Sermon preached by Dr. John A. Huffman, Jr.
October 28, 2007
Copyright© 2007, John A. Huffman, Jr.
All rights reserved.
GROWING TOWARD WHOLENESS--IN HUMAN FAVOR
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor. (Luke 2:52)
Could you ask for a more appropriate sermon theme this morning following a week in which we have been fully engaged, following the devastatingly impulsive California fires.
Last weekend at this time, we knew there was trouble ahead as the Santa Ana winds whipped up balls of fire through our parched canyons. During our 8:30 service last Sunday, we realized the ferocity of those winds, as we had repeated electrical outages, for a while cutting off all power during that service, leaving the video screens blank, the lights darkened and no public address system. Halfway through the service the power came back on, even though we could still hear the wind gusting outside the sanctuary.
What drove home the seriousness of this disaster were the words that met me as I recessed down the center aisle during the final hymn. A member arriving early for the 10:15 service breathlessly whispered to me, "The Malibu Presbyterian Church has been totally destroyed by the fire!" My heart sank. Just a few days before, Jim Birchfield and I were part of a luncheon meeting with the present pastor of that church, Greg Hughes, and the past pastor, Dave Worth. As I shook hands in the plaza with our new members and then took my customary position to greet the exiting congregation, my mind and heart could not help but vicariously identify with our sisters and brothers in Christ at Malibu as they arrived at church to see their physical plant ablaze. Thank God there was no loss of life. But imagine what it would be if we, a church of approximately the same age, had to start all over again with our physical plant. Imagine what it would be to lose not only the physical facility but the majority of the corporate records. I can't even begin to think of the horrific loss for its pastors and program staff to have a lifetime of accumulated books, sermon files, correspondence, financial records, precious photographs and other personal items disappear in a matter of minutes!
Then the attention shifted southward to Orange County, Lake Arrowhead and the San Diego area. Multiple emails arrived from my pastor friends with churches in these areas confronted by the fires.
Mike McClenahan, pastor of the Solana Beach Presbyterian Church, wrote on Wednesday describing how he and his wife Amy had, on Monday, evacuated their home in the hills east of Solana Beach and now gratefully were back home again.
On Wednesday, also, Bruce Humphrey, pastor of the Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church, wrote, describing how he, his wife and children went from Sunday evening breathing ashes from the fire up in the hills twenty miles away to being awakened at 5:00 a.m. Monday morning, as their back door, bolted and with a child safety lock, crashed open with a gust of wind, and one minute later, a phone call came telling them to flee immediately. Within five minutes, he started to pack the grandkids up, as fire broke over the hillside, and they realized they had less than five minutes to get out.
I carried our two grandchildren to the car and discovered that we were already in the midst of live embers raining down on us. The tree across the street exploded in a fire shower as I buckled our granddaughter into her car seat. We could already see some of the neighbors' homes were on fire with flames shooting from upper windows and off roof tops. I ran back into the house where my wife was still grabbing medicines etc. and shouted "GET OUT NOW!" SHE HAD NOT REALIZED OUR NEIGHBORHOOD WAS ALREADY LOST. We got our daughter and son-in-law into one car, wife Kate into her car and me with the grandkids in my car. I shouted over the fear and fire that we needed to get out of Rancho Bernardo so I told everyone to meet up at a distant parking lot ten miles away. We turned the corner and found the main road out like a parking lot with everybody in their cars at the same time. Amazing that we had no loss of life! Finally gathered with family a half hour later and I burst into tears as we hugged and realized we were all alive and safe. No shoes on the children. Just the clothes on our backs. Amazing ending to this story. . . while dozens in our congregation have lost their homes (most in our neighborhood), our home is standing nearly alone in the neighborhood. Hoping to get home to the house by the weekend. Electricity off so we'll have days of practical adjusting and will live in the midst of the impact of this for months (years?) to come. Thanks for your prayers. Jesus is still Lord! Bruce
Then, Saturday, I received another email from Mike McClenahan of Solana Beach, updating a number of us on circumstances in the San Diego Presbytery. Let me read one more paragraph.
