Dr Martin Luther King Jr once said, and I quote: "We must discover the power of love, the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make of this old world a new world, for love is the only way."
Now we are in the rainy season, and the rains have started, everything has started growing again – rapidly. I’m enjoying my trees – as they are sprouting new growth and blooming. But, I’m also daily weeding and trimming, just to keep everything under control.
Growth is what plants are supposed to do. In fact, every living thing is intended, by God, to grow – including us. There’s a famous saying, “You’re either growing, or dying.”
Love also grows as we grow.
There is a very powerful relationship between growth and love.
A definition of the word, “growth,” is “progressive development.” We were created for progressive development. During the early stage of our life, that growth is primarily physical and learning basic life skills. But, even into adulthood, we are made to continue to generate new growth – emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and relationally.
Though we may stop growing physically at some point, we still have the capacity for progressive development until we die. We never lose the ability to learn something new, to develop a new skill, to have new experiences, to build new relationships.
To understand the growth and love, we need to look at the life of Jesus
Because The Christian faith was born from Christ.
WHO IS JESUS?
To do this we need to distinguish between Jesus and Christ. They are not the same.
Jesus was a person;
Christ is a title, a theological principle.
Jesus was of history;
Christ is beyond history.
Jesus was human, finite, limited;
Christ is power that is divine, infinite, unlimited.
Jesus had a mother and a father, an ancestry, a human heritage. He was born. He died.
Christ is a principle beyond the capacity of the mind to embrace or human origins to explain.
Our world simply can no longer make contact with the thought forms in which the Church originally defined its Christ in the early ecumenical councils.
That is why an average Christian will say “I am in Christ” yet in reality he/she does not know what it means.
HOW DID JESUS GROW?
Over the years I’ve asked myself, “How did Jesus grow?” In the Gospel of Luke, we find a very interesting passage of scripture that actually gives us a peak into Jesus’ personal growth journey. In fact, it’s the ONLY place in Scripture where we get a picture of what happened between the time Jesus was born and the time he started his public ministry.
Beginning in Luke 2:40 (and through the remainder of the chapter), we see that;
1. Jesus had a Posture of Growth
Luke 2:40 says, “There Jesus grew up, maturing in physical strength and increasing in wisdom, and the grace of God rested on Him.” Verse 52 says, “And Jesus kept on growing—in wisdom, in physical stature, in favor with God, and in favor with others.”
Jesus exhibits an active posture of continual growth.
When you don’t embrace a posture of growth, you simultaneously eliminate the benefits of growth. If you’re not careful, you’ll become irrelevant to the world around you. As Eric Hoffer once observed:
“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
Don’t let that happen to you. When what you learned no longer works, what you learned may be your greatest liability. It may be time to unlearn what you’ve learned so you can learn something new.
As John Wooden observed, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
A posture of growth doesn’t have an expiration date. Too many people graduate learning when they graduate school.
A lifelong posture of personal growth is committed to learning, growing, and expanding right up to the end of life. It’s the pre-requisite for a lifetime of maximum contribution.
2. Jesus’ Areas of Growth
Luke 2:52 says, “And Jesus kept on growing—in wisdom, in physical stature, in favor with God, and in favor with others.” Notice the four areas in which Jesus grew:
• Mentally (wisdom)
• Physically (stature)
• Spiritually (favor with God)
• Socially (favor with others)
This is a good reminder that our growth must reach into the critical areas of life
The meaning of Jesus is found where his being made contact with the being of all human life.
Hence we look at his freedom to be and at the effect that freedom had on others. We look at his security, his fulfillment, his peace, his capacity to give and love and care. These signs of his being become our interpretive clues.
Then we have an angle of vision that will enable us to understand who he really was and to respond with a new commitment.
For Jesus, to be the Messiah meant that he must bring love to the unloved, freedom to the bound, wholeness to the distorted, peace to the insecure. Only in this way could he overcome the sin of the world. The only power that can ultimately save is love, and love was the deepest meaning of Jesus’ life.
Jesus knew this gift of infinite love was his to give. He knew, following the temptation episode, what he would not do, what would not work.
