AJM Holy Trinity 17.3.02 am
Good morning. Today we are beginning a new
sermon series on Jesus, and we start with a passage from Colossians and the
title, Jesus the Revelation of God. It’s an amazing passage. It covers
everything from the Big Bang to our gathering here this morning. But I promise
I’ll leave out some of the bits in between.
Let’s pray.
So, Jesus reveals God. We can
get to know God through Jesus. How?
Paul suggests in 3 ways.
Firstly, vs 15-16 he reveals
him in creation.
Secondly, vs 17-18 he reveals
him in the church
Thirdly, vs 19-20, he reveals
him in the cross.
Now this is all very
theological. So let’s bring it down to earth a bit and start by asking a question.
The question is, how do we know things? That is, not how do we know about
complicated things like salvation, but how do we know anything at all? Because the sentence Jesus is the revelation of God sounds fine, till you imagine
yourself explaining it to a child, which I think is an excellent test to see
whether you’ve really got your mind round something. You can’t fob off a child
by sounding clever. So stand in front of the child and explain how it is that
we can know God through Jesus, when God is invisible and Jesus is dead.
Our whole culture is based on
the concept that we know things because we can think them out. I think, therefore I am. The only sure
and certain thing I know is that I am. And I work everything else out from
that. It’s all about logical thinking. That’s how we know things. Through
reason.
But it’s a fallacy to think we
can think divorced from the rest of ourselves, as if we were disembodied
brains. I’ve just read a book by a neuroscientist reporting on the latest
research into brain activity. And she says there are 3 kinds of thinking that
go on inside us, and they correspond to 3 different sorts of brain patterns.
The first is rational thinking. That’s when impulses pass along single lines of
neurons rather like lights on a Christmas tree. That’s how we do logical
thinking, and we call it IQ. But a there’s a second kind of pattern, when
impulses fire through complex networks of neurons. That corresponds to a more
complex kind of thinking, and it works by association, not by logic. It’s a
more emotional and relational kind of thinking. Since it was first identified
in the 90s it’s been called EQ, or emotional intelligence. And it doesn’t just
go on in the head; the chemical processes by which it happens are linked to the
processes which take place throughout our bodies. And then there is a third
pattern, a pattern of waves which cross the surface of the whole brain at a
particular frequency, and which occur when we are trying to think about meaning
and purpose. That she calls Spiritual intelligence or SQ. It’s been discovered
only within the last 5 years.
Now thinking with IQ alone has
got us miles and miles. Since Descartes said I think, therefore I am, we’ve made enormous strides forward in our
ability to understand and organise our world. And yet the world hasn’t exactly
got more godly, has it. It’s got more destructive. A lot more. By concentrating
on rational thinking alone we have left whole dimensions of life out. We have
learnt a lot about the world, a little about ourselves, and almost nothing
about God. We live in the most spiritually illiterate culture there’s ever
been.
So, if we can’t know God
through the use of our own reason, how can we?
Verse 15. We know about God
because we know about Jesus.
He is the image
of the invisible God.
An image is something we see. So when we see Jesus, we see God. Through
the visible Jesus, God shows us his own invisible self.
The biblical word for that is revelation. That’s how we know things;
because they have been revealed to us.
Paul says the first way God
reveals himself to us is through creation. Jesus is the firstborn of all
creation.
In him all things in heaven and on
earth were created, things visible and invisible.
John spelt it out even more
clearly to the rational Greeks.
In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God;
all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that
was made.
When
my daughter Katy was a baby she spoke a word. She used to sit in her seat in
the car and say it over and over again as we drove along. This was it: goggy goggy. Or sometimes, goggy gog. The problem was, we hadn’t
the faintest idea what she meant. It was just a sound. Eventually she realised
that words had to correspond to something real, so she learnt to say mummy, and
know that when she did she meant me. Words label and describe things. They
communicate meaning.
But
Jesus’ words do more than that. Jesus’ words weren’t just sounds, and they
didn’t describe things – they actually created them. When Jesus spoke the
world, he didn’t say goggy goggy, and
nothing happened. He said world, and the world happened, in an enormous
explosion we call the Big Bang. He said angels, and angels happened. He said
people, and people happened. He said rabbits and trees, and rabbits and trees
happened. Then, much later, he said your name, and you happened. He speaks all
the time, and things happen. A word in the mouth of Jesus is not a description
of reality; it creates reality.