Again, please pray for two families from the Rancho Santa Fe Village Church and fifty-seven from Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church who lost their homes. Another insight from pastor Bruce Humphrey: "We know of fifty-seven member families who lost their houses. I stood with a neighbor an hour ago and we hugged and cried together in the ashes. I said, 'You lost your home.' He corrected me and said, 'Bruce, we just lost a house.' Already two other church members were with them sifting through the ashes when they came upon a few pages of their son's Bible charred but clearly readable. They gave the ash pages to me to present to our youth group since their son came to Christ through our youth ministry and is now away at college." Pray for pastor Kirk Bottomly in Fallbrook as he leads his church back into their hard hit community.
Please continue to pray for all of San Diego. Thanksgiving for so little loss of life and for the outpouring of compassion and love. Prayers of healing for families who lost everything--some will be able to replace everything, others who will be able to replace nothing. Prayer for firefighters who continue to fight fires today and for those who are recovering from injuries. Prayers for the Church--to be the church sent to be Christ to the world. Prayers for government officials who need wisdom to rebuild and prepare for future wildfires.
Even as today we talk about "Growing Toward Wholeness--In Human Favor," one of the ways we can implement this care for others is embodied in the fact that your mission team has made a list available of opportunities where you can either help financially or serve in the relief efforts. A table is now in the plaza before and after our services this weekend. For more information, please contact Laura Johnson in the Local Mission and Outreach office at 949-574-2214, or email laura@standrewspres.org, or check our website at www.standrewspres.org.
So, it is within this context that we complete today this series titled Growing Toward Wholeness--A Fourfold Pattern with today's theme being "Growing Toward Wholeness--In Human Favor."
God does call each one of us to balanced living. Jesus lived a balanced life. His development was coordinated. He increased in wisdom, in stature, in favor with God and in human favor.
As we saw last week, spiritual growth is essential. If we neglect our inward development, we do not become the persons God dreams for us to be in intimate, personal relationship with Him. At the same time, a healthy development of our inner spiritual resources must produce a life of outward concern for others. As Jesus increased "in divine favor," He also increased in "human favor" (Luke 2:52).
This need for parallel development spiritually and socially is spelled out most beautifully for us in Jesus' summation of the Great Commandments. "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:37-40).
Reducing all the Old Testament laws into two basic commands, Jesus was saying, "Put first things first!" We must begin at the point of total love for God. Some humanists love humankind more unselfishly than some Christians do. However, a Christian has a greater potential for human love than does a person who denies the reality of God. Why is this? The person who loves God has a greater understanding of who his fellow human beings are. He knows his own importance. True love for God produces an authentic love for others. Why? Because all humankind is created in the very image of God! If you and I truly love God and take that love seriously, we must love our fellow human beings.
Jesus calls His followers to ". . .love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This "great and first" commandment calls us to a totality of love. Jesus is stressing wholeness. People talk about body, soul, and spirit, trying to carve an individual up into three parts. Jesus didn't do this. When He talks about loving God with all one's heart, soul, and mind, He was stressing a total commitment to God of all that a person is. The body does not exist without the spirit. The spirit is literally the breath of life that characterizes a living person, making that person different from a dead body. Jesus is basically assuming that the people to whom He was talking are alive, when He urges them to love God with the totality of their beings.
In the Hebrew, "soul" refers to the living person. Jesus expands His call to a human love of God, as He encourages His followers to commit their hearts and minds to this task of loving. Jewish people did not draw a distinction between heart and mind that we make. We say the heart is the seat of one's emotions, and the mind is the center of rational response. Instead, to the Jew, the two were intermingled in a "will center," which motivated a person. God created us as whole people to love Him with all we are.
A right relationship with God gives us purpose for living and the ability to relate healthfully with our fellow human beings. Taking pride in my human abilities will lead me off course. It's like trying to sail the Atlantic on a ship captained by one who determines his course by the lights of other ships. Those lights are relative, shifting and moving. They do not provide accurate direction. Rather, I prefer a captain who charts his course by the stars, which cannot be tossed around by waves. The stars are fixed reference points in the heavens. If you understand this, you can plot your course with authority.
In the same way, once we know the God who created us in His image, we are set free to have a right relationship with our fellow human beings.
