"Radically Different!"
Given on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at Church of the Redeemer, Cairo, IL; and at St. James’ Memorial Church, Marion, IL.
Radically different!....The Christian faith is radically different from every other religion in the world….
And it is this difference that we celebrate at Christmas…the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, sent by God the Father, to save us from ourselves.
To contrast Christianity with the religions of the world, let’s summarize some of the ways that human beings have thought about spiritual things, the things that are in the realm of the divine (we should remind ourselves that human beings, in almost every age and in almost every place have tried to explain or account for spiritual things – we are “hard – wired” to be aware of some spiritual reality beyond ourselves).
Some of the beliefs that we humans have had down through the centuries might be described this way (this is not intended to be a complete list, just some of the major ideas that have been formed):
- There are a whole host of gods: This is called “pantheism”, and would describe the beliefs of ancient Greece and Rome…Many times, these gods would take on human form, and were often engaged in mischief…A person appeased these gods with offerings and sacrifices.
- There is one god: This would characterize the beliefs of Judaism, and also of Islam….To each of these religions (though there are some major differences in the two religions), this one god has revealed his law, and people relate to god by keeping the laws that he has given.
- Nature religions: Everything might be a god…the rocks, the trees, animals, and so forth….many times, this concept of the divine is very fluid, able to be adapted to many different circumstances.
These various beliefs have some things in common:
- The gods are removed from human existence: Usually, there is a great gulf between the human race and the god that created it.
- The gods are do not have human beings, or their welfare, in mind: Often, these belief systems think that the gods are following only their own self – interest, and do not have the interests of human beings in mind.
- The spiritual world is so vague that everything is OK to believe: such a concept could aptly be applied to the New Age spirituality that is so prevalent in modern society today….As a result, many people create a “designer god” to suit their own needs, or become very “spiritual” without any one focus for their spirituality (which, again, often becomes quite self – centered).
But the Christian faith is radically different from all other beliefs….How is it radically different?
Our Gospel reading from John, chapter one, provides some answers…And it is to John’s retelling of God’s work in Jesus Christ that we now turn…..
John addresses the issue of the uniqueness of God and the specific action of God in the “Word”: He says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Wow! Do you get the sense that this is “cosmic language”? John is stretching to find words to describe the “Word”…..
We should stop right there and define “Word” (with a capital “W”)…..To us modern human beings, there is a separation between an idea (and the word that describes it) and the actual object being described….But to the ancient Hebrew people, the two were intimately intertwined…we can hear this unity in the description of the creation of the world, in Genesis, chapter one (verses 1 – 2): “In the beginning, (notice how John’s Gospel begins in the same way that Genesis begins – many Biblical scholars have noted the similarities between Genesis, chapter one, and the beginning of John)…In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light.” Notice how the speaking of the word and the reality of light are connected….this pattern will be repeated as God continues creating the world: a word is spoken and something is created. To the ancient Hebrews, speaking a person’s name was just as real, just as powerful, as actually having the person present with you….the ancient Hebrew conception of all of life was very holistic, that is to say, it viewed all of life as a unified whole (the idea of a separation between spirit and flesh, between ideas and physical reality, is an idea we get largely from the ancient Greeks).
So, for John, the “Word” is that force, which is God (notice John’s very explicit language: “the Word was with God, and the Word was God”), and which created the world: notice (in verse 3) that John now says “through him all things were made: without him nothing was made that was made”. Wow again! John is saying that Jesus Christ is one with God the Father, and that the entire world was created through this “Word”, which came from God the Father. So, the “Word” is eternal, without a beginning and without an ending….fully God.
But John goes on to say that this “Word” is life….notice verse four: “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” Here we have another parallel to Genesis, for in Genesis 1: 3 (quoted a minute ago), we note that light was the first thing that God created.
So Christianity maintains that:
- God created the world, through His specific actions: Unlike a vague “spirituality”, Christianity maintains that God specifically acted in the “Word” to create the world, and in the “Word” to offer us a new life, a new creation (John 1: 12: “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”).
- God has not separated himself from the world that He created: John tells us very clearly (verse 14), “The Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us. We have seen the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Here is the critical difference between Christian belief and all other ideas: God loved the world enough to send the very best – himself! God himself, sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to become fully human (yet fully divine)…..John, a little further on in 3:16 & 17 will say, “For God so loved the world, that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” Notice the emphasis on sending, love, and saving. Clearly, God has our best interests in mind!
- God acted out of love for people: “For God so loved the world” we read a second ago….God’s relationship with people can’t be spelled out by a rigid set of rules and requirements, whereby we seek God’s favor (unlike the ancient pagan practices of offering sacrifices to the gods in order to appease them). Our relationship with God, through Jesus Christ, is based on love….since, in our modern world, the idea of “love” is so often confused with “permissiveness”, we ought to remind ourselves that the genuine concept of “love” involves seeking another’s welfare and good, not just our own….that means that our response to God is characterized by wanting to respond to God, wanting to respond by living our lives in accordance with God’s designs for us as human beings. We respond to God in love, living as God wants us to out of love, not out of rigid, legalistic demands.
So, let’s return to the question we began with: “How is Christian belief radically different from all other concepts of things spiritual and the things of God?”….
This question is at the heart of the Christmas message, because it dwells on the exact identity of the baby born in a cow’s stall in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.
John supplies the answer, chapter one, verses 17 & 18: “….grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known.”
In Jesus Christ, God’s light has shown among us….and just like the light of day in the created order of the world around us, God’s light makes possible life itself…without light, the world would be so cold that everything would be frozen. Without light, nothing could grow….What is true in the physical world is also true in the spiritual world: without the light of Christ, the spiritual world would be separated from the source of light and life, and would be spiritually frozen. Without the light of Christ, we cannot have life itself, spiritually.
But light also provides the means to see where we are going…without light, we would stumble around, bumping into things right and left….Without the spiritual light of Christ, we would stumble spiritually, as well.
Thanks be to God, for reaching out to us, and for sending us the gift of His only Son, born in Bethlehem, to save us from ourselves, and to offer to us life through belief in His name.
AMEN.
