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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.
Today, we are off and running here at year two at Commons. And if you have not picked up your copy of the twenty fifteen sixteen journal project, then there are copies in the pews in front of you or on the book table. This is our gift to you. They are completely free, and the journal will help you see, not only where we're going with teaching over the next fifty two weeks, but also give you information about who we are, what's happening around the church, and how to access any help that you might need throughout this year. So please take one.
Speaker 1:And if you do, if you can do me a favor, please put your name in the first page. There's a spot to put your name in there. Because when you lose it and when you leave it at church, because I know you will in the next year, it's fine. Then we'll at least know where to keep it and you can get it back in the in the coming week. So there we go.
Speaker 1:That said, before anything else, I want to say thank you to everyone who helped make our church launch last weekend such an incredible success. I'm not sure if you realize this, but across three services last Sunday, we actually had 571 people join us for church. And for yeah. Thank you. And for a 12 old community that had pretty modest expectations a year ago, that is just amazing.
Speaker 1:So thank you to everyone who came and sang and talked and ate and cooked, and then all of the people who cleaned up after everyone and made it an amazing start to the year. Year two is gonna be awesome, so thanks. Now we also started into our new year with a new series. Because for the first three weeks of this season, we wanna focus on what it would mean if we really honestly took to heart the idea that God looks like Jesus. And so last week, we set out three images of God that we often hold in our minds.
Speaker 1:And our goal in this series is to unpack the ways in which Jesus dismantles or changes or transforms those images for us. So this is a fairly heady series. After this, we're gonna jump into Abraham, and hopefully that'll be a little more practical for this. But last week, talked about the generic God. Today is the power God.
Speaker 1:Next week is the comfortable God. And so before we jump into today's conversation, I wanna take a couple minutes to recap where we went last week. And as always, if you did miss church, you can jump on the Internets to catch up. Go to commons.church, which is a real website. It's a new thing now, .church.
Speaker 1:You can find video and sermon notes there every week. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/commonschurch, and our podcast is in iTunes if you just search Kensington Commons Church. But last week, we took on the idea of a generic god. And this is the god that we sometimes think is the product or the necessary outcome of pluralism. That we live in a society with all kinds of different perspectives on religion and faith, and that's actually part of the beauty of Canada.
Speaker 1:But sometimes, I think we fall into the trap of thinking that in public, in the public sphere, we can and should only ever talk about the lowest common denominator. What we all have in common, what we all agree on, what we all think about God. The problem is that's not really pluralism because there's no room for plurality then. That's artificial monotony. And so forever going to experience the intent and the benefit of living in a pluralistic society, then we need to be able to acknowledge, understand, even celebrate our differences as humans, even our differences as unique people.
Speaker 1:And so as Christians, or at the very least, as people who are exploring the Christian story, this starts when we do the work to understand the unique perspective of our story because it is unique. In fact, at the very center of the Christian tale says that god chose not to remain aloof, distant, and generic, but that he became very particularly specific. Jesus says, I am way and truth and life. If you have seen me, you have seen God. And so we talked together about how that passage is intended as an invitation from Jesus, not a threat by Jesus.
Speaker 1:It's an attempt by Jesus to take deeply rooted Hebrew ideas and now transform them from concept and rule book and argument into relationship and personhood and way of being. Because that's Christianity. That we see way, truth, and life not as a set of rules or obligations we have to follow. But we experience these ideas. In fact, we experience God himself most clearly in the person of Jesus.
Speaker 1:And of course, absolutely, we share a great deal in common with all of the great religions of the world. And many different religious traditions teach us valuable lessons, but the unique claim that God is clearly seen. In fact, God is perfectly seen, inviting us to know him in the person of Jesus. That's our story. And so if we wanna participate fully, even if we want to benefit fully from the pluralistic society we're part of, the first step is to know our story well so that we can carry that humbly and peaceably into our conversations around us.
Speaker 1:So that was last week. How the generic god, becomes specific in Jesus. And also, if you might remember, I used some coffee metaphors in that series. I believe at one point, I did call God a single origin God. Please remember that all metaphors do break down if you take them too far.
Speaker 1:And so you cannot expect every prayer to give you the caffeine buzz that you're looking for in the morning. I'm sorry. That's just not how God works. But, speaking of buzz and the power of caffeine, this week, we wanna talk about the power of God. And that's sort of an odd premise to start, that God is not powerful.
