Who is this Man? How Jesus Shaped our Minds and Our Emotions.
How was high School for you? I loved high school, well actually it was a weird time of life, on one hand I couldn’t wait to graduate so I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. For me graduation signified freedom. Wow, was I in for a nasty surprise. If I had to pick a them song for my grade 12 year it would have probably been Alice Cooper’s “Schools Out”.
On the other hand, I enjoyed the social aspect of high school and academics never really seemed to pose much of a problem for me nor did it seem to cause much stress. And I discovered that the only way they would let me take part in the extra-curricular activities that I enjoyed so much was if I also took part in the curricular activities that they seemed to think were so important. Go figure?
This time of year education is on the minds of a lot of people. Today we honoured our high school graduates but there are folks in all kinds of transitions. Little kids are graduating from pre-school. Elementary kids will be leaving grade 6 and Jr. High students will be looking forward to high school with either anticipation or dread. Folks are receiving bachelor, master and doctorates.
But for many people education and the church don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Some people would actually contend that the church has been a road block to education and science. That the church is threatened by knowledge. But is that a reality?
This is week last of our series “Who is this Man?” Actually it has been a multi-part message, started over Christmas with my message “It’s a Wonderful life” where I started to look at how the world would be different if Jesus had never been born. And when I finished I promised that we would expand on that thought. So, with that in mind our theme over Holy Week was “Who is this Man?” and we looked at how people might have viewed Jesus on Good Friday at the Cross and then on Resurrection Sunday at the empty tomb.
And then over April I preached on the Blessed Life, because it was Money Month. And you folks responded in an incredible way on Consecration Sunday.
So three weeks ago we began looking at how Jesus shaped the world that we live in today. The first week we explored how time has been defined by the birth of Jesus. Every event in history is described in relation to whether it happened B.C. Before Christ or A.D. Anno Domini the year of our Lord. Jesus’ birth drew a line through history. And there are those who would try to secularize BC and AD and make it CE and BCE. Common Era and Before Common Era, but the question has to be asked. What do they have in common? Oh yeah, the birth of Jesus.
We went on to say that in our statement of faith at Cornerstone it says “Our beliefs are in line with historic Christianity.” But what does that mean? Well, it means that we believe that Jesus was the son of God, we believe that he was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. We believe that he suffered and died under Pontius Pilate and that on the third day he rose from the dead. This we believe.
And then over the last two weeks we have looked at how Jesus shaped the world that we live in. And he did that because of what he left behind, the church. And because there was a Jesus who promised in Luke 6:47 I will show you what it’s like when someone comes to me, listens to my teaching, and then follows it. And because there were people who came to Jesus, who listened to Jesus’ teachings and then followed those teachings the world is a different place.
Jesus Shaped How We Think of the Poor
Jesus Shaped How We Think of the Sick
Jesus Shaped How We Think of Slaves
Jesus Shaped How We Think of Children
Jesus Shaped How We Think of Women
Jesus Shaped How We Think of Marriage
And because there was a Jesus and because he left a church that would follow his teachings the world today is a different place.
But, you might be asking what does that have to with education? Let’s go back to the scripture that we started with. A religious teacher came to Jesus and asked him “Of all the commandments which is the most important?” And that is an important question. And listen to Jesus reply in Mark 12:29-30 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The LORD our God is the one and only LORD. And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’
And Jesus didn’t just make that up and it wouldn’t have come as a surprise to the man who asked the question. It was a text book answer from Deuteronomy 6:5-6 And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today.
But there is a difference. Remember those cartoons that used to run in the newspaper, Spot the difference? They would have two pictures that were almost the same but not quite. So here is the command from Deuteronomy 6:5-6 And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And here is the command from Mark 12:30 And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. Did you catch the difference? Jesus’ command includes the intellect.
It’s not enough to love God because you always have, or because you are commanded to, you are to love him intellectually as well.
