|
EASTER 1999 I read recently that over half of adult Americans say that they have been in a conversation in which a Christian has tried to persuade them to become Christians too. In the jargon of Christians that is called "witnessing." As in a courtroom, where the prosecutor asks the person sitting in the witness box, "Now, then, Mr. Jones, what did you see the defendant do with the money after he demanded it from the bank teller?" a witness is someone who has personal knowledge of something that he can tell others. Christians are witnesses in that same sense. They have learned things themselves about Jesus Christ that they can tell others. That is what Chris Jorgensen was just doing -- bearing witness, telling others what he himself has discovered, what he has seen with his own eyes and experienced in his own life. It is interesting, too, that most of the adult Americans who say that they have been witnessed to by Christians remember it as a negative experience! Some of that may be, of course, -- we Christians are the first to admit it -- because the Christian did a very poor job of communicating his or her faith, or was impolite and pushy. But, much of that discomfort on the part of people to whom Christians talk about Christ and salvation is due to the fact that people are just very uncomfortable talking about such things. It may be that they think the entire subject too personal to talk about with someone else. It may be that they are embarrassed because they know so little about religion and feel so inadequate to discuss it. But, it may also be that they think the Christian faith, when they hear it described, is strange, and they don't know how to end the conversation with their Christian friend without saying so. I read this past week a confession along these very lines from Alvin Plantinga. Many of you won't have heard his name, but every philosopher in America and most in Europe know exactly who Alvin Plantinga is. He is perhaps the most influential philosopher writing in America today. He is a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame and is an evangelical Christian -- by which I mean he takes the claims of the Bible about Jesus Christ, including his resurrection from the dead, with complete seriousness. Now philosophers are supposed to be the smartest people of all, the people who think thoughts that most ordinary people can't understand. And Alvin Plantinga is widely regarded as sitting at the pinnacle of philosophy in our day. But listen to what he admitted about himself.
Here is one of the smartest fellows in the world, a man whose mind is so powerful that it is intimidating to almost everyone else. A friend of mine studied with Alvin Plantinga when they were both students at Princeton, and he says that, even when Plantinga was just a student, when he would raise his hand, the professor in the class would visibly wince, for fear that the question that was coming would reveal that the student knew more than the professor did. But here is Prof. Plantinga, of all people, worried that if he told someone what he had discovered about Jesus Christ, that person might think he was weird! You might have thought he would have thought, "Hey, this other fellow knows how smart I am, how well-respected a philosopher I am; he will be required to take seriously whatever I tell him. I'm smarter than he is, so there!" But he admits, instead, he was afraid about what the other fellow would think of him. And multitudes of ordinary Christians struggle with the same fear, the same cowardice. And why is that, do you suppose? Well, it would be very hard to explain if Christianity really were the message that many people think it is. Ask the average American, for that matter ask the average human being anywhere in the world, what religion is about and he or she would be likely to say something like this: there is a god, he cares how we live, he wants us to be good and kind to others, and he will reward us if we do his will and, especially, if we love one another. And, it wouldn't matter a great deal whether you asked a Buddhist, a Muslim, or someone who thought himself a Christian. Most people think of religion in these terms. God wants us to be kind and honest and generous and will reward us if we do. He wants us to love him too, of course, and, depending upon the religion, perform certain acts of worship, but, interestingly, most people wouldn't think to mention that, at least not at first. They don't suppose that rituals are nearly so important as the way we treat our fellow man. Even very sophisticated and highly educated people think this way about religion and about Christianity. Perhaps the most astute observer of American culture writing today is Neil Postman, a Professor at NYU, and author of a number of very important and illuminating books. I think very highly of Professor Postman as a thinker. His writing, his observations of our culture are brilliant and very helpful. He is not a Christian, but he is a powerful and very helpful thinker. But when, on one occasion, he came to describe the religion taught in the Bible, this is what he wrote:
Pretty average stuff. So ordinary, in fact, that there is nothing particularly biblical about it. You could say, with few alterations, that this was the teaching of Islam, of Buddhism, Hinduism, even, after a strange fashion, that it was the teaching of atheism, for most atheists still believe, for some reason or another, that we ought to be kind to others and that there is some reward for those who are. But, it is very hard to imagine that Professor Alvin Plantinga would have thought that someone might think him weird if he said that! "Be nice to people and God will be nice to you." Nothing very controversial about that! Would you think it a bad experience if in a conversation someone said to you, "well, I think we ought to be nice to people and treat them with love and justice; and, I think, God approves of that and smiles on those who live like that." Would you turn toward that person and give him a look that suggested you thought he was completely out of his mind? Who would ever be offended by or think it strange that a person clap him on the shoulder and, with a smile, say "Just do your best to love others, and I'm sure God will not forget you if you do"? But, you see, that isn't the message of Christianity, not at all! And that isn't what Christians want to tell people and want them also to believe. That isn't testimony a witness can give -- to