Speaker 1:I mean, after all, he created sun and moon and stars. He brought galaxies and planets into existence with the word. He formed blades of grass and single celled organisms, human beings through a mastery of creative process that boggles the mind. What does it mean to say God is not powerful then? There's this great passage in the book of Job where the writer is comparing humanity to God.
Speaker 1:And he gives example after example of how futile that would even be. But God speaks to the writer. He says this, have you given orders to the morning or shown the dawn its place? Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Speaker 1:Tell me you know all this. Surely, do for you were already born. You have lived so many years. I love sarcastic God, by the way. God thinks it's amusing that we would even try to understand him.
Speaker 1:Here's the part I had in mind this week. He says this, can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion's belt? Both of these are constellations of stars. Then he says this, can you bring forth the constellations in their season or lead the bear out with its cubs?
Speaker 1:You catch that? When God thinks about his power, he says that pulling constellations across the sky at the right time is the same thing for him as inviting bears and her cubs out of hibernation after the winter. Now today, I think we have some understanding of the physics of how planets orbit and sun and how we spin our way through the galaxy. I mean, I don't think any of us really understand that, but intellectually, we have some concept. Try to imagine these words written thousands of years ago to a culture that knew nothing of physics and space.
Speaker 1:And God says, the power that pulls celestial bodies through the night sky, a concept you can't even begin to grasp, is the same power that tenderly cares for animals, natures, seasons, and you. And that that's awesome. Now, the next time you are outside at night and you look up and you see the stars, and you have the chance to just sit and watch as they move across your view, Remember that the same creative force that moves those bodies is the same force invested in the seasons, in the cycles, in the bears, in the cubs, in you. That's how God thinks about power. But if God is all that and he is, then what are we talking about when we say that Jesus transforms our imagination of the power of God?
Speaker 1:So that's what we wanna look at with the rest of our time today. First though, let's pray and then we'll dive in. Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid. May we sense your spirit with us today, revealing the truth of your power in your tender grace and care. May we learn to let go of corrupt imaginations of strength.
Speaker 1:Imaginations that have taught us that power is about the ability to impose ourselves, our views, our thoughts, our desires on those weaker than us. And instead, would you begin to replace that image with something bigger, something better, something more reflective of what we see in your son? For those of us here who have only known strength as something to be used as a weapon. For those of us who have only known father as someone domineering or demanding. Those of us who have only known God as an idea that would bring pain and strife and conflict into the world.
Speaker 1:Would you begin even now to speak something new and healing to our spirits? Something powerful and yet graceful. Something powerful and yet full of invitation. Something powerful and strong to heal and restore and redeem and fix your creation. May we see today the truth of your power expressed most clearly in the sacrificial self giving of your son.
Speaker 1:And in the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. K. Now we've talked about how powerful God is. And we saw a lot of that language this summer when we spent our time in the minor prophets.
Speaker 1:But one of the things that's very common for a lot of people is an experience of disconnect, maybe even cognitive dissonance, perhaps, between the powerful god of the Old Testament and the nice, happy, hippie Jesus of the New Testament. Now we're gonna see, especially next week, that Jesus was not just a happy hippie who never let anyone harsh his mellow. He's actually quite passionate at times when he goes. But there is a very real contrast between our perception of the OT God and the New Testament Jesus. We can admit that.
Speaker 1:Depending on who you ask, I suppose. Because if you go on Internet and search, you will find all kinds of rough and tumble Jesuses. There's Jesus for the boxing fans perhaps. They're probably a little out of date. I think today, he would probably be a mixed martial artist.
Speaker 1:There's Jesus for the tattoo slash Billy Ray Cyrus crowd. And those are some sweet mom jeans that Jesus is rocking there. There is even Jesus for the gun crowd or the bodybuilding crowd. There's even Gerard Butler as the machine gun preacher. Interesting movie.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure about the theology, but I enjoyed it. I do like the tagline here though. Hope is the greatest weapon of all. I can only assume having watched this movie that they mean except for the a k 47 that he shoots a million people with in this movie. Jesus does very much get pulled in all kinds of different directions when we think about what power and strength are.
