Great Words, Great Works
How do we know God?
According to the prophet, Jeremiah, God has made two kinds of covenants with his people. The first covenant – the old covenant – God made when he brought the Hebrew people out of Egypt; out of the house of bondage.
That was a covenant of reciprocity.
Do what God says, and God will be good to you.
Obey God’s laws, and God will bless you.
Disobey, or reject God… and face God’s vengeance.
We saw a glimpse of that vengeance last week, as we walked the wilderness with Moses, and God sent a scourge of poisonous snakes to bite and kill the faithless.
So we know God’s anger can be fierce when it is kindled.
But there’s a second type of covenant that Jeremiah talks about.
“This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, says the Lord – I will put my law within them and I will write on their hearts; and I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer will they teach one another or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all will know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
“They all will know me.”
We live under God’s new covenant. Not based on reciprocity. Not based on what sort of judgment we deserve. But based on God’s love for us. That God has chosen to be a God of mercy to us, not because we’ve earned it, but because it pleases God to be this way.
From the time of the exodus out of Egypt, through the time of Christ’s life on earth, through today, God has mellowed out.
But under this new covenant of love and grace and forgiveness, it says that we will all know God.
Do we?
Well, there are a number of ways to think about this.
We might look around and see half-empty churches, and wonder why our kids and young adults seem to be staying away in droves.
And assume that they don’t know God.
We might look at the growing numbers of people who identify as something other than Christian in this country. More Muslims. More Hindus. More Buddhists. And especially, more None-of-the-aboves.
And assume that they don’t know God.
Or we can see the alarming lack of religious knowledge in our communities, in the people around us who have never picked up a Bible, never put their hands together in prayer, and don’t know the first thing about God’s word.
And we might assume they don’t know God.
On the other hand, I’ve heard the opposite argument.
That it doesn’t matter so much the specifics of what we believe… that since there’s only one God, whether we call God Jesus or Allah or Buddha or whatever doesn’t matter. They’re all different names for the same being... and we’re all just taking different paths up the same mountain. And that everyone knows God, whether they know it or not.
Well… as usual… I think the truth lies somewhere in that uncomfortable gray area in the middle.
We can be alarmed at smaller churches; that our children don’t want to worship in the way that we were brought up to worship. Yet I look at all the good that young people these days are doing. I see the passion they’re bringing to the world. My generation, we’re hitting middle age, and we were brought up in a time of cynicism and skepticism and sarcasm, and we couldn’t dream of being so shamelessly invested in our passions.
Younger people… coming less than a generation after me and people my age… they’re bringing energy and new ideas to promoting racial reconciliation; to caring for God’s creation; to advocating for peace in a violent world; to reaching out to forgotten populations – homeless people, refugees, veterans… this is Kingdom work. And they’re doing it; they’re answering the charge of Matthew 25, when Jesus said, “when I was hungry you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you took me in (and so on), and as much as you did these to the least of my brothers and sisters, so you did it to me.”
So yes, there are fewer people calling themselves Christians, but more people acting in accordance with the words and message of Jesus Christ. To me, that is hopeful.
So I believe that yes, all will come to know God. Because I see it happening.
But that doesn’t mean that all will come to know about God. And that is, in itself, a worry.
Because I believe that it does matter how we identify ourselves and that we are able to confess faith in Jesus Christ. Not just any God. Not just some nebulous, vague notion of love and goodness… but in Jesus. Jesus is unique in all of religion. God on earth who walked among us. God who so loved the world that he died to save us. Other gods don’t die. Other God’s certainly don’t die for us miserable mortals. Other Gods definitely don’t die, then conquer death and rise again.
I’d love to believe that we’re all worshipping the same God and that our differences don’t matter, and that we’re all just taking different paths up the same mountain. But I can’t. Because the love and sacrifice that Jesus showed to us, in living and dying for us, is unique and unmatched by any other expression of religion. Now, you’ll never hear me come up here and say a disparaging word against Islam or Judaism or Hinduism or any other religion – There are worthy and admirable things about just about every major religion. But they’re also not what I believe in. They don’t make sense to me the way that Jesus makes sense. They each talk about love and kindness and being good to one another; but none of them go to the depths that Jesus went to to show that love and grace and mercy to us.
These things matter to us. And they should.
Do they matter to God?
That I don’t know.
Because I can read the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John this morning, that Christ will draw all people up to him. And think that if Christ means all, then he means all, and maybe those differences matter less to God than to us.
Or I can read the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John we read last week, that all who believe will not perish, but have eternal life…
There’s a huge difference between all people. And all believers.
So I’m not sure what to do with this.
Except go back to the promise God made through Jeremiah.
That we are in a new covenant.
That no one will teach each other about God, because God will be written into everybody’s hearts.
That all people, from the least to the greatest, will know God.
And our iniquities will be forgiven, and our sins forgotten.
Under this covenant, we have grace.
We are worried about our churches. About our traditions and ways of worshiping fading from the public pedestal they were once on. We worry about our children not knowing about God. And we worry that we’ll soon be outnumbered by people who aren’t like us.
