Dr. Lloyd J. Averill Sermon, 1967-07-30, The Exclusiveness Of Faith

one of the most remarkable things about jesus of nazareth is the way in which he has haunted human history what impresses me is the way in which this galilean man of the first century has won the loyalty of unlikely man all he has held an almost irresistible attraction for some who was resistance we would ordinarily rate very high now he has done is almost in spite of the formal christian movement which has grown up around him rebecca pointed example of this fascination with jesus in unlikely places is the nineteenth century german philosopher friedrich nietzsche shirley teaches name is synonymous with the modern world with the intense as kind of hatred for everything christianity teaches these are some of the ways in which nature describes christianity the one great curse you called it almost fatal and seductive why the greatest democracy little corruptions a crime against life

no description of pathway of the christian ethical tradition was too extreme to express features in loading up and yet the one thing he joined up to us to renounce jesus christ for some strange reason he felt that he must acquit batman i'll go badly and hard in the christian tradition so he sought to relieve jesus all responsibility for the system of ethics which claims visas as it sorts the teaching of the new testament gospels comes not from jesus all need to set it is a pious man pernicious fiction hoisted upon the erstwhile galleon by his friends critical historical warrant the jet had for such a distinction is certainly not clear still he insisted upon it there's only been one real christian in history he said and that one died on the cross all the rest are pious fraught or consider the case of frank harris

paris who's active life span the last two decades of the nineteenth century the first two of the twentieth was a prominent literary figure i suppose his notoriety springs primarily from the fact that his autobiography was banned from american publication and distribution for years because of its incredible record of seduction and the clinical detail in which selection is described while reading frank harris is autobiography it's difficult to think of a more apt description of him than the term vegan and that is indeed precisely the way in which he thought of himself in spite of that he makes a number of admiring references to jesus all through his autobiography and even has one entire chapter which he entitled jesus christ and the chapter begins with these works opinion is slowly coming to the conviction that jesus of nazareth is the greatest spirit of recorded time very early they proclaimed him divine and now for nearly two thousand years all sorts and

conditions of them have studied him and talk to him but very few so far as i know had ever tried to see him as he was he was so sweet and so great that even after twenty centuries the jury of his peers as not yet been formed nor the final verdict for moms as i have loved him says harris without adoring him i contribute hear my voice to the final decision and described besides how i came to my belief and the affect it had on my condo just imagine one of the most notorious greats of modern times who makes tom jones look like an amateur concern in his autobiography to help men see jesus of nazareth as he was so that they might love him too and the trend has are not unique among modern family customarily to reverend george bernard shaw once confessed i am no more christian man pilot was or you gentle reader mike

pilot i greatly prefer jesus than a psychiatrist's i'm ready to admit that after contemplating the world in human nature for nearly sixty years i see no way out of the world's misery but the way that would have been found by christ will if he had undertaken the work of the modern practical statesman and the french mr al assad regime has written much the same thing i have written said she'd and i believe firmly that if christianity had really prevailed and if it had really fulfill the teaching of christ there would today be no question of communism there would indeed be no social problem at all aha are we to account for this strange preoccupation with jesus quite outside the circle where we might expect to find to explain the claim he appears to have made a pan live we would ordinarily think impervious to his influence are surely for nature and four harris for shot and where he'd this was not simply a that a concession the social convention like the highest

correlation of the politician for example these are all proudly and conventional man indeed one season struggling to say jesus from being polarized or discarded by this conventional friends in the charges i must hazard the suggestion that these men were granted visas because they recognized him as the authentic man the complete man and because in a real sense they found in him the possibility of their own completed manhood they were drawn to him because they found in him an integrity which claim them but we can't be looted them they were drawn to him because they found him in a quality of life which they did not bear to appropriate they could not bring themselves to deny they were drawn to him because he told them the truth about and so even when they fail to follow him they could not fail to acknowledge his

authority over them it is because jesus what we call the price is their new album as paul called emad is god's real prototype of our own proper humanity that he can be acknowledged as lord even of those who profess to have no religion all cars that kind of statement the statement i just made his views on patients on the face of it yesterday that italian man a radical priority among all his fellow man it claims for jesus a significant which is historically exclusive applicable to know other historical person and it's precisely this claim to exclusive this which is made the christian faith suspect among many of our contemporary perhaps indeed among many who sit here this morning i think we cannot properly assessed christianity's explosive claim apart from examining christianity's conviction that it has its origins in a decisive divine

