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Brad Jersak writes:
“What is God like? Toxic images abound: God the punishing judge, the deadbeat dad, the genie in a bottle—false gods that need to be challenged.
But what if, instead, God truly is completely Christlike? What if His love is more generous, his Cross more powerful, and his gospel more beautiful than we’ve dared to imagine? What if our clearest image of God is the self-giving, radically forgiving, co- suffering Love revealed on the Cross? What if we had ‘A More Christlike God’?”
That’s it. That’s our imagination as a church. To become a community that looks like Jesus, so that we can serve a God who looks like Jesus, and prepare to participate in a kingdom that looks just like Jesus. As we launch into our second year together as Commons Church we want to take the start of the season to refocus our community, theology, and participation on Jesus.
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
This morning, we are finishing up our series entitled like Jesus. This is a series that we were really excited about creating and the ways that it would set the table for our year together here at Commons. And our agenda, these first three weeks of fall was to look at the God who looks like Jesus. And in this series, we're taking some common misconceptions about who God is. We're having Jesus speak into those and maybe reform the ways in which we think about God.
Speaker 1:And this week, we get to discuss the comfortable God. Comfortable God. And when I say comfortable God, I don't mean the God that sits around in sweatpants and an extra large hoodie eating chips by the fire, because that does sound very comfortable. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the comfortable God.
Speaker 1:The God who wants you above all else to be happy. Happy. Happiness. The American dream. Even though we're Canadian, we know what that means.
Speaker 1:Canadian dream, maybe a little bit different, just probably nicer than or the Pharrell song. I'm pretty cool. I know that's a little bit dated, but there's a Pharrell song out there. Saw it once on the TV. Isn't that the song that God wants us to sing all the time?
Speaker 1:The happy song? Doesn't God want us to be happy? I was gonna challenge us to a fun social experiment around the word happy, and how we don't necessarily have, we don't have access to tone over text message. So I was gonna say, why don't you just text a bunch of people this phrase this afternoon? And just see what happens.
Speaker 1:Because you don't know. It depends how they hear it. So look for that text from me later today or this week sometime. So the comfortable God says that God's plan is for us to be happy all the time. If that's what the comfortable God says, we have to ask first, was Jesus happy all the time?
Speaker 1:And second, did Jesus tell us to be happy all the time or that that was a goal? Was Jesus happy? Sure, but not all the time, like comfortable God wants us to think, or not only when he was close to God. We have verses like John eleven thirty five, Jesus wept. Shortest verse in all of scripture, but it proves a point.
Speaker 1:Jesus was not happy all the time. This verse shows us Jesus crying, but it proves this point. We can find Jesus angry, frustrated, hurt, sad throughout scripture. And in his ultimate suffering moments towards and on the cross, we have nothing in the gospels that says he was happy in those moments. And before we go on, we're not talking about joy today in the way that we sometimes try in Christian circles to replace the word happy with joy.
Speaker 1:Because yes, of course, God wants us to experience joy and happiness. But either way, I can't point to the suffering and eventual death of Christ and say, well, he may not have been happy, but he was surely choosing joy in those moments. That's not what I read. That's not what I see in those stories. When Jesus cries to God, is that joy or happiness?
Speaker 1:He's not the masochistic savior smiling away and choosing joy as he's being whipped and beaten before his death. We have to quit pushing our Pharrell infused agenda of happy all the time into our reading of who Christ is. And we'd have to see what we get, which is someone fully God, yet fully human, experiencing a full range of emotions that we would expect as a person walked through a life on earth. Did did Jesus tell us to be happy? That we should try for that with all of our hearts.
Speaker 1:No. More commonly, there are verses like John sixteen thirty three, in this world you will have trouble. That's a little more familiar to my story sometimes. So, how then have we landed at seeing God or Jesus as this comfortable God? Well, first, as I touched on already, our culture tells us that your individual happiness matters above all else.
Speaker 1:And over time, we have sort of let that seep and slide into our theology and our understanding of God. The other way that this happens is through compartmentalization that we do, and our human need to compare ourselves to others. So we'll talk about those things as we go forward, but first would you pray with me? Lord Jesus Christ, it is good for us to gather in this space as your children, and we get to meet here as friends and family, and we get to discuss the good things of who you are. God, would you be present to us in these moments?
Speaker 1:Would you help us to understand more of who you are as we look at Jesus? Help us to have the courage to be open to what it is you might have for us today. God, we trust you as we have this conversation. We trust and we know that you hope for the best for us, but we live in a world where the best does not always happen. God, we love you, would you be with us as we continue here together this morning?
Speaker 1:Amen. So above all, happiness matters. Jeremy used last week, these images of the power god, and he had these like the machine gun preacher and all these other things. He brought up all these images. And so, I found some images of the comfortable god, or what I think is the comfortable god.