Everything that is, is only because Jesus said it.
Verse 16,
by him all things were created, things in heaven and
on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or
authorities – all things were created by him and for him.
So Jesus spoke and the world happened. But how
does that tell us about God? Well, if you look at something someone has made it
tells you about the person who has made it. When you speak, you express
yourself. And when God spoke the world through Jesus, he spoke in an explosion
of self-expression. We call it the Big Bang. But it was God’s first words to
us. I think when I first learnt to talk I never stopped, and they had to shut
me up. God’s a bit the same. He opened his mouth and it all came pouring out.
Jesus reveals God because Jesus is a language, a language of self-expression.
The problem is, we don’t know how to interpret
it. How exactly does the world Jesus spoke reveal God?
Maybe the best way of explaining it is to look
at human creativity.
Here are two pictures. The first is a landscape
by Pissarro. Look at it and you see not just what the place looked like, but
how he felt about it, something of his personality. Look at the soft outlines,
the slanting sunlight, the whole atmosphere of relaxed immobility.
The second picture is by Salvador Dali. It’s
also a landscape. But you can tell the painter was quite a different
personality. It’s harsh, with hard outlines and a stark unrealness about it. It
has none of the peace of the Pissarro.
Here are two more pictures.
The first is painted by Rembrandt. It’s his
mother. His feelings are in the picture. You can see how he felt about age, how
he felt about his mother. It’s a picture of acceptance. Compare the second
picture, by the Italian artist Bemba, of a noblewoman. Did he like her? How did
he feel about people? How did he feel about his job? Was he the same kind of
person as Rembrandt? Obviously not.
What do these works reveal about their creator?
Well, a lot more than we can work out by our own logic. What the creator
creates is never impersonal, it’s always personal. It is not just an arid
description of something, but an expression of who he is. This isn’t art
history, it’s present reality. And so it is with God and the world. Paul
explained it like this to the Romans:
Romans 1 ever since the creation of
the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been
clearly perceived in the things that have been made.
Because they are an expression of his personality.
In the Middle Ages they used to say that there are 2 ways of knowing
God. Neither of them had anything to do with us working it out, and both had
everything to do with revelation. God, they said, had written 2 books. The
first was the book of scripture. The second was the book of nature. God reveals
himself to us when we read either of these books. Both of them are a form of
words. And the great Christian mystics have always known this.
This is a 14th writer called Meister Eckhart:
God is in all things by
essence, by virtue and by power. All creatures are like the footprint of God.
Even he who knew nothing but the creatures would never need to think out any
sermons, for every creature is full of God and is a book.
If you were a medieval Benedictine monk they’d
have started your spiritual life off by getting you to meditate on the created
world. They wanted them to learn to look at the world and see God. Or see the
reality of his power. And the diversity of his imagination. And the love that
lies behind the details. It doesn’t matter what you look at, anything will do.
A cold white winter moon. The round red of a rising sun. The scales on the wing
of a single butterfly. The evening light stretching shadows over the fields.
The silence of the snow or the seething power in the lava of a volcano. And
always I think, why did he do it that way? How did he think of that? How
incredible is his power, how detailed his care, how creative his eye.
When I was in the 6th
form we had a couple of holidays on the Isle of Mull, and I collected a
load of the pellets owls and gulls produce to get rid of all the little bones
and insect cases from the food they’ve eaten. I spent ages dissecting them and
peering through drawers in the Natural History Museum in London to find out
what animals they’d come from. I learnt a lot about owls and gulls, but not
much about God who made them. A year or so later I was out bird ringing, and we
caught a long eared owl. I remember holding it and gazing into its eyes; they
were enormous and a deep orange colour, unblinking, astonishing. They gave me a
much better idea of what it is to be an owl than dissecting the pellets did;
and a much greater sense of wonder at the God who wanted to make such beautiful
eyes and to sustain the life of the owl inside its scrawny body and its thick
silent feathers. We don’t need to analyse the created world; we just need to
look at it, and allow ourselves to be caught up into it and out of the troubles
of our times. The whole world beats with the creative, sustaining power of the
spirit; withdraw the spirit from any living thing and it would dissolve
immediately into death. And the whole world reveals its maker, because his
handwriting is in his words, his sense of order and humour and love, beauty and
power and even anger.