revelation that will take is at once to the heart of the matter religion is concerned with the meaning of life and not simply with the meaning of my own life but also of the wider like him with my own existence is set on the trouble is that when i try to examine my experience for clues to the nature of the meaning of my life i need a welter of conflicting evidence so long as things go reasonably well with me so long as my world is on troubled by threat or a calamity i can convince myself that life meaning is to be seen in terms of a growing army of men with all men of a widening integration of things toward a new boldness and health effects of apartheid work in things which makes for goodness so i guess things don't all reasonably well with me and my world i can convince myself of the primacy of love and justice and the promise of the future yes but the

trouble is that things don't always go even reasonably well with me or with my care deeply about and that i am tempted to believe that the final fact of life is suffering or conflict or despair last fall was one of the most brilliant scientists and mathematicians of the seventeenth century rascoff law describes the principle of equilibrium influence he increased our knowledge of the atmosphere through barometric measurement he was the founder of the modern mathematical of probabilities his were contributed to the development of differential calculus castile had powers of reflection and observation would surpass those of an ordinary man in his century or in our own and it may be instructive to recall that in his boss a fastball wrote this this is what i see that troubles me so i look on all sides and i find nothing but obscurity

nature offers nothing which is not a subject of doubts and disquiet you if i saw know where any sign of a deity it decided the negative if i saw everywhere the signs of a creator i should rest in peace in my three what seemed too much to do not and too little confidently to affirm i am in a pitiable state and i have a long a hundred times that if they got a sustained major nature should show it without ambiguity or that if the signs about a fallacious nature should suppress altogether letters say will hold true for nothing so that i may see what side i ought to play i think we read our twentieth century the line in those seventeenth century words and however far we may have moved beyond pascoe in physics and mathematics in this at least we share with him a common quite honestly it advancing state of our modern knowledge of the world

and perhaps which also find as best golf on what perplexity does not have the last word after all forget a meaning strong enough and sure enough to sustain our experiences beyond our powers to discover that is not to say no such meaning is available to us the sharp pascal wrote seeing too much to the night and two little confidently to affirm i am in a pitiable state and yet it was that same passed all to address god with these prayer for words of confession i would not even see the ads are not already found me for pascal came to see was the ball as a scientist he could not find the final truth the saudi was himself on by that true indeed he came to believe that he had undertaken that certainly because

he himself had been sought and he's restless quest for meaning was itself evidence that god was at work in him before he knew it but what a difference knowing it may all different way the world looked out that's a change from pitiable this piece what could not be discovered had been revealed what could not be broken open had burst forth and when it appears it was not a new idea to be learned that a man that we met it's not a rule to be copied that amanda be follow it was not true of awesome and abstract and this and body and it was through incarnated and flesh body and forth in a new relationship that was the unveiling of god's character and intention in

jesus we call the press once he appeared it is clear that no other answer to our need would do whatever else he may be god is person will be more than that must be said but that at least what he said if god were a lesser being than ourselves if he were less than person then we would be a more of an effect of existence and he surely god must know self consciousness and memory purpose and this decisiveness structure and power these are all the marks of person will be but the personnel is never adequately represented by the impersonal when a man and woman who never seen each other and are in a correspondence when they're growing acquaintance brightens into friendship and friendship into affection each new letter is a fresh representation of that relationship or

what a difference when at last the beloved appears and even if ultimately they face separation and the written word becomes again also means that their communication is not a different communication for it is written after their meeting and written for ever after in the light of their meeting and it's this kind of love story that the christian message that for centuries province proclaimed a god whose love for men was stronger than any other power in the universe for centuries poet sincere sang of a god who was in relentless pursuit a man sized me well at last my lover of men appeared among them as a man what where that on earth really low which cherishes evenly unlovely and accept even the unacceptable it was more than profit report either green or desire now once again that man is gone from

our means that we are not the same for the meeting and if his words i heard once again for profit employers it is now a different communication for it is given after that meeting and given for ever after in the light of that meeting the greats so there's a bit of the divine in every man on that may seem as a more democratic one revelation i think when we reflected what we see how inadequate it is putting all the pieces together we would still have something less than personal reality something less than a sufficient representation of only a person in his whole person who can reveal what is truly personal and so it brings us to the edge of life's deepest mystery still we must affirm it only eight man in his for particularly as a man and review the terrible