Speaker 1:So, they're ones like this. Maybe you grew up, you're familiar with this. It was shining white robe, or this one, a good smile. This one's a really good one. Right?
Speaker 1:That's good. These images I think are based on the typical Scandinavian Jesus. This is a Jesus that I grew up and was very familiar with as I'm half Swedish and I grew up in a Swedish church and so this is what our Jesus looked like. So part of me resonates with these images, but the other parts of me, not just the not Swedish parts, but all the rest of me. The parts of me that wanna understand history and context.
Speaker 1:The parts that wanna try and look at who Jesus really was while he was here in human form has some serious questions about these as our primary images of God in that human form. The sash, the hair, the cheesy smile, the beautiful bone structure. In recent North American culture, we have bought what Scandinavian Jesus is selling. And maybe for you, for part of for some of us, it's part of why we grew up dressing up for church, or part of why we check our hair before we leave to make sure it's great before we come. I mean, look at that.
Speaker 1:They're even looking at the same thing, probably angels. The more significant than looking good for church or for whoever else interactions we have, Some of us grew up having to play the part that everything was great. I did. No matter what was going on in my life, I grew up in a culture that taught me when I walked through the doors everything was all high. Yes.
Speaker 1:Doing good. Thank you. Good. Really good. Thanks.
Speaker 1:Things are good. Good. Good. Good. Good.
Speaker 1:Good. Good. And then I would ask them, how about you? And I'd get the exact same response from people. And if that's as deep as you maybe grew up with community, that's not the best.
Speaker 1:It's surface community. And the worst part is that sometimes it's based on a metric of measuring and comparing happiness levels. But when this fully expresses ourselves, expresses itself and we find ourselves in deep pain or trauma, and we've been conditioned to what the comfortable God teaches. Comfortable God teaches us now, now, now choose joy. Above all else, be happy or you're not being a good Christ follower.
Speaker 1:Remember, Jesus never says we'll be happy in our relationship with him nor does he say that that is the goal. I can't just choose joy in those moments of great pain or fear or loneliness or I might be a bit of a crazy person. Because staying positive is one thing. Any car can be used as a glider and then a submarine for a few beautiful seconds if you just stay positive in a tough situation. There's positive.
Speaker 1:There's being joyful when things really are good. But where are we venturing into if we choose to act happy in all circumstances all the time? Jeremy and I talked this week about how we think that Jesus frees us from the tyranny of believing that God wants us to be happy. That might sound a little bit odd at first. Because, yes, of course, God wants joy and celebration and goodness to win the day, but if I am honest, sometimes my life is like this.
Speaker 1:Or sometimes you text your friend in Winnipeg who's a pastor and you say, hey, I've been thinking about you. How are you doing these days? And all he texts back is this. This is our reality sometimes. This is how things go sometimes.
Speaker 1:And so to break this image and version of the tyranny of the comfortable God, Jesus comes and says, no. God is with you even when you hurt. And more than that, God hurts when you hurt. God is the one who suffers with us and from us, and for us. So, when you are sad, hurt, or sick, or weak, you are not the problem.
Speaker 1:Yes, God wants happiness and joy, but pain does not mean that God has left the building. God doesn't just want us to be happy. He wants us to not be afraid of not being happy. He wants us to not be afraid of not being happy. I have a two and a half year old son and he's learning about emotions, which is really fun.
Speaker 1:However, he's doing this thing now where he has this fake forced smile like this. He's like, dad. And if I am at home and I'm frustrated or I'm sad or I'm angry about something, he will try to, like, walk in front of my face like this, dad. Try to like catch my eye, dad. Right?
Speaker 1:Dad. He's trying to get me to see his fake forced cheesy smile. He even has a phrase. Are you happy, dad? You happy, mom?
Speaker 1:He knows. He's two and a half. He's learning about the range of emotions, but he already is learning that happy is the best one. The one that matters. He's already afraid of us not being happy.
Speaker 1:And this ties in as we move towards the idea of compartmentalization. Because having this two year old is brand new territory for us. Because how do you explain to a two year old who God is? Especially when he leaves church on Sundays and he asks you questions like that. Who's Jesus?
Speaker 1:He's God and he's God's son and he's good and he loves you. It's really hard. It's really hard, but harder than that, how do you explain to a two year old where God is? If I would have grown up saying, well, he's in your heart, But it's a lot more than that. He's in your head.
Speaker 1:He's in your hands. He's in your thoughts. He's in your emotions. He is everywhere. This is really hard, especially when he's two and a half and he just keeps asking more and more questions.