tell people to love one another and to assure them that if they do God will smile on them. That isn't telling someone else something that you yourself have experienced and seen and discovered. That is just teaching a kind of moral philosophy. Christianity, has a great deal to say, of course, about love for God and for man, about morals and doing good. But first, and far more, it is a message about Jesus Christ. About God the Son, the second person of the Triune God, coming into the world as a man to live in our place the life we should have lived and have not and to die in our place the death we deserve to die because of our many sins against both God and man. For, as an aside, let me say, while people talk about religion in terms of doing good, they have much more trouble doing and being good themselves. It is a message about Christ dying on the cross, the just for the unjust to bring us to God; and about Christ rising again on the third day, the pledge and promise that we can also live again after we die. It is a message about his resurrection from the dead as the proof that Jesus is the Son of God and that he can give eternal life to those who believe in him. And, still more, it is a message about a present Jesus Christ who makes himself known to people today, who comes into their lives and grants them his love, the forgiveness of their sins, new life with new powers and new convictions, as well as the promise of life forever in the world to come. That is the greatest significance of the resurrection -- that Christ is alive to be known today by you and by me. I cannot, no Christian today can, be a witness to the events that transpired long ago when Christ died on the cross and then came out of the tomb that next Sunday morning. I didn't see that. Nor did professor Plantinga. But, Christians today can be witnesses to their own encounter with the same Jesus Christ, to his presence in their lives, to the grace and goodness and forgiveness that he has brought into their hearts. They know that first hand, and can tell others about what they themselves have seen and experienced. That is what the Lord said in the passage we read this morning from the Gospel of John. Here was Christ speaking to his disciples the night before his death on the cross; a death he had already predicted many times, had already talked about at length that very night. He was to die. There could be no mistaking that. But, here he is speaking about coming again to them (v. 18), of them seeing him again after the world lost sight of him (v. 19), of their living because of his living, indeed of his dwelling with them, even in them (v. 20), of his showing himself to them (v. 21), and of making his home with them (v. 23). Later he will speak of "coming back to them" (v. 28). All of this, he said, he told them beforehand, so that when it happened just as he said it would, they would believe (v. 29). This is extraordinary language, remarkable! He will die, but he will soon be alive again, and his disciples could know him and live with him and walk with him on the other side of the cross as they had before his death. There is nothing conventional about this message! A dying Savior, who rises again, and can be known and loved, who will be present in the life of his followers. And that is why Prof. Plantinga wondered just how he would open the conversation with his friend: "Hello, have you found Jesus?" For that, is, you see, the real issue: have you found Jesus? Have you met him? Come to know him? Have you experienced his life in your life, his power, his love, his mercy? Have you discovered that he is so much alive, so truly risen from the dead, that you can know him personally today, as truly as the disciples did in their day? But, let's be honest. That is a harder message to sell, a harder message to believe. And, it has other tough parts as well. Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for our sins, but many people are offended at the idea that they are so sinful that Christ would have to die for them or they could not be made right with God. What is more, he is the only way of salvation, the only way sinful human beings can find peace with God. And that is a tough sell in a pluralist age like ours. We have been taught to think that many roads lead to God. But Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the father but by me." And his resurrection proved it! And, then, there is the entire problem of divine judgment, which Christianity says, Christ bore for us. We do not like any more the idea of a holy God who hates sin and is bound by his just and holy nature to punish it. The God favored by late twentieth century American culture is much less demanding, much less strict, much less concerned about right and wrong. His mercy is a sort of generalized kindliness, not the titanic, sacrificial love, that sent him into the world to live, to suffer, and to die for the sins of his people, because only in this way could they be saved and live at peace with him. The Bible is very honest about all of this. It is fully aware that many will not believe, will not even approve of the Christian message. It will be foolishness to them, the apostle Paul says in one place. But, then, it was fine, upstanding, church-going, citizens who murdered Jesus Christ. People can be catastrophically wrong about things they are sure of at the time! Difficult as all of this is to believe, it is absolutely true -- just as many of the most important truths, truths about ourselves, truths about death, truths about human life, are difficult to believe and very hard for people to accept. I deal with people all the time who cannot be made to see the truth about their lives, truth that everyone else can see except themselves, because that truth is so unwelcome to them. That is why Prof. Plantinga knew it was wrong for him to keep silent, even if in speaking he risked the disapproval of his friend. For this is the truth. Christ did rise from the dead. Every Easter week I read again books dealing with the arguments for and against the resurrection -- Christians arguing for it and non-Christians against it. And every year I am encouraged to see again how powerful the arguments really are for the resurrection of Christ and why it is that though people have tried to disprove it for these two thousand years, they have not fared any better than the religious leadership fared in Jerusalem right after the resurrection itself. The fledgling church was mushrooming