The true love of God produces in us a love for others.
A right God-human relationship stimulates right person-to-person relationships. Jesus expressed this truth in a two-fold manner, when He said in His second Great Commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Actually, Jesus is referring here to a three-dimensional love relationship, which includes God, myself and my fellow human beings. Interpersonal relationships call for not one but two human loves.
The first priority is a healthy self-love. Jesus wants you to love yourself. Jesus wants me to love myself.
A person with whom I once shared this concept took considerable exception to this truth. He was angered by the thought that a Christian should love himself. He had always been taught that the Christian is to love God and others. As a result of this emphasis, my friend really hated himself. He attacked me almost venomously for saying that a person should love himself. In denying a healthy self-love, he found it impossible to really love others.
I am convinced that Jesus is saying that people who are sour with other people are usually sour with themselves. Such a person has not truly experienced God's grace. The person at peace with himself is probably most at ease with others. As I know that I am loved by God, I am set free to genuinely love myself and, in the process, I am freer to become vulnerable to others. As I distrust and dislike myself, I question God's love for me. In doing so, I seal myself off from others. I fear they will reject me if they get to know me as well as I know myself.
Healthy self-love comes from experiencing the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, as I acknowledge my own weakness, my own sin. Today is Reformation Sunday. It's a day that we stress the fact that "the just shall live by faith, not by works." I acknowledge my sin. His cleansing blood, His infinite acceptance of me took place at Calvary. There, He paid for my total and complete forgiveness. Through His healing, I am set free to truly love others.
I believe that this lack of self-love has been the primary cause for today's breakdown in sexual morality. The person who does not see one's self as created in the very image of God is inclined toward the secular notion that human kind is only an animal. If you see yourself as only an animal, not a special creation of God, one will tend to have a lower self-love than one who sees one's self in personal relationship to his Creator, the one who has a purpose and plan for his life. If I feel that life has no meaning, I'll find it difficult to take others seriously. Why should their lives have meaning when mine doesn't? Humanism fails to take a person's individuality seriously. We see where this took the world in the Marxist fallacy of putting societal rights above individual rights. The individual became dispensable. And we saw the shipwreck of societies which, for many decades, built their whole social philosophy on this godless notion. On the other hand, one who has a high sense of self worth takes seriously the worth of another person.
Now, let me make it clear, there is a difference between healthy self-love and selfishness. There is a rugged and selfish individualism that does not take other persons seriously. At its core is the pathology of narcissism, that distorted sense of self that sees the universe centering around one's own selfish interests. In contrast, if I truly love myself as a person for whom Christ died, I am then free to give myself for others as He gave himself for me.
Do you catch this three-step progression of love--to God, to self, to fellow man?
We are called on to love more than ourselves. Jesus calls us to neighbor-love, as well. No person is an island. You and I cannot go it alone.
George Buttrick--for many years the pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City--said, "If religion does not begin with the individual, it never begins; but if it ends with the individual--it ends!"
You and I need other people. Our lives must have a social dimension. Jesus has placed you and me in a social environment. He yearns for us to realize all the responsibilities and all the privileges of living in community.
Jesus was a social person.
One of our first in-depth glimpses of Him comes at that wedding in Cana. His first recorded miracle involved people at a wedding party. Jesus loved life, and He enjoyed people. He didn't walk through life throwing cold water on fun. Far from it. He kept pricking the balloons of pompous, self-righteous religiosity.
When He called Zacchaeus down out of his tree, he didn't march him off to the synagogue. Rather, he visited Zacchaeus in his home, joining him for dinner. Jesus enjoyed men and women so much that some of the religious hierarchy wagged their fingers at Him, accusing Him of spending too much time socially with non-righteous and/or even non-religious people.
Jesus had friends who represented a cross section of society. His twelve disciples came from all walks of life. He enjoyed a variety of persons, respecting each person for his or her individual gifts, accepting each one with their strengths and weaknesses. I want to know what Jesus would have done if He had been as demanding of His friends as you and I tend to be of ours. It's possible that He would have dumped the whole bunch of them in a matter of months, in that they didn't seem to understand what He was trying to do. They weren't very reliable. But Jesus loved people. He invested His life in theirs. And He wasn't afraid to let them love Him. What a delight Jesus took in those casual evenings spent at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus and then walked that sixty minutes or so to Bethany. There, He enjoyed His friends.
