Memory
Verse: I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Philippians 3:8 KJV
Recently I have
spent more time in a hospital surgical suite than desired. While there
I observed the anthill-like busy activity around me. And, as
with ants, everyone looked the same, male and female, because they
were dressed in hospital green. Even the lines of status were smudged,
making it difficult to separate doctors, nurses and support personnel.
What impressed me was their focus. Everyone was focused on fixing,
either by mending or removing, what was out of order for each patient. The focus was on correcting body parts that were out of proper working
relationship with one another. And in most cases, surely they
were successful! Broken relationships within bodies were restored.
But after the medical personnel finished restoring the broken relationships,
the relationship healing was not finished! Yes, the broken relationships
between parts in the body were restored, but it would take time and
patient discipline for the parts to start working at optimal levels. Body parts, and patients, would have to obey certain procedures in
order to grow strong and well. Muscles separated by injury,
could be reattached, but only by obeying rules leading to strengthening,
could the multitude of relationships making up a whole body eventually
work well.
This two step process regarding reconciling broken body
relationships needs to be kept in mind if we are to understand the
spiritual relationship between what the Bible calls God’s grace and
God’s laws. The blended relationship between God’s free Grace
and God’s command to obey God’s Law is the melody line for the three
texts from which we are to hear a word from the Lord. The three
texts are like three-part harmony enhancing the sound and clarity
of the melody line about how God’s Grace and Law are properly connected. Let me explain.
The melody line of our texts sounds out that obedience
to God’s laws is not what moves God to save or reconcile our broken
relationship with God. Obedience to God’s laws is our response
to God’s previous gracious action reconciling our broken relationship
with God. Our obedience is our cooperating with God, to do along
with God, all God dreams that is good for us. Obedience is our
submissive behavior so that we do not obstruct God being close and
personal with us. Therefore, obedience changes us. Obedience
does not change God.
On God’s own, totally unrelated to human behavior,
God chose to enter into a personal relationship with humans. This did not, as many Christians imagine, begin with the human Jesus. It began with God’s decision to create humans; was confirmed by God’s
relational behavior in the Garden of Eden; was dittoed by God when
God threw Adam and Eve out of the Garden, yet put a mark of grace
on their son Cain warning all not to kill him, i.e. God was still
choosing to relate with him; was reinforced when God did not eliminate
all living things at the Flood, graciously saving Noah with whom to
relate; and relational priority was amplified loudly when God reached
out, for no worthy reason, save God’s mysterious choice, to establish
a Divine-Human relationship with Abraham. You see, over and
over the Bible resounds with the message that on God’s own, God is
moved to form a personal relationship with humans. Humans do
not motivate God to enter into this relationship. God elects
to do so. It is God’s grace!
Our human response must be
to accept this, by faith, as true. Our human response must be gratitude,
and trust that the laws or rules God has established for the shaping
of a close, personal relationship, have nothing to do with motivating
God to relate. Our human response must be that obedience has
everything to do with how we respond to God’s election so that we
cooperate and get all God intends for us and everybody else. Obedient behavior demands that our motivation to relate with God change
from behaviors of placation, manipulation and attempts to be equal
competitors with God, to behaviors of submission, relaxation, and
obeying God’s laws, allowing God to shape our relationships with people
and with things to best operate as originally designed. Obedient
behavior just assures that God, and we, are operating off the same
page of instructions for giving shape to our lives. Going back
to my opening surgical analogy, by God’s grace our broken relationship
with God is fixed, but our conforming to God’s strengthening rules
permits the relationship between the broken parts to be strengthened
and fulfill its intention. This is the message and sound of
the Biblical melody line of today’s three Biblical harmony lines.
The first harmony line from Exodus 20 is the Ten Commandments. It should be read not as what humans must do (a prescription) to stop
God from being hostile and to start motivating God to treat humans
well. It should be read as what humans need to do to change
them so that the relationship already assured by God’s grace, can
be shaped most productively for individuals
The second
harmony line, from Matthew, is an example of what happens when the
intended shape of the relationship resulting from grace and obedience
is ignored. The tenants were in competition with the vineyard
owner, ignoring that they were granted tenancy by the owner’s grace. They, like all who have unredeemed thinking about the relationship
between God and humans, assumed the owner/God was hostile toward them,
rather than wanting to help them. They acted as if they could
only have the benefits of the vineyard if they owned the vineyard. They were so broken with themselves that they did not even stop to
realize the heavy burden ownership placed on them, and that they could
have all the benefits of the vineyard without shouldering the load
of ownership.
In the minds of Matthew’s Jewish audience the vineyard
represented
The result was then, and is
today, that the tenants acted with great cruelty, a cruelty that would
perpetuate their disassociation from the abundant relationship with
God for which they were intended. They would continue to fear
someone like them showing up and killing them, because they continued
to think relationships depended on who was the mightiest.
