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“The
Right Answer”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Luke 12:49-56
“I
came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”
DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS, Our Lord Jesus Christ was recorded as saying,
“I am the way, the truth, and
the life…” (JN 14:6) Jesus
Christ is our truth. We
usually think of truth in terms of the right story about something.
A witness in our courts must make the vow, “I will” to the
question, “Will you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, so help you, God?” But,
the Holy Scriptures of God that point to our Lord Jesus Christ are
showing us at a deep level that TRUTH, according to God, is a certain
person, not human words. Truth,
from God’s perspective is not confined or wrapped up in box by the
statements we make; even propositions from our Christian beliefs.
When I was studying mathematics, one of my favorite learning’s that I
experienced was seeing that even when we prove something in math, the
truth is not in the proof, the truth is in what the proof is pointing
to. Even if I were to make the most accurate and logical argument
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the truth would not be in my
process of reasoning. The
truth is Jesus Christ.
So, I wonder how many witnesses in court knew that what they were really
promising to do was “To tell Christ, the whole Christ, and no-one but
Christ, so help me, God?” (smile)
Intellectually, this does seem a little deep.
I remember one of the first places I applied it to was politics.
We usually think of political positions in terms of principles,
the far left, the far right, or somewhere in the middle.
That is a picture of a line from left to right with a mid-point.
When I came to, possibly, thinking a little about Jesus Christ
being the truth, I realized that real truth was not totally about the
situation of being to the right, left, or in the middle, politically. Maybe, I just like that because as a Pastor, I could stand
off from taking political positions publically. (smile)
School is in the process if getting back started, so my mind is a lot on
teaching techniques. Of
course, I like answers and questions.
When one of my students, during a quiz or test, walks up to my
desk and asks me, “Do I have to reduce this fraction?”
My first answer is, “You are asking the wrong person the wrong
question.” Then they usually look even a little more confused.
Next, I teach them, “You should be asking yourself: can I
reduce this fraction?”
Many times, students come to me and say, “I’m lost in all this; can
you help me?” And I start
by asking them to show me something specifically that they don’t think
they know how to do. Then I
ask them other questions that I think they know the answers to, until,
by my questioning, I finally lead them to answering the problem.
Then, I show them that they did all the work, when they were
asked the proper questions. They
knew how to do it with the right questions.
In order to solve a problem, they need to learn what questions to
ask themselves. We all do.
In the passage we just read, Luke shows Jesus saying that he came to
bring fire upon this earth and that he, at that time, wished the fire he
was bringing had already been started.
Then, he talked about his full anointing and emersion, in God’s
will, that he called Baptism. And
he says that this very thing was producing an extremely high level of
stress in his life. After
these words, he then tells them that what he his bringing to this earth
is not about peace and that there will even be conflicts and divisions
within the most intimate types of relationships we have: families.
After these words, he speaks to the whole crowd, telling them something
about themselves, then asking them a question: “When
you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going
to rain’; and so it happens. And
when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching
heat’; and it happens. You
hypocrites! You know how to
interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how
to interpret the present time?”
My friend, Baxter Kruger, has a ministry named Perichoresis. If you
have a computer, I would love for you to go to our church’s website.
His ministry’s website has an entrance on ours, and there is an
interview with Baxter, that I would love for you to watch.
He has an illustration that he has used for years. He has preached and taught in four countries, and hundreds of
colleges and seminaries. He
has written six or seven books. And
when he’s teaching, he almost always uses this following illustration.
He has a pair of funny looking glasses, about 5 inches on each
side, and the lenses themselves are about an inch and a half thick.
And the glass in them is all crumpled.
And his point is that these are the glasses that we all wear in
trying to see and understand what is going on in lives.
And what we need to do is ask Jesus will he take these glasses
off us and give us the sight that he has in interpreting the present
time.
Now, from what we know, if we can imagine Jesus asking us, “Why do you
not know how to interpret the present time?”
The right answer is, “Because you, Jesus are the truth of God
and of me. I don’t see
things as you do. That is
what I need in my life, to be lead to see through your eyes, because you
are in me and I am in you, and we, in the Holy Spirit are in the love of
God the Father.”
We all have times in our lives where we, like Jesus (but not at his
level), go through serious stress and suffering.
As we look back upon our lives, we remember all kinds of grace
given to us: wonderful family relationships, the blessings of children,
friends, and great times in the aspects of life that we love: music,
gardening, pets, sports, art, entertainment, vacations, and professional
success.
On one hand, we have all these great blessings from God in our lives.
On the other hand, we have suffering and misery.
We experience both ends of the spectrum.
And we ask ourselves all kinds of questions:
Why is this happening? How
can I get out of this? What
is going to happen in the future? What
does all of this mean?
My favorite quote, from whom you know as one of my beloved theologians,
Karl Barth is, “The answer is in the question.”
The right answer is in the right question.
You and I, and each and every one of us are the right question.
And Jesus Christ, who is the truth, is the right answer, and He
is with us, in us, closer to us than we are to ourselves.
Our truth is Jesus Christ. In
him, for our whole lives, we have never been separated from God. The greatest will of God the Father and God the Son, in God
the Holy Spirit was, is, and always will be that we are included in the
relationship that they are. No
matter where we think we are in our lives, looking at this world through
our eyes, we are not seeing the present time through the eyes of Jesus
Christ. His vision is the
faith that he lays down in our minds, hearts, and souls.
And when we see this truth about ourselves, that sight comes from
Christ.
If we are hearing, right now, that we cannot interpret the present time
in and of ourselves, even that is coming from Jesus.
And we need to turn to him, the right answer, and pray to him,
asking him to give us his vision.
Let us pray…
Amen
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