Do you remember the last command of Jesus? Sure you do. It’s found in Matthew 28:19 where Jesus told his followers to do three things. 1) Make disciples 2) Baptize those disciples and 3) They were to teach those disciples. When the first church was described in the book of Acts it is recorded that they devoted themselves to the Apostle’s Teaching and not just men and boys but women and girls. Jesus Shaped How We Think of Education
There had always been education, but it had been reserved for wealthy privileged males. In AD 150 a man who followed Jesus by the name of Justin Martyr opened a school, and there he taught, men and women, free and slaves. And because of that the Romans had him beheaded.
And for the past two thousand years the church has been at the forefront of not only teaching knowledge but also in preserving knowledge. Why? Because they remembered when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was his reply was not only to love God with all of our hearts but with all of our minds as well.
And so learning about everything was seen by many in the church as a means of helping believers know more about the God who created everything.
Which is why Augustine said “A person who is a good and true Christian should realize that truth belongs to his Lord, wherever it is found, gathering and acknowledging it even in pagan literature, but rejecting superstitious vanities and deploring and avoiding those who ‘though they knew God did not glorify him as God...”
There is sometimes a feeling the church is anti-intellectual and yet when Rome collapsed and the barbarians overran the Roman Empire and the scrolls and manuscripts that contained the classics of ancient civilizations were in danger of being lost, it was in Christian communities called monasteries that those documents were painstakingly copied and preserved by hand. Because a man named Jesus told his followers to love God with all their minds.
And these monasteries became places of learning and eventually formed schools called Universities all over Europe and Asia. And within six years of the Puritans landing in the New World they established a school whose motto translated into English was “Truth for Christ and the Church.” You might recognize the name of the school, it was called Harvard. As a matter of fact ninety two percent of the first 138 institutions of higher learning in the United States were founded by churches.
Closer to home, of the ten Universities in Nova Scotia four were started by the Catholic Church, one by the Anglicans, one by the Baptist and one by the Methodists. In New Brunswick of the eight universities one was started by the Catholic Church, one by the Baptist, one by the Anglicans, one was Methodist, one was Wesleyan and one was non-denominational. Love God with all your mind.
Most people know about Sunday School, but how many of you know that it was started in 1780 by a Jesus follower, named Robert Raikes, as a means to teach children of common people how to read and write. In that day and age children worked 6 days a week and his dream was to give them an opportunity on the seventh day to learn regardless of how much or how little they had. Five years from it’s beginning it is estimated that there were 250,000 children enrolled And within 50 years we are told that there were 160,000 Jesus Followers teaching 1.5 million children how to read and write and how to love God with all their minds.
You might be more familiar with the Sunday School movement by what it’s called today “Public School”.
And it was the church which developed alphabets, and dictionaries and developed written music so songs of worship could be shared around the world. Love God with all your minds.
But Jesus wasn’t content to simply talk about the greatest commandment, which was to love God. He goes on to say Mark 12:31 The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” This same story is told in Luke’s gospel as well and in that account it leads into one of Jesus’ great teaching moments. Because in that account, after Jesus says to love your neighbour, the man asks “Who is my neighbour” and Jesus goes into the story of the Good Samaritan. You know the story, a man is travelling along a lonely stretch of road and he is mugged and left for dead. Three different men come upon him, the first two, a lawyer and a priest, go out of their way to avoid him. The third man was a Samaritan. Which doesn’t mean a great deal to us but 2000 years ago in that culture the Jews bore a grudge against the Samaritan’s that went back half a millennium. And it was that man, the Samaritan who reached out to the victim on the side of the road. And that was radical.
Most people have no problem loving their neighbour, if they already like them. But Jesus expanded our neighbour to mean everyone we come in contact with. Even people we don’t like and even people who have done us wrong. Jesus turned the command to love our neighbour upside down when he said in Matthew 5:43-44 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!
And those early lovers of Jesus were reminded of this over and over again while they were being taught. And so we get radical over the top teachings like 1 Peter 3:9 Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do, and he will bless you for it. And remember that this church was a church persecuted under the Romans, whose members were imprisoned for their faith, and tortured and killed.