Speaker 1:We could read from Revelation. I saw heaven standing open, and there before me was a white horse whose rider is called faithful and true. With justice, he judges and he wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the word of God.
Speaker 1:Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with an iron scepter, Revelation 19. Now, of course, when we spent some time with Revelation this spring, we noted that Jesus is covered in blood before the battle starts. So this is not his enemy's blood on his robe here. This is an image of his blood, his sacrifice that we see. And the sword that he uses to overcome evil, that comes from his mouth.
Speaker 1:Metaphor that's used many times in the scriptures. This is not a weapon. This is his story, his testimony that he uses to change the world, not divine violence. And so even in these images and this strong powerful Jesus, we see on first reading when we go back and we read deeper, we see that it's meant to undermine to subvert our expectations. That's the nature of the genre of in revelation.
Speaker 1:So where then do we see Jesus clearly? Well, obviously, we can go to the gospels. We could look to the Jesus who overturns tables and drives merchants out of the temple. That's a powerful Jesus. Right?
Speaker 1:And yet, if we look more closely, we see that no one is hurt in that confrontation. And then in the very next verse, Matthew 21, it says, the blind and the lame came for healing, and the children entered the temple courts to sing and dance with Jesus. It's actually a very beautiful, nurturing, joyful scene, not an angry, violent scene. Maybe we could go to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew five. The Jesus who says, if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to them the left.
Speaker 1:Now, this is not about a fight. This is not a cage match here. This is about social cues in Jesus' world. If somebody slaps you on the right cheek with the back of their hand, this was a form of social stratification in that world. It's a way of saying, you're not equal to me.
Speaker 1:You're not on my level. That's how an adult might have treated a child or how a master would treat a slave in that culture. Jesus says, if someone treats you this way, then don't fight back. Don't do the same to them. Don't even demand an apology.
Speaker 1:Instead, turn the left cheek to them. And you gotta remember, in that culture, you would never use your left hand to touch someone, even to slap someone. It was just considered unclean. And so to slap someone on the left cheek means you need to do that with the palm of your hand. It's still gonna hurt.
Speaker 1:It's not gonna be comfortable, but that forces someone to acknowledge you as an equal that way. It's a person of commensurate value. It's a social signal. So far from passively allowing someone to punch you, that's not what Jesus is saying. Jesus is advocating for peaceful protest here.
Speaker 1:I am not your enemy. I will not fight you, but I will not accept your valuation of me as less than. We could go to Jesus in the Garden Of Gethsemane. At the time of his arrest, the night before his execution. His disciples are ready to defend him.
Speaker 1:One of them even pulls a sword and attacks a soldier who is unjustly arresting Jesus. But Jesus answered, no more of this. And he touched the man's ear, and he healed him. Luke 22. And Jesus tells his disciples, put your weapons away.
Speaker 1:It's not how we're doing this. He refuses the sword, and yet when he stands before Pilate, he absolutely denies the charges. He says, no. I'm not guilty. So this is Jesus who doesn't allow himself to be defined by those around him.
Speaker 1:Not his overzealous friends who wanna fight, not his dishonest accusers who want to misrepresent him. This is clearly a Jesus who has a very different imagination of power than us. At one point, with Pilate, he even says this, knowing full well that Pilate has the power to execute him. He says, you would have no power over me if it were not given to you. So for Jesus, anger gives way to laughter, and aggression is confronted by peace, and violence is met with healing.
Speaker 1:It's a man with a very different imagination of power. And there's already a lot to reflect on there, but the scripture I wanna dive into before we close actually comes from Paul in the letter to the Philippians. And I wanna look here because this passage gives us a glimpse into the imagination of the early church. What the first followers of Jesus thought about him when it came to these ideas. As found in Philippians chapter two starting in verse five.
Speaker 1:And most likely, if you open your bible or if you grab the one from the pew in front of you and you open it to Philippians two, it will look something like this. Well, all of that indenting and that awkward paragraph structure you see on the page. This is because this is a poem. Even more than that though, most scholars agree that not only is this a poem that Paul is writing for us, this is very likely a poem that Paul is quoting for us. It goes like this.
Speaker 1:In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. And then here's the poem. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by being obedient to death, even death on a cross.