before their eyes, streams of their own people were embracing the Jesus they had put to death and claiming that he was alive again, and they could do nothing to stop it. It's hard to prove that the whole thing is a fraud when hundreds of people, good people, simple people and sophisticated people, say that they saw Jesus alive again. And all the more when the transformation of their lives that resulted from their coming to believe in Christ has made them so much better people than they were: humble, kind, generous, loving, honest, and pure. And, still more, what the enemies of Jesus couldn't withstand was the simple assurance that Christ was not only alive, but was present with his people, to know them, love them, hear their prayers, care for them, support them, forgive their sins and cleanse their hearts. In that knowledge that he was with them, they turned the world upside down. It reminds me of a visit to Russia that Billy Graham made many years ago. It was just at the time a Russian cosmonaut was saying that he had been in space and seen no evidence of God, more proof, the cosmonaut thought, that God did not exist. "That's funny," Dr. Graham replied, "because I talked to him this morning!" That is what we want you to know -- what we struggle to know how best to convince you. That Christ is the in the world to be known, to be loved, and to love and to save those who come to him. We realize that such can be a hard thing to believe, but we know from our own experience and that of multitudes of other people, that all doubts will vanish in a moment when Christ himself draws near! I took some lectures from Nigel Lee, a South African scholar, some years ago during my seminary training and have followed his career from a distance ever since. He has spent many years now teaching in a Presbyterian Theological College in Australia. A few years ago he was asked to deliver some lectures in the United States and made plans to stop in South Africa on his way to America to see his parents. His aged mother was in a nursing home, but his father was still at home and in reasonable health for a man of almost eighty-six years of age. But just a few weeks before he was to visit, his father was assaulted by a burglar and left for dead. A week later, he died in the hospital. When Dr. Lee arrived in South Africa he discovered that the police had already apprehended a young man in connection with his father's murder and that the suspect had confessed to the crime. He asked if he could see this fellow, visit him in his jail cell, and the police agreed to arrange a visit, if the young man was willing, which it turned out he was. So he went to the jail on the appointed day and was led into a room where there were several armed policemen and, moments later, the young man, his father's murderer was brought in. You can imagine the tension in the room. Dr. Lee broke it by asking whether the young man was getting enough to eat and was being treated well. And then he asked him whether he had peace of mind, and the man confessed that he did not. And then Dr. Lee told him about Christ and Christ's readiness to forgive him, to take away his sins, great as his sins were, and to grant him -- even in the face of the possibility of his execution -- eternal life in heaven. He told him about his father having become a Christian years before and of how, through Christ, he could become the dear brother of the man he had killed. And then he told him about the two robbers who were crucified alongside of Jesus and how, while one of them in his anger and bitterness mocked the Lord, the other saw that Jesus was the Christ and prayed to him for salvation ("Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!"), and then how Jesus had said to that man who had seen the truth at the very end of his life, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." Dr. Lee asked the young man if he didn't see himself as one of those robbers next to Jesus on Golgotha. Which robber would he be? Then he asked the young man if he wanted to know how to become a Christian and he said that he did. So Dr. Lee turned to one of the police officers -- all of whom had put down what work they had been doing to listen to this conversation -- and asked for a Bible. Dr. Lee recalls that the atmosphere in the room was electric. A Bible was quickly brought and Dr. Lee opened it to John 3:16 and asked the young man to read it. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life." "Whoever believes..." Dr. Lee pointed out -- that includes you too, if you will believe in Christ. "Will you come to Jesus?" "Yes, I will," was the reply. And then they prayed, the two of them, in front of the policemen in that room. Dr. Lee visited the young man four days later and he was waiting with a smile. He had been reading the Bible since that first day and he had peace in his heart. Christ had come to him; he had found the same Jesus Christ the robber had found, the same Christ that had come out of the tomb that first Easter Sunday morning. Christ was alive and now he was alive too! Christ had come to him, made his home with him, just as he had promised his disciples he would, that long-ago night in the Upper Room. Now he was a witness, telling others in the prison what he had found and learned and experienced himself. And so still today, as on that first Easter Sunday, the news is passed from mouth to mouth: that we have seen the Christ, that he is risen from the dead, and that he has life in his hand to give to all who come to him. And he is inviting you, as well, to come and have life. Over and again in the Bible he says that if you come, really come to him, he will welcome you, he will not turn you away. He wants you to live and not to die. And many of us here this morning know from our own experience, what a marvelous life it is that he gives to those who trust in him. You have sins -- but he died on the cross for our sins; you have death staring you in the face, but he rose from the dead to give life forever to his people. And who are his people? All those who believe that he is, and that he will reward those who believe in him. Or as Paul put it, "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. As the Scripture says, 'Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.' [For he] richly blesses all who call on him, for, 'Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'" We have met Christ ourselves and we want you to meet him too! Call on him. |
|
[Home] |