Now
in case you just think this is me going on about birds again, I notice that
Jesus taught from the created world all the time. At first I thought this was
because it just seemed the most sensible thing, in a rural society. That was
what was there. Then I thought, well, fair enough; he made it. But then it
occurred to me that there is a third and more profound reason. The reason is
that created reality is a reflection of spiritual reality. The created world is
a reflection of the spiritual essence of God, just as Rembrandt’s painting is a
reflection of his own personality. And so the words which Jesus spoke in
creation reflect the fundamental spiritual realities which underlie the
universe.
It is a universe in which my
spiritual life is like the life of a tree rooted in water. Psalm 1. It is a
universe in which God’s provision for me is like the lily standing in the field
clothed in the beautiful petals he provided for it, Matthew 6. It is a world in
which my labour plays a part in my welfare, like a colony of ants storing up
food for winter, Proverbs 5. It is a world in which I shelter under the
powerful wings of God like a young eagle beneath those of its mother,
Deuteronomy 32. I belong to a community of people amongst whom I must expect to
find problems, for we are like a field of wheat with weeds growing in it. One
day I will face death, but I will be like a seed falling into the ground and
growing into a beautiful new plant. As I walk in my garden I smell the scent of
the mock orange by the fence, and I can reflect that my life is meant to spread
the fragrance of the knowledge of God, for I am to God the aroma of Christ. 2
Corinthians 2.14. And on it goes.
This is what a famous writer
on prayer said:
To elude nature, to refuse her friendship, and attempt to leap the
river of life in the hope of finding God on the other side, is the common error
of a perverted mysticality. So you are to begin with that first form of
contemplation which the old mystics sometimes called the ‘discovery of God in
his creatures’.
Next time you see a waterfall, stop and just
think: why?
So Jesus reveals God in speaking the world. The second way Jesus
reveals God is by being born as a human being.
Verse 17..
He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, and the firstborn
from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God
was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.
Or as John put it, the Word
was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.
One of the obvious spiritual
truths about God is that he is relational. God is Father, Son and Spirit. One
theologian put it like this. In the
beginning was the relationship. Father, Son, Spirit. We are made in the
image of God, and we too are relational beings. We aren’t just rational. We
have a relational, emotional way of thinking locked inside our brains which we
need to embrace – we have EQ as well as IQ. We know God, through the books he’s
written in the visible world. But how do we relate to him? The answer
has to be, through Christ. God is relational.
And so he sent his Son to live among us. Jesus reveals God in speaking
the world. And he reveals God by drawing us together in relationship with him.
Jesus creates and sustains the physical
reality which reflects the nature of God, and he creates and sustains the emotional reality which reflects the
nature of God. Jesus was born. The image of God was born, and when he was put
to death he was born again. We too have been born. And we too may be born
again.
So how do I know God? How do I
know what he is like? Well, we’ve seen, partly because the world is his body,
as another theologian put it; we see his nature in the things that have been
made. But I know it also because through Christ I am drawn into a relationship
with him. I discover that he loves me. And I discover that not as a nice idea,
but as a reality in my relationships with his people. I feel it. I pick it up
through using my emotional intelligence. I discover that just as God’s power
created the universe, so his love echoes through it. And that love was and is
expressed to us by Jesus, in his life, his death, and his risen life.
My daughter Bethy got a rabbit
for Christmas. It’s called Floppy. I thought this would be fine, we’ve had
hamsters, you just have to feed them and clean them out. But this wretched
rabbit wants more than that. It expects to be loved. It’s amazing that love is
so written into the universe that even a rabbit knows about it. And let’s face
it, this rabbit isn’t very bright. But it does want to be loved. That means it
charges up to you and sticks its nose into your hand to be stroked. When you
stroke its nose it likes it so much it shuts its eyes. Then it licks your face
in return. Love turns out to be a law of the universe. In the beginning was the
relationship. Descartes may not have known that, for all his IQ; but Bethy’s
rabbit does.
So how do we enter into that
relationship? By knowing Christ, and by allowing him to bind us together in
love for one another. I’m not a rabbit. Please don’t stroke my nose. But I have
found that God loves me because other people have loved me. And they have loved
me because they have received love. And they have received love through Christ
and through one another. I think,
therefore I am. How about, I love
therefore I am? In the beginning was the word. And the word was spoken to
me and to you. Words are about creation; but they are also about communication.
