I am the Life

It’s funny, I don’t have a favorite German Chancellor or a favourite African dictator but I do have a couple of favorite American Presidents.  I have enjoyed reading the quiet wit of Calvin Coolidge, don’t know what he was like as a president but he said some quotable things.  Although it happened when I was really young I have heard enough people talk about Camelot to wonder how things would have turned out if JFK had of lived, sometimes I put Bill Clinton on the list, but that’s just to annoy my republican friends.  But my  all-time favourite US president would have to be Abraham Lincoln, and that is probably true for a lot of people.  Partly, because as I have mentioned before, he is a distant relative of mine on my Mother’s side, but also because of his stand against slavery and how he handled the entire issue of forgiveness following the defeat of the south in the US Civil war, or as some people refer to it, the war of Northern Aggression.  My respect and admiration for Lincoln has only increased with my recent discovery that he was also a vampire hunter.  A vampire hunter can you imagine?

It was Abraham Lincoln who said and lived the adage “And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”  It seems that sometimes we are so consumed with getting as many years as possible we forget to enrich them and treat each year as special.  We become caught up in a quest for quantity over quality.   And it becomes easy to fall into one of two traps.  We either live like there is no tomorrow or we live like there is no today.  But Jesus was apparently concerned with how we live in the present and also how we would live in the forever.  There were times, very few but there were times that he raised the dead to life, Lazarus, Jarius’ daughter and the widows son.  In that case he was adding years to their lives, when he offers us eternal life he is offering to extend our lives.  And because of how he called us to live, and love and forgive he was offering to put more life in our years, to make our lives fuller. 

In the scripture that Colin read for us Jesus told those who followed him John 14:6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”  And in the first part of this month we looked at what it meant for Jesus to be the “Way” and the “Truth”.  Jesus didn’t say he would point us to the way or show us the truth he stated that he was the way and he was the truth.  And Jesus didn’t say he was one way or one truth he said he was the way and the truth. 

If we asked people today how they came to Cornerstone this morning we would discover that there are a variety of ways to come to our church.  If we were talking about direction you could arrive here up the Hammonds Plains Rd. or down the Hammonds Plains Rd.  You could come up Gatehouse Run or out Kingswood Dr.  and it would make no difference, because you would have arrived at your destination.  There are many ways to arrive at Cornerstone, and you could come via any of those ways by a variety of modes of transportation.  You could ride a bicycle, or walk, or come by car or motorcycle.  I guess you could probably parachute in or land a helicopter in the parking lot if you wanted. 

However Jesus said very clearly and without hesitation, John 14:6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”  And so very clearly Jesus said there was no other way to find God and no other way to find the truth about God other than through the Son of God.  And I know that sounds narrow and dogmatic and it is meant to be, because the truth has to be narrow and dogmatic about itself.  And if your vision of Jesus is a much more inclusive Jesus than you have never read the story of Jesus because in it not only does he say he is the only way and the only truth he also makes comments like Matthew 7:14 But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.   And while I feel that every person should have the opportunity to hear the story about Jesus I understand that not every person will embrace the truth about Jesus.  And not every person will choose to embrace the life that Jesus offers.  So what is this life that Jesus speaks of?

It is a life on both sides of the line.  If our lives were defined by a time line most people would view it as having two finite points, a beginning and an end.  Birth and death.  And so when we talk about life it is the period of time that fits between here and here. 

We live our lives up to the line and some people view death as the finish line, at that point everything stops.  Stephen Hawking stated in one interview “I regard the brain as a computer that will stop working when its components fail. . . There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers — that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

But the bible tells us that death is a line that we can cross over.  It is not an ending it is simply a transition.  It is not a period as some people would teach but instead it is a comma.  So what is this life that Jesus has promised us?  Jesus told us that he didn’t come to show us the way, he is the way.  And Jesus didn’t come to point us to the truth he is the truth.  And so in the same way Jesus didn’t come to show us life he is life.  And when he is in us then we inherit the life he promised.  And what type of life is that?  In John chapter 10 Jesus makes this statement.   John 10:10 The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.  Perhaps you are more familiar with that passage from the older translation where we read John 10:10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.  And the original word that was translated “abundantly” or “rich and satisfying” was a word that meant:  “a super abundance”, not just a full life but full to the point of flowing over.   Jesus didn’t tell us that we would just be putting in time, or that we would go through life with our eyes looking at the ground missing all the wonders that are being offered to us.  Sometimes it seems that some people are just content to live, to make it from today until tomorrow.  Some Christians it would appear are so looking forward to what life will be like in heaven they completely miss all that life has to offer on earth.   But is that what Jesus was offering when he promised his followers that they would have a “Super Abundance of life”?

