CHRISTIANITY 101: GOD IS SELF-SACRIFICING
Daniel T. Rodgers is a professor at Princeton University and the author of a new book entitled, Age of Fracture. In it he describes how words like dedication, courage, responsibility, self-scrutiny, and sacrifice have largely faded from the public discourse of our nation’s life. “In particular,” he writes, “the language of sacrifice has disappeared as the values of a consumer-driven economy have swept over us – except for the sacrifice of a volunteer military, which sacrifices for us.” In other words, the last thing on God’s green earth that we want to talk about these days…is our own personal sacrifice.
Among the most important places this shift can be seen is in presidential speech making. Rodgers points to the ways that earlier presidential speeches essentially mimicked Protestant preaching. For example, John F. Kennedy once said, “And so my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” “Beginning with Ronald Reagan,” Rodgers writes, “with his rhetoric of psychic optimism, older rhetorical formulas with their calls for sacrifice and responsibility were overwhelmed by new, softer, less demanding ones.” In other words, the President as Protestant preacher was replaced by the President as motivational speaker. Perhaps the election of 2012 serves as a vivid reminder of how foreign the language of sacrifice and responsibility is to contemporary American culture.
Erskine Clarke is the editor of Journal for Preachers magazine. Along those very same lines, he addresses today’s Protestant preacher in a recent article. He writes, “So as a preacher, if you dare to claim the old rhetoric and traditions of the church, if you dare to model your preaching on something other than entertainment, if you dare for your preaching to plunge into the biblical texts – with their calls for personal and social self-scrutiny, repentance and sacrifice – you will be participating in a very un-American activity.” Thus, ladies and gentlemen, we are about to embark upon a very un-American activity today. Keep that thought in mind as we move on.
Several weeks ago, we talked about the contrast between our tendency to gratify the desires of the flesh and the Apostle Paul’s call for us to live by the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit. We noted how human will power lacks the capacity to change much of anything within us. Change happens when something else is modified. What is it that needs to be modified? What needs to be modified is our personal narrative of who and what God is. We need to have the proper story in our minds as to who and what God is, if we’re ever going to change who and what we are, because everything about us stems from our own internal narrative.
As Jesus is God Incarnate, we determined to let Jesus establish our new internal narrative. We noted how one of the false narratives that many people have of God is that God sticks it to us if we do something wrong. Citing a passage from the gospel according to John, we saw Jesus and his disciples encounter a man who was blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned – this man or his parents – that he was born blind?” In their minds, it had to be one or the other. Blindness was believed to be punishment from an angry God. Thus, Jesus set out to establish a new narrative within them. He quickly replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned. He was born blind that the works of God might be made manifest in him.” In other words, “God is good; God wills the good…and the glory of God will ultimately be revealed in him.” Then Jesus healed the man born blind. The point is that God wills what’s best for us. The problem is that we don’t see the big picture as God sees the big picture. Yet the narrative Jesus clearly sets out to establish here…is that God is good.
We considered how much of our experience might lead us to believe that God cannot be trusted. Why, even Jesus was not spared the agony of the cross when he begged God to do so. Thus, what we did was embark upon the process of conducting a spiritual inventory. In other words, we took the time to count our blessings. What we discovered is that while our troubles are indeed very real, they are really quite small compared to God’s widespread mercy. The more we are able to comprehend how many blessings we really have – freely given and freely received – the more we come to realize that God truly does will what’s best for us. And when that moment of revelation occurs, we can’t help but discover that God is indeed trustworthy.
Then we explored what we called a performance-based narrative. A performance-based narrative dictates that the good are rewarded with good, while the bad are rewarded with bad. The problem with a performance-based narrative about God is that it completely neglects the concept of grace. Thus, while looking at the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, we encountered a landowner who gave not on the basis of what the laborers earned, but rather, on the basis of his abundant generosity. Jesus’ intent, of course, was to equate the landowner with God. We discovered that – while the way of the world may be survival of the fittest – the way of God is generosity to a fault.
Looking at another angle of the performance-based narrative, we wrestled with whether or not God loves us only when we are good. We considered the parable of the prodigal son. There we discovered that there is a difference between hating the sin and hating the sinner. God loves us unconditionally and longs for our return. He will not rest until all of his children are securely under his roof. What remains for us is to decide whether life in the Father’s house is better than life on our own. Some come to that realization later than others, and some never come to it at all. Yet the Father’s love remains undaunted, for the love of God is unconditional.