And it’s true that some churches are dying. Some have already closed.
Yet others are thriving, and doing good work in the world, and supplying a demand, a real hunger for the truth of God’s love and grace and mercy in the world.
And it’s true that Christianity in America is losing some of its luster. “The Church” at large, however you define it, has largely lost the imagination, and more importantly, the trust of our people. A lot of churches have done a lot of not-so-Christ-like things over the past decades, then tried to sweep those problems under the rug. People don’t forget that.
And it’s true that every year our country is becoming less Christian, especially less mainline Christian, although the losses that we’ve seen in the mainline denominations over the past 20 years or so are starting to be felt in the churches of our Baptist and Pentecostal churches as well… no one is immune from this wave of decline.
And yet, we still have grace.
As Christians, we’ve done both great things and terrible things in the name of Jesus Christ. We’ve lifted up parts of God’s law and dropped others entirely, without much rhyme or reason. Yet God grants us grace for our sins, and judges us based on his own love. Not what we’ve earned.
In our communities, we wring our hands over the people who have left the church and never looked back. And it’s true, that as communities of the faithful, we all suffer when people leave. Being a Christian is a group activity. We need the group. We crave it. Not for the bodies in the pews or the checks in the offering plate, but because God really, really likes it when we all worship together.
Yet for those who are not here, who cannot come, or even choose not to come, God still extends grace. God cares for them as much as for us, as a shepherd cares for the sheep who wanders and is lost.
God’s covenant is with all of us. Those who come and worship faithfully. As well as those who wander. God’s grace is unending. His love is unyielding. His forgiveness holds no grudges.
Does it matter whether people confess their faith, come to church, and live according to the will of Jesus Christ?
Yes. Of course it matters. It’s a life full of joy and richness and closeness and meaning, and we want people to take part in it.
But when people choose not to… For good reasons or for bad (and yes, there are sometimes good reasons)… God loves them anyway. All who are created in God’s image are his children. And in the end, God calls all his children to be with him. Amen.
For God’s graciousness and mercy, let us give thanks.
Holy God, we come together to worship in your holy name. We lift you up, to honor, to bless, to glorify you. To point to you as the beacon of all hope for all people. Yet so many of us choose not to look to you. We turn away and search for other paths. Yet even in our disobedience, you continue to love us. You love us with a depth we can never understand, and with a bond we could never break. And for this we are humbled and grateful. We thank you, that you allow us to know you. And we praise your name that you even love those of us who don’t know you, or who look the other way. For these things, and for all your blessings, which we have not earned but which you give out of your love for us, we give you our loving thanksgiving. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
How do we know God?
According to the prophet, Jeremiah, God has made two kinds of covenants with his people. The first covenant – the old covenant – God made when he brought the Hebrew people out of Egypt; out of the house of bondage.
That was a covenant of reciprocity.
Do what God says, and God will be good to you.
Obey God’s laws, and God will bless you.
Disobey, or reject God… and face God’s vengeance.
We saw a glimpse of that vengeance last week, as we walked the wilderness with Moses, and God sent a scourge of poisonous snakes to bite and kill the faithless.
So we know God’s anger can be fierce when it is kindled.
But there’s a second type of covenant that Jeremiah talks about.
“This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, says the Lord – I will put my law within them and I will write on their hearts; and I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer will they teach one another or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all will know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
“They all will know me.”
We live under God’s new covenant. Not based on reciprocity. Not based on what sort of judgment we deserve. But based on God’s love for us. That God has chosen to be a God of mercy to us, not because we’ve earned it, but because it pleases God to be this way.
From the time of the exodus out of Egypt, through the time of Christ’s life on earth, through today, God has mellowed out.
But under this new covenant of love and grace and forgiveness, it says that we will all know God.
Do we?
Well, there are a number of ways to think about this.
We might look around and see half-empty churches, and wonder why our kids and young adults seem to be staying away in droves.
And assume that they don’t know God.
We might look at the growing numbers of people who identify as something other than Christian in this country. More Muslims. More Hindus. More Buddhists. And especially, more None-of-the-aboves.
And assume that they don’t know God.
Or we can see the alarming lack of religious knowledge in our communities, in the people around us who have never picked up a Bible, never put their hands together in prayer, and don’t know the first thing about God’s word.
And we might assume they don’t know God.
On the other hand, I’ve heard the opposite argument.
That it doesn’t matter so much the specifics of what we believe… that since there’s only one God, whether we call God Jesus or Allah or Buddha or whatever doesn’t matter. They’re all different names for the same being... and we’re all just taking different paths up the same mountain. And that everyone knows God, whether they know it or not.
Well… as usual… I think the truth lies somewhere in that uncomfortable gray area in the middle.
We can be alarmed at smaller churches; that our children don’t want to worship in the way that we were brought up to worship. Yet I look at all the good that young people these days are doing. I see the passion they’re bringing to the world. My generation, we’re hitting middle age, and we were brought up in a time of cynicism and skepticism and sarcasm, and we couldn’t dream of being so shamelessly invested in our passions.