Joseph Dongell tells us in the Wesleyan Bible Commentary “Nor will he (Jesus) congratulate himself if his sheep are weak and scrawny, merely alive. Rather, he bends every effort toward producing a healthy flock, a flock “abundantly” alive.”   Even though Jesus offers that abundance of life he won’t force it on us.  It is a gift, but like all gifts it can either be received or rejected.  Jesus offers us life, but in the end it will up to us to choose life. 

Joan Baez wrote “You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can decide how you're going to live now.”  Sometimes it’s easy to look around and wish for someone else’s life but that’s not the life you were given. And you will not be responsible to live someone else’s life.  Josh Billings who said “Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.”

Following Jesus doesn’t just mean that we will be different after we die but that we should be different before we die.  That our lives will not only be beneficial for us that our lives will be beneficial to others.  And in many ways it is a different life than the life the world promises us. 

So what is this the life that Jesus said he is and by default what is the life that he promises us as his followers?

John 15:12 This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.

It Was and Is a Life of Love  Do you remember the story of the Good Samaritan?  Do you remember how it started?  A man came to Jesus and asked the question Luke 10:25 One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”   And so Jesus said you know what you are supposed to do, what is it the Law says?  And the man replied by saying Luke 10:27 The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”  

Simple enough right?  That must be what Jesus thought because he replies by saying Luke 10:28 “Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”   Simple, right?  Love God and love others. 

And Jesus reminded his followers that love would be such a defining factor in their lives that people would say “The only way they can love like that is because they follow Jesus.” 

But for Jesus love wasn’t just a feeling it was defined by action.  It was a love that reached out to those who were hurting, hurting physically, hurting emotionally and hurting spiritually and not only did he reach out to those who were hurting he did something about it. 

Too often today Christians try to define themselves by what they believe rather than how they behave.  But that isn’t how Jesus was defined and he didn’t say that is how we should be defined.  John 13:35 Jesus said “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”  And sometimes it’s easy to forget that, because sometimes it is a lot easier to say we believe in Jesus than to demonstrate that.  Which is why when Jesus’ brother James was writing to the early church he had these words to say James 2:18-19 But someone will say, "You have faith, and I have works." Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe--and tremble!   

 So Jesus didn’t simply call his followers to believe in life of love he called them to live a life of love.  Which leads us to the second point.    Probably the best know sermon in the world is the Sermon on the Mount and as a part of that we read these words of Jesus Matthew 5:6 God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.

 It Was and Is a Life of Justice Jesus wasn’t just concerned about people in some nebulous wishy-washy way.  He sought to meet their needs, even if it meant stepping outside the boundaries from time to time.  Last week we looked at Jesus statement “I am the truth”  and that goes hand in hand with Benjamin Disraeli observation “Justice is truth in action.” 

And so people were healed on the Sabbath, and tax collectors and prostitutes were restored and the woman caught in adultery was spared.  And for two thousand years those who follow him, those who make up his church, have been called to live a life of Justice.     We have blown it at times.  The Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades weren’t our finest hours, but you can’t just take them in isolation.  The Crusades may have ended with Christians behaving badly but remember why they started.  They started when armies of volunteers left their homes and their families to make their way to the middle east to defend innocent Christians and Jews who were being slaughtered by the armies of Islam. 

Remember who it was who founded hospitals and schools, orphanages, homes for unwed mothers and hospices for aids patients.  When a natural disaster hits it is the World Visions and the World Hopes and the Compassions and Samaritan Purses who are first on the ground with aid.  When I travel through Africa the majority of hospitals and clinics have been started and are staffed by Christian churches.  When someone had to take a stand against slavery it was preachers like Wesley and Wilberforce who effectively got the trade in human beings ended in the British Empire and it was churches that said “No more” and began the abolitionist movement in the United States and who organized the underground railroad to help slaves escape.  And right in the front of that movement was a small denomination called the Wesleyans. 

