Today’s Scripture
Reading (January 30, 2015): Ephesians 4
Theologian
William Barclay once commented that “if God had been a man, he would long
since have wiped out the world for all its disobedience!” I think we understand
that. I know we are just joking – kind of – but how often do you hear someone
say they would like to hit someone in the head with a two by four. Whenever
someone crosses us, they are dead to us. And, if I am honest, I have to admit
that I have met some of the most unforgiving people inside the Christian Church.
If this is the way we react when we don’t get our own way, what chance would we
have with an all-powerful being who is continually ignored or abused by the
human race? Barclay is right, if God reacted like a man, we would have been
gone a long time ago.
So
why are we still here? It isn’t that God hasn’t tried. In the story of Noah (Genesis
6-9), the central plot of the story is that God meets with Noah and informs him
that he has had it with the human race. And so he proposes to Noah that Noah
should build an Ark and take animals and his family inside the ark, at which
point God would deal with the human race as they deserved – he would destroy
them with a flood. And so, Noah builds an Ark
In
Genesis 18, God once again is frustrated with the way that the people of the
earth are acting. In this case God steps down out of heaven and has a meeting
with Abraham. God proposes that he will destroy the offending cities, Sodom and
Gomorrah, and likely a few other unnamed cities which had been built by the
Dead Sea, with fire. Abraham could have done what Noah did, and just acquiesce to
God. But instead Abraham finds the courage to argue with God. What if there are
fifty righteous people in the city? God relents, if he finds fifty righteous
people he will not destroy the cities. So Abraham continues, what about forty,
thirty, twenty, or even ten? And God commits to Abraham that if he can find ten
righteous people he will not destroy the cities. But God cannot even find ten righteous
people, and so the cities are destroyed by the fire of God.
In
Exodus 32, the people of Israel build a Golden Calf to worship instead of God,
and once again the anger of God burns against the people of the earth. This
time God argues with Moses, step aside and let me destroy this stiff-necked
people of Israel and I will raise up a new nation starting with your
descendants. Moses could have followed the actions of Noah and simply step
aside, or of Abraham and argue with God over the number of bad apples it takes
to destroy the batch. But, this time, Moses refuses to step aside. He stands up
to God and begs God not to do such a thing. He begs for the life of his people,
the people of Israel. And I often wonder, is this just possibly the reaction
that God was hoping for from Abraham and from Noah. Is it just a little
possible that God hoped that the ones who know him the best would be willing to
stand up for the people of the earth, even when the sin and the error of the
people is more than obvious? Does Moses in this passage, more than either
Abraham and Noah, reflect the true desires of our creator God?
Paul
would seem to want to argue that. He instructs the Ephesian Church to “be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one
another in love.” These would appear to be the
characteristics of a God who has, for some reason, allowed his rebellious
creation to live as long as he has. And it follows that unless we can find these
godly characteristics, this world may not last for much longer. The real weapon
of mass destruction that threatens this planet on a daily basis is just simple
selfishness.
But what may be even more critical is that the Christian Church needs
desperately to find these characteristics. We have a too well-earned reputation
for shooting our own wounded. What we need is to learn to react to the negatives
inside the church with love – to welcome those who may believe differently from
us into our midst with gentle humility, recognizing the very image of God that
they bear on their souls. Only then will it be possible to say that Church has
begun to reflect the character of the God we profess to serve. Only then will
we truly be fulfilling our purpose on the earth.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading:
Ephesians 5
No comments:
Post a Comment