Younger people… coming less than a generation after me and people my age… they’re bringing energy and new ideas to promoting racial reconciliation; to caring for God’s creation; to advocating for peace in a violent world; to reaching out to forgotten populations – homeless people, refugees, veterans… this is Kingdom work. And they’re doing it; they’re answering the charge of Matthew 25, when Jesus said, “when I was hungry you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you took me in (and so on), and as much as you did these to the least of my brothers and sisters, so you did it to me.”
So yes, there are fewer people calling themselves Christians, but more people acting in accordance with the words and message of Jesus Christ. To me, that is hopeful.
So I believe that yes, all will come to know God. Because I see it happening.
But that doesn’t mean that all will come to know about God. And that is, in itself, a worry.
Because I believe that it does matter how we identify ourselves and that we are able to confess faith in Jesus Christ. Not just any God. Not just some nebulous, vague notion of love and goodness… but in Jesus. Jesus is unique in all of religion. God on earth who walked among us. God who so loved the world that he died to save us. Other gods don’t die. Other God’s certainly don’t die for us miserable mortals. Other Gods definitely don’t die, then conquer death and rise again.
I’d love to believe that we’re all worshipping the same God and that our differences don’t matter, and that we’re all just taking different paths up the same mountain. But I can’t. Because the love and sacrifice that Jesus showed to us, in living and dying for us, is unique and unmatched by any other expression of religion. Now, you’ll never hear me come up here and say a disparaging word against Islam or Judaism or Hinduism or any other religion – There are worthy and admirable things about just about every major religion. But they’re also not what I believe in. They don’t make sense to me the way that Jesus makes sense. They each talk about love and kindness and being good to one another; but none of them go to the depths that Jesus went to to show that love and grace and mercy to us.
These things matter to us. And they should.
Do they matter to God?
That I don’t know.
Because I can read the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John this morning, that Christ will draw all people up to him. And think that if Christ means all, then he means all, and maybe those differences matter less to God than to us.
Or I can read the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John we read last week, that all who believe will not perish, but have eternal life…
There’s a huge difference between all people. And all believers.
So I’m not sure what to do with this.
Except go back to the promise God made through Jeremiah.
That we are in a new covenant.
That no one will teach each other about God, because God will be written into everybody’s hearts.
That all people, from the least to the greatest, will know God.
And our iniquities will be forgiven, and our sins forgotten.
Under this covenant, we have grace.
We are worried about our churches. About our traditions and ways of worshiping fading from the public pedestal they were once on. We worry about our children not knowing about God. And we worry that we’ll soon be outnumbered by people who aren’t like us.
And it’s true that some churches are dying. Some have already closed.
Yet others are thriving, and doing good work in the world, and supplying a demand, a real hunger for the truth of God’s love and grace and mercy in the world.
And it’s true that Christianity in America is losing some of its luster. “The Church” at large, however you define it, has largely lost the imagination, and more importantly, the trust of our people. A lot of churches have done a lot of not-so-Christ-like things over the past decades, then tried to sweep those problems under the rug. People don’t forget that.
And it’s true that every year our country is becoming less Christian, especially less mainline Christian, although the losses that we’ve seen in the mainline denominations over the past 20 years or so are starting to be felt in the churches of our Baptist and Pentecostal churches as well… no one is immune from this wave of decline.
And yet, we still have grace.
As Christians, we’ve done both great things and terrible things in the name of Jesus Christ. We’ve lifted up parts of God’s law and dropped others entirely, without much rhyme or reason. Yet God grants us grace for our sins, and judges us based on his own love. Not what we’ve earned.
In our communities, we wring our hands over the people who have left the church and never looked back. And it’s true, that as communities of the faithful, we all suffer when people leave. Being a Christian is a group activity. We need the group. We crave it. Not for the bodies in the pews or the checks in the offering plate, but because God really, really likes it when we all worship together.
Yet for those who are not here, who cannot come, or even choose not to come, God still extends grace. God cares for them as much as for us, as a shepherd cares for the sheep who wanders and is lost.
God’s covenant is with all of us. Those who come and worship faithfully. As well as those who wander. God’s grace is unending. His love is unyielding. His forgiveness holds no grudges.
Does it matter whether people confess their faith, come to church, and live according to the will of Jesus Christ?
Yes. Of course it matters. It’s a life full of joy and richness and closeness and meaning, and we want people to take part in it.
But when people choose not to… For good reasons or for bad (and yes, there are sometimes good reasons)… God loves them anyway. All who are created in God’s image are his children. And in the end, God calls all his children to be with him. Amen.
For God’s graciousness and mercy, let us give thanks.
Holy God, we come together to worship in your holy name. We lift you up, to honor, to bless, to glorify you. To point to you as the beacon of all hope for all people. Yet so many of us choose not to look to you. We turn away and search for other paths. Yet even in our disobedience, you continue to love us. You love us with a depth we can never understand, and with a bond we could never break. And for this we are humbled and grateful. We thank you, that you allow us to know you. And we praise your name that you even love those of us who don’t know you, or who look the other way. For these things, and for all your blessings, which we have not earned but which you give out of your love for us, we give you our loving thanksgiving. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.