Speaker 1:Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every other name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the father. Now the way that this section is set out in the original copies of Philippians has led most scholars to conclude that this is very likely a preexisting poem or hymn. It's probably something that Paul heard, perhaps read, very likely it's something that Paul had recited together with the Christian community in worship. That's really significant.
Speaker 1:Because Paul's writings are actually the very earliest Christian documents we have. Earlier even in the gospels that by at least about a decade, Paul's writings come. But if this hymn had been written and passed around even before Paul wrote it down, then it means that the church is thinking about Jesus, we call this our Christology, was being formed very early in the Christian story. In fact, there's another hymn that we think that Paul is probably quoting Colossians that focuses on these same ideas about Christ. If you want to, you can write down Colossians one verses 15 to 20 and go read that one later.
Speaker 1:But this passage, this hymn or this poem about Christ is very likely one of the earliest confessions of what people thought Jesus showed us about God. That's incredible to think. Starts this way. It says Jesus, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Now, two things here.
Speaker 1:First, this is a very early confession that Jesus is divine. So this wasn't something that got added to Christianity hundreds of years later. Even before Paul starts writing, the early Christians understood the incredible significance of Jesus that the particular specific God was present in Jesus. But then second, this phrase did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. This is an interesting one.
Speaker 1:In Greek, it's more literally something like this. Did not see equality with God as something to be grasped or grabbed or snatched. All you parents in the room, you can use this one. Tell your kids, Jesus is not grabby. He's giving.
Speaker 1:That's what he does. Right? In fact, the very next thing says this, that he made himself nothing. So he doesn't grab for more, he gives away. And theologically, this is a big moment for those of us who are theology nerds.
Speaker 1:Because the word here made himself nothing is the word kanao. And usually, we say kenosis, which is actually an English word that we stole from the Greek, and it means the act of emptying. So Jesus made himself nothing or he emptied himself. That's what the poem says. And theologically, we've wondered and argued and debated and generally been fascinated with this idea ever since Paul wrote it down for us.
Speaker 1:I mean, what does it mean that Jesus emptied himself? Was he God and then he wasn't God? Well, that doesn't kinda work. He can't be God and then not God and then be God again. Maybe he emptied himself of certain attributes of God.
Speaker 1:Mean, obviously, Jesus wasn't omnipresent when he walked around on the earth. He was somewhere, not everywhere. Is that what emptied means? Maybe. It says that Jesus emptied himself by taking on the nature of a slave.
Speaker 1:By the way, it does say slave in Greek, not servant. In English, we we kinda like to soften it because nobody likes the idea of Jesus being compared to a slave. That's what it says. Very heavy image in Greek. Maybe what it means is this, that Jesus was strong and powerful in God for all eternity.
Speaker 1:And then he emptied himself to look like a human to take on the role of a slave. Until the father exalted him back to the place of being strong and powerful again. So he was strong, and then he was weak, and then he's strong again. Is that what emptied means? In fact, that's how a lot of people still read that passage.
Speaker 1:That Jesus may have been meek and mild for a time, but trust me, look out. He's coming back, and next time it won't be the same. Next time he will be full of anger and power and strength and all the stuff he wasn't the first time around, that blessed or the poor in spirit stuff, that was just temporary. Because Jesus is angry. Maybe.
Speaker 1:I don't think that's what's going on here. Because when I set aside as much of my bias as I can about what strength and power mean, When I try, even to settle aside my my theological training, and I just simply read this hymn for what it says. This is what I hear in the earliest confession of trust we have in Jesus. That Jesus was God, and so he never felt like being God was something to grab for. Instead, being God, he acted like God, And he poured himself out.
Speaker 1:And he gave himself away, and he humbled himself, and he offered himself to us. Because he did what God does. And being found as God is found in the face of those who are weak and in need, being found in the experience of suffering and hope combined together the way God always is. He was all of a sudden paradoxically worthy of everything that he had ever given away. And God celebrated that by proclaiming that every knee should bow and tongue confess, not because Jesus took the power to force anyone to do it, but precisely because he chose to invite us to do it instead.
Speaker 1:That's what it means to me to say that God emptied himself. That God did what God does, and he gave himself away. It means not that Jesus became less than God for a moment, because the scriptures tell us that we will never see God more clearly than when we will, when we are looking directly at Jesus. No. The emptying, the kenosis, the humility of Jesus, that is not less than God.
