(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Easy Desecration”,
originally shared on December 11, 2025. It was the 388th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams
of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my
wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
It’s easier to destroy than to build, it’s easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God,
and it’s easier to desecrate the Church than to make it holy. Today, we’re
going to find out why.
Either way, we are
a very young country. People who are around 80 years old have seen one-third
of our country’s history! People who are around 62 years old have seen one-quarter
of our country’s history!
So’s easy for us to
lose a sense of historical perspective, and many countries who measure their
histories in the thousands of years have often accused us of doing just that.
Take Christianity,
for example.
Christianity didn’t
begin with the founding of your church. It didn’t begin with the founding of
your denomination. It began almost 2,000 years ago on the Day of
Pentecost, when people who had gathered in Jerusalem from all over the world
received the Holy Spirit.
But Christian
history didn’t go smoothly, and I’m not referring to the hot and cold periods
of persecution in our first few hundred years.
What threatened
Christianity the most came from within.
There were
disagreements over what Christianity was and what it believed. There were
councils that were held where church leaders debated the fundamentals of the
Christian faith. Heresy was defined, identified, and corrected. These were days
of definition.
The faithful
representation of the history of salvation was at stake. Salvation itself was
at stake.
As has been said
before, theology is not about matters of life and death. It’s way more
important than that! 😊
Participants in
those councils listened for the voice of the Holy Spirit among all the voices
of those who had gathered, and they wrote creeds, from the Latin word “Credo”,
or “I believe”.
Three creeds are
widely recognized as the “ecumenical” creeds, because they contain the core
beliefs of universal, historical, Biblical Christianity, going back to
the first Christians: the Apostles’ Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the Nicene
Creed.
It’s pretty common
for churches with historical roots to recite the Apostles’ Creed at
worship. It’s the oldest among the three. Though it wasn’t named until 390 A.D.
it was drawn from much older baptismal rites.
The second is the Athanasian
Creed, written to bring clarity to the nature of the Trinity: one God in
three persons. It was likely written in the late 400’s, but it is very long and
addresses issues that are settled, so it’s rarely used at worship.
The third is the Nicene
Creed, composed in 325 A.D. and later expanded in 381. It is regularly used
in Christian worship today and we have been celebrating its 1,700th
anniversary this year!
Participants were not
there to decide what books would be included in the New Testament. That had
been decided by the lived experience of the Early Church. They were not
there to discuss whether Jesus was God. That had been established by the words
and actions of Jesus himself.
Church leaders, at
least 300 bishops, met in Nicaea, in what is today Turkey, to address the
heresy of Arianism which claimed that Jesus was God, but that he had been
created by God the Father, and so was less than God. There is a legend that St.
Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, the bishop on who our modern Santa Clause is based,
was there and got so worked up that he smacked Arius in the face!
Many were survivors
of the brutal persecution of Emperor Diocletian (ruling 284-305) and Maximian
(ruling 286-305). One of the bishops had lost his right eye and been given a
limp in his left leg because of his profession of faith. One had lost the use
of both hands after being burned with a red-hot iron. Others had lost eyes and
limbs.
Those who came to
the Council of Nicaea were not there for academic debate alone. They
were the defenders of the faith that they had confessed with
their bodies and with their will, and their vote resulted with only two votes
for Arius.
There was a lot at
stake. There always is when people seek to make God in their own image. God
becomes less God and more manageable.
Who Jesus is, and
what his authority is, is what is at stake in the Gospel reading that will be
shared this coming Sunday in the vast majority of churches throughout the
world, Matthew 11:2-11.
John the Baptist
was the last of the Old Testament prophets. He bridged the gap between the Old
and New Testament sections of the Bible.
He did it without
any regard for human hierarchies. In fact, he was kind of harsh, even and
especially to those who were among the most respected people of their day.
He stood at the
crossroads of time, the fulfillment of one of the most cherished prophecies
among the people of God in the 1,000 years before Christ was born: the coming of
the Messiah.
John and Jesus both
had disciples, and we get The Lord’s Prayer because Jesus’ disciples heard that
John had taught his disciples how to pray. Later on in the Bible, we’ll get the
whole “Game of Thrones” story of John’s imprisonment and gruesome death for choosing
God over human beings.