On this note he began his public career.
JESUS’ JOURNEY
TEACHING
First, he chose to share this freeing gift with the world by talking about it.
He announced in Nazareth that in his life the power of love that issued in life was present (Luke 4:21). To know love is to enter the kingdom of God. "It is upon you" (Mark 1: 15), he asserted.
His parables spelled out the quality of life in the kingdom where wholeness abounded.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan, he revealed that love crosses such ego-serving barriers as race and nationality.
He indicated that the mark of the kingdom was the gift of self-acceptance and forgiveness, as in the prodigal son who "came to himself" and the waiting father who went out to embrace, to accept, and to forgive (Luke 15: 11).
The kingdom was seen in the publican who, in the act of prayer, had the capacity to look at himself in honesty, admit who he was to his own conscious mind, and know the inner healing that comes when the game of "let’s pretend" ceases (Luke 18:9).
Behind all Jesus’ parables, his sayings, his public teaching was his attempt to share his gift of love through words: to talk about it, to invite men and women to listen to it, to respond to it, to be grasped by it.
But his listening audience did not hear. Perhaps they could not hear, for they listened through ears distorted by their insecurity. Words alone were inadequate to accomplish his purpose. His teaching ministry could not be the vehicle of his purpose.
ACTING LOVE OUT
Jesus decided, therefore, to supplement his teaching with specific acting out of the life-giving power of love. This is what lies behind all of the healing miracle stories of the Gospel. If love can call life to fullness, it can restore that which is twisted, broken, and distorted physically and mentally. So Jesus acted.
• He calmed troubled minds (Mark 5:2),
• healed demon possessed (Luke 8:34),
• restored sight to blind (Mark 10:46),
• hearing to deaf ears (Mark 7:34),
• wholeness to broken (Mark 5:25),
• Life to dead bodies (Luke 8:41).
But men did not see in these mighty acts the meaning of love and the Christ power was not born in them. At best they saw a wonder-worker who could give them status so they attempted to make him king.
At worst they saw a man who was demon-possessed. "By the power of Beelzebub he casts out demons" (Luke 11:15), they charged.
His healing acts failed as the means of achieving his purpose, just as his teaching had failed. But they are necessary for his journey. Our first task a Christ followers is the consciousness of who we are because your best actions will questioned by people you claim you are serving.
Jesus had one other alternative. It had been his option since the moment of Baptism. He had lived out his life so as never to preclude this possibility, but he had also hoped until the very end that it would not be necessary.
His last effort came in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14: 32).
He set in motion at that final meal the Judas act of betrayal, the Peter act of denial, the disciples’ act of fleeing (Luke 22:14-35). He went to the garden where arrest was a certainty. It was the servant’s path he walked. His decision was to give himself in the ultimate act of love.
LIVING OUT LOVE
He would live love out in the face of every human distortion of love. Perhaps then men would see.
• When he was betrayed, he responded by loving the betrayer, Judas.
• When he was denied, he responded by loving the denier, Peter.
• When he was forsaken, he responded by reaching out in love to the forsaking disciples.
• He poured out his love on the soldiers who tortured him and on the mob who screamed for his blood.
• He showed the freedom that love brings, even as his life was being taken away. There was no scream of the self-centered life grasping at its own being. His concern was for others.
This was the free life, the whole life, the affirmed life. This was the power of love dramatically and totally acted out. What he could not accomplish through words, deeds, or in the intimate community of the disciple band he now lived out hoping that his disciples would look at his true being, see who he was, experience the power of his love, and thus find "the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. 5:21).
Easter is many things to me, but at the very least it is the moment when it finally dawned upon the disciples who Jesus was and what the secret of his power was and is; and when they saw;
• They experienced the transforming birth of that life-giving power in themselves. They were grasped by love, set free by love, fulfilled by love.
• They were made whole. The quality of the life of Jesus became the quality of their lives.
• Their need to search for ego fulfillment disappeared. Peter no longer must brag or impress (John 15:5ff). The disciples did not need to use people in their quest for gratification. Their fear for their own security vanished.