Speaker 1:It's Jesus showing us exactly what God looks like. And I know, At times, it's hard for us to reconcile that with what we read in the Old Testament. It's hard for us to reconcile that with what we see about power and strength in our world around us. And trust me, it was just as hard for the early Christians to wrap their heads around. Some of them even wanted to toss all the Hebrew scriptures and just start over again completely with just the New Testament.
Speaker 1:And thankfully, for us, there was enough wisdom in the church to say, no, that doesn't work. Because God has been slowly, deliberately revealing himself. He's been preparing us since the beginning for this full and final revelation in Jesus. And so all of it needs to be kept because all of it is important. It leads us.
Speaker 1:It points us. It culminates in the humility, the grace, the compassion, and the sacrifice of Jesus. Not because God changed, but because God has shown us bit by bit who he is. And so this persistent idea that God is vindictive and violent and he takes it all out on his son. This is what happens when we don't quite believe that we see all of God in Jesus.
Speaker 1:That there's still a little bit more of the more powerful God that sits outside of him. And, yes, God enacts a plan for salvation. And, yes, that includes Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, but God is not the one who does the killing in the story. God is the one who does the dying and the forgiving and the rising again. That's the story.
Speaker 1:God comes and he allows us to do the worst thing we could possibly do to him. And yet rather than turn around and pay us back for it, rather than turn around and show us just how powerful and strong he is, Rather than God trying to demonstrate his power in the terms that we just tried to show him ours, God does what he does and he forgives. Because that's what power really is. You see, this is the difference between being so powerful that you're driven to prove it to everyone around you. Maybe you have a boss like that.
Speaker 1:Maybe you're like that. But it's the difference between that and being infinitely powerful. Where the only thing left is to give it away. That's what God does. That's the kind of power that Jesus shows us in God, that God's experience, that God's imagination, that God's pursuit of power is so radically different from ours that the only way he could express it was to give it away, to empty himself.
Speaker 1:And all of that completely turns all of our games upside down. As he comes and he pours himself out, and he empties himself, and he takes on weakness, not because he's weak, but because he is infinitely strong. And any compulsion that he could have to prove his strength to us would be absurd as you trying to prove your strength to an ant. It just doesn't make sense. And so strength is made perfect when he comes and he gives it away.
Speaker 1:When he hands it to us and he says, do what you will with it, and I will still love you when you're done. Maybe you have instinctively understood the power of the universe. I mean, you look up, you see constellations, you see this world, and you know something powerful is behind this. But you have only ever been able to conceive of power in the terms of a finite human grasping for more of it. And so you imagine God is stern or stoic.
Speaker 1:When you think of him as angry or vengeful, you imagine him ready to pounce on your mistakes. Eager for that moment when he can point out your flaws and exert his dominance over you. You messed up. May Jesus free you today from that imagination of power because that is not God. God is what we see in the self giving emptying love of Christ.
Speaker 1:And so would you see in Christ today, the God who is so infinitely strong that his own status meant less to him than his relationship with you. That is so infinitely self giving that he could never be diminished by giving away. That every knee would bow, every tongue would confess, not because God forces us to, but because when we see God for who he is, it is the natural reaction to the self giving love of Christ. Let's pray. God, help us as we begin this new season together.
Speaker 1:To take big ideas, concepts, thoughts that stretch the bounds of our imagination and our capacity to think. But then to drive them so deep down into our soul that they would become the ways in which we live together. That your self giving example would play itself out in the ways that we use our voice to give a voice to the voiceless. That we use our resources to prop up those who have less. That we would take all of the strength and the power and everything that you've given to us in this society and use it for those who have less.
Speaker 1:God, may we follow in your footsteps by being fascinated with the act of giving power away, knowing that this is what strength really is. And so as we act, as we shop, as we converse with each other, as we experience the spectrum of human need in this world. May we learn the self giving sacrifice of your son and drive that into the center of our being. God, be with us as we go. We ask all this in the strong name of the risen Christ.
Speaker 1:Amen.
Speaker 2:This is a podcast of Kensington Commons Church. We believe that God is invested in the renewal of all things. Therefore, we wanna live the good news by being part of the rhythms of our city as good neighbors, good friends, and good citizens in our common life. Join us on Sunday or visit us online at commonschurch.org.