GOD HOMELESS--US AT HOME
An animal shelter: "Where God was homeless and all people are at home!"
GK Chestertaon said that!
Since it's Advent season we're going to be hearing a lot about the
incarnation of God in the birth of our Lord Jesus. It's wonderful that
we should! We're going to hear much about his love and his sacrifice,
about his poverty and rejection, his lower working-class status and
such. Come "Easter" we will hear plenty about his suffering and the gory
details of his physical trauma. Thank God that the cross and the
resurrection will be made center in preaching and liturgy in general.
[We could do well without the attempts to prove that crucifixion was the
worst form of torture the world has ever known; clearly it wasn't. It's
no crime to give something of a decription of crucifixion but you must
have noticed that the NT doesn't go on and on about the details. The
glory of the cross was not in the degree of physical agony produced; it
was in the meaning of Christ's self-giving. There we see a son's holy
and loving offering of obedience to his father; there we see a lover of
humanity carrying out the gracious purpose of God to redeem a world;
there we see God getting what he deserves--a trust-filled commitment the
Holy One's heart's desire.] Here's something worth hearing about Jesus
Christ who is God being a man:
“He was not merely a man so good as to be ‘like God'-- He was God.
Now this is not just a pious commonplace; it is not a commonplace at
all. For what it means is this, among other things: that for whatever
reason God chose to make man as he is--limited and suffering and subject
to sorrows and death - He had the honesty and the courage to take His
own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept
his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He
has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole
human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the
cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst
horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was
a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace
and thought it well worth while.”
Dorothy Sayers said that!
Don't you love that phrase, “and thought it well worth while”? That
says things about human beings. Even sinful human beings! That says
things about the God who came to us in and as Jesus Christ. Roll it all
around in your mind for a while. Look in the mirror and think of what it
says about you. Look out your window and think what it says about those
people you see passing by. Look at your parents or children or brothers
or sisters or husband or wife. Look at the people that come to your
assembly. Yes, say that they could all do with changing. But what was it
that God thought well worth while and who was it he came for?
What does that have to say to the multiplied millions who are born in, enslaved and shaped by poverty that beggars description and on top of that are
saddled with gods and religions that add burdens too hard to bear?
What's our first word to such oppressed and helpless people? Should it
be something about what they need to do? Something about their need to
repent of their sins and turn to God who has come to us in and as Jesus
Christ? Or should it be a rich development of the truth that there is a
God who sees all that is going on, that he means to bring it to an end
and right all the wrongs, that he has entered into their experience of
oppression and helplessness, died such a death and rose to make it clear
that he is Lord of all that demeans and frightens and robs those that
God has made to love and be loved. Our message then to the wayward and
suffering humanity might well be that we come in the name of God to
proclaim hope in Christ and that he wants people to join him in telling
their fellow-sufferers, friends and families that Someone does know and
will deal with the injustice and evil in such a way that joy-filled
astonishment will take the place of despair and ceaseless hurt.
In the meantime? In the meantime they have the word of Someone
they can trust; they have hope instead of utter despair, they have
assurance that this evil chaos does not last forever. In the meantime
the People of God who have been privileged with such a gospel will NOW
do what they can [by God's grace] to reflect and embody the life and
character of Jesus in all the ways that are open to them. They will TALK
for gospeling is fundamental to their calling and essential in a world
of sheep that have gone astray. The transformation of a person, a
society, a nation or a world rests on the truth and that truth told.
When the People of God are faithful they will talk; they will GOSPEL
They will do more than talk--they will do more than TALK.