|
May
2, 2004 (Jimmie Johnson) At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem . It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." Jesus answered, "I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand. The Father and I are one."
The scripture quotations contained within are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used by permission. -------------------------------------------------------------------- What about those “other people”? By this I mean those who are not in the Christian sheepfold, our neighbors who are adherents of other religions or no religion? What about a text like this from John where it sure sounds as if Jesus is stating that his sheep hear his voice but the rest are likely to get sheared for eternity? At least a surface reading would so indicate. One afternoon I was having coffee with Rabbi Norman Klein, who at the time was still here in Waco. I asked him what he thought was a serious obstacle in Jewish-Christian relations. He said for him the biggest was the anti-Semitism of the Christian scriptures where Jews are referred to so negatively as if they were Christ killers and hell bound and spiritually blind because of their unbelief in Jesus. The gospel reading from John for this morning is such an example. I asked the Rabbi what he wished we would do about these passages. He responded quickly and clearly by saying, “Take them out.” I said from my point of view it would be better for us Christians to leave them in so that we are reminded how easily we can slip into the religious sin of scapegoating, making ourselves look like true believers by making others look like un-believers. By leaving them in, Christian pastors and educators would then have to explain such troublesome passages. His response was that unfortunately the Jewish people can’t rely on such sensitivity to be the norm among Christian leadership. I think Rabbi Klein was right a few years ago, and his opinion is still correct today. There is a huge un-Christian Christian attitude toward non-Christians. Also there is a huge unwillingness to grant some of our texts are less than Christ-like as well, strangely some attributed to Christ. So, what do we do with this text where the Jews are represented as being so spiritually blind because of closed mindedness? And what about those other people and their religions? Well, let’s start with our Christian scripture and admit part of our historical record, some of the texts of the New Testament, do come across as sub-Christian to me. Then there are other troublesome texts, such as Matthew 15:24 and Mark 7:26-27, where Jesus says he was sent only for the Jews, the lost sheep of the House of Israel, and not to the Gentiles or the “dogs” as he refers to them. There are peculiar texts in the Bible, and there always have been. Let’s acknowledge their existence and realize this doesn’t diminish the Bible’s proper authority unless we have a fundamentalist view of the Bible. Biblical criticism is only a negative discipline if you worship the Bible. Fortunately, at First Presbyterian and in most Reformed Tradition churches, we don’t worship the Bible. We worship the Living God. We don’t believe in the Bible. We believe only in the Living God and in Jesus Christ, God’s Son, and in the Holy Spirit. Actually, we don’t believe in any of our doctrine. We only believe in the triune God. Our doctrines are systematic statements of our beliefs, but they are not hitching posts. They are only sign posts. Only the Living God is our hitching post, the end of our faith’s journey. Look, I have gotten a lot of response to the commentary I wrote for the newspaper, particularly the part about God “not being a Christian.” That’s not really as radical as it sounds. It is centrist Christian theology. Centrist Christian thinking about God has always declared it is the sin of idolatry to equate your religion with God. Belief in God and belief in Christianity as a religion are not equivalent. A belief system and the Living Mystery to which the system can only point and never contain are not the same. Someone said to me following up on the commentary, “Jimmie, you don’t believe Jesus is God?” I said, “I do believe Jesus is God, but I don’t believe all of God was in Jesus. So, no, I don’t believe God is a Christian. I am a Trinitarian Christian in my beliefs, but God is bigger than both my belief and my belief system.” It is an act of sub-Christian thinking to equate your religion with God. Well, what about this kind of text? By the time John’s gospel was written, the followers of Jesus who at first were all Jews had become entangled in conflict with the Jews who were loyal to the synagogue and who were uninterested in the Christian movement and who saw it as a threat to their identity. For these Jews so invested in the Jewish Temple and the institutions of their faith, they could never say Jesus and God were one. The Temple and God, yes. Jesus and God as one, no. So this picture of “the Jews” in the text is one being painted by Jewish Christians who were in conflict with their roots, their families, their very fathers, mothers and siblings, in addition to their neighbors. Christianity had not even been given its name, yet. Christianity was in the beginning a Jewish sect