Why do we strip Jesus of His genuine, happy relationships with people? The Scriptures don't. Perhaps it's because we have a hard time living with ourselves. We can't forgive ourselves for the wrong we've done. Because we are so hard on ourselves, we come down hard on other people. We seem to have a sick craving to make others dislike us. True, Jesus warns us we will suffer if we are truly His followers. But He doesn't say that we must suffer constantly. He doesn't deny us the delights of friendship. In fact, He calls us to friendship. The sign of true spirituality is not that others dislike us. There is a winsome, Christian spirit that draws people to us, even as it alienates some who hate our Lord.
Jesus did more than just enjoy people. He also showed an infinite concern for their social needs. He fed and healed them. He was sensitive to their physical, spiritual and emotional needs. Tough political power plays were not His way. Although He did get somewhat rough in the temple area with those who were religiously exploiting the people, His real social power was that of love. Jesus broke down enormous barriers through the power of love. In that spirit, He ministered to human need. Inevitably, He made many friends and many enemies.
So far, we've been somewhat theoretical in our approach.
Now, let's move on to some of the practical implications of a healthy God-self-humankind love relationship.
Jesus had an active social life as He went about doing His Father's business. What was His Father's business? His Father's business was serving others.
How do I serve others?
I serve them by helping with their spiritual, physical and emotional problems. That's why He increased in favor with His fellow humankind. It was no wonder He alienated some who saw religion in cold, harsh, non-relational terms.
A Christian is not free to do his own thing. The follower of Jesus is set free to do God's thing. Some years ago, Vermont Royster wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal titled "Thinking Things Over." In it, he described what happens to a society that is void of moral standards. He concluded that such a society becomes a social anarchy. People think they are free to do their own thing. Every society, from the most primitive to the most advanced, depends on an accepted moral base. Destroying the gods of Rome destroyed Rome. Dealing with the dynamics behind the phenomenon, Royster wrote:
The reason is that the social fabric is all of one piece. As in the civil law when one is flouted the binding power of all law is diminished, so with moral injunctions. Without a sense that some things are wrong simply because they are wrong--I am tempted to say, without a sense of sin--then every man is cast adrift. Not just the young; the lawyer, doctor or public servant has no inner standard to measure whether what he does is ethical or unethical. Why should we be surprised, then, at what some men do?
You and I are called to live lives of service in harmony with what God revealed in His Word. We may make some enemies in the process. But we have the security of knowing we are gaining favor with the right persons--with God and our fellow humankind whom we serve.
I find it exciting to see how many of you are involved in this love for others as it is expressed in servant ministries. Not all of us are called to respond in the exact same ways. Some of you, right now, are giving your money and your time to help bring relief to those devastated by these Southern California fires that are still threatening many. Hundreds of you have been on mission teams, going as far away as to serve in a leper hospital in India; an AIDS project in Malawi; a Christian education ministry in Egypt; a social ministry in the city dump of Manila, Philippines; a church or homebuilding crew in Mexico; or a post-Katrina cleanup to Louisiana or Mississippi. Some of you continue to tutor at the Shalimar project. When the tsunami hit Southeast Asia some time ago, you made a generous outpouring of over $300,000 for World Vision Tsunami Relief. I've been to Banda Aceh and have seen the results of your generosity.
This care for our fellow human beings can be as extensive as going on to law school to get a degree so that you can work with the International Justice Mission. It can be as simple and profound as doing what our member Jim Penney does every week. For years now, each week, when the local garbage collector comes around to pick up his trash, Jim is there at the curb with an ice-cold soft drink to assuage his thirst. In each of these activities and many more, we are serving others as equal to us and doing it in the name of Jesus Christ as part of the Father's business.
We now come to the conclusion of our five-week series Growing Toward Wholeness--A Fourfold Pattern. We've given an in-depth look into this verse that embodies that developmental process in the life of Jesus Christ, in which the majority of thirty years are capsuled in this verse, "And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor" (Luke 2:52).
