Annual Conference 2005 - Saturday Sermon Page

Jim Hardenbrook
Photo by Regina Roberts

"In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven." Hebrews 1:1-3 (TNIV)

Wow! This is the One we have been called to fix our eyes upon. This is one we have been called to follow, to be guided by and, yes, to worship and adore. I love to tell this story.

So, how would you start a conference with the theme, "Fixing our eyes on Jesus?" If we look to the gospels we see that Mark just begins. "The beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah." Matthew goes back to Abraham. Luke goes back to Adam. But John takes the prize when he begins his gospel at "the beginning."

"In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the very beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of the world. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
The true light was coming into the world...."
"And the word became flesh and blood and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1:1-7 and 14

There you have it: an expansive soaring eagle-type view of what Matthew simply records the angel Gabriel saying, "And you shall call him Jesus."

Luke tells us, "In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. And everyone went to their own town to register. Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and the line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and placed him in a manger because there was no guest room available for them.
And there were some shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth and lying in a manger." Luke 2:1-12 (TNIV) I love to tell this story.

And so it was that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." The "Author and Perfector of our faith" came into this world the same as any other human - with the mess and pain and terrifying excitement of child birth. He was as totally helpless as any baby, unable to control his bladder or speak a known language. 2,000 years ago he slipped into the world almost unnoticed, spent his pre-school years as a refugee in Egypt, grew up in a regular kind of family in a blue-collar kind of town in northern Israel, learned the trade of carpentry, then burst on the local scene as an itinerant preacher/rabbi for three years only to be executed by the occupying force of imperial Rome. His closest friends and some of his enemies saw him resurrected after his death.

This one we call Jesus of Nazareth is the preeminent personality of human history, the perfect guide to good living, the savior of the world, the Lord of the church and the Son of the living God. He is the author and perfector of our faith. And now, this one called Jesus, is the central focus of this 219th Recorded Annual Conference of the Church of the Brethren - right where he should be.

But who is this guy? Throughout this year I've traveled to most parts of this denomination asking you to read a gospel a month and "fix your eyes upon Jesus." And some of you have, in all seriousness and respect, asked, "Which Jesus should we fix our eyes on?" I spent these last 12 months with the four gospels. Reading the gospels this year has taught me that most of us are wrong about Jesus in one way or another. As I have discovered new and amazing things about this one we call Lord and Savior - the Christ - the more disappointed I've become with my ignorance about him. After 32 years of ordained ministry! We tend to go to those images of Jesus we like. The ones that we agree with. There is the Jesus of European colonizers and the Jesus of the political advocate, the Jesus of German intellectuals and of Guatemalan Indians, the Jesus of stage, theater, song and film. This nation's third president, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), took scissors to all that offended his eighteenth-century concept of reason in the Gospels, and ended up with a Jesus who was little more than a great moral teacher. The 43^rd U.S. president, George Bush, claimed Jesus as his favorite political philosopher. Philip Yancey wrote a book called The Jesus I Never Knew (1996), while in the very first chapter of his new book A Generous Orthodoxy (2004) Brian McLaren pays tribute to "The Seven Jesuses I Have Known." In one of the more famous theological metaphors ever suggested, in his Quest for the Historical Jesus (1906), Albert Schweitzer compared the 19th-century liberal search for the "real" Jesus, scrubbed clean of centuries of historical accretions, to people gazing down a well and seeing only their own reflections.

A representative from each district carried oil lamps, lit from the Christ candle, out of the worship area into the world.
Photo by Regina Roberts

I've been reminded of some early Sunday School experiences. I was born in far eastern Oregon and raised in Idaho. That's cowboy country. My grandfather Hardenbrook was a cowboy on the famed King Ranch. I was raised with cowboy stories... and with Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.

I've always been in church on Sundays. I learned a lot of the Bible stories before I could read. One such story was the Sermon on the Mount. Remember, I was born in cowboy country. So, I envisioned the Sermon on the Mount as a sermon on the mount - probably a very beautiful buckskin quarter horse. Jesus wore a white hat and you folks need to know that Peter looked very much like Gene Autry and John like Roy Rogers. The rest of the apostles looked and sounded like the Sons of the Pioneers.

