Becoming the People of God

Part 4: The End

November 6, 2011

J.W. McNeill

Over the last few weeks we have been taking time to understand some of our core beliefs and practices that help us to become the people of God. We have been contrasting what our Affirmation of Faith says with an alternative set of beliefs that researchers have found to be prevalent in our culture.

The first week we contrasted our belief in God who created and continues to create with a God who watches over from a distance. We believe in God who does not stand back, but has come in Jesus to show and be the transforming presence of God in this world. We understand God to be always and everywhere at work in our lives and our world.

The second week, we considered that we are not here as a random collection of people, but rather we have been called out as God’s created people to be the Church – to behave in some particular ways:

·         To celebrate God’s presence

·         To love and serve others

·         To seek justice and resist evil and

·         To proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen.

And last week we put this into the context of how we are not on this earth to be happy and to feel good about ourselves, but instead we are called to trust God no matter what our circumstances and to further trust that God is at work in us as the church (and in others) as we live out the four critical dimensions for being the Church.

Last week’s contrast allowed for these three points to help us on our way to living a life worthy of God, becoming the people of God:

That contrast today highlighted three central points that can help us on our way to becoming the people of God:

1.      We need to be aware of a pervasive egoism/selfishness that is a dangerous and seductive basis of our consumer culture.

2.      We trust in God. We trust that God is at work in us, so that we can together open ourselves ever wider to the Holy Spirit’s work within us and among us.

3.      We are not the only people in whom God is at work. God is not bound by those whom God has called and part of our joy is to notice that God’s spirit is already at work even before we arrive. That is part of the basis for trust.

This morning’s contrast brings our attention to what happens after death. Paul reminds us the Thessalonians in our lesson this morning.

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-14

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism would have us believe:

            Good people go to heaven when they die.

This statement is a widely held position on the matter. It leaves a number of questions unanswered, of course.

·         How good is good enough?

·         How is goodness measured?

·         Does repentance and improvement count?

·         Does sincerity matter if we are mistaken about what is good?

·         What about the Christian notion of salvation through Jesus Christ? How does that fit in?

Here again we have a bland position that does not approach the richness and depth of the view that our Affirmation sets out.

We believe in,

Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us.

·         Jesus, crucified and risen

·         Judge

·         Hope

·         Life beyond death.

Let’s take each of these in turn:

·         Jesus, crucified and risen

As St. Paul writes to encourage and give hope to the Christians in Thessalonica, he bases his confidence rests on his knowledge of Jesus Christ. Paul  knows that Jesus was crucified, he was killed. He was dead. He suffered at the hands of  those who rejected his message and feared that he would overturn the power structures of the world. So they tortured and killed him. But St. Paul also had the testimony of those who had encountered Jesus as alive after that. Death was not the end of him. He had been raised from the dead by the power of God, almighty. Jesus could not be silenced. He could not be finished off.

Like St. Paul, like Christians down through the ages, we also proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen.

·         Judge

And it is this very Jesus, crucified and risen, whom the Bible tells us will be our judge.

I am, of course, aware that talk of judgment is sometimes not very popular. It tends to be popular only when we are talking of someone else’s being judged. Bad people. Evil people. People who have hurt folks we care about. When it comes time to talk about judgment of me, us, that’s another matter. Then it’s a little more tricky and we prefer to talk about a more gentle and forgiving God.

Indeed, the bland notion that “Good people go to heaven when they die,” is a way of avoiding the difficult questions of judgment.

Now, it must be said that the Bible has no single picture of what the judgment is and what it is based on. But the notion of judgment itself is not in question.

So why is there judgment? Why is that important in the divine plan? Perhaps the most important reason is that God takes us seriously. God has created us and takes our lives seriously. God has a stake in who we are and who we are becoming. God does not look at our lives and just say – Oh never mind about all that. God takes us seriously. We are to take ourselves seriously as well.

So we can imagine that through our lives and at the end of our lives God checks in and goes over how it’s been. “That business there, when you were patient with the grouchy person in line ahead of you?  That was great! I was so proud of that!”  “That time you wouldn’t let your spouse finish her sentence?  That was really disappointing. How could you have handled that better?”

If we got a pass on our lives without comment or consideration. What would that say about how important our lives were? What would it say about how seriously God takes us?

No. The message of the Bible is that God take us seriously. Seriously enough to engage us in some rigorous examination and reflection about what we have made of what we have been given.

Another reason for judgment is that God cares about justice. When the weak are abused by the strong, when the powerful oppress the powerless, God is angry.  God abhors evil because it hurts God’s creation. Judgment is God’s response to the abuse of creation. It is an acknowledgment that the gift of creation has not been received with gratitude, but with indifference or rebellion.

·         Hope

And yet this judgment is not to destroy us or condemn us. It is for our good. It is a diagnosis for our healing. In fact, it is for the healing of creation: that we and all of creation may be restored to wholeness and peace.

Our affirmation states that Jesus is our judge and that means there is hope. We see that Jesus is not about retaliation, but about reconciliation. Judgment is to lead to reconciliation, not condemnation. 

Our hope lies in our confidence that God loves us enough to offer healing and restoration.

·         Life beyond death.

Finally, our affirmation speaks of life beyond death.

Our life here on this earth is limited.  It is limited in years – the strongest of us live only a few years beyond a hundred. To live 90 years is unusual. But we are not just limited by time. We are limited by our fears, by our frustrations, and by our distractions and our frailties. The most significant impact these limitations have is on our ability to love. To love ourselves, to love one another, and to love God. And not only that: we are limited in how much love we can receive. How often we push the love of others away!

And so we long for freedom to live our dreams and our aspirations to love and be loved.

Our confidence is that beyond this life of limitation, our capacity to love and be loved might be refreshed and renewed in a life beyond death.

St. Paul invited his friends in Thessalonica to live in hope. Despite the persecution they endured, despite the adversities they faced, despite the difficulties they had at times with one another, he called them to be people of God who lived in hope that this life was not the end, but a prelude to a fuller life of love in God in their midst then and forever in eternity.

That same invitation: that Jesus Christ is our judge and our hope, in life, in death, in life beyond death is our invitation to our own fuller life of love in God as we become God’s people in this time and forever.

Imagine that!

Stay tuned. More next week.