And yet, Jesus
says, all Christians are greater than John the Baptist in the Kingdom of God.
How can that be?
We begin today’s
verses about John the Baptist with one of the most poignant moments in history,
in Matthew 11:2-3,
2When John heard in prison what
the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 3and said
to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
Jesus, the one for
whom John’s role was to prepare the way, was just beginning his public
ministry.
John was in prison
for publicly calling out the morality of a major local government official of
the Roman empire. John probably already knew that things did not look good for
him in prison, and he wanted to know if his life had been wasted, or not.
It all hinged on
the answer to one question.
Imagine the meaning
of your life hinging on that one question?
Do you know what? It
does.
Is Jesus ”the
one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
What is your creed?
Do you believe that
Jesus is the Messiah, the promised one of God?
Do you believe that
Christmas celebrates his birth, God become human flesh?
Do you believe that
he died for us and took his life back again in the Resurrection?
Do you believe that
he is present among us right now and that he is coming again to judge the
living and the dead?
Many of us have
longed for the coming of the Messiah, some before we were Christians and some
both before and after we were Christians. Sometimes people are longing
for the coming of the Messiah even when they can’t articulate that longing or
put a name to what they are longing for.
Maybe you are
longing for the coming of the Messiah right now.
Maybe you know
someone who is longing right now.
All people who do
not know God intimately have what has been called a God shaped hole within
them. God is right there, knocking at the door to every heart, asking only to
be let in.
So, we don’t bring
God to people, God is already there, seeking to redeem them, to save them, to
make them whole. We just name the name.
That is especially
true at Christmas, when the message is at least suggested all around us. We
have an opening.
Will you be the one
to invite people to open the door to let God come in?
Will you be the one
to prepare the way?
Will you be the one
to name the Name?
Or will you invite
people to worship with you at a time of the year when people who wouldn’t
otherwise consider it are open to an invitation.
I saw a meme some
time ago that described “Reality Evangelism”. In the first panel, a girl says
to a boy, “Yeah, I go to church.” In the second panel she says, “Wanna come?”
Will you be the one
to invite someone to worship with you this Christmas?
Jesus’ answer to
John’s plaintive question follows in Matthew 11:4-6,
4Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and
see: 5the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers
are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news
brought to them. 6And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at
me.”
Jesus points to his
miracles as evidence that he is the Messiah, but what did he mean? What are
miracles?
Miracles are not a
suspension of the laws of Nature. Miracles are a moment of restoration of the
way God created things to be.
All evil, all that
is broken in this world, comes through human rejection of God. Our rejection of
God, our Sin, separates us from God.
Miracles point to
what God intended for us and to what heaven and earth will be like again when
He returns.
The cross is where
God restores what was broken. Where God is the One for us. The relationship
with God is now restored for all who believe what God has promised and are
baptized.
John didn’t live to
see that. He never got out of prison alive. He was beheaded. He died before
Jesus gave his life on the cross to usher in the already-but-not-yet-perfected
Kingdom of God.
Jesus spells this
out in Matthew 11:7-11,
7As they went away, Jesus began to
speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to
look at? A reed shaken by the wind? 8What then did you go out
to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in
royal palaces. 9What then did you go out to see? A prophet?
Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10This is the one
about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who
will prepare your way before you.’ 11Truly I tell you, among
those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the
least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
We are saints and
sinners! We are greater than John the Baptist in the kingdom of heaven!?
The answer is that,
unlike John the Baptist, we live on the other side of the cross. We do not just
point to Jesus, we have experienced His grace. We have been made holy.
But the world
doesn’t see it. It often only sees a desecrated Christianity. That is our
problem.
Ross Douthat, a
conservative columnist for “The New York Times”, wrote a book called Bad
Religion, in which he said that most of Christianity’s wounds are
self-inflicted. Near the end of the book, he wrote that Christianity has been
near collapse several times in its history, and two things have brought it
back: holy living and the arts.
Desecration is
easy in this world. There is plenty of support for it. Holy living is
hard. There are plenty of things pulling us away from it.
Desecration is
treating something sacred with irreverence, disrespect, or contempt. Do we not
see that everywhere? Including in the Church?
Our secular
societies in the Western world have had contempt for what is holy for a long
time.
