Some years ago I was chatting with an acquaintance about Christianity over coffee in one of New York’s coffee shops when I noticed two women sitting in a darkened corner of the room. As the window blind had been drawn I thought it strange that one of them was wearing dark glasses. It was not until they rose to leave that I realized that she was a famous film-star. I had been sitting a table away from movie greatness – but I didn’t know it.
It’s easy to miss the opportunities of meeting greatness. I say this because many today have only eaten a diet of secular progressivism when it comes to the subject of Jesus. People don’t even bother to check out the primary documents of the New Testament.
This brings me to the second coffee conversation you might schedule with people you know.
Having touched on questions of the authenticity of the New Testament over coffee conversation #1, and having encouraged your friend(s) to read Luke chapters 1-4, you might ask if they have any questions. During coffee #2, let me suggest you focus on the drama of the scene in Luke 5:17-26.
You might point out that people were so keen to hear Jesus that they spilled out of the doors of a house where he was onto the street. Draw attention to the ingenuity of four men trying to get a friend who was paralyzed inside to see Jesus. In their desperation, they carried him up to the roof of the house, removed the tiles and lowered him on his stretcher-bed into Jesus’ presence.
The unexpected. Notice that instead of simply saying, ‘Rise and walk’, to the paralyzed man, Jesus astounded everyone by saying, Man, your sins are forgiven you (5:20).
His unexpected words suggest the man’s sickness was linked to sin. Jesus didn’t always make this equation. On another occasion when the disciples asked him why a man was blind, he comments, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be manifest in him” (John 9:3).
To return to the scene of Luke 5, medical science has long understood the link between mental attitude and physical well-being. Furthermore, there are times when there is a link between depression and a sense of unresolved guilt.
In Luke 5:17ff, Jesus is telling us that the paralyzed man’s primary issue was that of unresolved guilt. “Your sins are forgiven,” Jesus said. ‘Forgiven by whom?’ we ask: ‘His family or his friends? His neighbors or God?’ ‘Who is this who has that kind of authority?’ we ask.
Who is this? This was the question the religious leaders asked: “Why does this man speak like this?” they asked. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
Their complaint centered on Jesus’ claim to have the authority to forgive sins. God is the one who is wronged by us. It’s his prerogative alone to forgive. Their theology was right, but they were unwilling to think outside their prejudices to form another conclusion: ‘Could this man have God’s authority?’
An unanswerable response: “So that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins,… I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home” (Luke 5:24).
We can only imagine the heightened tension and excitement as the drama unfolds.
Jesus’ commands are forceful and clear: Rise, pick up, go. We’re left in no doubt that the man is completely healed. The miracle is a sign of both Jesus’ power and authority – power to heal and authority to forgive.
Why didn’t Jesus cut to the chase and simply heal the man? Why didn’t he avoid conflict with the leaders? He deliberately used the occasion to provoke a reaction, because he wanted his audience then, and us today, to feel the cumulative impact of his words and his action. He wants us to know that sin is serious and, importantly for us, that God has given him his authority to forgive sins.
Greatness. Luke tells us that everyone who heard and saw what Jesus did that day realized they were in the presence of greatness – “We have seen extraordinary things today”, they said (Luke 5:26).
Indeed, as Luke’s narrative unfolds we see that the kind of authority Jesus displayed that day was not a freakish event. Again and again, he revealed his greatness and his power – over the forces of nature and evil, over sickness and even death. Jesus’ greatness prompted CS Lewis to write: Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
We all need to recover an awareness of Jesus’ greatness – deepening our trust in him and enabling us to introduce him to others so that they too can meet with ultimate ‘greatness’.
You might want to encourage your friend(s) to read Luke 5-9 and set up a time for coffee conversation #3.
Our age of postmodernism arose out of the ashes of the ‘Deconstruction’ of the Age of Reason (Enlightenment). Over the last century science and mathematics pointed to the limits of logic – especially with the greater understanding of the complexity of ‘light’. Further, the atrocities of two world wars and the systematic murder of millions under various totalitarian regimes dented humanity’s dream of being able to produce a world of peace.
