no banks back then. And on top of that, for thousands of years Israel was one of the most fought over, conquered and re-conquered pieces of real estate in the ancient world. Literally hundreds of armies had passed through here. If you were a resident of Jerusalem and a marauding army was bearing down on you, say the Philistines or the Assyrians or the Babylonians, and you had some great treasure, some possession of real value, what would you do with it. You’d go out secretly into an out of the way field and bury it. But then what happened if you didn’t survive (which often happened). The treasure was forgotten, buried for decades or centuries until the weathering processes exposed just a hint of it. This actually probably happened from time to time. It was a little like winning the lottery. People knew it happened and desperately wished it would happen to them. I think it is a little like the lotto in our culture. Sometimes my co-workers will have a bad day and say, ‘I need to play the lottery.’ I can totally see bakers or fishermen or farmers in first century Galilee, after a particularly bad day, saying ‘Shoot, I hope I trip over a treasure on the way home.’

Which leads to my first point. Spiritual treasure is often hidden. It is seldom where we expect it to be. How many times does Jesus have to tell us before we catch on. It is a major theme of his. He said stuff like ‘the first will be last and the last will be first’. Let me let you in on a secret. The church is full of losers. And you know what, it always has been. In looking over the congregation in Corinth Paul said

1:26 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

This can be problematic because sociologists tell us we generally believe things based not on whether or not they are true but whether or not the people who believe them are the kind of people we want to be. But Jesus came with no flare. The scriptures say ‘He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” (53:2) They would say, we know this guy, he grew up with us. He’s Joseph’s kid. He built my mom’s bread box. He’s far too ordinary to have something spiritually valuable to offer me.

When God chose to become a human and walk among us he didn’t even afford himself the distinction of being attractive. I don’t know about you, but if I were God choosing to become incarnate, I’d come as at least an 8. But he was shockingly ordinary. The unremarkable carpenter that stirred every soul. And so here’s the point; God is not that into packaging. In the Old Testament, God’s presence lived in ‘the Tabernacle’ which sounds mysterious and exalted but was a simple tent made of the skins of butchered animals.

Just before this parable, Jesus teaches that the Kingdom of God comes in unexpected packages. Yeast and mustard seeds are both so insignificant to the human eye but are powerful transforming agents influencing stuff around them. Yeast mysteriously transforms flower into bread and the insignificant mustard seed eventually towers providing habitat for birds. This parable is actually not that much of a departure from these themes. Nothing about the kingdom of God can be judged by what is on the surface. Nerds, dorks, losers, these are the building blocks of God’s kingdom. God subverts the proud expectations of the world by using those that don’t look like much.

This idea that spiritual treasure is often hidden has a couple of applications. First, this gathering of yours, the Lighthouse should be a different kind of place for someone to walk into. Any high school student should be able to walk through those doors and be evaluated by a completely different standard than any other rooms they have any walked into. When a new person walks through that door, regardless of how your culture has trained you to evaluate them, look beneath the surface. By being intentional about befriending each other and going out of your way to meet the new guy you are showing care and obeying God, but it also pretty fun. People are really interesting. Finding out the special secrets that make individuals unexpectedly special is one of my favorite hobbies. Incidentally, this is how I became a Christian. I walked into a youth group, full of odd people, that I was almost sure was going to be lame. And I found treasure.

Second, the spiritual treasure that you have given your life for, is hidden to those around you and you should expect them to act accordingly. To those who don’t know the field contained treasure, the first guy seems crazy. One of my favorite bands put out an album a couple years ago titled ‘The Dancer’s Mad.’ It comes from a quote ‘To those who can’t hear the music the dancer’s mad’. If you make God’s kingdom, God’s rule, God’s priorities your own, others are just not going to understand. But you know. You know that beneath the ordinary field, in those odd people you hang out with. You know, there is treasure there. And if you don’t know, let me be the one to tell you. There is treasure there. Which leads me to my second observation:

2. The Kingdom is Free but its not Cheap

Let’s look closely at the two men in these parables. I am going to read the passage again and afterwards I want you to answer this question for me: How are these two men different?
A working man – and a wealthy man/ deliberate and by accident
What they have in common is that they both sell everything

You know you have found spiritual treasure b/c every part of your life is revolutionized – it never improves you. The kingdom is not just something you add to your life for self improvement like a diet, dating someone new, going to college or taking up a new sport. It is not merely useful. It is not an incremental improvement. This is what the world thinks of spirituality. It is part of my life that can make it better. Spirituality can be useful. It can make me more interesting or more emotionally resilient. But this is not spiritual treasure. But true spiritual treasure becomes the centerpiece around which every other possession or trait is organized.

