Several years ago, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks did a comedy skit called “The 2013 Year Old Man”. In the skit, Reiner interviews Brooks, who is the old gentleman who has lived for over 2000 years. At one point, Reiner asks the old man, “Did you always believe in the Lord?” Brooks replied: “No. We had a guy in our village named Harry, and for a time we worshiped him.” Reiner: “You worshiped a guy named Harry? Why?” Brooks: “Because he was big, and mean, and he could break you in two with his bare hands!” Reiner: “Did you have prayers?” Brooks: “Yes, would you like to hear one? ‘O Harry, please don’t be mean, and hurt us, or break us in two with your bare hands.’” Reiner: “So when did you start worshiping the Lord?” Brooks: “Well, one day a big thunderstorm came up, and a lightning bolt hit Harry. We gathered around and saw that he was dead. Then we said to one another, ‘There’s somthin’ bigger than Harry!’”
Mel Brooks humorous skit is more than comedy; it tells us something very important about ourselves. It tells us that we are all in search of something bigger and greater than ourselves. Something transcendent. We were made to worship and seek something beyond ourselves — not something like ourselves. It is interesting that in our culture which has rejected the obvious truth that it is God we are seeking, we have turned to other things. Some worship themselves. Since, outside our relationship with God, sex is as close to the transcendent as some ever get, we worship sex. For others it is paranormal experiences. I think this is why we have such an extraordinary and amusing interest and belief in aliens — from books, to television, to movies. We are looking for something beyond ourselves, something bigger than ourselves. We are searching for an experience of awe and mystery. We are searching for answers, and the meaning of the universe and life itself. But, as in the case of the 2000 year old man worshiping Harry, just because something or someone is bigger and more powerful than us is not enough reason to worship. Fear by itself is a poor motivator, even if it is directed toward God — it never lasts long. It is the wrong motive, even if it ends in the worship of God, because it is not how God desires to relate to us. It is not what he wants from us.
I want us to think this morning about our motivations for being Christians. How do we relate to God and what should our motives be? What is the Christian life all about? Let’s think about some erroneous ways some Christians think, and then what our real motivations should be. The first point is that I want to consider is that some people only think of the Christian faith as a way to be forgiven for their sins. We all need forgiveness, and this is certainly a central part of why Jesus came and what he wants to do for us. But it is only the beginning.
Much of what we hear today is a simple plan of salvation. It goes something like this: God loves you and wants to forgive you, but there is a great gulf between you and God. This gulf that separates you from God is your sin. You cannot get across the gulf by yourself, and so Jesus had to come and die for your sins. His cross is laid over the gulf like a bridge that enables you to cross over to God. When you accept Christ as your savior, you walk across the gulf and come to God. When you do this you are forgiven and assured that you will go to heaven.
All of that is good and true, but the problem is that it often stops there. It is only a small part of what life, and the Christian life in particular, is about. It is almost as if people ask for forgiveness, wipe their forehead and say, “Thank God that is over with,” and just sit back and wait till Jesus comes. If that is all we have it is a truncated Gospel. What was meant to be a starting point becomes the whole thing. Some people only want to be forgiven without wanting any real relationship with God. They want forgiveness so that they will not have any negative experience in the afterlife, but they do not necessarily want any contact with God, or have God change the way they live. The whole point of forgiveness is that it clears the way for us to have an ongoing relationship with God and get to know him.
The apostle Paul in speaking to the learned men at Athens said, “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.’” (Acts 17:26-28). Paul was saying that the result of believing the Gospel was that we might find God and know him. He was saying that we should live in a way that we realize that the Christian life is a matter of living in God, moving in God and having our being in him. Jesus said, “The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:17). This indwelling of the Spirit of God is how we come to know him. It is not just about being forgiven, but having the very Spirit of God living in us, us living in him, and knowing him intimately. Forgiveness only opens the door to a relationship with God. It makes that relationship possible. It is in growing in that relationship that we are transformed into his likeness.
And this is the second point: The goal of the Christian life is not just salvation, but transformation. Paul wrote: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Fear is not a good motivator, nor is it what God wants from us. What God wants is for us to enter into a relationship with him that increasingly transforms us from the inside out. It changes our actions and our reactions. It puts love at the center of our lives. It transforms us into his image. We are conformed into his likeness.
Many people want to be a Christian without growth or discipleship. Being a disciple means being a student — a learner. We study God’s Word. We pray. We love. We serve. We don’t merely think about going to heaven, we want to grow in God that we might become like him. We forgive our enemies. When we fail, we repent. We become reconciled with those we have wronged, or to those who may have wronged us. We don’t just spend our money and our time on ourselves, but we give to others in need and serve them. We look for ways to serve others. We mirror the life of Christ who said that he, “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).
But some Christians keep their lives tightly compartmentalized. They have their Christianity in one compartment where they go to church and go through the motions of the Christian faith, and keep the rest of their lives separated from it. They keep a barrier between their religion and their other life. Some even have secret parts of their lives that no one else is allowed to know about, and even God is not allowed to enter. They do not want God or anyone else interfering with certain parts of their lives that they keep hidden. They are good at keeping up a good religious front, while keeping God out of some of the most important areas of their lives.
