“Keeping God’s Glory
Safe on Earth”
Mark 1:4-11
First
Presbyterian
The Reverend
Thomas A. Sweet
January 11,
2008
Baptism of
the Lord Sunday
2009
marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin who is, as
you may or may not know, often considered to be the father of Presbyterianism
and the towering figure in the development of what we call Reformed theology and
the Reformed tradition, the tradition of which our church is a part.
Along with a handful of other reformers who protested against what they
considered to be abominations and abuses in the Roman Catholic Church of that
day, Calvin was a leader of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century.
Though
Calvin was trained as an attorney, we know him best today as a first-rate
theologian and biblical scholar. His
defining theological work is known as The
Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin
was born and lived in
In
honor of Calvin’s 500th birthday, Princeton Seminary and the
Presbyterian Church are sponsoring websites that feature a daily lectionary of
readings from The Institutes of the
Christian Religion. For those
who desire, the entire text of The
Institutes can be read in 2009 by following the daily readings.
I have decided to do that this year as a spiritual and theological
discipline in no small part because I did not give Calvin his proper due when I
was a seminarian. With the proximity
of Princeton to
I
have been reading The Institutes for
ten days now. I find Calvin at times
to be utterly brilliant, usually blunt, and sometimes stodgy and arcane.
He both infuriates and inspires. He
challenges and chastens. He turns
the spotlight on my sin but the floodlight on God’s grace. Always
he makes it clear that our lives have first and last to do with God whether we
acknowledge it or not.
Let
me give you a little Calvin sampler from my early reading (with the caveat that
inclusive language was not yet “invented”):
“Today, all sorts of subjects are
eagerly pursued, but the knowledge of God is neglected…Yet to know God is
man’s chief end, and justifies his existence.
Even if a hundred lives were ours, this one aim would be sufficient for
them all.”
Calvin
also insists that the knowledge of God and self-knowledge, that is, knowing
ourselves, are interrelated. On the
one hand, Calvin says that the discontent we sometimes feel within ourselves
about our lives is a recognition of the larger Ground of Being in which we live,
as when
“Each of us must, then, be so stung by
the consciousness of our own unhappiness as to attain at least some knowledge of
God. Thus, from the feeling of our
own ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity and – what is more – depravity and
corruption, we recognize that the true light of wisdom, sound virtue, full
abundance of every good, and purity of righteousness, rest in the Lord alone.
To this extent we are prompted by our own ills to contemplate the good
things of God; and we cannot seriously aspire to God before we become displeased
with ourselves. For what man in all
the world would not gladly remain as he is – what man does not remain as he is
– so long as he does not know himself, that is, while content with his own
gifts, and either ignorant or unmindful of his own misery?
Accordingly, the knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God,
but also, as it were, leads us by the hand to find God.”
But
it also is true, Calvin says, that we cannot truly know ourselves until we have
seen what he calls “the face of God”
and what we might call “the
extraordinary in the ordinary” or “inestimable
beauty” or “inexplicable
compassion”…whatever it is in us that raises up a lump in our throats or
causes us to lose ourselves in something beyond us.
Again, I refer to Calvin (thinking that if I quote him enough you will
clamor again for Mary Oliver!):
“It is certain that man never achieves
a clear knowledge of himself unless he first has looked upon God’s face, and
then descends from contemplating God to scrutinizing himself.”
It
is not until we see the limitless grandeur of God that we can acknowledge our
own limitedness. Such a discovery of
disparity is never for the purpose, though, of making us feel like worms by
comparison, but so that we may accept the invitation of God to share in the
fullness of God’s glory.
Okay,
just one more Calvin citation (for today!).
This one takes us to this sermon’s destination.
Sometimes we encounter a word image so beautiful and transcendent that
simply reading it or hearing it or speaking it aloud moves us toward doing what
it says. All week long I have been
filled with the glow of the image Calvin used in trying to convince King Francis
I to side with those who were protesting what the reformers claimed was the
debasing and defiling of true religion and the gospel by the Catholic Church of
his day. Calvin wrote to Francis:
“It will then be for you, most serene
King, not to close your ears or your mind to such just defense, especially when
a very great question is at stake: how God’s glory may be kept safe on earth,
how God’s truth may retain its place of honor, how Christ’s Kingdom may be
kept in good repair among us.”
Perhaps
Mary Oliver, come to think of it, was in league with Calvin when she wrote that “there
is only one question: how to love the world.”
But I like the way that Calvin says it: “…
a very great question is at stake: how God’s glory may be kept safe on
earth.” How about that as a
mission statement…for our church or for ourselves…to keep God’s glory safe
on earth!
What
is God’s glory? It is, I think,
something like the true nature of God. God
in God’s Godness. Though I am
impressed by that phrase I just coined (smile), it might be just a little obtuse
and, in any case, we need to know what God’s “Godness” is.
And that is where today’s scripture reading about the baptism of Jesus
helps us.
Marks
tells us that as Jesus was being lifted up out of the baptismal waters of the
Jordan River, Jesus saw God’s Spirit in the form of a lone, wild bird
alighting on him even as he was hearing the divine Voice from heaven saying to
him, “You are my beloved Son; with you I
am well pleased.” What Mark
was meaning for us to understand is that in Jesus we could see “God in God’s
Godness.” That is what the church
means to say when it calls Jesus “the Son of God.”
Jesus is an icon of the living God, an incarnation of the living God, an
exemplar of the heart and mind and hope of the living God.
Jesus is the glory of God in plain sight.
His life, his teaching, his ministry, his death, and resurrection all
show forth the glory of God on earth. That
was his vocation. Keeping the
glory of God safe on earth. Not
length of years, not popularity with the masses, not fancy titles.
Keeping the glory of God safe on earth.
Being the presence of God’s Godness.
Calvin
himself called the world “the theater of
God’s glory” which means, at the least, that God’s glory is to be
visible here.
So that becomes our vocation as well, we who also have been baptized.
We are, the church is, if we are to live truly and deeply into our
calling, to be those who by the manner of our living help to keep God’s glory
safe on earth. Rooted in mercy,
generosity, forgiveness, humility, justice, hospitality, regard for the earth
our home and all of creation, and love…and daring to live past social
conventions into the fullness of our humanity…our lives become the hope of the
world.
Have
you ever heard or read W. H. Auden’s extended poem entitled “For
the Time Being”? It is
subtitled “The Christmas Oratorio” and part of it describes our lives
after the heightened days of Christmas have returned us to normalcy.
Auden writes:
Well, so that is that.
Now we must dismantle the tree
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes –
Some have gotten broken – and carrying them up to the attic.
…But for the time being, here we all are…
…To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all…
…There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance…
I
suggest to you today, no, I declare to you today that the way we do that, the
way we redeem The Time Being from insignificance is to live in such a way that
we help to keep God’s glory safe on earth.
Now there is a New Year’s resolution worth keeping!
Amen.
©
Copyright 2009 First Presbyterian Church