What does it mean to believe in Jesus Christ today?
Exod 3:1-10; Mark 1:14-20,
Mark 2:13-14, 10:17-22; Luke 19:1-10
Introduction
My friends, there are some things in life which you can only really know by participating in them. Take the experience of love! If you don’t take the risk of trust and surrender and faithfulness you will never know what love is. Faith is like that. It calls for involvement - and it promises meaning and liberation.
During the last few weeks I have been trying to remind ourselves what we as Baptist Christians can contribute to the wider church. We don’t have all the truth. No church has all the truth – even though some may claim otherwise.
But just as a beautiful rainbow is made up of many colours, so each church can contribute a colour or two to make up the rainbow of the Community of Faith, the Church.
On previous occasions I have spoken to you about the Christian Sacraments, the Lord’s Supper and Baptism. Today I want to speak about faith. What does it mean to believe – to believe in Jesus Christ today?
It is quite interesting. When the Christian Bible speaks of faith in Jesus Christ and links this to our relationship with God, different churches understand this in different ways.
Some inter-relate faith so closely with baptism that you become a Christian by being baptised, even as a baby. Now, there is nothing wrong - indeed it is right and proper – to celebrate the birth of a child. The question is whether baptism is the appropriate way to do so and whether some sort of voluntary and intentional faith should not be involved.
Others say that faith is not only a personal but also a private affair. That it has nothing to do with the market places of life - nothing to do with bank accounts and political parties and carbon tax and asylum seekers. But if we believe in Jesus Christ today, and if we do not want to withdraw from the market place of life, and if we believe that this is God’s world and that God is passionately concerned about God’s creation, then our faith must have something to do with our bank accounts, with our political system, our economic practices, with our attitude to refugees and asylum seekers and with leaving an earth behind on which our children and grand children have safe shelter, enough to eat, and can breath clean air and drink clean water.
A historical reminder
I don’t want to give a history lesson. A pulpit is not a lectern. But I would like to register a historical reminder. When our spiritual forebears in Central Europe, during the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, and then in England in the 17th century, separated from the established churches or were kicked out by the established churches, at issue was the meaning of faith in Jesus Christ. What does it mean to believe in Jesus Christ? The early Baptist Christians found that for many people who confessed to be Christians, their understanding of faith and the way of life that followed from it was not a true reflection of what they read in their Bible about Jesus.
When the earliest Christians wanted to put into words what it meant for them to believe in Jesus Christ, they told stories. Some of them are collected in the Bible. We heard some this morning read to us. They invite us to tune into God’s ways with us and with the world.
In these stories there occurs a conflation of horizons. They talk about God and Moses in the Old Testament, and about Jesus and the disciples in the New Testament. But they are not merely historical reports. They are confessions of faith! When they speak about Moses and Jesus, they include themselves in the stories, because they believed that the God who called Moses, and the God who through Jesus called the disciples is the same God who has called them and Christians through the ages to the journey of faith.
Let us ask what these stories teach us about the journey of faith.
1. God takes the initiative.
The story is simple, but profound. It says that Jesus was "passing along by the see of Galilee ...." Jesus is always portrayed as "being on the road". He walks by the lake. He walks from village to village. He walks through the streets of Jericho and Jerusalem.
For the early Christians, Jesus was an icon, a parable of God. They read their experiences of God into Jesus’ life. For the early Christians, Jesus’ story is a picture of what God is like.
For those of you who remember their grammar exercises in high school, you will be interested to know that the Bible prefers speaking of God in participles. God is "the God who creates . . . loves . . . liberates . . . judges . . . comforts . . . empowers . . . encourages . . . ." God is not a static deity who lives somewhere in splendid isolation. God is active, dynamic, on the move.
That is the first point that we must remember: God is on the way, knocking at the doors of our life. Not imposing, not coercing, but on the move – knocking.
But not just anywhere! On the move to help, to save, to liberate, to comfort, to challenge. God’s very nature includes the inner dynamic of wanting to relate to the world and to us.
2. God elects us.
The stories therefore continue: "... he saw Simon and Peter, the fishermen ... he saw James and John, mending their nets ... he saw Levi, the tax collector ...." God saw Moses, minding the sheep of his father in law.
Yes, even Zachaeus, the little man, a tax collector, known but despised by the people. He wanted to see Jesus; but nobody allowed him room to stand; he therefore climbed up and hid in the heavy branches of a sycamore tree. Jesus passes by. And he sees Zacchaeus and issues to him the invitation of joy.
God sees. That is what theologians mean when they say: God elects. That is God. God does not simply look at the world and our life; he does not simply observe what a mess we make of God’s creation. God sees, and in seeing God relates himself to us.
Have we not all made similar experiences — at a disco or at a party: we observe and look at many people; but then it happens. We suddenly see the one person whom we want to get to know, with whom we want to talk, with whom we want to share life. The eye becomes more than a physical organ. It meets the eye of the other and establishes a relationship. God is like that. God wants to share God’s life with us. On my baptismal certificate I read: ". . . thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.’" (Isaiah 43:1).
It is good to know that God leans toward us. We may flee from God, but God will never flee from us. Following every night there is the dawning of a new day. And Simon and Peter, James and John, Levi and Zacchaeus: they did not expect that Jesus would see them, and Moses did not expect that God would call him. So also we may be surprised by joy in the midst of our everyday life.