so what is the exclusive rights which they claim to justice but the revelation of god in jesus and we call it price is final and sedition that of course does not mean it is god's only revelation org or his last revelation it does mean that in jesus christ god has given all that man needs for salvation or to put it in less traditional terms it means that in jesus christ god has given us a meeting which can transmute are broken mass into a new integrity our purpose listeners into a new point when a scientist gives us a list of a daily minimum requirements of the various nutritional elements our bodies need is not saying about all that can be known about human nutrition you're saying this is what our health

requires and that is the claim christian faith makes in jesus christ god has revealed all the men means for his help but i think what we need to see and perhaps what we need to see most particularly on this sunday reconciliation and forgiveness is that it is precisely at the point of its most radical party if you rip that the christian faith is most universal they're just white plains the most radical exclusive does the president faces most in close it because that shows jesus christ is in a genuine sense that shows every man the metal plate and says that the first obligation of the question has to take every other man with the utmost seriousness one should object that on the contrary the first

obligation is to take jobs seriously than i want to insist that these are by no means conferees martin luther somewhere wrote that since god does not need our service we serve god by serving the neighbor hoover did not hesitate to assert that the vocation of the christian is immediately a price to his neighbor jesus himself form his response to a question about the greatest commandment by putting together what he said were to like injunctions thus indicating that in his own mind love of god and love of neighbor are simply not separate will be sure our love of the neighbors crazy in part from our love of god we see the neighbor in a new light because of the revelation that was accepting love what our love of god cannot be acted out apart from our love of neighbor now lara of course is not a word unique to the christian vocabulary and experience it is one of the natural races of life that is

given to us and our creation as man anthropologist laurent isolated as pointed out that mankind has not survive these long centuries of toughness out of tenderness human rights foot long since of disappeared says dr iser we were it not for the fact that men are nurtured him at matrix of sustained affection we call the family a capacity for the love of our crime is mans survival factors that is the judgment of the anthropologist but i think the christian faith has another observation that had to the anthropologists account of the natural history of love foreign minister ahmet mankind has survived because of the capacity to love this time it's also true that mans survival has most often been threatened as indeed today it is threatened because their natural impulse of mark is directed only toward those

whom we identify as our kind natural love is both aesthetic and reciprocal in character that is my natural affection is directed toward what i perceived as a lovely and from which i receive affection and return and so is your boots my natural impulse to love and i daresay your natural impulse to love feels no obligation for that which is merely plane or clearly repulsive nor is it likely to resist in the face of indifference or outright hostility against it and there's one other fact about the natural history of love which must be noted it is the ease with which my natural affection wants to dominate and best to control its public i think the christian faith invites us respectfully to decline to settle for the natural history well as an adequate nor of opera which we're called for which

we were created this is not to be mean or to disparage the world's largest they are indeed genuine races for the enriching and ennobling of mankind we have a source in god's created was the book they are insufficient for all that and they contained the seeds not only of mans survival but also on his destruction we christians ought to know that another love has appeared which calls the natural history of love to a higher level in jesus christ authorities said we need that an earthly love which charities even be unlovely and accept even be unacceptable which is to say that in jesus christ we need not natural redemptive love love which is acetic and reciprocal which is love for what i identify as my kind has no redemptive power because it finally cannot

create that reunion and reconciliation of man with all men which are saving health report so the love of god revealed in jesus christ corrects that natural history of love that two points for one thing it broadens my sense of kinship with all men even with those whom identify as my enemies or as my natural inclination is to attend to my own virtue and to my neighbors sent price makes me aware also the neighbors virtue end of my own sins both the neighbor and i are the sequel we removed from being able to affect our own redemption are on reunion and reconciliation and the us equally innate of god's reunion and reconciliation even my enemy and i received our dignity from the same source for we are about the objects of god's love and that is that playing upon which our dignity finally depends