With the rejection of reason, we have the rise of postmodernism. As Robert Letham observes: The modern world’s (the Enlightenment’s) reliance on reason has been replaced by a preference for emotion. The cardinal fault in interpersonal relations now is to hurt someone’s feelings (The Holy Trinity, P&R Publishing: 2004, p.449). Today’s world insists there is no absolute truth.
It follows that there is no absolute morality or norm to guide human behavior. This makes life and the choices we make, entirely arbitrary. Letham concludes, Postmodernism cannot stand the test of everyday life. It does not work and it will not work. It fails the test of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who insisted that language and philosophy must have ‘cash value’ in terms of the real world in which we go about our business from day to day… We assume there is an objective world and act accordingly… Wittgenstein compared a situation of there being no objective truth to someone buying several copies of the morning paper to assure himself that what it said was true! (L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell, 1963, pp.93f; quoted in R Letham, p.453.)
How then do we respond? Today and over following Wednesdays I plan to suggest some topics for ‘coffee conversations’.
Something the postmodern world accepts is story. It is therefore worth taking the time to think about how you might frame your story of faith. In telling my story I recount how I was keen to find out answers to two key questions during an undergraduate degree at Sydney University – ‘Did Jesus really rise from the dead?’ And, behind that: ‘Is the New Testament authentic?’
Yes, my questions are those of the Age of Reason, but I find that I receive a hearing because my response is framed in a personal story.
As one of my subjects was Ancient History I had professors to speak with and sources to examine. I understood that the Christian Bible, written by many different writers over more than two thousand years, provides us with historical context. We see this, for example in the ‘birth narratives’ of Luke.
In his introduction Luke writes: Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who were from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may have the certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
Luke wants us to know:
He was writing a history—he was setting down an accurate and orderly account of events that had recently occurred. His writing is not myth or legend that have the appearance of a history such as Tolkein’s, The Lord of the Rings.
His research is thorough. While he says that he himself is not an eyewitness, he was careful to check the accuracy of the facts (1:2). Thucydides said: Where I have not been an eyewitness myself, I have investigated with the utmost accuracy attainable every detail that I have taken at second hand (History of the Peloponnesian War).
His narrative is true. Luke’s reference to eyewitnesses was more than just a convention. The picture we have in Luke and Acts leads us to conclude that he met with people who had been with Jesus throughout his public ministry – the twelve disciples and other close followers, including Mary. It seems that he met with these people in Jerusalem when Paul was under house arrest in 56-59AD.
Dr. Edwin Judge, an internationally acclaimed historian comments: ‘An ancient historian has no problem seeing the phenomenon of Jesus as an historical one. His many surprising aspects only help anchor him in history. Myth or legend would have created a more predictable figure. The writings that sprang up about Jesus also reveal to us a movement of thought and an experience of life so unusual that something much more substantial than the imagination is needed to explain it.
My story – over my first cup of coffee – begins with an unexpected figure whose own story looms larger than that of anyone else. I suggest to my interlocutors that they might like to read Luke chapters 1-4 before our next cup of coffee.
In September or October 1621 the Pilgrim Fathers enjoyed a special meal expressing their joy and thanks to God. The feast that was within a month or two of the first anniversary of the settlement in Plymouth Harbor, reflected the practice of Harvest Thanksgiving celebrated since the Middle Ages. And while only fifty-three of the original one hundred or so settlers had survived, a spirit of thanksgiving for God’s goodness and mercy prevailed. Furthermore, local Indians who had provided assistance during the year were invited to join the feasting. The Pilgrim Fathers not only expressed their gratitude to God but also to those who had helped them through a difficult year.
The times of thanksgiving to God in the early years of the colonies became more formalized over the years, especially following the Declaration of Independence and the aftermath of the Civil War.
How easily we fail to acknowledge our gratitude and thanks to those who have helped us or provided for us. Yet ingratitude is nothing new.
Centuries earlier Dr. Luke tells us of a time that Jesus of Nazareth was traveling in the border region between Samaria and Galilee. As he approached an unnamed village, ten lepers began shouting. These men, outcasts of society because of their infectious disease, were compelled to live beyond the fringes of the town. Hearing that Jesus, the noted celebrity, was nearby they called out, not specifically for healing, but rather for mercy – charis in the original (17:12-13).
