Good Morning Friends,
Today’s lectionary scripture from John reminds me of Jacob’s ladder and the passage from Revelation of a clock face and the history of all time connected to the future of Jerusalem. Perhaps you share some of the same thoughts. They are not necessary to be a Christian. Of course, some scripture is more difficult to grasp. We can get sidetracked. Doubt creeps in on the issue of interpretation and frankly, the dogma can blind us. This is, after all, part of how it all works and sometimes does not work when it comes to our faith and our belief in God. Life gets messy and occasionally we feel it hard to believe in a God that loves us as individuals and has our best interest at heart. We can tend to believe in a dualism of good and evil. Yet Jesus changed all that through the transformation of the cross, the resurrection and the gifting of the Holy Spirit. We should get a sense of it. Still, we wonder what the future will bring. We wonder about meeting Jesus in this life and doubt creeps in. So, Are We Skeptical Of Seeing The Beauty Of Heaven In The Places We Live And Work?
Scripture: Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites; on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
Revelation 21:9b-14 (NRSV)
Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
John 1:45-51 (NRSV)
Message: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” That is what Nathanael was saying about Jesus. He knew the place well. It was unimpressive. Now some reading this devotional will have very different doubts about God and have no clue why people were disparaging this small, backwoods community north of Jerusalem. We just do not have the facts. We are ignorant really. But Nathanael knew about Nazareth. It was an Immokalee of sorts. But the problem was not that Nathanael was ignorant about Nazareth but about Jesus. Our bias can be misleading too. We can think in the wrong way. But Nathanael opened his mind to the possibility of Jesus for he knew Jesus was a teacher and taught the word of God. Nathanael had studied scripture under the fig tree and was a seeker and that Jesus had chosen to seek him out and to open a unified heart and mind. He was not such a bad fellow, but he did not know Jesus. You see, the world is filled with different kinds of doubters that are not all hard-core disbelievers. Some of them in the Bible had the benefit of Jesus living in the flesh with them but still found believing difficult. Thomas is perhaps the most famous of the cynics. He was governed by his senses and was stubborn of nature, wanting firsthand proof about Jesus. He had a kind of melancholy but was honest about his distrust of others. He questioned the claims of others wanting to see for himself. Other people in the Bible that questioned Jesus though were entangled in the ways of the world that Jesus was in the process of transforming. Consider Pilot. He had no moral depth. He was guided by wrong thinking that prompted his disbelief and this resulted in his ruin. And then other doubters are filled with self-conceit and a lack of due consideration and respect for others and their opinions. I do not know what kind of doubter you are, but imagine you have some qualms about religion. Perhaps you are like Nathanael, a sincere, relatively honest and religious person that we might even call good. If so, come and see what scripture and other believers offer. Approach your doubts with wisdom. Wrestle with your doubts. Test your faith and let Jesus open your eyes to a relationship that is more rational than the world. Know that God can use even our doubts and that despite the apparent and compelling separation of good and evil Jesus makes us one. Friends, people are searching for meaning and satisfaction in life that can only be realize in a transformational relationship with God in the unity of love. Here is a purpose in life. Here is meaning that strengthens the being of people. Friends, with all the emptiness in this world God shouts from the heaven with an invitation to come and see a new way of being. Friends, the Bible teaches us that the only real meaning in life is found in a living relationship with God through Jesus Christ, we are invited by God to come and see this for ourselves by inviting Christ into our lives. The incarnation changes everything. See the beauty of Heaven. See the beauty of the Earth. Be filled with the Holy Spirit in ways that unify our existence.
And So, one of the greatest enemies of Christian culture is dualism. And we are affected by it all the time, but especially when we divide our lives and culture into two overarching spheres of influence that we make antithetical to one another. If we fall for this pagan heresy we will be affected. We can develop an ideal and historical duality that pits our perfect image with the reality of things. We can develop a material and immaterial duality that prompts us to devalue the physical world. We can develop a soul and body duality that gets us to thinking like the Greeks, that we were made for heaven and not earth, making Christian culture less than a priority. We can develop a public and private dualism that tends to reduce Christianity to a personal worship hobby. But in the Bible, the conflict is never between physical and non-physical, public, and private. It is between righteousness and sin that can only be resolved in Christ. The wrong thinking can take many forms, but it is not hard to grasp how this earth-heaven dualism hinders Christian culture. The ancient Hebrews, by contrast, held, as the Bible itself does, a unified view of people. They were not materialists, certainly not in the modern sense. They believed that man consists of both materiality and non-materiality. However, these two were interwoven. We cannot be human without a body. But we cannot be Christian without the Spirit. They go together. Perhaps even more of a hindrance is the internal-external duality. This duality gets to the heart of dualism’s aversion to Christian culture. Man is made for a vertical relationship with God, and this relationship is a heart matter. Most Christians realize that the Bible places great emphasis on a person’s heart. Some believe this term is a synonym for emotion, but this belief is false. The head versus the heart is a false comparison. But even if Christians understand the right definition of heart that still may be in conflict. And that is one reason that Christian culture is not a priority in our society.
Pray we learn to love like Jesus. Pray we bring others to Jesus. Pray we all discover the greatest longing of our hearts and minds is to be one with Jesus. Pray we find purpose and passion and peace in a relationship with Christ. Pray we realize that Jesus is more than a teacher. Pray we come and see but also exhibit a spark to ignite the fire of the Spirit of God to fill our lives and spill over into the lives of others on earth as in heaven. Pray we share with others that the invitation is still available today and that it paves the way to our future.
Pray we look around and realize how lucky the disciples were to be alive in the History of the world when Jesus walked the earth. Pray we realize how lucky we are to be living the dream today. Pray when we encounter skeptics, we invite them to come and see. Pray we get the facts and help others get the facts too. Pray we encounter Jesus with our fears and have them relieved. Pray we approach our doubts with wisdom and a heart that seeks the truth. Pray we do not surrender our Christian roots. Pray we do not degenerate into a radical individualism. Pray we do not worship a state that believes that God’s word has nothing to say about society. Pray we realize that our job is to unify our understanding of heaven and earth so we might glorify God and enjoy life.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 