We've observed this call to balance. It has an ongoing dynamic to it. We've observed two great theological words.
The first of these words is justification. How appropriate it is on this Reformation Sunday that we are reminded of that word. God has justified us in the Person of Jesus Christ. God, who created us in His image to live full meaningful lives, has seen our distortion, our brokenness, our sin. He still loves us, and He came and took all of our brokenness upon himself on the cross that, through His life, death and resurrection, we might be made whole people. We are clothed in His righteousness. This is the theology of creation, the theology of the fall, the theology of redemption. And you and I are privileged to receive His justification through faith, not based on our works but on what He has done for us. Have you received Him as Savior? Have you received Him as Lord?
The second great theological word is sanctification. This is that ongoing growth process. Jesus "increased" in a balanced way--intellectually, physically, spiritually and socially. This is not salvation by works. This is the natural growth process by which those of us who are born again by the Spirit of God are privileged to allow the Lord access to our lives in that fullness of the Holy Spirit that maximizes, holistically and in a balanced way, these four aspects of our human existence. Failure to give adequate attention to any one of these throws us off balance, to be less than what God dreams for us to be. Our response to what God has done for us is to live in obedience to His Lordship according to the teachings of His Word.
So let me conclude with four practical questions. I will ask them of myself, and I will ask them of you.
Question One: Am I growing in wisdom? Are you growing in wisdom?
Do you see your mind as a gift from God? Are you using it to His glory? Do you have a curiosity about the world He has created and entrusted you to steward? Are you growing in an understanding of who God is and who you are and how together you relate to all of His creation? Are you a student of His Word? And are you applying those insights you receive from His special revelation in the Bible and His natural revelation in all the rest of creation in a healthy, growing way?
Question Two: Am I growing in stature? Are you growing in stature?
Are you taking good care of your body? Are you getting adequate sleep? Are you getting adequate exercise? Is your diet one that is helping your body be healthy? Are you having regular physical checkups? Are you pacing yourself in your energy flow or are you burning the candle at both ends? Are you aware of the chronological aspect of this growth process from cradle all the way to grave? Are you willing to accept the developmental process that accepts that, even with taking the best care of yourself physically, aging will take its toll? Can you celebrate those realities when the very graying of your hair and the wrinkles on your face are signs of maturity, part of the growth process that connotes a life experience that can be generative and encouraging to the younger generation that observes you as you age gracefully?
Question Three: Am I growing spiritually? Are you growing spiritually?
Is that growth inward? Are you taking time for prayer, the reading of Scripture, the reading of other devotional materials, with quiet, thoughtful reflection, and even for some occasional writing of prayers and journaling? Are you in a small group with other people in that intimate discussion of Scripture, as it applies itself practically to the daily challenges you and they face? Are you together, with them, sharing prayerfully your mutual concerns? And are you faithful in worship, where you come with a genuine hunger to present yourself to God in the corporate singing of hymns and spiritual songs, the corporate sharing of spiritual concerns of the Body of Christ, the corporate prayers, the hearing of the Word of God preached, and the response to that with the bringing of yourself as a living sacrifice to the Lord, bringing the first fruits of all He has given you in the tithes and offerings to carry on His work here and throughout the world?
Question Four: Am I growing in my relationship socially to others? Are you growing socially in your relationship to others?
Do I really see myself as special, created in the image of God? Do I see every other person created in that same image? Do I relate to others with whom I have radical disagreements as persons who also are loved by God and very special to Him, even if their lifestyles and viewpoints are antithetical to the teaching of Scriptures? Am I growing in my love of both the Lord and of other people? Do I genuinely love my neighbor as I love myself? Am I allowing my heart to be broken by those things that break the heart of God? And what am I doing about it?
I'm so grateful to be the pastor of a church in which these questions are being raised. St. Andrew's is not content to be static, but we want to be a community that is committed to this growth dynamic. Christ-centered worship is at the core of all we are. Evangelism, nurture and servant ministry are the tasks to which we have been assigned. And our Mission Statement, as of next Sunday, will be on the cover of our bulletin:
Transformed by Jesus and led by His Word, we are