Ross Erb: Clinging Tightly, Holding Lightly

August 24, 2008
Matthew 16:13-20

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Matthew 16 has some interesting events recorded in it.
You read them and you start to think that this bunch guys called disciples just are not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier!
In fact, as you read you get the sense that even the smart ones of the time,
the teachers and preachers, were not as smart as they thought they were.
To recap, Chapter 16 starts with some Pharisees and Sadducees trying to test Jesus,
asking for a sign.
Jesus uses the maxim “red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky at morning, sailors take warning” to point out that they can tell signs of coming weather,
but they cannot read the signs of the times.
Now, these were the teachers and professors, and the preachers and theologians of Jesus time. This would be like Jesus saying to me, or Pastor Barbara, or your Sunday School teacher,
or even a seminary dean (just for an example)
that they, we, don’t know as much as we think we know.
Then, as Jesus walks off,
he warns his disciples to beware the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Instead of connecting the dots and realizing what Jesus was talking about,
the disciples think Jesus is mad at them because they forgot to pack a lunch.
So Jesus has to set them straight as well.
“Haven’t you learned from the feeding of the 5000 and the 4000?
The problem here isn’t with bread, it is with poor teaching!”

That brings us up to the verses you just heard from Chapter 16.
The group is walking along and comes to the district of Ceasarea Philippi.
Jesus asks who people think he is, and he gets some pretty standard answers.
People think he is the reincarnation of one of the great teachers of Israel’s past,
someone like John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the other prophets.
I can only imagine that Jesus is kind of cringing inside as he asks
“Who do YOU say that I am?”
He knows the track record of this group.
Based on that, I don’t know why Jesus would expect Simon Peter to blurt out,
“Hey, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!”
And in fact, I’d guess that Jesus’ head snapped up and he said,
“Whoa, where did that come from?
Simon, you didn’t come up with that answer on your own,
God gave you that knowledge!”

I can’t help but think that if Jesus had asked the disciples that same question the month before,
or the week before,
maybe even the day before,
Peter would not have had the same answer,
he would not have come up with that bold statement defining Jesus.
Back in Matthew 8, after Jesus calmed a storm while out in a boat with the disciples,
they ask, “What sort of man is this?” They were not sure about Jesus then!
Then they get a bit clearer understanding in Matthew 14, when, after Jesus walks on the water,
Peter says, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
He’s starting to get it.

It’s over the course of time
that the disciples come to a fuller understanding of the person of Jesus.
They were not wrong when they started following him
because he was a compelling teacher, or a charismatic leader.
As they began to see more of who Jesus was, they had to re-evaluate what they “knew”
and eventually they came to catch a glimpse of Jesus as the Son of God.
The TRUTH of who Jesus is does not change as the disciples grow in their understanding of Him. They simply begin to see more of the truth.

Truth is a tricky concept, and it is interwoven into our understanding of faith.
It is frequently referenced in the Scriptures (about 450 times),
and indeed as a child I sang 2 Timothy 2:15, which told me,
“Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the Word of Truth.”
In John 8, Jesus tells the Jews who had believed in him,
“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples;
and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
He also says in chapter 14 of John that he is “the way, the truth, and the light.”

But these days we are not content with looking at Jesus as the truth.
We want to get more specific than that,
we want to be able to say, “this statement is truth; this fact is truth.”
Indeed, our claims of “truth” regularly divide us.
We are no longer content to live with mystery and ambiguity.
In this age of science and reason, we need to claim the truth!
I am reminded of the courtroom scene from the movie, “A Few Good Men”
where Tom Cruise yells, “I want the truth!”,
and Jack Nicholson yells back, “You can’t handle the truth!”

Hmm, perhaps we are all like Tom Cruise (there is a fanciful thought)
well, except for the looks, the money, the fame…
in that we are crying out that we want the truth.
And to be honest, we all think that we have the truth.
We think that we are, in matters of faith,
reading the Bible correctly, and interpreting it correctly,
or perhaps not interpreting it but accepting it at face value,
and that anyone who reads the Bible differently is wrong.

And of course, in today’s world,
the Bible does not speak directly to many of the issues that we face.
The result is that we can argue and splinter.
A current example is the debate over creation, evolution, or intelligent design.
We get heated up over this issue.
If you are a firm creationist, then the theory of evolution is heresy.
If you are a proponent of evolution,
then the two creation stories in Genesis are merely quaint fairy tales.
And if you are either a creationist, or an evolutionist,
then you might view those pushing the idea of intelligent design as having sold out
to either sloppy theology or sloppy science.