or as william sloane coffin has remarked men are not love because they have dignity they had dignity because they are low and having seen that i cannot so easily dismiss the enemy as one who is not my kind i cannot so easily exclude him from the legitimate range of my own low from our dna and i partake of the same humanity astonishingly little alteration of circumstance the podium where i am and me where he is i think of blaise pascal wrote in another place about the appropriate added to the christian ought to take toward the unbeliever we can also a certain oh those with only standing relationship of amity as carl said our religion obliges us always to consider them so long as they arrive capable of being illuminated by grace and to believe that in a short while they may be for our faith and we ourselves

while we on the other hand they fall into the blindness which is not there and so if the christian they called me to broaden my understanding of my kind to include the whole human family it also overcomes the natural tendency of love to dominate and thus to control its object or strangers a liaison to say it for the christian there can be no such thing as a man him and relationship i digress we get into trouble most often because we insist upon man command relationships christ must be permitted to stand between me and every person i encountered in order that that person may be permitted to be himself dietrich bonhoeffer insult me to see this more clearly and i've seen it before does not offer whenever i seek to have a direct relationship with another person

than average man the man even when that relationship goes by the name of human law in reality i'm trying to help sort that other persons being into my own i want to dominate him to ask dr to him only those qualities icu to shake him to the image of what i desire for him and the result is often a tragic distortion of all so obama ferraro because christ stands between me and others i dare not desired direct fellowship with them as only christ can speak to me in such a way that i may be saved so others too in the save only by christ himself this means that i must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate coarse and dominate him with my look the other person needs to retain his independence of meat to be loved for what he is as one for whom christ became man died and rose again because christ has long since acted

decisively for my brother before i could begin and i must leave him his freedom to be christ's i must meet him only as the person that he already is in christ's lines and this says bonhoeffer is the meaning of the proposition that we can meet others only through the mediation of christ all this i think simply means that if christianity is an explosive play with it cause us to center our ultimate concern in the love of god revealed in jesus christ it is not their by and excluding way or if i cannot love a neighbor that the god the neighbor worships i must nevertheless one of the neighbor if i cannot about his faith i must nevertheless respect is faithfulness arcane it didn't presume to invite the neighbor to about my own faith as barb over i think makes quite clear that would confuse religion with revelations religion is after all our human

brass ring our human sir it's the peculiar form our own human response to god's revelation takes my faith is evoked perhaps even pro vote by god revealing action but my faith is not identical with god's revelation saw every particular form of faith here president this morning is judged by the revelation which evoked it so i can invite the neighbor to about my faith i can only point him to the source and center of my faith the god who cared enough about us draw near in jesus christ so i called till it was right it is the greatness of christianity he says that it can see how small it is the importance of being a christian village road is that we can stand the insight that it is of no importance so this intimate stories is what

we must say to the neighbor no particular religion matters lew bars know yours i want to tell you that something has happened that matters something that judges you and me your religion and my religion a new creation has occurred a new lobbying has appeared and we are all asked to participate in it one thing that we want to convert you away from your secular state a religious state that we want to make you really just are members of or high religion the christian end of a very great a nomination within a family our own this will be of no avail we want only to communicate to you an experience we have had that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is a new creation usually hidden sometimes manifests and certainly manifests in jesus who was called price so on the christian faith invites us to receive god's revelation or to

reject it to decide for jesus christ or against him i think that decision has less to do with what it is for god to be gone down with what it is for a man the man so i must confess it for myself jesus christ because i recognize him as the automatic man and because i'm a real sense i have found in him a possibility of my own completed not that i knew in advance what was to be an authentic man him and saw that he met and match the norm know he has given me a new normal for authenticity i am drawn to him because i find in him an integrity which claims me but which has eluded me because i find in him a quality of life which though i dare not appropriate i cannot ignore i am drawn to him because he has told me the truth about myself

perhaps what is most disturbing of all is that this is not a truth which i can verify this is the truth which verifies me so the mothers are almighty god who has called us to examine ourselves by the light of the holy spirit rapid know impurity of motive nor meanness of will they darken our vision of the neanderthal shall become the bright and abiding presence of our days through jesus christ our lord and as an

act of worship we make a congregation and the city as we guilt may we remember our neighbors united with us and at the same sign of the cross who were homeless riot torn defeated strengthen our corporate witness that this oval commercial and cultural life of our city may be enriched and strengthened by our common allegiance to christ as we make our offering may we remember the words of scripture which read if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother indeed it closes his hard against him how does god local buy in him let us not loving word or speech the fb