The man in the story could never afford the treasure. He has the opportunity to acquire something of great value, which he deeply desires, but could not otherwise afford. The new life that Christ offers us is not anything we could earn or afford. He paid the price for it to come to us. If that is a new idea to you, if you think that Christianity is about being good enough that God will be pleased and let you into heaven, you are wrong. If you are still trying to earn God’s love, cut it out. You need to get a hold of the gospel, let’s talk. Being reconciled to God and enlisted in this revolutionary movement of his kingdom is a gift from Jesus. It is entirely free. But here is the paradox…while it is free, it is not cheap.

A professor from Duke University that calls himself a behavioral economist has identified a trait he calls ‘Predictable Irrationality.’ He has done a number of studies in which he has demonstrated that we are not good judges of value. In fact, he says that we tend to make the same sort of mistake every time. We far outweigh the value of the stuff that we already have if someone offers us something in exchange for it, that far outweighs its value. This observation helped me find a hole in my poker game. I play poker once a month with guys from work. It is part of my theology of the kingdom; that I am supposed to extend God’s influence all sorts of places to all sorts of people. At the beginning I was one of the better players. But then my friends got better and I didn’t seem to. But my game had a fatal flaw. I was far too timid a player. I would not give up the chips in front of me to acquire far more chips in the pot even when the laws of statistic said that the right play was to go all in. When presented with a chance to risk my chips with a great chance to win a huge pile of chips, rather than go all in I’d fold. This is where some of you are. You know there is treasure in the field, but you know it will cost you. You know the only move is to go all in, but you are too attached to the chips in front of you.

Jim Elliot, a guy who was actually killed for his desire to extend the kingdom of God, used to say, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot loose.”

Now every time I hear someone preach something like this I used to think, you’re right, I need to give Jesus everything. But I would get stuck on the how question. The only way I could figure out how to do that was to go into full time ministry. I used to think there were pastors and missionaries that gave God everything and then there were the second class Christians that just squeaked by by grace. Some of you may be called into full time ministry, but you need to hear this, most of you are going to have to figure out the arguably more difficult calling of giving everything for the kingdom while you actually have a spouse, job, house, kids and lots of other things you actually enjoy.

Most of you will go to college, get a job, get married, have kids and buy a house. These things are not betrayals of the call to the kingdom. Most of you will live perfectly ordinary lives…why…because that is where God hides his spiritual treasure. The difference is that you will live these lives as agents of the kingdom. God’s kingdom is not advanced primarily by a small group of full time Christian superstars. The real work of the kingdom is the result of ‘ordinary’ people living extraordinary lives. Your job, family and house will be all about extending the rule and influence of God. That is the good news of the kingdom…ordinary lives have extraordinary potential in God’s kingdom.

The point of this parable is not that the kingdom can be bought. It is that if it costs you everything, it is still a good deal.

3. Two Words: “For Joy”

The adults are going through a series by Jon Piper in Lifebuilders. He is a popular teacher and writer. I have recently heard him say that every book he ever wrote was motivated by these two words. ‘For Joy.’

When the man found the treasure did he say, ‘Crap, now I am going to have to sell everything. It is going to be such a hassle. I am going to have to move out of my house and get an apartment. I really like my iPod and I’m just not sure if I can do without it?’

No, he was thrilled. He couldn’t wait to do whatever it took to rearrange his life in the single minded pursuit of the treasure. Sacrifices made for Jesus and his kingdom bring more joy than the thing sacrificed. Do you ever wonder why Paul says that ‘God loves a cheerful giver’? Doesn’t it seem like God would be happy with our time, money, efforts and sacrifices regardless of whether or not we are happy about providing them? No. God does not need anything we offer him. But what he wants is for us to want him more than anything else. He wants us to enjoy him and his work. The kingdom should be a blast. And that is the litmus test of spiritual health. Do you give things to god ‘with joy’ because He and His Kingdom are far more valuable to him than anything else in this world.

So in summary: Spiritual Treasure is Often Hidden, The Kingdom is Free but Not Cheap and Two Words: “For Joy”.

So I guess the bottom line is: Buy the field. There is treasure in there.

Note: I’d like to recognize a debt to Tim Keller in this message, particularly for the point ‘Spiritual treasure is often hidden.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTV8FYZ1jVs