One Sunday School class while I was in second grade really messed with my vision of the sermon on the mount. Mrs. Frost was using flannel graph to tell the story and there was Jesus, sitting on a big rock preaching the sermon on the mount! Of course, I tried to correct her heresy. She would have none of it. She actually believed that it is called the Sermon on the Mount because Jesus preached it in the mountains. When I told her that her flannel graph pictures surely didn't look like any mountains I had seen (the Sawtooths, the White Clouds, the Owyhees, the Cascades, the ROCKIES!) she told me that the flannel graph pictures were designed by people from Illinois (Elgin, I think) who had yet to see real mountains. I mentioned that it should be called the Sermon on the Bump and she told me to sit down and be still. Mrs. Frost said, "And now we'll get back to the Sermon on the Mount." I started singing "Happy Trails." She invited me to go sit in the hallway.

I know how Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount! Don't mess with my mind.

That's the way we deal with the life of Jesus. We go to those "favorites," those passages that agree with us - that fit into the way we want to think and the way we want to believe. It sure beats having to change our minds.

But a continuous reading of the Gospels has shown me that Jesus was constantly confronting such thinking and demanding repentance - change. You have to take all of him if he is truly Lord. He is, after all, the "author AND perfector" of our faith. Oh but this is hard.

It was Soren Kiekegaard who wrote, "The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even more dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."

Now, Soren might have been having a tough day when he wrote those words but he sure makes me think.

So let's at least give Jesus a chance to be the "author" of our faith.

Throughout the Gospels Jesus is acknowledged as the Son of God. We hear human and non-human voices proclaiming this. At his baptism, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." At the transfiguration, "This is my Son. Listen to him." When pressed for a personal response to the public perceptions of Jesus Peter said, "You are the Messiah, the son of the living God."

And then there is this twist. He is also God, the Son. Thomas, "My Lord and my God." The early church, through the inspiration of the Spirit, came to this conclusion, "The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; his is the beginning and the firstborn among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross." Colossians 1:15-20 (TNIV)

Jesus is the Author of our faith. I love to tell this story.

He is also the "perfecter" of our faith. Few dictionaries contain this word. In spite of this, the word simply means "the one who makes things perfect, mature, or whole."

How did he and does he do that? How does he perfect our faith?

He asked and continues to ask tough questions, hard questions, questions that make us think deeply.

Consider some of these from the gospels:
"If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even the pagans do that?"
"Do you want me to come and heal him?"
"Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"
"And why do you worry about clothes?"
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"
"You of little faith, why are you so afraid?"
"How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep?"
"Why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?"
"Are you still so dull?"
"How many loaves do you have?" Oh I love to tell that story!
"Do you still not understand?"
"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
"But what about you?" "Who do you say that I am?"
"What do you think, Simon?"
"Haven't you read that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'?"
"Why do you ask me about what is good?"
"Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?"
"What do you want me to do for you?"
"Haven't you read, 'From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise?'"
"Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"
"Couldn't you men keep watch with me for one hour?"
"Are you still sleeping?"
"Am I leading a rebellion that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me?"
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

If we "fix our eyes" on Jesus he will have some questions for us. Those questions will cause us to leave him or get closer to him, hoping to find the answer.

He also perfects our faith by forcing both followers and enemies to look beyond themselves.

Once he looked at the crowd gathered to hear and be healed and noticed how harassed they were, "like sheep without a shepherd." He noticed the people when they were hungry and when they were alienated. He made people, who would never feel comfortable in church, feel comfortable and those who were very comfortable in church to be uncomfortable.

One of the biggest problems he caused was when he demanded that the needs of human beings be put above a strict, narrow interpretation of Sabbath keeping. Oh, there were 'litmus tests' back then just as there are among our liberal and conservative brethren today.

His great command was to love our neighbor and enemy. His great commission was to go and make disciples of all ethnic groups. He was always looking at others and if we "fix our eyes" on him he will makes us look at them.

My greatest concern about our next few days is that we will have this theme staring at us while we spend all our time talking and thinking about ourselves.

Another way Jesus perfects our faith is by challenging the "dominant culture" to think and act in ways contrary to "common sense" and yet in ways that have been proven successful.

"You have heard it said....but I say unto you...."
"Don't be afraid!"
"If anyone would follow me they must take up their cross..."
"Why do you worry about what you will eat or drink?"
"Love your enemies and pray for those who despitefully use you."
"If you want to be great in God's kingdom learn to be the servant of all."

And he showed us how by touching the leper, speaking to a woman at a well, healing the servant of a Roman army commander and praying for the forgiveness of those who executed him.

He perfects our faith by forcing us to look at the culture (whether it be liberal or conservative politics and theologies, or the materialistic individualism of our western civilization) that molds our living and see if there isn't "another way of living."

He told stories.

Stories about a farmer planting a field and another farmer who ended up with weeds in his.

Stories about a woman who lost a coin, a shepherd who lost a sheep and a father who lost his son.