3. Election becomes concrete in the call.
Since it is Jesus who sees, the call is already implied: "follow me"! When Jesus sees, he does not simply look or observe. His seeing is like the look of a lover. It is the look that contains the invitation to follow him.
We are reminded of the story when God saw the affliction of his people in Israel, when he heard their cry. But this does not mean looking at or observing. It means: "... I know their suffering, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians" (Exod 3:7f.). For God, seeing means personal involvement and liberating praxis. But in his saving and liberating praxis God does not by-pass us. God longs to involve us. God calls Moses and Jesus' seeing issues naturally in the call: "Follow me".
Following Jesus means, amongst other things, accepting responsibility for what we know!
Is it not true, as many have argued, that every nation, and therefore also this nation, needs a centre, a foundation, a focus to provide orientation and food for the journey - and when such a centre is missing, people lose orientation? "Things are falling apart". "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity" – to use the words of William Butler Yeats.
Today in this nation we are not facing a political or an economic crisis. We are facing a moral and spiritual crisis in our nation! Politicians and traders will come and go. They manifest what is in our hearts. And in the long run, no financial crisis can do us harm if our house is in order. Don’t let us blame Howard or Gillard. When the boat crashed against the rocks on Christmas Island and the cries of children and women and drowning men interwove with the torrents of nature, the challenge for us as a nation became a moral and spiritual one. Have we as a nation become so desensitised that we speak about generosity and a fair go, but we do not have the courage and conviction to open our borders to the battlers of the world. Who in our nation will bring about a change of heart and attitude? Who will witness to a different way of life? Every one of us is challenged. Faith in Jesus the Christ contains the resources for such a change – if we explore and use them.
John Keats wrote the “Ode to a nightingale”. In it in moving words he muses that the singer may pass, may die, but the ode live on, is eternal. Do we Christians believe that there is a narrative that has the silver lining of eternity and are we prepared to break our silence and raise our voices for the wretched of the earth?
4. The response is immediate and holistic.
I return to our stories. How shall people respond when it is God, really God, and not the projection of our religious imagination, who calls? The story says: "And immediately they left their nets and followed him." What else can they do - when it is God, really God, who calls? What else do they want to do? "Immediately" — they set out on a new future. A new vision of life begins to shape them. Suddenly they realize in their heart that it is God who calls.
It is the ultimacy of such encounter that is reflected in one of the classics of our culture, the overture to the decalogue: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods besides me” (Exod 20:2f.). Who can have other gods besides God if one realizes in one’s heart that it is God, really God, who calls? To know God as God means to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” and “to love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:30f.).
This is an invitation to a new way of life, a new vision of reality. Not only the ordinary fishermen — Simon and Andrew, James and John — but also the rich capitalists Levi and Zacchaeus follow Jesus. Important is not what they do. Important is that in whatever they do, they follow Jesus!
And this response is not the grudging response to a “must” coming from the outside and imposing itself on us. It is not like going to school or to military service because the law demands it. It is God who calls and God is the source of life, love and freedom!
We must recall, however, that whenever people have taken God seriously as God, it was not a call to a life of ease. Remember Moses and Jeremiah and Paul! But it is God's call and therefore it would be an offense against the rules if we treat such a call in the same fashion as the invitation to a football game or a Rock Concert or a Cocktail Party.
When God calls, then we can only respond holistically. We cannot hold anything back. We know this from life’s experiences. When we really love someone, the response can only be holistic, involving all areas of life.
5. Do not miss the kairos.
God is love, and love cannot rape. Therefore the call can be neglected or it can be refused. The New Testament interestingly relates only one occasion when Jesus’ call, Jesus’ invitation to life, was refused. Let us churches and us Christians in the so-called “first world” hear! It was because the man was rich and Jesus had reminded him that God is God and that therefore it is not possible to worship God and mammon at the same time and with the same intensity.
Conclusion
My friends, I wanted to remind ourselves today of what it means to believe in Jesus Christ today. It means to follow him – ever again! - in a free and intentional decision. It means to listen to his story and then let that story guide our life - and by that become part of the soft revolution that seeks alternatives to greed, selfishness
If the German Poet Rainer Maria Rilke is right then the hardest thing to learn in life is to love and yet there is no other road to freedom. Jesus did not withdraw from the society in which he lived but got involved so that the word “God” stood for compassion and healing and liberation, so also those who believe in him and follow him will become involved in the issues of the day. Christians in Australia engage their lives for an open and compassionate Australia. We do not just send Missionaries to other shores, but we also welcome strangers in our midst.
I think there may be times when it is good to know that God cares and that God is on God’s way to us to share our burdens. It is good to know that God's invitation to life is always there. It is there even when we have become luke-warm in our faith or when a cloud has descended upon our hearts, when we have not kept our promises, when we have become too comfortable and perhaps even too lazy. God will not enforce God’s love upon us. But God will become real to us when we open our hearts and our minds and our lives to what God is doing or wants to do in our lives and in our world. Let us grasp the time, let us seize the moment. Let us hear God’s call and then follow him!
TL Canberra, Oct 2, 2011.
For front of bulletin
"Faith alone makes us holy before God . . . . Such faith can not remain passive but must break out to God in thanksgiving and to mankind in all kinds of works of brotherly love" (Balthasar Hubmaier, 16th Century Baptist martyr).
". . . none may truly know (Christ) unless he follow after him with his life. And no one can follow after him except in so far as one previously knows him." (Hans [John] Denck, 16th century Baptist Christian).