• They abandoned their upper room of hiding and became agents of life and love in the world (Acts 2).
• Their sense of racial or religious exclusiveness evaporated (Acts 11:5ff).
• They discovered that the language of life-giving love was universal and understood by all men (Acts 2:5-13).
• They knew with existential certainty that life was stronger than death, and that love was stronger than hatred.
• They experienced Christpower freeing them to be, and they came alive to their own deepest reality.
• They knew the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection, for when they knew the affirmation that was in him, they themselves were resurrected, transformed, converted. True to their Lord, they did not become religious; they, rather, became free to be and free to love, free to give and free to care.
• The power present in Jesus of Nazareth was now present in them.
• They had life, and this life and love they were determined to share. In this determination the mission of the Christian Church was born. To the universal human need for love came the universal gift of love from the Source of love seen in a concrete, historic life.
The simplistic claim that Jesus is God is nowhere made in the biblical story. Nowhere! But time after time in historic episode after historic episode, the claim has been made that through Jesus God was revealed -- fully, completely, totally.
And who is God? He is not a man in the sky who thinks and acts, who feels and directs.
I am going to give three definitions of God…these three definition also captures the trinity.
• God is the source of life. God is seen wherever life is lived, and he is not alien or separated from that life.
• God is the source of love. God is seen wherever love is shared, and he is not alien or separated from that love.
• God is the ground of being. God is seen wherever one has the courage to be, and he is not alien or separated from that being.
In Jesus of Nazareth men saw the
• fullness of life being lived,
• depth of love being shared,
• and the courage to be being revealed.
To them Jesus revealed life and love and being. He revealed God, and whenever God is seen in human life, that power is called Christ.
"You are the Christ, Jesus" -- that was the claim. "You are the Christ,
for in your life we have seen the meaning of life.
In your love we have seen the meaning of love.
In your being we have seen the ground of being."
To be in this Christ is
• to come alive.
• It is to dare to love,
• to dare to be.
• It is to escape the bondage of ourselves and to fly.
• It is to press the limits of our humanity, to meet another life openly, honestly, to touch and to share.
• It is to escape our estrangement.
The mark of the Christian is not piety but love; not religious zeal but outgoing sensitivity.
Dietrich Bonhoffer, aware of this meaning, could write in his prison letters that
“to be a Christian is not to be "religious man," it is simply to be "man." The full person -- open, free, whole, outgoing, caring -- is what it means to be Christian.”
It has been my purpose to lay before you, the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and let you feel his power, gaze at his being, hear his words, and experience his gift of life.
In this process it has been my hope that you might first see yourself as you are and then see yourself as you are in him, thus forcing your decision as to who it is you really want to be.
I hope that you have been compelled to a serious decision -- to respond to a real Christ and to give up the stereotyped religious facade.
To respond to this Christ is costly, for it means to be open to the new being you are in him. For, to me, Christ and life are inseparable categories and together they make worship an inescapable, glorious pleasure.
My worship demands that I be willing to contend against the prejudice, Bigotry, fear, or whatever else warps and denies another’s personhood. Worship of this Christ is thus for me a call to life, to love, to compassion, to sensitivity, and to the quest for justice.
...and for me, to be in Christ is not to make me religious, but to make me come ALIVE. To discover the fullness of living. It is to turn on to life. It is to know the power of love.
It is to experience freedom from my self-centered bondage. It is to be whole, to be affirmed.
I will reveal the glory of God and share the Christ power when I am FREE to be the self I was created to be, as Jesus was free to be the self he was. Only this way do I imitate Him.
“If God is the source is life, then to worship this God forces me into the task of living-living fully. Then that which we call God becomes visible in others in the fullness of the depths of our being.”
“If God is Love, then only way we can worship God is by loving others, the more we give love away, the more we make the experience of God visible. God is not a being, external to us; God is experienced in the presence of Love.”
“If God is being, then the only way we can worship God properly is by having the courage to be all that each we can be. The more deeply and fully we can be ourselves, the more God, who is being, becomes visible.”