Then we contrasted the grace of God with the holiness of God. The grace of God has to do with God’s unconditional love and acceptance, while the holiness of God has to do with God’s passing judgment on sin. We compared the grace of God and the holiness of God to the wings of a bird. How far can a bird fly by flapping only one wing? The world needs the grace of God on the one hand – and the holiness of God on the other hand – if it is ever going to fly; if it is ever going to change; if it is ever going to grow.
Today our goal is to establish the narrative that God is self-sacrificing. We noted earlier how out of touch the concept of sacrifice is with contemporary American society. And, truth be told, many of us have a problem with the sacrifice Jesus made. I knew a woman once who was very devout in her faith. She’d taught Sunday school for years, she’d been Moderator of the Presbyterian women’s group, and she’d even served on Session. But she had a problem with the sacrifice Jesus made. “I just don’t understand why God would allow his Son to die on a cross like that,” she once said. “To me…that borders on child abuse.”
The sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, I think, serves as a deterrent to many who would consider the Christian faith. Why did God allow his Son to die such a horrible death? And, pushing the envelope a little further still, wasn’t it God who sent him there in the first place? If we take the time to think about it, I suspect a lot of us have a problem with the sacrifice Jesus made. I suspect a lot of us have a problem with the death of God’s Son on the cross.
In order to fully understand what God was up to in the Easter event, I think we need to consider what we call Trinitarian theology. We know God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God the Father is God over and above us, God the Son is God with us and for us, and God the Holy Spirit is God in us. We believe in one God, revealed to us in three persons. Yet the word “person” comes from the Latin word persona, which literally means “mask.” So in other words, we literally have one God who essentially puts on masks to reveal himself to us in three ways. Are you with me? What I am saying is this: Jesus Christ dying on a cross does not reveal child abuse on God’s part. It was God himself who went to the cross that day. And that, my friends, is what we call the self-sacrifice of God.
Now, the issue of why the cross was necessary is a subject for another sermon. What we are concerned with today is the self-sacrifice of God. So, rather than consider the rationale behind the cross, let’s instead look to what motivated God to go to the cross. What was God thinking when he went to the cross to die?
Richard Francis Xavier Manning – better known as Brennan Manning – is an American author and a Catholic priest. In a book called, The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God’s Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives, he tells the story of how he came to be known as Brennan. While growing up in Depression-era New York City, his best friend was a boy named Ray Brennan. The two of them did everything together. As teenagers they bought a car together, they double-dated together, and they went to high school together. Later, they enlisted in the Marine Corps together, they went to boot camp together, and they fought on the front lines together in Korea.
One night, while sitting in a foxhole, Manning was reminiscing about the good old days in Brooklyn, while his friend listened and ate a chocolate bar. Suddenly, a live grenade dropped into the foxhole. His friend looked at him, smiled, dropped his chocolate bar, and threw himself on the hand grenade. It exploded – killing him – but Manning’s life was saved.
When Manning later became a priest, he was instructed to take on the name of a saint. He thought of his friend, Ray Brennan. From that point on, Richard Francis Xavier Manning came to be known as Brennan Manning. Years later, Father Manning went to visit Ray Brennan’s mother in Brooklyn. As they sat up late one night drinking tea, Father Manning asked her, “Do you think Ray loved me?” Mrs. Brennan got up off the couch, shook her finger in Father Manning’s face, and cried, “Dear God, what more could he have done for you?”
Father Manning said that at that moment, he experienced an epiphany. He imagined himself standing before the cross of Jesus, wondering: “Does God really love me?” Then he thought of Jesus’ mother Mary pointing to Jesus on the cross and crying out, “Dear God, what more could he have done for you?”
The cross of Jesus Christ is God’s way of doing all that he could do for us. Now we need not wonder: Am I important to God, does God care about me, or does God really love me? All we have to do…is look to the cross of Christ.
When it comes to God’s self-sacrifice, we often ask the question: Why did Jesus have to die? Maybe the answer is that Jesus did not have to die. Maybe the answer is that Jesus chose to die. Why? For God so loved the world. Amen.
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