Stories about a party designed for rich folks that ended up with a bunch of bums enjoying themselves at the table and on the dance floor.

Stories about a real jerk whose overwhelming debt was forgiven and then he went on to demand that a fellow servant pay a small, insignificant debt.

Stories about a wise builder who built on solid rock and a silly builder who built on shifting sand.

Stories about the impact of small seeds and yeast and stories about salt and lamps.

Oh, he could tell a story and hardly ever explain them - twice I think - but rather trusted the imaginations of those who were willing to hear - "let those who have ears hear."

If we "fix our eyes" on him we will hear some stories and find ourselves being challenged to think deeply and change.

The Resurrected Jesus is constantly perfecting our faith. Such perfecting requires a humility seldom seen in the Christian church. Liberal or conservative, doesn't matter, we have trouble being perfected. It was C. S. Lewis who wrote, "Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realizing that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor - that is the only way out of a "hole." This process of surrender - this movement full speed astern - is repentance." It is time for repentance.

And I'm coming to see that this only comes about when we are smitten with and by Jesus. I'm not talking about "having a personal relationship with Jesus." Or about allowing him to be your moral guide. Or about praying the sinner's prayer or fighting injustice in his name. I'm talking about being so amazed by his brilliance, his personality, his wisdom, his power, his disarming grace and, yes, his love that you want to be around him and learn how to be like him. "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection of the dead." Philippians 3:1-11

During the time between the resurrection and the ascension some of his closest friends went up north to the western shore of Lake Tiberius (Sea of Galilee). They fished all night. Caught nothing. While they were still out on the lake Jesus (who they were not expecting) called to them, "Have you any fish?" "No. Try the next dock." "Put your nets on the other side." They did and the catch was amazing. Peter thought it was the Lord, dove overboard, swam to shore. Jesus had a fire going, baking some bread. When the boats arrived the fish were sorted and counted. Some became part of the breakfast.

Jesus calls Peter for a talk that began with a question. "Peter, do you love me more than these?" These what? "Yes, Lord, know I love you." Two more times the question came. Two more times the answer came. All three times Peter was given a task - "feed my lambs, take care of my sheep, feed my sheep". After his three denials that awful night a few weeks ago he was back.

That question, "Do you love me?" is the question for this denomination at this time in our history. "Do you love him?" Love is a life changing state of being. With couples I've seen it lived out in the giddy courting stage right through the "till death do us part" stage. Love is a life changing state of being.

The resurrected Jesus is asking us this evening the same question asked of Peter that morning on the shore after breakfast. "Brethren, do you love me?" He's not asking if you will join a protest or be a conscientious objector. He's not asking if you will join a disaster relief effort or go on a work camp or serve in BVS. He's not asking for a donation to any of our agencies or if you will help start a new congregation or be a cross-cultural missionary. He's not asking about health insurance or southern Sudan. He's not asking about being the Annual Conference Moderator or even being Brethren. The question being asked of us is much more important. It is foundational, essential, the very source for all that we are and do. You see, our faith is not about Jesus, it is not based on Jesus, it IS Jesus.

So, he asks Peter and each one of us, "Do you love me?" But be careful with your answer. "Count well the cost," our ancestors warned us. I have no idea how he will specifically follow up your answer. But your answer will determine the future of this denomination and, of course, your eternal destiny and the eternal destiny of those you will encounter throughout the rest of your life.

And yes, there will be some of you here that, like Peter, are hurt that Jesus would ask you such a question! You don't think it should be asked of you! And you will ask that sinfully juvenile question Peter asked. Do you remember what it was? Looking at John, Peter asked, "What about him?". Your question will be somewhat different, "What about the BRF? What about BMC? What about "Elgin?" What about that congregation and that pastor?" Jesus will look you right in the eye with that 'look' (you know 'the look') and say, "What I do with them is my business. Your business is to follow me."

Brethren, do you hear the question? It is being asked of you tonight. Do you love him more than these?

Brethren, "let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and run with perseverance the course marked out for us fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorned the shame and sat down at the right hand of God."

Oh I love to tell the story...of Jesus and his love.

Happy trails!

Members of the 2005 Annual Conference news team, a ministry of the General Board, contributed to this report: Regina Roberts, Jesse Reid, Hannah Edwards, and Sarah Kovacs, photographers; Kathleen Campanella, Karen Garrett, Jill Kline, Frank Ramirez, Frances Townsend, Sarah Leatherman Young, and Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford, writers; Amy Heckert, technical support; Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford and Becky Ullom, editors.