which changed dramatically when we gentiles, we barbarians, got in on the action “a la” St. Paul. Therefore, such texts reflect this conflict through the spin placed within the dialogue between Jesus and his conversation partners. When John’s gospel is talking about “the Jews,” it is a symbol-system, meaning the “religious elite and their leaders,” not the average Jew on the street or in the Temple at prayer. An equivalent translation today would be Christian leaders who preach love and practice a hate-filled and narrow-minded Christianity to promote their little Bible colleges, television productions, and congregations. Although it is beneath us as believers, all religious people, if they are not extremely sensitive, sin, this need to be right in religion. We Christians even do this to one another. Until very recent times, each of the Christian denominations tried to use the New Testament to show the superiority of their view of baptism or church government, why only believing adults should be baptized or why infants and adults should both be baptized or why only by immersion or why by pouring or sprinkling. Each denomination used to say only its form of church government was biblical: the Episcopal form with bishops, or the Congregational form as with Baptists or us Presbyterians with elders. Each denomination tried to show the others were wrong while its was correct. As time passed, scholarship has helped us see the truth that the early church was very fluid and developmental with its understandings of sacraments like baptism and forms of church government. In some places there was immersion. In some places there was sprinkling. In some places there was pouring. Sometimes only believers were baptized; sometimes whole families including infants were baptized. In some places there were elders. In some places there were deacons. In some places there were bishops. Today none of the mainline denominations take the approach that there is only one Christian view of the sacraments or church government. Presbyterian ministers, for instance, can serve in Lutheran or Episcopal congregations. But what about this passage? This passage from John is helpful to us because we Christians do believe Jesus is indeed the unique Shepherd without being the exclusive Shepherd. No other Shepherd, no other founder of a religion died as Jesus died nor had claims preached of being brought back to life. Those who had such claims made about them were discredited in time as fakes and charlatans, not so with Jesus. His Easter has stood all historical investigation. The fakes have all had failed Easters. They stay dead. But with Jesus, his resurrection has never been proved nor disproved. It is why we call it “faith.” For me, Jesus is the Messiah of God, the Son of God, the great Shepherd of the sheep called Christian. To me, Jesus and the Father are one. To me, he is the world’s Shepherd, too. I talk with non-Christians not as if they are lost persons on their way to hell but as “loved of God persons” who are children of God by God’s love given through Christ to all sheep even if they don’t hear his voice in Christian-sounding beliefs and practices. When God looks at human beings, I believe God sees each one as Christ’s lamb for whom Christ died as an innocent lamb. The love of God in Christ is so secure that nothing in life or death can tear us human beings loose from God’s providential and loving grasp unless, I suppose, someone simply says, “No, I don’t want to be held in your love.” Friends, at First Pres, let’s be loving shepherds offering God’s love and tender care to all God’s children whether they are active in or members of this particular house or not. God is not a Christian, but with all our hearts and minds let’s ask God’s help to make us Christian in our thinking and in our believing and, lest we forget, in our behaving as well. Let our church in the approaching 150th year of its life be known as a voice of love where all sheep can detect the sound of God’s call. If we can get rid of our arrogant haughtiness as Christian, then we can more effectively share what we believe are truly unique dimensions of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. To God alone be glory here at old First Pres! Let’s be a truly big church, maybe not in numbers, but in heart and mind, which are the only places that bigness really counts! |
First Presbyterian Church • 1100 Austin Avenue • Waco, TX
76701 • (254)752-1665
Questions, comments, or broken links? Please email the webmaster at bgilliam@firstpreswaco.org.
Unless otherwise
stated, all material contained in this web site is Copyright © 1999-2005
First Presbyterian Church of Waco, Texas. Right is hereby granted
for any congregation or governing body of the Presbyterian Church
(USA) to copy and use this material only as long as proper credit
is given as to its source. The scripture quotations contained within
are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Copyright © 1989
by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of
Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used
by permission. All quotations from the Book of Confessions are reprinted
by permission and are Copyright ©1996 by the Office of the General
Assembly, Presbyterian Church (USA).