This is not unique to today.
Not so many years ago, we KNEW that the world was flat.
We KNEW that the sun and the stars revolved around the earth.
Theologically, we KNEW that women could not preach or pastor a congregation.
The list could go on and on.
Many of our understandings of the physical world,
many of our understandings of what it means to be followers of Jesus,
and to be Christ’s church, have changed over time.

I Corinthians 13:12 says,
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.
Now I know only in part;
then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
What does it mean to us that we are only seeing an incomplete or distorted version of the truth?
Science makes advances almost every day it seems,
and new knowledge reconfigures how we understand this world, God’s creation.
Is it possible that we are also having the same thing happen as we continue to study the Bible?
Again, Isaiah 55:8 says
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
We do our best to diligently and faithfully read and interpret scriptures.
Anabaptists have long held that this happens best in the context of the faith community.
I cannot go off and read the Bible and form my own understandings
without also testing those understandings with my brothers and sisters in the church.

In 1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn addressed the graduating class at Harvard
and he told them:
“Harvard’s motto is ‘Veritas.’
Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives
that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit.
And even while it eludes us,
the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings.”

It is the second point that caught my attention.
It is so easy to forget that we are not seeing the whole picture from God’s vantage point.
It is so easy to forget that we do not know all that God knows.
And when we forget, when we hold too firmly to what we think is TRUTH,
to the illusion of truth,
then we have misunderstandings and we begin to divide into camps.

Our faith is full of mystery.
Michael Card wrote about this and talked about the mystery of Christ.
It is not that Christ is a mystery only to non-believers.
No, Christ is a mystery to those of us who believe and have committed our lives to him.
How do we explain the virgin birth, the Trinity, grace, prayer, the Cross, the Incarnation?
Oh, we try, we have theories and explanations.
But in the end, all of this is beyond at least my ability to fully understand.
So I, and I would suggest WE,
are not so different from the disciples.

God is continuing to reveal greater and greater portions of the TRUTH to us.
Jesus is THE TRUTH.
We can cling tightly to that!
Jesus is the touchstone that we keep coming back to in our faith.
Jesus centers us and through His words and deeds gives us direction.
Beyond that, as we read and apply the scriptures,
we look to God to continue to give us new insights and understandings
into His Word and His Will.
In the meantime, we need to hold lightly those things that we KNOW,
remembering that now we know in part.
It is only after we leave this world to be with God in glory
that we will know fully, even as we are known fully.

That is a scary idea for most of us,
thinking that the things that we know and believe are perhaps not completely accurate.
Does this mean that we have to doubt everything?
I don’t think so.
I’m not suggesting that everything should be up for grabs.
We continue to believe and understand as we do.
We just allow for the fact that we may not know the whole truth on a matter.

Paul wrote in Romans 12 that we are not to be conformed to this world,
(and here I would like to suggest that this could mean that we not believe that we have a corner on the truth)
but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds,
so that we can discern what is the will of God –
what is good, and acceptable, and perfect.

This morning we marked milestones
as our children and youth enter into new stages of their education.
Not just in school, but at home and here at church,
their minds are being shaped, renewed as new knowledge is instilled.
It is an exciting time, I hope, as new ideas and understandings open up to them.
They see the world in different ways, and they see themselves in the world in different ways.
But Paul was not writing only to the children and youth of the church in Rome.
All of us, whether young or old, need to continue to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
As this happens, some of what we KNOW, may need to be re-evaluated.
At times it may feel that everything is shifting.
Then we need to go back to THE TRUTH, to Jesus.
We need to get centered once again in our faith, and then look at what these shifts are.
That is when we test things out in the context of our faith communities.
Holding lightly to what it is we believe to be true does not need to mean that we believe any less.
It just means that we understand God to be active,
not just in the world, but in His body, the church.
God has, and will, continue to reveal more and more of Himself, of his Truth, to us.

So, on this “Back to School Sunday,
perhaps we are all needing to be reminded that we are still learning,
still being transformed by the renewing of our minds.
May we all be open to the movement of God,
as we continue to discern what is good, and acceptable, and perfect…
as we discern more and more of God’s Truth.
Amen.



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