Jesus Shaped How We Think of Our Enemies In Jesus day most of the world subscribed to a philosophy called Lex Talionis (lex talin-o-nis). What we would know as “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” but it might have been more aptly referred to as the “law of tit for tat” It appears in the earliest code of law and that was the code of Hammurabi, who was a Babylonian King who lived 1800 years before Christ. The main principal is clear; if a person inflicts an injury then he would receive the same treatment.
There are some who would call this harsh and blood thirsty, but in reality it was the beginning of mercy, for two reasons: The first is that it limited Judgement, if someone knocked out one of your teeth then you can't knock out all of his. Secondly it took judgement away from the individual and gave it to society. Probably the greatest example of the why and how of this law was capital punishment. If someone killed your child they would be sentenced to death, that was their punishment, you couldn't go out and kill their children and their spouse. This type of law was indicative of the society in which Christ lived. It was very much a retaliatory society.
And it still is through much of the Middle East, Iran does it, Syria does it, Lebanon does it, Iraq does it, Libya does it and if you want a real lesson in retaliatory justice then just watch Israel. But then again we support Israel so when the do it we don't call it terrorism.
If’n you want to stomp out evil by stomping out the evil doer then the law of Moses is fine. But if’n you want to destroy evil and salvage the sinner then you need a completely different approach.
The law tells us to react in kind, and that suits our human personality. We are quite willing to kill the killer, hate the hater, and be close minded to the close minded. But Christ isn't content with those who call themselves by his name reacting in the same way as the world. Instead of reacting in kind, he commands us to react in contrast. So when someone strikes you, turn the other cheek. When someone demands your coat, give them your shirt as well. When someone makes you carry their bags for a mile, offer to carry them two miles.
If we are going to change the world it will happen through forgiveness, it was Martin Luther King Jr. who wrote “That old law about "an eye for an eye" leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.” Martin didn’t think that up by himself, he was remembering the words of the Jesus whom he followed.
If you don’t forgive when you’ve been wronged eventually it will consume you and turn you into a hateful resentful person. And that isn’t who Christ called people to be.
Do you remember the school house shooting that happened in the Amish Community of Nickel Mines Pennsylvania back in 2006? A gunman opened fire in a school and killed 5 girls? Did you know that the community publically declared their forgiveness for the shooter and raised money to help out his widow and orphans? Why would they do that? Because they remembered the teachings of Jesus who said in Matthew 5:43-44 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!
In 2007 I sat with a group of pastors under a tree in Sierra Leone and they told me of the atrocities that had happened during the civil war, of friends and loved ones who had lost their limbs and lost their lives. And I asked them now that the war was over what their reaction was to their neighbours who had committed those atrocities? And they said, “We will forgive them.” Why would they do that? Because that’s what Jesus told them to do. And Jesus not only taught it he lived it and ultimately he proved it to the world when he was hanging dying on a cross and prayed “Father, forgive them.”
When the overriding motivation is displaying the love of Christ the rest of the pieces will fall into place. When you seek to love others in the way that Christ loves you then you won’t have to worry about whether you do this or don’t do that.
But as we said last week, the most important question that can be asked isn’t “how has Jesus shaped the world?” but “How has Jesus shaped you?”
Have you come to Jesus? Because you are here you at least come to hear his message. Most of you, I hope, have paid attention and heard his teachings. But are you following him? Are you allowing his teachings to shape who you are and how you live?
Listen to the end of the scripture we started with, Mark 12:32-34 The teacher of religious law replied, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth by saying that there is only one God and no other. And I know it is important to love him with all my heart and all my understanding and all my strength, and to love my neighbor as myself. This is more important than to offer all of the burnt offerings and sacrifices required in the law.” Realizing how much the man understood, Jesus said to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”
When you understand why Jesus came, and what he requires then you are not far from the Kingdom of God. And it is a choice that you will make for yourself. Will you follow Jesus and embrace what he taught? When you allow Jesus to shape you, then you will shape your world, which will ultimately help to shape the world.
Free PowerPoint may be available for this message contact me at denn@cornerstonewesleyan.ca