The third
harmony line, the one from Philippians, illustrates the victory of
one Israelite person, namely Paul, who saw through the perverted understanding
that obedience was the way to move God to relate peacefully and beneficently
with humans. Paul explained, I have given up efforts to obey
perfectly and be worthy of God, that is, “having a righteousness of
my own that comes from the law, [instead I have a righteousness] which
is through faith in Christ---a righteousness that comes from God and
is by faith.” (v.9) Paul’s harmony line of the new divine/human understanding
of the relationship therefore echoes with glorious relief and victory! It is glorious relief and victory, though still in the future, is
yet already present, as well.
Through his coming to see that God was
as in Jesus Christ, Paul discovered God didn’t need perfect obedience,
but needed Paul’s full embrace of his own fragileness, imperfection,
and vulnerability. God did not need Paul to be perfect in order
to relate in friendly fashion. Paul learned that God needed
him to trust that God restored the broken relationship between him
and God, demonstrated through Jesus’ supreme act of forgiveness on
the Cross-and at the Resurrection. Paul learned that God wanted
him to demonstrate his faith and trust in Gods’ relating with him,
by responding with obedience to the Laws of God concerning creating
and strengthening relationships. Paul learned that such obedience
did not move God to relate with him, but moved him closer to be able
to experience the abundant life God was trying to give him. Keeping the Ten Commandments was not to move God to “like” Paul, but
to move Paul to be “like” God when Paul related to other people.
Kevin
was a young man of twenty years of age, who suddenly walked into my
office while I was preparing this sermon. Don’t tell me God
does not act to illustrate God’s truth when we are trying to get God’s
message straight! Kevin was well dressed, wearing a backpack. He is a college student at
I invited him to
have a seat and let me try. I explained the melody line of the
Bible. “Kevin, you assume that God is at war with you unless
you get your life right. Let me tell you the truth about God
as revealed over and over in the Bible. Yes, obedience to God’s
laws is important. But neither obedience nor perfection is necessary
to move God to want a relationship with you. Jesus’ resurrection
proved this to be true! Obeying God’s laws about how best to
relate to persons of all races is to change you to be better able
to let God help you grow to be a better Christian. It will always
be a struggle, harder at some times than at others. Being a
Christian is a commitment to struggle with God rather than with other
lesser gods (or with only partial truths about Almighty God), always
trusting that Almighty God is stronger and more enduring, even when
in the short term it seems otherwise.”
Kevin said that he understood. It made sense. I warned him, though he said he understood at
the moment, the clarity would leave him. The struggle would
return! He would need to be reminded over and over. I
bid him to return for reinforcement. I’ll see! Perhaps
he will not.
Perhaps Kevin was just God’s angel “falling from the
sky” to put the truth of today’s commentary in human form for me. Perhaps my words pointed him to the right fork as he stood before
it before going down the wrong Aryan Nation fork. I’ll have
to trust God. I’ll gladly trust the God who surely picked me
out for Kevin at just the time I was preparing a commentary about
the connection between God’s expectation of obedience and God’s grace
when establishing a relationship with God. There was too much
mystery in the encounter for it to have simply been coincidence!
Tuesday
we will vote! Or, I hope you will join me and do so. Remember,
you have been given, unrelated to your worth, the glorious gift of
political freedom. Remember, also, you have been given spiritual
freedom because Christ has set you free from your sinful nature, which
separates you from God. Your faith in Christ assures you of
a reconciled relationship with God. But your obedient response,
to both of these freedoms demands that you exercise your freedom by
voting to try and shape public policy about public relationships according
to Divine order.
However, your vote is just one episode in the ongoing
struggle to do that. All candidates would claim, I suspect,
Christian heritage. All have methods as to how best to respond
to God’s gracious free relationship with God and to the gift of political
freedom. Yours and mine are to struggle with their methods and
to choose which we think closest to God’s order were we ourselves
to be endowed with the presidential power.
But, like Kevin, we need
to remember we do not have to get it right this one time for God to
be on our side. We do need to remember to not make just voting
our only involvement with public issues. We need more intense
personal involvement, perhaps not with all, but with selected public
issues as expressions of our faith in God’s election of us.
The melody
line of the Bible is FIRST God’s election of us and THEN our obedience
to God’s laws in response to God’s election. This is, indeed,
a good news melody line! The Bible’s Melody Line sets me free
to want to obey God out of gratitude, and both personal and societal
improvement, rather than out of pressure to achieve or maintain a
worthy relationship. It tends to keep my motivation Divine as
opposed to arrogant.
Do you hear the melody line? Do you hear
the harmony lines of the texts? Does it sound like the Good
News? Then why not submit, to it being the truth that really
sets you free, to live boldly and with confidence in God’s perfection,
rather than in your own perfection?
Well?