The Christian church has had more than its share of scandals, and it is precisely because many Christians, and even many Christian leaders, have allowed themselves to become compromised at this point. And a scandal, just as large, is that the world sees Christians as merely uptight rule-keepers who are judgmental, angry and mean-spirited. I recently read Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina and read his description of Countess Ivanovna, one of the “religious” people in the story. Tolstoy writes: “It’s really ludicrous; her object is doing good; she is a Christian, yet she’s always angry; and she always has enemies, and always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing good.” The story was written in the 1800’s, in another land and culture, but it is still as true today. Somehow her religion led to spiritual pride and judgmentalism rather than love and spiritual transformation. I have known many Countess Ivanovnas.
Becoming forgiven is not just a legal transaction that we need to get out of the way. It is having a relationship with God that transforms who we are and realizing that this relationship is what we were made for. God longs to know us and have us know him. God has created the world and everything that is in it, and he wants us to experience the fullness of life. The laws of God are not arbitrary rules set up by God to make life difficult, these are laws that God built into the universe that make it work, just as much as the laws of gravity or thermodynamics. They are the secret to life and well-being. This is the life we were made for. We were meant to live for God and others — not ourselves. We are fond of quoting the Scripture that says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.” But we fail to read the words that immediately follow it: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:8-10). God has called us to a life of obedience and discipleship, and this is where real life is found.
The third point is: This transformation makes us God’s agents in a lost and jaded world. Here is what I think is exciting. God is redeeming the world and all that is in it, and God’s transformation of us is not just for our sakes. It is not just so that we might be good, it is that we might join God in transforming the world — here and now. He is using us to redeem and reconcile the world to himself. Salvation is bigger than we think. It is not just about you personally getting saved and going to heaven, it is about God’s plan to save the world and bring the world to himself. It is about heaven coming down to earth. Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Salvation is about what God is doing to redeem the world and save the whole world. Earth is to be transformed so that one day there will be a new earth and new heavens, and we will have new bodies to live on the new earth. Peter wrote: “But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13). In the book of Revelation we do not see Christians being spirited away into an ethereal heaven, rather we see heaven coming down to earth. In that book, John writes: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’ ” (Revelation 21:1-3).
So we have the privilege of partnering with God to bring about his kingdom here on earth. Every time we help someone in need, every time we forgive, every time we lift someone up or show an act of kindness or love, we are paving the way for God to come and bring about his kingdom here on earth. This world belongs to God and he has not given up on it. He is at work in the world whether we can personally see it or not. He is drawing the world to himself, and when the fulness of time comes, he will return to claim what has been his all along.
The apostle Paul has outlined our responsibility until that time comes. He writes, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:17-20). So we are not to sit in judgment of the world and condemn it; we are not to be afraid of the world and events taking place within it; we are to be Christ’s ambassadors calling the world to be reconciled to God. The Bible says that God so loved the world that he sent his Son into it to save it (John 3:16). God is not our adversary. He does not hate the world. He loves the world and is redeeming it for himself.
N T Wright, the famous New Testament scholar talks about the task of Christians in the world. He says, “Many say, ‘Oh yes, the Holy Spirit came in his place to live in us.’ Yes, but for what purpose? The Holy Spirit came to empower us to be God’s life in the world. We are to do the work of God in the world. We are to be God to the world. And we cannot do that alone. The church is God’s redemptive community in the world. Without you, and without you joined with God’s other children, God’s work will not be done. He will not do it without us. He will not do it for us.”
The good news is that you don’t have to be a perfect person to be a part of this. The Psalmist wrote, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17). If God waited for perfect people to carry out his will, the kingdom would never come. Certainly I would never have entered the ministry. But we take our brokeness and our failures and lay them at the foot of the cross, and move on to be God’s people in the world — finding ways, and doing whatever we can, to be redemptive agents and bring about God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
Max Lucado tells this story: “Over a hundred years ago, a group of fishermen were relaxing in a Scottish seaside inn. One of the men gestured widely and his arm struck the serving maid’s tea tray, sending the teapot flying into the whitewashed wall. The innkeeper surveyed the damage and sighed, “The whole wall will have to be repainted.” “Perhaps not,” offered a stranger. “Let me work with it.” Having nothing to lose, the proprietor consented. The man pulled pencils, brushes, and pigment out of an art box... In time, an image began to emerge: a stag with a great rack of antlers. The man inscribed his signature at the bottom, paid for his meal, and left. His name: Sir Edwin Landseer, the famous painter of wildlife.” Lucado concludes: “In his hands, a mistake became a masterpiece. God’s hands do the same, over and over. He draws together the disjointed blotches in our life and renders them an expression of his love.”
Rodney J. Buchanan
July 15, 2012
Amity United Methodist Church
rodbuchanan2000@yahoo.com
