"The Fulfillment of the Law
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." (TNIV)
“From Ashes to Sunlight: The Phoenix Affirmations” Sermon Series, Week Six, Nov. 6, 2011
In Georgia, Pastor Andy Stanley’s Northpoint Church created a video for Youtube that was a gentle parody of their rock concert-style megachurch worship, in which the parody of the pastor stands up there and simply repeats word-for-word after the narrator, “I have all the answers.” And that is pretty much how I want you to view me—I have all the answers. I am a Magic 8 Ball in a white robe and Oakleys. Should we include an extra casserole for this month’s luncheon? Answer is hazy, try again later. But if it’s a pizza casserole, then okay, yeah, do it.
Okay. I don’t have all the answers, as any of y’all who are three times my age will know. But it is what more and more churches are demanding of their pastors these days—gone are the parishes that my Disciples church in California would call the “journey churches,” where faith was about a lifelong search for truth, in favor of “answer churches,” where the answers, such as they are, are spoon-fed to the congregation. In explaining his irritation with such churches, a buddy of mine said to me, “Look, my nephew is a year old. He wants to be spoon-fed? Cool. But if he wants to be spoon-fed at six, no can do. Here’s a fork, feed yourself.” Church is not about treating you like the one-year-old incapable of feeding himself, it is about empowering you to find your own spiritual nourishment for those other six days of the week when you are not here in this sanctuary, worshiping with us.
And so begins the sixth week of our sermon series together, “From Ashes to Sunlight: The Phoenix Affirmations.” This series is based on a book written by a United Church of Christ pastor, Rev. Eric Elnes, who has pastored a very successful church in Arizona, where they have made amazing use of a diverse array of tools and talents available to them in doing ministry. Eric then wrote this short book called “The Phoenix Affirmations” after the town in which it was composed, but also because the image of the phoenix, being reborn out of the ashes. We’ve talked about a lot of things these past six weeks, from the role of Scripture to worship itself to the church in mission to the nature of God’s infinite love for us! But the glue that ties all of those themes together is that of belief—of faith itself. And so appropriately, this week’s theme is, “recognizing that faith, science, doubt, and belief all serve the pursuit of truth.”
Now, if it feels like we have heard this particular message in Scripture from Jesus before, about the law and the prophets, it is because, basically, we have—week one of this sermon series was based on the passage in Matthew where Jesus says that upon the commandments of “love your God” and “love your neighbor” hang the entirety of the law and the prophets. But the message is a little bit different this time—that none of these laws may be set aside, that none of them shall disappear. Jesus begins His ministry here by teaching to uphold the entirety of the law equally, but elsewhere in Matthew, He says that two laws—love God, love each other—are clearly more important than any other laws or any prophetic teaching. What gives?
In today’s passage, Jesus is saying what I promise you that every visionary, every genius, every scientist has had to say at one point in their work—I am here not to abolish everything you know, I am here to transform it! I am here not to destroy your world, I am here to make it better, please, just have faith that I know what I am doing! It was true for Christ, it was true for the Church reformers from Martin Luther on down, it was probably true for the secular visionaries we idolize today, like Steve Jobs and Christopher Reeve. All of them probably had to give the same disclaimer—I am not here to end your world, I am here to improve upon it! And it is tough to hear, because of that old cliché that has a lot of truth to it—the devil you know beats the devil you don’t. In life, it is almost always much easier to stay inside a cocoon of familiarity—but the feeling that it is actually safe for us? Well…that’s more illusion than anything else.
I’ve said this in previous sermons and I will continue to swear by it, the church is called to be proactive. If all we do is react to what is happening around us, then to be completely honest, we might as well close our doors right now. The pursuit of answers, of truth, is proactive—it is not that the truth is already obtained by us and we are willing to dispense it to whichever sinner walks through our doors. No—we know that we have obtained one precious piece of truth—that Jesus is our Messiah and Savior—and that from that bit of truth we go out to learn even more. But Jesus used so many techniques to find truth—He preached, as He did here in the Sermon on the Mount, but he also told stories, he healed, he traveled, he fed people, he did all of these different things and not one was greater than the other, but all were tools to truth. And I worry so, so, much that today’s church has settled on just a few tried and true ways to search for truth—the same kind of worship that preaches the same kind of theology, followed by the same kind of coffee hour where the same kind of casseroles are served and the same corny jokes are told. It would be like if all Jesus did was to retell the same two or three stories over and over and over—by the final chapter of the Gospels, instead of receiving the Great Commission to go forth and make disciples, or the command to tend to God’s sheep, we’d be treated to our seventeenth rendition of the Prodigal Son, except maybe this time with finger puppets.
And this is where the church can take a great lesson to heart from the not-church world—the secular world, science and all of its complexity, computers and technology, because those sorts of things—science and technology—are always trying to improve upon themselves. After reading one too many articles about how the late Steve Jobs was like a sort of spiritual-slash-corporate priest for Americana, I simply realized that I, too, felt this way about the man for one simple reason—he never, never stopped trying to make his work better. Do not confuse this with having a work ethic—it is about being willing to take risks as well for the sake of improvement.
The best story I can offer to you is that of Nicholas Copernicus, the Renaissance priest and scientist who decided, stubborn old bird that he was, that the earth actually revolved around the sun, and not the other way around—which is pretty remarkable when you consider that the theory he was disagreeing with was Aristotle’s, written well over 1,500 years before Copernicus began his work. Because of that—because he was going against 1,500 years of established belief, Copernicus put off publishing his work for fear of controversy, for fear that the world would not see the Christ in his message—that he had come not to abolish everyone’s beliefs, but to transform them. Copernicus finally relented and published his work—and the day the first copies were complete, he was in bed, having been stricken by a crippling stroke. According to legend, that day, a friend placed his book in his hands and Copernicus looks up, sees his book, and dies, immediately and peacefully, knowing that in his work, he lives, and will always live.
And so when Christians today clam up at change, be it in the form doing everything the same way time and time again, or in the form of disputing every scientific theory that overlaps with Scripture, or even in the form of doubting what tomorrow will even look like, a new challenge is issued to us, a challenge to curiously, inquisitively, even perhaps a tad fearfully, wander outside to see where God’s divine presence might lead us next. If God is a God of the living, a God meant to bring this ancient and dusty book we call the Bible to life, then know that there are answers out there still that we have yet to find. I cannot promise you that I know what God’s entire truth looks like—after all, I have very few answers to give. But I can promise you that I will be there to wander with you, every step of the way. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
November 6, 2011
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