How have we
responded? It seems to me that we have mainly responded with embarrassment and
accommodation by the particular claims of Christianity in a pluralistic
society. They make us sound intolerant, not useful, so it’s easier to drop them
and focus on social causes and politics, then maybe some people will
agree with us instead of none. We have accepted the accolades of some to avoid
the condemnation of all, but this is not sustainable.
We are like the man
in the parable who built his house upon the sand (Matthew 7:24-27). It
didn’t turn out well.
One of my seminary
professors observed that all modern-era theology is created in Germany,
corrected in Great Britian, and corrupted in the United States. 😊
That may or may not
be true today. It seems to me to be a little extreme, though, especially when
one looks at the state of the church in any of those places today. We have all
desecrated our theology.
What do you see in
our churches? Primarily performative worship that evokes the Holy Spirit
without embodying it. Or, if it does, it merely offers an exotic counterfeit,
or a copy of what someone saw on TV, which itself was a copy of the real thing.
They are trying to find some experience again by one’s own efforts.
Do we communicate
any expectation for keeping the sabbath holy?
What is our public
witness? Which of our public statements is a full-throated proclamation of the
gospel, and not a political or social statement pointing to the coercive power
of our members who vote?
The Church is being
persecuted daily in Nigeria and elsewhere for its faith right now! Where is the
outcry? Are we afraid to be labeled “intolerant”, exactly as the early
Christians were?
We are, and where
has that gotten us? The world knows when we are not being real, that we are so
much like the world that we have nothing transformational to offer to it.
A staff member of
our synod, who was Japanese, once told of a visit there where he was met on the
street in Tokyo by a man selling “Rolex” watches. Five dollars!
He knew they were
counterfeit, but he thought it would make a fun souvenir, so he bought one.
Then, when he was
back in the United States and he found himself near Beverly Hills, he decided
to find a place that sold Rolex watches.
He went into one to
see what would happen and showed a salesperson his watch and said, “You know, I
was thinking about selling my Rolex and I wonder if you could tell me about how
much it’s worth?”
The salesperson
barely glanced at it and said, “About five bucks.” 😊
Most people can
tell if something is real or not, but sometimes they are preferring the “not”.
Both the Nicene
Creed and the Apostles’ Creed we recite at worship contain our belief in the
holy catholic (meaning universal Christian) church.
That is not a
statement about our buildings but about our identity.
When I studied in
Israel for a semester in college, I was impressed with how well the Jewish and
Muslim holy sites were kept up, while the Christian sites were kind of run
down.
When I asked our
guide, a post-graduate student from my college, about that he said that he had
been distressed by that too when he first came to Israel. But then he realized
that Christianity has no holy places. The only holy place in Christianity is
the human heart when God comes to dwell there.
We don’t find our
way to Jesus. Jesus is the way. We just open our hearts in repentance
and new life, for life transformation.
We have been called
to repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand, and to live as a holy people set
apart, as Peter reminds us in 1 Peter 2:9,
9 But you
are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in
order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of
darkness into his marvelous light.
We have been given good
news to share, and we are the only ones who will share it. If not us, who?
Are you the one?
The world doesn’t
give Jesus a second thought at Christmas, but we can name the name.
Are you the one?
We are not the
light of the world, but we can be reflectors of that light.
Are you the one?
I am certain that
your church has prepared printed materials to help you invite people to know
Jesus, God with us, the Word made Flesh, the light of the world at Christmas.
Who will share them? Will you put them on public bulletin boards? Include them
with your Christmas cards? Hang them on doorknobs? Hand them to friends and
neighbors with a personal word of invitation?
Are you the one?
Maybe people are
looking for a gift that is real this Christmas and need someone to prepare the
way.
Are you the one?
All that some people
will need to hear from someone this Christmas is, “Have you heard about Jesus?”
Are you the one?
The people of God
are a holy nation. Open your heart today
so that God may come in and make you holy.
Being a Christian doesn’t
mean to make God the most important part of your life. It means to make God
your life.
Be holy. Live a
wholly holy life. It can be hard, but you are not alone.
Be love in action, in human flesh. Be the one to share the Good News for all people this Christmas, and may this Christmas be holy.
No comments:
Post a Comment