And when women didn’t have the right to vote, or make an honest living and were considered to be little more than the property of their husbands it was the church that took a stand.  And the first meeting in the US of the woman’s rights movement in July of 1845 wasn’t held in a lodge or a hall it was held in a church, a Wesleyan Church in Seneca Falls NY.  And when the world was turning a blind eye to the carnage of the civil war in Sierra Leone it was a Christian Agency that turned the international spotlight on the atrocities that were happening and it was that same Christian agency that organized Limbs of Hope providing prosthesis for tens of thousands of amputees who had lost their limbs to rebel soldiers, and that agency was World Hope the relief arm of the Wesleyan Church. 

So we are called to a life of justice.  Of standing up for the underdog, or making the world and our neighbourhoods a better place to live.  And so when someone has to take a stand against bullying in school it should be the Christians kids, and when someone has to take a stand against employers who exploit employees and the environment it should be Christians.  And when a politician drapes himself in the mantle of Christianity he better display the justice and compassion of Christ. 

On the night that he was arrested Jesus celebrated the Passover feast with his 12 closest friends and it was from this meal that we have our sacrament of communion.  Matthew 26:28 (Jesus said) “For this is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people. It is poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many.”

 It Was and Is a Life of Forgiveness  Even the greatest skeptics acknowledge the love and compassion of Jesus.  And part of what he taught and lived was forgiveness for others.  And yet 2000 years ago that didn’t prevent him from eventually being killed. And it was in his death more so than even in his life that his teaching about forgiveness became a reality.  It is easy to command others to forgive when you don’t have much to forgive.  Up to the cross it seemed that all Jesus had to forgive others for were the nasty things they said about him.  And yet on the cross, after having been lied about and beaten and humiliated.  After having been sentenced to die in the most painful and lingering way known to the Romans he doesn’t curse those who betrayed him and denied him, he doesn’t condemn those who beat him and nailed him to the cross instead we are told that he looks down from the cross and says, Luke 23:34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”  

And he calls us his followers to live a life of forgiveness as well, and it’s not a suggestion it is a commandment.  Matthew 6:14-15 “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

Sometimes when I talk to people they imply that they have not yet come to a place emotionally where they are ready to forgive.  “I’m just not ready yet.”  You need to understand that forgiveness is an action not an emotion.  It is something we do not something we feel and like every other action or activity we will choose to do it or not.

Her name was 66730, or at least that was the name she went by. Her father had died in a German Concentration camp as did her sister. Her freedom, her dignity, her humanity had been stripped away by those who imprisoned her and yet she survived. And not only did she survive she went on to minister to some of the very people who had been responsible for what had happened to her.  You probably know her as Corrie Ten Boom and she said  “Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.”  And I would suspect that Corrie Ten Boom had a lot more to forgive than any one of us.

If we go back to the line of life, we have been talking about how Jesus effects our lives in between the lines.  How we live in the here and now.  But what about on the other side of the line?  That question was asked of Jesus over and over again in the gospels.    Mark 10:17 As Jesus was starting out on his way to Jerusalem, a man came running up to him, knelt down, and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”   He was asking “what must I do to live on the other side of the line?”

It Was and Is Life Forever We are told in John 3:36 Anyone who believes in God’s Son has eternal life. Anyone who doesn’t obey the Son will never experience eternal life but remains under God’s angry judgment.   You did see that there were two conditions there believe and obey?  It’s not enough to believe if we don’t believe in him enough to obey, and it’s not enough to simply try to live by his commandments without believing that he was and is the Son of God.

Perhaps you are thinking “He preacher, what if you are wrong, what if there is no life after death?”  Well then what have I lost, but what if I’m right?

If you have never embraced the life that Jesus has for you then today is the day.  The bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 6:2 For God says, “At just the right time, I heard you. On the day of salvation, I helped you.” Indeed, the “right time” is now. Today is the day of salvation.”