25^th February 2014

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley Sunday 19 January 2014

Lessons - Isaiah 49:1-6; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:35-42

'Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ.' (1 Corinthians 1:3)

This familiar blessing shows what it means to belong to the 'Church of God' (v2). It describes a community unlike any other: a 'fellowship' of Christ (v9) that we have not chosen for ourselves but into which we have been 'called'.

In our society, where individual choice is considered sacred, it seems preposterous that membership in the Church is determined by someone else.
Moreover, the sense of being 'chosen' for a specific God-appointed purpose is widely thought to be dangerously narrow and fanatical. Surely, it is said, our multi-cultural, multi-faith society requires us to give up such an exclusive idea.

Ironically, many who feel 'called' to promote tolerance, vehemently attack Christian beliefs and practices. They are rightly appalled by misbehaviour by clergy and lay members of the institutional Church. But they often act as if they have been 'chosen' to ensure that Christian voices are silenced on important public issues.

This is typical of many religious and political 'Saviours' or 'Messiahs'
over the centuries who believe that they are 'chosen' to call people to follow them in overthrowing the old order and embracing their brave new world. Such figures are found on the left, right and centre of politics and religion.

Common to all of them is the appeal to their virtues and their opponents'
vices, the promise of being rescued from poverty, oppression or ignorance and the hope of tasting heaven on earth. Often they include a 'call to arms' to their followers to defeat the infidel and glorify the revolution.

Our readings also speak of a 'calling' to follow a Chosen One in whom salvation is revealed.

But that is where the similarities end. Those called to preach the Gospel and live it out in community are disciples of the only Saviour who has given himself completely for all of us in our broken relations in this strife-torn world!

This Saviour does not manipulate the masses to gain power. He does not expose the shortcomings of one group and praise the virtues of others. He knows that all have fallen short of the glory of God. While insisting that the poor and the outcast be treated justly and mercifully, he does not promise social, economic or political utopia. (For example, see the temptations in Matthew 4:1-11 and parallels.) Instead, he displays God's redemptive love for all!

Christ is the Chosen One who exposes our true agenda. Behind our values and ideals lurks a fierce desire to shape the world and other people in our image, instead of in the image of God in Christ. We foolishly imagine that the future well-being of our society and the world would be improved if only everybody were to follow our religious or political beliefs.

We hate to admit that well-intentioned people like us need redemption!
Indeed, we think that talk of 'sin' and 'redemption' is out of place in a society where our 'choices' are held to be ultimate.

The problem is our culture has been 'Christianised'. We have lost contact with the magnificence of our human calling to reflect the glory of God's grace and goodness as it has been revealed in Christ. It is only in his humanity that we see both God's glorious purpose for our humanity and our failure to be fully human!

Sadly, having largely lost the sense of being called to such a special vocation, we happily go along with the prevailing mood. For some, being members of the 'Church of God' is little different from belonging to any community group.

Compare this with what Paul says about the Church (ekklesia) that is established by the will of God. God has chosen him to be an 'apostle' of the Gospel and has called the 'saints' (at Corinth and elsewhere) who 'are sanctified in Christ Jesus' (vv 1,2) to witness to the glory of God in him. The fact that they are 'set apart' has nothing to do with their superior virtue or ideals, but with the 'grace' and 'peace' that they have experienced in their relationship with 'God the Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ' (v3). God's reconciling grace in Christ is the sole basis for them being chosen to participate in the Christian 'fellowship' (v9).

This calling is a high privilege and responsibility. The Church is to bear testimony to Christ before the world. Christians are to give thanks for the gift of grace (v4) which has 'enriched' their life-together (v5). In all situations they are to 'strengthen one another in grace and peace'
(v6). They are to place their hope, not in themselves, but in God's future for our sinful and strife-torn world - a future that has already begun in Christ (v8).

The privilege of being called into the 'fellowship of his Son' (v9) is amplified in John's account of the calling of the first disciples in John 1:29-51. After John the Baptist declares Jesus to be 'the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world' (1:29,36), Andrew and Simon (and later
Phillip) follow him. The centrality of this saving event for all is enacted at the Lord's Supper when we sing that Jesus is the 'Lamb of God who bears our sins and redeems the world' - the One chosen to embody God's
'mercy' and 'peace'.

This imagery and these ideas can be unsettling. They are drawn from Jewish tradition. The killing of the Passover lamb reminded them of God's deliverance from bondage in Egypt (Exodus 12). Lambs were killed as sin offerings. The Suffering Servant was to be put to death for the sins of the people (Isaiah 53:6-9).

Drawing on this rich imagery, John makes clear that Jesus is no 'Saviour'
or 'Messiah' come to avenge the enemies of Judaism and vindicate her faith and virtue! He does not take up the sword or spruik a new political or religious programme to impose on others. Instead, John invites us into a community that is called to witness to the extraordinary act of divine love in which God's Chosen One gives himself sacrificially for sin.

How can we make sense of an act that has no parallel in our ordinary experience? What does it mean that Jesus 'takes away the sin of the world'? All we can do is use analogies that move us to embrace a reality that we cannot fully comprehend or describe.

* When we say to somebody we love, 'I wish I could take away your suffering,' we long to destroy its power over their life. We may wish that we could bear it instead. But we know that we cannot remove the burden.
Likewise, although we may yearn to destroy the power of sin in our own lives, the lives of our loved ones and the life of the world, we know that
we cannot remove its burden.

* The story of Simpson and his donkey dying in the process of saving wounded allied soldiers in World War 1 is etched in our minds. It is no slight on him to say that, had he saved enemy soldiers, the parallel with the sacrificial action of the 'Lamb of God' would have been closer.

* A closer analogy is found in a World War 2 story about an incident in a Nazi concentration camp. An innocent man, knowing that his decision meant certain death, stepped forward to take the blame for something that another prisoner had done.

* In a recent TV murder mystery, a father, out of love for his wayward son, confessed to a crime that he knew his son had committed.

Comparisons drawn from individual situations help us draw closer to what John means by 'the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world'. We cannot remove the cause of sin in ourselves or in others or in the world.
Yet, astonishingly, in Christ, God has come into the midst of our broken, strife-torn world, taken upon himself the suffering caused by our sin, and forgiven us for refusing to live out the glorious humanity that is God's high purpose for us.

We badly need to hear this word of grace and peace. That is why the 'Church of God' (v2) is called to witness to Jesus Christ - the Chosen Saviour and Messiah - in whom God's reconciling love for the world has been embodied. That is why we are to be a community of hope (v8) which yearns for the time when the defeat of the power of sin in Christ is acknowledged by all.

'Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ.'

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Rev Dr Max Champion is the minister of St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is a member of the Council of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.