God's Last Words

ANTHROPOMORPHISM

John 2: 13-22 (NRSV)

It has often been said that the difference between philosophy and theology is: If you have an argument over philosophy, you get red in the face. If you have an argument over theology you throw bombs.

Any way you slice it, theology is serious stuff for most people who don’t usually even joke much about it.

E.B. White once commented: "People have re-cut their clothes to follow fashion. People have remodeled their ideas too -- taken in their convictions a little at the waist, shortened the sleeves of their resolve, and fitted themselves out in a new intellectual ensemble copied from a smart design out of the very latest page of history."

When slavery to fashion and the latest trends invades the church, our religious ideas are yesterday's fads. We adopt the world's agenda – but always just a few years too late. Many churches wear last year’s theological bell-bottom pants or the proverbial leisure suit. 

John W. Gardner once remarked: “In a practical sense an excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent theologian. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in theology because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good theology. Neither its pipes nor its sermons will hold water.” 

Martin Luther said this to his son Martin: “If you become a lawyer, then I will hang you on the gallows.  Because some lawyers are greedy and rob their clients blind, it is almost impossible for lawyers to be saved. It's difficult enough for theologians.”

My Theology professor Lee Barrett once told us: “If all the theologians in the world were laid end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion.”

Humanity has so much trouble with theology because of the way we think and act. We constantly reduce things to terms we can see and understand. None of us has the same understanding or ability to search out truth in the exact same way.

Which brings me to our big word for the day: Anthropomorphism, or how we humans personify everything we encounter, by describing it in human form or other characteristics to anything other than a human being.

Examples include depicting God with a human form, creating fictional non-human animal characters with human physical traits, and ascribing human emotions or motives to forces of nature, such as hurricanes or earthquakes. That’s Anthropology 101.

If you have seen the famous picture of the dogs playing poker that’s anthropomorphism at it’s best.

Anthropomorphism has ancient roots as a literary device in storytelling, and also in art. Most cultures have traditional fables with animals who can stand or talk as if human, as characters.

How many of you recognize ASLAN as the main character of C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series?

He is "the great Lion" of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and his role represents Jesus. The author, C. S. Lewis, described Aslan as an alternative version of Christ; that is, as the form in which Christ might have appeared in a fantasy world.

Aslan helps us understand Jesus just a little better. But Lewis mentions several times via his characters that we the reader must never forget that Aslan is not a “tame” lion. 

And just because Jesus appears human doesn’t mean He can be understood in just human terms. He isn’t tame either and if you only see human characteristics you’re.in trouble.

Theology, in essence, is just that: Humanity’s attempts to explain God and how He acts and reacts to humanity. And we rarely remember that God is not tame.

Listen to this passage from John, chapter 2, verses 13-22, about Jesus’ visit to the Temple, and His reaction to their interpretation of human Temple theology:

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.  Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.

He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

 The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?”  

But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Jesus is clearly changing the Jewish theological center from a material, brick and mortar human world, to a spiritual world based on Him as the touchstone of truth and redemption. Jesus is the beginning and end of Heavenly theology.

As the name implies Systematic Theology is the gathering of all that the Scriptures teach as to what we are to believe and do, and what is known about God. It is also in presenting all the elements of this teaching in a symmetrical system with a beginning and an end.

All my studies have led to the same place: God is consistent, persistent, and delivers on every promise He has made. Our scriptures flow from Genesis to Revelation; a beginning, a middle with human history and struggle, and the end that show’s God’s delivered promises.

A good systematic theology rests on the results of another big word, “Exegesis,” bible study that is, for its foundation. Passages of Scripture studied, and interpreted are its requirement.  When rightly interpreted by Divine inspiration they reveal their relations and place in the system where Christ is the center. 

Putting God first is not only basic, it is crucial! Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other...” (Matthew 6: 24). Earthly things will never replace heavenly things.

It’s why people encounter the temple experience with Jesus cited in our passage.  We find out that God and Jesus are not easily tamed and forced to do our bidding. It is a human temple, not God’s house, that Jesus enters, and he corrects their errors.

Almost like an echo to the abrupt correction that Jesus gave Peter in Matthew 16 (i.e. “Get behind Me, Satan!”) are the words in Isaiah 55: 8, “’My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord.” So the question is, how do we think God’s thoughts after Him? The Holy Spirit.

We have this information from Jesus regarding the coming of the Holy Spirit after Jesus returned to heaven:

“However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.” (John 16: 13).

The ability for believers to discern the truth of God is made clear in 2 Corinthians 2: 9-16:

“But as it is written: ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him’

^“But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.”

^“These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For ‘who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.”

So what are we to believe without trying to add a human understanding? Can we make simple enough to serve God?

A Reformation Baptism vow of faith went like this:

I take God the Father to be my chief end and highest good.

I take God the Son to be my prince and Savior.

I take God the Holy Spirit to be my sanctifier, teacher, guide, and comforter.

I take the Word of God to be my rule in all my actions and the people of God to be my people under all conditions.

I do hereby dedicate and devote to the Lord all I am, all I have, and all I can do.

And this I do deliberately, freely, and forever.

(Baptismal declaration written by Philip Henry, father of Matthew Henry)

This would be a good starting place. Amen.