Speaker 1:It's really fun. I think this is part of why God gave the Hebrew people the Shema, which is Deuteronomy six four. Hear o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. These commandments I give you today are to be on your hearts.
Speaker 1:Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the road. When you lie down, and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands, and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and your gates.
Speaker 1:How do you explain it to a two year old? Sometimes you can't, but you keep trying and you keep expressing it yourself. You keep talking about it. You stay engaged in all parts of your life, good, bad, and ugly. But many of us have spent a lifetime compart mentalizing our lives.
Speaker 1:And compartmentalization is a problem because the danger is to keep or look for God only in the good parts. And say that God must not be present when things are bad, or when I hurt, or when I'm lost or lonely. God's not there. And if I teach Frank to only see or notice God in the beautiful mountains, or when we have plenty, or when things seem very good, or when we're just happy. That's a misunderstanding of who Christ is.
Speaker 1:And more than that, it's a misunderstanding of how Christ is involved with all of our lives and involved with all of Frank. I wanna take a look at a well known interaction between Jesus and his disciples, especially Peter, as we talk about this a little bit more. So, I'm gonna read this so you can follow along. Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, who do people say I am?
Speaker 1:They replied, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others one of the prophets. But what about you? He asked, who do you say I am? Peter answered, you're the Messiah. And Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
Speaker 1:He then began to teach them that the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed. And after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. Get behind me, Satan, he said.
Speaker 1:You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns. Then he called the crowd to him, along with his disciples, and he said, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. The first thing that I love about this scripture is Peter's response after Jesus says he's going to suffer and die. He kinda pulls him aside. He's like, Jesus, can I talk to you for a sec over here?
Speaker 1:And he's like, this is not gonna happen. This is not good. This is not cool. You cannot have this happen. This is not how it's going to be.
Speaker 1:The reality is that Jesus is deeply connected to the father, yet he still experiences heartbreak and sadness, even loneliness. And Peter misunderstands what that is about. For Peter, Jesus being more connected to God means never experiencing pain or sadness. I think what's happening in this moment with Peter and why Jesus stops him in his tracks is that Peter's line of thought goes this way. The Messiah can't be suffer Can't suffer or be weak.
Speaker 1:You're the Messiah. But what's implicit, if that's his train of thought, is if those things happen, then you must not be the Messiah. Peter's understanding of Christ is too narrow, too selfish even. I think Jesus rebukes Peter to remain silent because his understanding of what Christ means is wrong and needs some correction. So if you know the context, Peter's version of Christ the Messiah is powerful.
Speaker 1:It's the Messiah who retakes the throne from Rome and establishes a new kingdom. And Peter then, being close to Jesus, gets a spot at that table. That's a pretty good deal. And when we buy into comfortable God's version of Christ, this ultimate version and vision of happiness being the only thing that matters, both of those versions create unhealthy expectations on Jesus and on ourselves. And they don't tell the full story of Christ.
Speaker 1:Because if what matters is being happy, I could compare that to other people. I'm more happier than you or I could at least show it. Or if I'm not as happy, then maybe I'm worthless than someone else or I feel that at least. But if what I'm about is recognizing Christ on the way in both the good and the bad, the joy and the deep pain or suffering, and everything in between, that's not something that we can as easily kind of hold over each other in comparison. That's why there's this line in verse 34, deny yourself.
Speaker 1:Jesus doesn't ask his disciples to deny something to themselves, but to deny themselves and all self promoting ambitions. Dietrich Bonhoeffer talks about self denial this way. To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self. To see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self denial can say is, he leads the way, keep close to him.
Speaker 1:And this is possible because we can know and trust that Jesus has gone before us and experienced the same highs and lows that we have. That we don't have to only keep close to him when we're doing great, or when we're happy, or that he's only close to us, and that's a sign. Jesus maintained a deep relationship with the father through all those same range of highs and lows in his earthly life. And because we get to experience it with Christ, our deepest lows as humans, we shouldn't just brush them off. Shouldn't just close our eyes and power through.
Speaker 1:We can feel those things. At the same time, when things are great, we can fully experience that because we may have seen the other side. It's not just one note of music throughout an entire life. There's a rhythm and a harmony to experiencing the fullness of life with Christ, of a life with Christ. Good and bad, happy or otherwise.
Speaker 1:Because when Jesus asks the disciples, who do you say I am? Jesus knows who he is. He doesn't need them to answer it for him. He doesn't need Peter to say it. He's asking so that Peter can hear it and notice what he's saying.
Speaker 1:What you say about who Christ is says a lot about how you see yourself even. If Peter says that Jesus is the coming king in the sense that he's gonna institute a new kingdom of power and control and rule that way, then Peter has something to gain in that system and that says a lot about himself in his answer. And if I say that Christ is the beautiful Scandinavian Jesus, I may see myself as someone who has to meet a standard on canvas, appreciated by all. Beautiful to look at, but with the potential to somehow be better than others. The most beautiful part of this scripture of this story and this interaction for me.
