That Was Then: This is Now

Hebrews 1:1-4
October 8, 2006

We had just finished another one of those business meetings. It was the kind of business meeting in which someone suggests something innovative and after the initial silence, established members rose to voice objections. In the interest of preserving the peace, the moderator moved that the church table the suggestion pending further study of the financial feasibility of the suggestion. The gathered congregation breathed a sigh of relief and went out into the night. They would not have to debate, study, ponder, or spend any more energy thinking through biblical logic. I walked out wondering what had happened and as I walked along I heard Jack Fretwell speaking with one of the established church members who had expressed the strongest objections to the suggested innovation. Jack said, “I know we’ve been here and done it that way for 75 years, but Bill, you can’t win today’s ball games on yesterday’s home runs.”

I admit it sounds a bit inelegant, certainly nor very scholarly, but that’s what the writer of Hebrews is saying. “Folks, in the past, our forefathers hit a passel of homeruns, but now it’s a whole new ball game.” Consider what he says. “In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.” In other words, yes, we need to pay attention to what the prophets said and did, but if you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, everything that the prophets said and did needs to be interpreted in light of Jesus. No longer are the words of the prophets sufficient. If you’re a follower of Jesus, and you encounter a problem or an opportunity in the world, you determine how to solve the problem or take advantage of the opportunity in light of what Jesus would have done, not on the basis of what the prophets said alone.

It’s interesting to me how after 9/11, WWJD bracelets virtually disappeared from Christian use, but we need to bring them back out. The writer of Hebrews would certainly have loved them. In all things, in every situation, in every decision, we need to consider what Jesus would do. Why?

Read verse three. “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” Did you hear that phrase? Jesus is the exact representation of God’s being. If you want to know the proper way to live in the world, the proper way to treat other people, the proper way to respond to situations, you can do an exhaustive study of the Pentateuch, including a synthesis of the entire Levitical and Deuteronomic codes and combine that with a reading of all the prophets, memorizing and writing down all they said, weighing the various emphases of the various writers given their historical and social contexts and then determine your daily faith stance in the world. Or, you can learn the story of Jesus and imitate that.

I majored in philosophy at Appalachian State University. To most of you, that probably sounds like a waste of time. When I told one of my friends toward the end of my sophomore year when we were required to declare our majors that I had decided to major in philosophy, he said, “So, you chose a major that lets you avoid choosing a major?”

“What do you mean?” I was indignant.

He said, “All you do in philosophy is bandy words about and never take a stance on anything.”

I said, “I think you’re wrong.” Then I thought for a moment. “On the other hand, you might have a point.”

My father’s objection to philosophy was less philosophical. What he meant to say was that philosophy was a major guaranteed to result in unemployment. “Philosophy? You can’t get no job with that.”

Well, I think everyone should be required to do basic philosophy. The discipline teaches you to think things through and examine the premises that underlie our basic assumptions. But I’m not here to argue for the legitimacy of my major in college. I did find out in majoring in philosophy, though, that philosophy hasn’t yet been able to grasp the mystery of God – and neither has orthodoxy.

During my junior year, I had to take part in a colloquium. For the whole semester, we were given a philosopher or theologian from history and we had to assume that person’s personality. Then, in our colloquium gatherings, our professors would lay before us classic philosophical and theological issues. We were to debate those issues as if we were the person who had been assigned to us. That meant that we had to read everything we could put our hands on that our assigned person had ever written, soak it in, and essentially become that person.

As I’ve thought back on it, I’m sure my major professor, Dr. Ray Ruble, knew what he was doing, because he assigned this born, bred and buttered Southern Baptist the medieval Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas.

Now, this was in the day before lap top computers and the internet. I had to actually go to the library, climb to the third floor and walk in among the book stacks to fetch out books by and about Aquinas. And there were scores of them. Thick books. Real thick books. Some of them were in Latin, but I pulled them down and began looking through them, searching out quotable quotes from Aquinas that I could use in colloquium.

Our first colloquium was going to be on the essence of God so I paged through the index of Aquinas’ multi-volume Summa Theologica and found that if I went to Volume three, article three, I would have the exact words of Aquinas regarding God’s essence.

This is what it said:

God is the same as His essence or nature. To understand this, it must be noted that in things composed of matter and form, the nature or essence must differ from the suppositum, for the essence or nature includes only what falls within the definition of the species; as humanity includes all that falls within the definition of man, for it is by this that man is man, and it is this that humanity signifies, that, namely, whereby man is man.

I looked up from the book and said to myself, “Huh?” Well, it was quiet there on the third floor of the library. The smell of book leather and wooden shelves permeated the air, and a warm, yellow shaft of afternoon sunlight poked through the window and little dust motes floated through it. It was so quiet, so quiet. And Aquinas was making no noise in my brain. “Well,” I thought, “If I can memorize this paragraph, maybe the rest of the guys in the colloquium will have the same reaction I did, but if I say it with confidence and drama, maybe they’ll think I know what it means, and they’ll just be impressed, and Dr. Ruble will give me an ‘A’.

