I
think I’m getting old. I pledged
allegiance to Jesus back when I was 19 and that was over thirty years ago
now. That’s a long time and it went
fast. I look back on those days with
nostalgia and nostalgia is the number one clue that you’ve lived longer than
you’ve got left to live. It also might
be a symptom of some sort of weird mental disorder to say that I am nostalgic
about the 80’s particularly with respect to my walk with Christ. Those were the early days when things were
new for me with respect to him. I had
suddenly begun to know that God is really involved in my life and not just a
distant judge. I had discovered Jesus
lives and “What a friend we have in Jesus.”
I began to experience that the Holy Spirit was with me and in me working
to heal me and assuring me that God loves me, that all things are in God’s hands,
and that I need not fear the life that lies ahead of me.
TV
preachers were big back in the 80’s and I watched my share of them. A good many of them talked about something
called “victorious living”. They said
Jesus won the victory for us and all we got to do is by faith live that victory
and we will have a victorious life and making a donation to their ministry was
a good place to start. By victory they meant becoming financially successful and free of worry. In the 80’s there was a lot of that "faux-preaching" going
around.
Their
way of victorious living was basically a positive thinking spin on the ideas
taught by the first great atheist philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach. Feuerbach said two things: one, that God is
just a made up image of our best selves that we project out there and idolize;
and two, we are what we eat. Victorious
living preachers just said imagine the successful life you want and go for it
and God will make it happen and don’t think negative thoughts because if you
think defeat you’ll only receive defeat.
Incidentally, the Greek word for victory is “nike” – Just do it.
So,
victorious living according to the TV preachers went like this. God will give you the best life you can
imagine filled with blessing and joy.
Thinking negatively will keep you living in defeat. So, keep hoping for what you want and praise
God in everything. Get your eyes off of the
circumstances and fix them on Jesus the Author of your joy. When setbacks happen don’t accept them as
defeat just keep praying, immersing yourself in the Scriptures, and living the
Christian life of service and God will bring you the victory.
On
the surface there is some good pastoral advice hidden in there. Faithful living is victorious living. Fill your life with hope and praise and
prayer and devotion and service. I say
“Amen” to that. But don’t do it just to
get the successful life you’ve always dreamed of – a life of success is not the
victory Jesus won when he was crucified and died for us and the Father in the
power of the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead victorious over it. John is not telling us here to be faithfully
devout so that God will make us successful.
Success and a suffering free life is not what John meant when he wrote
that the victory that conquers the world is our faith and that whoever believes
that Jesus is the Son of God conquers the world. Bear with me a bit and I will take you down a
rabbit hole.
Sometimes
the last thing a person says is the most important thing they say. Looking at First John, the very last thing
John just up and out of the blue says is “Little children, guard yourselves
from idols.” What idols were people
worshipping that John would be concerned about? You’ll need a little historical
background. John likely wrote this
letter from the city of Ephesus, which is in western Turkey. He wrote it at the end of the first century
very close to the time he would have been arrested and imprisoned on the island
of Patmos when and from where he wrote the Book of Revelation. One of John’s major underlying themes in
Revelation is encouragement for Christians in western Turkey to keep their
confession of Jesus being Lord in the face of persecution. In Revelation those who “conquer” and
“overcome” are those who remain faithful in their confession of Christ in the
face of persecution even to the point martyrdom.
The
Romans were persecuting the followers of Jesus at that time because we were
refusing to participate in the civic worship of the Roman Emperor as a
god. The Emperor at that time was
Domitian who claimed himself to be a god and demanded to be worshipped as
such. He had temples with his statue in
them all over the Roman Empire for that purpose. Most emperors just claimed to be a son of the
god Jupiter and it was when they died that they became fully a god. Domitian was a bit shrewd, if not crazy, and
claimed to already be a god and should be worshipped as such and this helped
solidify his rule throughout the empire.
Therefore, when Christians refused to do their civic duty of worshipping
the Emperor and instead called Jesus Lord, Saviour, and Son of God, that was treason. That’s the reason I think the Romans arrested
John in his nineties and imprisoned on Patmos.
Throughout
this letter John keeps emphasizing that Jesus is the real Son of God, the One
True God and encouraging Christians to hold firm to that confession and to
demonstrate their allegiance to Jesus by loving one another as Jesus loved
them. Victorious living, as I see it
here, is the followers of Jesus together loving each other as Jesus loved and
died for us each – unselfishly, unconditionally, even to the point of
death. Jesus conquered the world,
conquered sin and death. In the power
and presence of the Holy Spirit Jesus made this victory real in the small
communities of his disciples who loved as he loved. As John saw it Lord Jesus and his Kingdom of Holy Spirit-filled disciples by building loving communities were conquering the Roman Emperor and his empire built by means of fear, economic domination, and military might.
The
immediate question that follows on all this is “what does this have to do with
us today?” Well, all of us were brought
up in a world that was undergirded by the institution of the Christian
Church. In our life times we have seem
this same institution lose its favoured status.
Oh, the church still wields some power.
It was the Evangelical Christian vote that provided the swing vote that
elected the current President of the United States. Here in Canada, I really don’t see where the
Christian vote has any sway at all as less than 20% of the culture still goes
to church on a regular basis. Our
culture as a whole is either indifferent to the Christian faith or biased
against it. The lifestyle of those who
call themselves Christian does not look all that different than everybody else
around us. We seem to differ from the world around us only in our individual beliefs and our being more likely to volunteer.
I
started this sermon talking about victorious living, about us as individuals
being faithful in prayer, devotions, and service; about keeping hopeful and
praising God in all things; and fixing our eyes on Jesus. That’s private faithfulness. But Jesus didn’t say that people would know
we are his disciples by how we privately practice our faith. He said people would know we are his
disciples by the way we love. For the last 1700 years the church has been undergirding
the empire that Jesus in actuality conquered. We have a prime opportunity to simply be about
the love of Jesus these days, but it means that beyond simply holding to our private beliefs, we have to start being public in our loving. Amen.