Speaker 1:The truest part of Christ for me in this story is in this inviting and loving act when God asks us who we say he is. Because he knows we're not always gonna be in a spot to give a good review, yet he still asks. He invites response. He engages us whether we are happy, sad, depressed, full of anxiety, or full of hope and joy. And he engages with us while walking on the way.
Speaker 1:If you remember at the beginning of this passage, verse 27, as they're leaving Caesarea Philippi, they are on the way when Jesus asks this question. The word way in Greek is the same as Jeremy shared a few weeks ago about Jesus being the way. It's hodos. They're on the way and Jesus is the way. While they're on the way, the way asks them how the way is going.
Speaker 1:Jesus is the hodos on the hodos because I don't speak Greek. For me, it brings up these images of the footprints poem. People know the footprints poem. Right? You're you're either you're either hot or cold in the footprints poem.
Speaker 1:Either you love it or you don't like it. Depends on where you're at. Just to recap if you don't know, there's this poem of this man who goes through life and his life, and he walks on the beach. When he gets to the end of the life, he looks back and he sees there were times where there was only one set of footprints. And he asks Jesus and he says, how come during the hard times of my life, there's only one set of footprints?
Speaker 1:Why'd you leave me? And Jesus says, that's when I carried you. Okay. That's the poem. That's it.
Speaker 1:That's it. So, those of you that like it are like, nailed it. And those of you that are you're like, cheesy. And so okay. My favorite take there's quite a few, like, if you were had time later, not during sermon, but if you had time to go online on your phone and look for, like, funny versions of the footprints film, there's tons of them, and they're really funny.
Speaker 1:My favorite one, though, is that this tells the story and the guy and he gets to the end of his life, and he looks back at the beach, and he says, Jesus, how come during my toughest times, you were wearing Crocs? I like that one. I personally, not a huge footprints fan, because I feel a couple things. First, Jesus carrying us implies to me that getting to the destination is more important than who's with us on the journey. I don't think that that part is true.
Speaker 1:Carrying us through tough times might also mean that we don't have to deal with them in this iteration of the poem. Just close your eyes and hang on, Jesus will carry you through. That's not necessarily, I think, what Jesus wants either. Maybe in your version like in mine, there are always two sets of footprints. There are moments maybe when the sand is all messy, maybe where I was fighting with Jesus.
Speaker 1:Or maybe there's moments where there's these deep whole body imprints because I just had to lay down and cry, but Jesus was there and there's two sets of whole body imprints too. Or maybe there's a spot where the sand's all kicked up because we were jumping and dancing over some great experience that I had in life. While we are on the way with Jesus, he stays, and he keeps asking us, who do you say I am? Now our answer can change and it can grow just as our understanding of who Jesus is will change and grow. I have a quote from David Benner.
Speaker 1:Rather than being content with the circle of love within the Godhead, God reached out to create so that others could enter this sphere of intimacy and be warmed by divine love. We were not brought into existence simply so that we could worship God, nor were we created simply for service. Human beings exist because of God's desire for companionship. That picture of the offer of companionship comes for me from this constant loving invitation from Jesus, who do you say I am? On our way, we will experience happiness and joy, and that will inform our answer.
Speaker 1:And on our way, we may experience deep pain and suffering, and that may inform our answer. Sometimes our answers might be off the mark. Sometimes our answer might reflect a God who's more comfortable, or more powerful, or too generic, or uninvolved. But it doesn't change who God is. God is like Jesus, and Jesus is on the way with us.
Speaker 1:When things are good, who do you say he is? When things are bad, who do you say he is? Tell him. He invites a response and his promise stands. Not the comfortable false promise that we'll be happy, but the real promise that he is with us on our way no matter what our way looks like.
Speaker 1:Would you pray with me? Loving God, God who lets us experience heights of joy and depths of peace. At the same time as we walk sometimes on the fringes of loneliness, with the wounds of pain. God help us to not apologize for them or for ourselves, making them seem less than they actually are. These things are very real, very normal, and very significant as we get to walk with you through them all.
Speaker 1:God help us to live the harmony of a life with highs and lows together with you, also walking with each other in deep, open, and honest relationships where we can be ourselves and not subscribe to the gospel of the comfortable God who teaches us that being happy is all that matters, or that being happy means we're close to you. Thank you that you ask us. There is this constantly beautiful, loving movement of grace where you invite us to respond to your question. No matter our answer though, here in the love of Christ we stand. We are so grateful for that, Jesus.
Speaker 1:In your powerful name, we pray. Amen.