Charles Winter pastors a First Baptist Church in a town in Tennessee. Charles and I talk pretty regularly, share our frustrations, and generally sympathize with and advise one and one primary source of frustration for Charles has always been a deacon by the name of Mr. Bergman. They don't rotate deacons at my friend's church, so Mr. Bergman has been a deacon for a lo-o-o-ong time. As Charles once said, "Ol' Bergman has underwear and socks older than I am." Says Charles, "He comes to the church before worship, helps fold the bullitens and generally catches up on gossip. Then, as many mornings as not, he says, 'pastor, I have an ox in a ditch. I have to miss church today to get him out. You know what I mean don't you pastor? Ox in a ditch?' Of course, he's always referring to the place where Jesus is arguing with the Pharisees about their legalism concerning not doing work on the Sabboth, and Mr. Bergman really likes that verse -- mainly because he operates a sealing and striping service and he's the only one in town who'll work on Sundays when other stores are closed and don't need their parking lots. So, even though he's a deacon, he's gone half the time running his business."

I pointed out that lots of people have to work on Sundays, but Charles responded, "Mr. Bergman could do his work on other days, it's just that he gets a bit more money than the others by doing it on Sundays. And even that wouldn't be so bad but for the way he treats his employees. He yells at them, pays them minimum wage, no benefits, makes them work every Sunday and never gives them a holiday. One day he bragged to me that his workers couldn't find work anywhere else, that he was the only one in town who'd employ them. Of course, he's always had real high turnover. One day when I was in Knoxville, I recognized one of his workers in the video store. I went over to him and introduced myself as Mr. Bergman's pastor. He looked at me with astonished eyes for a moment, then said, 'Mr. Bergman goes to church?'"
This frustrated Charles. You see, Mr. Bergman sat near the back of the sanctuary and every Sunday that he attended worship, he'd always sleep during the sermon. He'd interlock his fingers over a bulbous belly then his mouth would sag open. Charles complained that the only time Bergman ever came to worship was on Sunday morning, half of those he'd miss because of an ox in the ditch and he'd never come on Sunday nights or Wednesdays -- except when there was a business meeting. As Charles put it, "He'd never miss a decision making time, but he never attended a character making time."

Bergman's biggest complaint? People aren't honest, workers always come to work late, sometimes drunk, they lie, they're lazy, they don't have ambition. Can't make decisions. They have to be told everything to do. Bergman never appeared happy and he always had some complain about how things weren't going right at the church. He frustrated Charles to no end.

Not long ago, I was talking with Charles again and I commented that I hadn't heard him complain about Bergman recently. Charles said, "Oh, yeah! He's completely changed. Never misses worship, comes regularly on Wednesday nights, even participated in a deacons retreat."

"What in the world happened?" And Charles told me this story.

Bergman needed a new worker to replace yet another person whom he'd fired. Through word of mouth, a young man heard about the job and came by to see Bergman. He was a skinny kid with long hair pulled into a pony tail, an ear ring, and a tatoo of a dragon on his left forearm -- all three of which Bergman detested. But the fellow needed work seeing as how he'd just been paroled from the penitentiary in Owensboro and Bergman saw an opportunity to exploit some cheap labor. He hired the kid.

The next five Sundays Bergman worked his striping crew. When he announced that they were to show up for work on yet another Sunday, the young kid said, "Mr. Bergman, I was hoping that I could get off this Sunday."

Mr. Bergman blew up. "What do you mean, get off? Who do you think you are asking for special privileges when you haven't even worked two months yet!"

The young fellow sort of dipped his head and cowered away. Bergman uttered a little curse under his breath as he worked with filling the tank of their striping truck. He turned to get something and nearly ran right into the young kid, who'd come back.

What do you want now?"

"Well, Mr. Bergman, I really need to talk to you for a moment."

"What's there to talk about?"

"I want to tell you about someone I met in prison. He's my best friend and I he really makes me happy no matter what goes on in my life. I want to go visit him on Sunday, and Mr. Bergman, you seem real unhappy yourself and I thought that if you met my friend, he might help you to feel better."

"Oh yeah? So who's your friend?"

"Jesus, sir. My friend is Jesus, and I think you need to meet him, too."

Bergman was about to really get mad, but something stopped him. He looked at the kid's scarred face -- he'd probably been knifed at some point -- and realized the fellow was quite serious. Bergman realized that even though he'd been going to church all his life, the kid couldn't tell it. And it wouldn't do any good to tell the kid that he was a deacon because the kid would never believe it. Bergman lowered his voice and said, "Tell you what, son, you go ahead and go to church next Sunday. Go to your church, and I think I'll just go with my wife to her church."

Well, something had snapped in ol' Bergman. He started coming to Bible studies on Wednesday evenings and after several Sundays had passed and he hadn't gone out to get an ox out of the ditch, he explained to me that he had decided to give his men every Sunday off. In fact, he raised their pay and instituted a health policy. After some time, though, customers started noticing that Bergman's Striping Company had mighty courtious and happy employees and soon, Bergman had more business than he could handle. Profits went up, he bought more equipment and hired more workers -- and made the paroled long hair into the foreman of a crew. He started getting honest days wages out of his men, he realized that they were acting more trustworthy, they were working on time and showing up regularly. Bergman realized that those demons that he hated so much in his men had been thrown out when he decided to connect the mountain top on Sunday with the valley he worked in the rest of the week.

That's how we'll toss the demons out of this land: by taking our faith into the market place and daring to put it into practice where we work through the various facets of our jobs that we have in front of us.