The simplicity of Jesus’ response is striking. He didn’t lay his hands on them. He didn’t pray a loud, long-winded prayer, let alone tell them they were healed. Rather, he told them to do what the Jewish law required of anyone who was cured of leprosy: namely, to go and show themselves to the priests who were charged with the task of health inspection (Leviticus 14:2ff).
In other words Jesus put their trust in him to the test by telling them to act as though they had been cured.
So it was, Luke tells us, that as they went, they were made clean (17:14). Their going was a response of faith and obedience. If they hadn’t believed in the power of Jesus’ words they would not have gone.
But the narrative doesn’t end there. Luke goes on to tell us that one of the ten, seeing that he had been healed, turned back to Jesus, praising God with a loud voice. He couldn’t keep quiet. Having experienced God’s mercy through Jesus that day he wanted to let everyone else know about it. In an act of humility and gratitude he prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him (Luke 17:15-16).
Almost as an afterthought Luke adds: And he was a Samaritan. It is a telling comment. The Jewish people had no time for the Samaritans, but such were the horrors of leprosy that the Jewish and Samaritan lepers had been brought together. It says a great deal that Jesus did not isolate the nine Jewish sufferers for a special blessing. Both the Jewish sufferers and this Samaritan were equal beneficiaries of his compassion and power.
It says a great deal that the Samaritan was the only one who turned back to thank Jesus – even though Jesus was a Jewish rabbi. It almost seems as though the Jewish lepers expected God’s compassion and action as a matter of right. They felt they had no need to thank him.
Yet with three deft questions Jesus exposes the failure of the nine to express their gratitude: “Were not ten cleansed?” he asked. “Where are the nine?” and, “Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” (Luke 17:18)
Caught up with their new-found happiness, they forgot the source (God) and instrument (Jesus) of their cure. It was clearly too much to make the effort to return to Jesus and thank him. Understandably Jesus was saddened.
For the man who turned back to Jesus there seems to have been an added blessing: “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well,” Jesus said (17:19). While the nine were certainly healed of their leprosy, the words translated here, has made you wellare literally, has saved you. For this man there was a healing of his soul as well as his body.
How easily we forget to thank God for all the good things we enjoy – especially the gift of life in all its fullness. We overlook the significance of the Incarnation where the eternal Son of God drew into himself human form, and that in his humanity he has served us in our greatest need, dying the death we deserve so that we might participate in the very glory of God. Jesus’ own resurrection and ascension into glory authenticate this.
A Prayer of Thanksgiving: Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we your unworthy servants give humble and hearty thanks for all your goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all people. We bless you for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for your amazing love in the redemption of the world through our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace and for the hope of glory. And, we pray, give us that due sense of all your mercies, that our hearts may be truly thankful, and that we may declare your praise not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to your service, and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be all honor and glory, now and forever. Amen (from An Australian Prayer Book: 1978).
In October 2013, The Wall Street Journal reported an interview with Alan Greenspan about his book, The Map and the Territory. Greenspan commented on a human feature he had not factored in when he was chairman of the Federal Reserve. Referring to the meltdown of the markets in 2008, he noted that none of the recognized forecasters saw the economic crisis coming. He went on to say that he had not factored in ‘the spells of (human) euphoria and irrational fear.’
The article continued, ‘Studying the results of herd behavior provided him with some surprises. “I was actually flabbergasted,” he says. “It upended my view of how the world works… He concluded that fear has at least three times the effect of euphoria in producing market gyrations. “I wouldn’t have dared write anything like that before,” he says.’
It is not my purpose to speak about the state of the US economy or the financial world. Rather, I want to take up the theme of human nature. The Wall Street Journal article raises the subject of the deeper aspects of our human nature usually hidden from others. It opens up questions about the complex nature of being human. Where do we turn for answers?
Thomas Nagel, the American philosopher in The View from Nowhere (1986, p.4), commented on the perplexity of doing this. He wrote: Certain forms of perplexity – for example, about freedom, knowledge, and the meaning of life – seem to embody more insight than any of the supposed solutions to those problems.
It is certainly true that from our human inquiry – be it through medicine, biology, neuroscience, psychology, social anthropology or philosophy – a satisfying answer seems shrouded in mystery.