And communication means relationships.
I said earlier our culture has
majored on rational thinking at the expense of relational thinking. And I think
this is clearly demonstrated in the superficial and fragmented nature of our
relationships. Relationships just aren’t very high on the agenda. We’re all so
busy rushing around earning money and consuming goods and services that we
scarcely stop to speak to one another. Gone is the world in which we knew all
our neighbours and depended on them; people now live in isolated brick boxes
which they enter and leave in their cars. Gone is the community of family; we
live scattered from our family members and watch the TV instead of talking to
the ones we do live with. The result is that our urban society is falling
apart. Technology was supposed to do the work for us and leave us more time for
relationships; instead it has just increased the amount of work we can fit in.
I have a friend whose husband will only go on holiday to places where he can
keep in touch with his work by email. Their family life doesn’t have much to be
said for it.
I don’t think God wants us to
do it this way. Jesus is the head of the body, the church. He offers us
relationship, and asks us to enter into relationship with one another. People
out there want relationship, but often they don’t have it, or when they do have
it it breaks down because they load too many expectations onto it. I discovered
recently that the Italians have a divorce rate of 11%. Here it is over 40%. The
only difference I can see is that Italians live much more in community than we
do, both local communities and family communities. We have largely lost that,
and we overload the relationships we do have to breaking point. But Jesus offers
us a way back. It’s a way of belonging, a way of slowing down, a way of putting
the emotional aspect of our being back into our lives. It’s a way of resisting
the culture. It’s attractive; Alpha is so successful precisely because it
introduces people to the idea of relationship. Relationship with one another
and with God. The only churches which grow are ones which offer relationship.
For some that means a small band of people within a traditional community. For
us, it means cells. God reveals himself to us through relationship. That’s what
the church is meant to be, and Jesus is its head. We learn that God loves us as
we receive his love from one another. We can do that only because we are joined
together by Christ in the body which is the church.
We have IQ, which is about understanding
through our minds. We have EQ, which is about understanding through
relationships. And finally we have SQ, which is about understanding through our
spirits. SQ is about how we make sense of the world and our place in it. It can
be done only in relationship with God. And we can only know God through Christ.
We’ve got to the last section. This is what it says.
God was pleased to have all his
fulness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things,
whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood,
shed on the cross.
Jesus reveals God to us because he spoke the world. He created reality.
Jesus reveals God to us
because he enters into relationship with us and creates relationship between
us. He was born as man.
And finally, Jesus reveals God
to us because he reconciles us to God in person. He died on the cross. We have,
as a human race, become distant from God. We have fallen short. We have failed
to notice his footprints in the visible world he made, we have failed to
reflect him in our relationships with one another, and we have failed to obey
him in our personal lives. We are out of sync with the world and with God. And
so here is the gospel. Here is the good news, all spelt out to us in black and
white, written down for every generation and for all peoples. Jesus has made
peace between us and God, and he did it on the cross. On the cross he drew all
things together. On the cross he made everything that has gone wrong come
right. On the cross he defeated the thrones and powers and rulers and
authorities which had rebelled from God in the spiritual realms and which rush
around creating invisible havoc in our lives and hearts. On the cross he
expressed our sorrow at our alienation from God in a single act which we may
claim as our own, any time we want. And when we do it, we are reconciled to God
and we may know him directly. We can do that because we are spiritually intelligent
people, and we are able to grasp what has been revealed to us.
So Jesus reveals God to us
because he is the word of God. Jesus is a language. A language of doing, a
language of being, and a language of reconciliation. If you think about it, God
couldn’t have tried much harder to communicate with us, could he. The answer to
the child who asks how do we know God is this. First, we know him because he
got Jesus to make the world, and when you look at something someone’s made you
can find out quite a lot about what they are like. And second, we know him
because Jesus was born as a person, and told people God loved them, and told
them to love one another in the church, and that way they would find out what
it felt like to know God. And lastly, we know him because Jesus defeated the
devil on the cross, and took away all the bad things that were keeping us away
from God.
Creation, church, cross. Three
ways Jesus reveals God.
There’s still more to come, of
course; one day there will be another creation, the creation of a new heaven
and a new earth, in which we will live with God fully and permanently, and
revelation will be complete. But that’s another story.