Summarizing the human dilemma, Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French philosopher asked: Is life simply a journey… a great mysterious search for the unknown and unknowable? We desire truth and find in ourselves nothing but uncertainty. We seek happiness and find only wretchedness and death. We are incapable of not desiring truth and happiness and incapable of either certainty or happiness.
In response, given the complexity of the existence of all things in the universe, not just humanity, it is not inconsistent to suggest that there is a greater being who stands at the heart of the center of all things – one who not only exists but who is able to reveal himself and thus give us meaning and understanding about life.
Indeed, Dr. John Lennox (Emeritus Professor Mathematics, Oxford University), writes in ‘God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?’: To the majority of those who have reflected deeply and written about the origin and nature of the universe, it has seemed that it points beyond itself to a source which is non-physical and of great intelligence and power.
And CS Lewis wrote: I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
To return to the WSJ article and Alan Greenspan’s comments about the way that fear can trump euphoria in our attitudes and actions: why is that all too often we allow fear to shape our feelings and actions? Instead of living out the New Testament injunction to rejoice,we fear. Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say rejoice, exhorts Paul the Apostle (Philippians 4:4). We fear what others might think of us if they discovered what we believe and that we go to church. We fear that we might be bullied or made to look stupid. We fear we may be treated as intolerant if we try to talk to them about our faith. We fear we may be stuck for words. We make excuses and are silent.
St Matthew concludes his Gospel with Jesus’ commission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18ff).
The commission Jesus gave to the apostles has been passed down through the ages, not in some form of mystical ‘apostolic succession’ through the literal laying on of hands, but in the passing on of what the apostles preached and taught. One way or another all of us are involved in this.
Over the coming weeks, I plan to explore ways we can be more effective in our relationships and conversations.
In an article, ‘Faith’s Implacable Enemies’, in The Weekend Australian (November 4-5, 2017), Dyson Heydon, a former justice of the High Court of Australia, writes of the significant shift by society’s elites today away from the humble dependence on the blessing of Almighty God expressed in the ‘Imperial Act’ that brought ‘the Australian Constitution into being’.
Heydon comments that ‘the public voices of the modern elites are not humble. They conceive themselves to have entitlements and rights, not blessings. And they do not feel any gratitude to Almighty God for their entitlements and rights. Instead, they desire to exclude any role for religion in Australian public discussion, and perhaps any role for religion in any sphere, public or private. They instantly demand an apology for any statement they dislike.’
Furthermore, Heydon observes, ‘Indifference (towards religion) based on rising wealth can be insidiously damaging to religion… Religion inquires into the nature of humanity and the destiny of humanity… To those satisfied with the pleasures of this world, now so freely available, inquiry and search of these kinds is of no interest… But members of modern elites are moving away from mere indifference. They are embracing a fanatical anti-clericalism. Some want to destroy faith itself…’
‘Modern elites do not desire tolerance,’ Heydon notes. ‘They demand unconditional surrender’.
How will we respond? We need to keep before us the evidence of God in the existence of the universe. We also need to remember the evidence of God’s powerful work in history – especially in the life, death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Too often we forget and are silenced.
In 2 Peter 1 the Apostle Peter insists that his readers always rememberwhat they had been taught about the faith. I intend to keep on reminding you …, he says (verse 12); I will always make every effort to refresh your memory (verse 13); and, After my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things (verse 15).
His words, reminder and memory point to the fact that Christianity is a received truth. There is a body of information that can be learned and recalled – God’s good news.
Peter wants us to understand that all Jesus said and did was true: We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,…. (verse 16).
We often forget that Christianity was born at a time of hundreds of religions and philosophies — Paganism, Epicureanism with its rationalism, Stoicism with its moralism and ‘stiff upper-lip’; occultism, spiritism, mysticism, dualism, pantheism, animism, and a host of other ‘–isms’. Indeed the elites of the 1st century Roman Empire were hostile towards the followers of Jesus Christ.
How important is it that we remember the reality and trustworthiness of Jesus – God in the flesh, who lived amongst us, died for us, and was raised to life.
We need to keep front and center in our lives his words: “You are the salt of the earth,”he says. “You are the light of the world…”he continues. “In the same way, let your light so shine before others that they see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven”(Matthew 5:13-14, 16).
Furthermore, Jesus expects us to play our part in his wider mission to ‘the lost’ in a hostile world. His words to the Seventy, sent out in the course of his ministry, identify principles for us: “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep amongst wolves, so be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).
Not all the seventy were preachers, but they were still sent. They were part of the witness to Jesus. In Colossians 4:5, Paul picks up the theme of wisdom: Conduct yourselves wisely towards outsiders… He calls his readers (including you and me)to speak graciously, looking for ways to introduce questions and comments that open up the larger issues of life. Our speech is to be seasoned with salt – not insipid, gossip (Colossians 4:6).
Dyson Heydon comments that the elites today, ‘By preventing any public expression of religious thought through ridicule and bullying, they tend to cause religion to wither away even in the private sphere. What can have no public expression will eventually cease to have any private existence…’
What we often overlook is that the followers of Jesus overturned the ancient Roman world, not by armed revolution, but through bold and confident prayer to the God ‘whose nature is always to have mercy’, and by the example of their lives and the testimony of their lips. Let’s pray for the grace, wisdom, and strength we need to serve Christ Jesus, the Lord.
Throughout my ministry, I have endeavored to find appropriate ways to hand on the light of God’s redeeming love to non-churchgoing people. Now at this time of aggressive and arrogant atheism, it seems to me that we need to revisit this task. The substance of the message of God’s gospel remains constant but the way we communicate it needs to be fine-tuned in every age. The reasoned apologetics of the twentieth century need to be re-cast for the twenty-first.
That said, in an interesting article in The Weekend Australian (October 28-29) entitled, ‘Idea of God is perfectly logical’, Greg Sheridan wrote: ‘…It is important to understand that there is nothing in reason that contradicts God. That our public culture so routinely suppresses this knowledge, mocks it and teaches the reverse, demonstrates just what a strange and dangerous cultural dead end we have wandered into. Yet even in our moment, in our society, there is already a nostalgia for God.
‘Reasoning from first principles, of course, is not even the primary rational way you can come to a rational knowledge of God. For it is one of the central realities of humanity, one of the deep mysteries of the human condition, that all truth involves a balance of truths. Rationality needs a context in order to be rational…’
Sheridan goes on to observe: ‘There are countless clues of God throughout the world and within humanity itself. There is the strange phenomenon of joy, the even stranger delight of humour, the inescapable intimation of meaning in beauty and music. There is the mystery of love, along with the equal mystery of our consciousness and our self-awareness…’
Once we get past the inconsistencies of the popular culture we often find that many will agree that God does exist but that he is unknowable – he is abstract, impersonal, and a mystery.
To return to words of Deuteronomy 6 that I have touched on over the last two weeks, we need to feel the sharpness and precision of verse 4: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
The words speak of the supremacy, the unity, the uniqueness and the personality of God. The Hebrew word translated ‘one’ here can refer to more than one person. Significantly it is the same word that we find in Genesis 2:24: Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
In the light of this meaning of the Hebrew word, one,it is consistent that in Genesis 1:26 and 27 we read, Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,…” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Furthermore, it is not surprising that amongst Abraham’s three visitors (Genesis 18:1-21), the supernatural figure Jacob encountered (Genesis 28:1-17), the fourth man in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:24-25) was the pre-incarnate Son of God. We so often forget that the God of the Old Testament is the same as in the new. The one God exists in three persons.But I digress.
The God of Deuteronomy 6 is not an abstract being, without meaning or message. The language of Lord and unity (as we learn) implies personality – indeed, more than one person who enjoys a relationship and who speak. Deuteronomy 6 reveals the God who is Lord and who is passionately committed to being known and being loved by his people.
This theme is even more evident in the New Testament where we read in Philippians 2: At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, every tongue will confess him as Lord, to the glory of God the Father (2:11).
Every generation needs to hear these truths so that they come and live under them.
The French poet, writer, and aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, once observed: If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
Given our task of handing on the light of God’s truth found in Christ, perhaps we need to start considering ways we can paint a larger picture of life, lifting people’s gaze from the ground to the reality of God who has not only given us our existence, but also the opportunity to experience life in all its fullness and joy.
How important it is that we keep before us God’s words to his people: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
