Light from Barmen: The Word
2 Corinthians 4:5-7
Monte Johnston
Clayton Presbyterian Church
September 3, 2006
Giving It Away
Imagine that I gave you $10000 to give away, with the only catch being that you can’t give it to anyone that you know. Would it be easy or hard? Imagine yourself going up to a complete stranger and offering to write them a check for $5000. What kind of a look would you get? They would probably look at you like your crazy. They would surely be wondering what you were trying to get over on them. “What’s the catch?” they might ask. My guess is that it would be frustrating and a lot harder than you would first think. Keep this scenario in your mind as I want to come back to it in a minute.
But first, to catch you up if you are visiting with us today or haven’t been here in a while, we have been looking at a statement of faith that was composed by faithful Christians who were taking their stand against the Nazi influence on the church in 1934.
Barmen Declaration
6. "See, I am with you always, to the end of the age." Matt. 28:20 "God's Word is not fettered." 2 Tim. 2:9
The Church's commission, which is the foundation of its freedom, consists in this: in Christ's stead, and so in the service of his own Word and work, to deliver all people, through preaching and sacrament, the message of the free grace of God.
We reject the false doctrine that with human vainglory the Church could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of self-chosen desires, purposes and plans.
This last article of the Barmen Declaration definitively states what the church’s mission is. The authors wanted to leave no doubt about its purpose. The reason for this is that there were competing ideas about the church’s purpose. Those who were sympathetic with the Nazis saw its purpose as advancing the Nazi ideology and message. They wanted to see the power of the pulpit brought to bear in helping to spread the message about God’s will for the German Race.
It is against this effort that the Christians at Barmen declared, “The Church’s Commission … consists in this: in Christ’s stead, and so in the service of his own Word and work, to deliver all people, through preaching and sacrament, the message of the free grace of God.”
The purpose of the church is solely to bring to all people the message of the free grace of God. It cannot be to move people to a political party. It cannot be to just tell people what they want to hear. I can be nothing other than to proclaim the Word that God has spoken. It is bound to point to and to proclaim the Gospel through both word and deed.
Reading the Barmen Declaration, and other confessions of the church, is helpful to us because they alert us to dangers that would damage the faith. The danger that we see today is the danger to make church to fit our needs. It is the danger of trying to change the Word to suit us, instead of having it change us for its purposes. In Nazi Germany this was dramatic, as they wanted the church to serve the state in the most visible way. The danger for us is much the same, but it is much more subtle. It is the danger in our own attitudes toward church. In our consumer society we tend to view church as the place where we can go to find a product that fits us. We look for a church that supplies our needs, that doesn’t ask to much, that is convenient and fits our schedule just right. We tend to view church like a “spirituality store,” where we can shop for a custom-fitted faith.
This is unavoidable in the marketplace society that we live in, but that doesn’t mean that it is right or safe. The danger is that our faith becomes all about us. It is just for our own comfort in life. It reminds me of the description of religion by Karl Marx, where he called religion the “opium of the people.” The situation he saw was Christians who used their faith to insulate them from the pain and concerns of the world. When we do this, we are guilty of domesticating the Word of God. Jesus’ Word and Work was always meant, not just for us, but for the whole world.
Everyone has a Mission
It is one of the basic beliefs of our church that every person has a mission. We believe that God has you in the particular place in life, and he wants you to serve him there. I recently heard a benediction composed by Richard Halverson, former chaplain of the Senate. I want to share it with you:
Wherever you go, God is sending you, wherever you are, God has put you there; He has a purpose in your being there. Christ who indwells you has something He wants to do through you where you are. Believe this and go in His grace and love and power.
Wherever you go, God is sending you. Wherever you are, God has put you there and he has a purpose in your being there. He has something that he wants you to do. Everyone one of you has a mission. Part of your mission is to deliver the message about the free grace of God to the people that God has put you with, like your neighbors, or co-workers, or friends.
Your job is to deliver the message of what God has done in Jesus Christ. You are not proselytizing. You are not converting. You are only trying to do what is in your power to get them to accept the free gift of God, his grace.
When you think of yourself as God’s messenger, the first thing that you feel is probably a sense of inadequacy. Who are you to deliver God’s word? What training do you have? What is your education or your credentials? “Surely, this is the kind of thing that should be left to the professionals,” you might be saying. Well, that might be your attitude, but it is not God’s. He calls and commissions each one of us to be his messengers.
Scripture Reading: 2 Corinthians 4:5-7
Paul, in 2 Corinthians, in defending his ministry, directly addresses our situation.
We don't go around preaching about ourselves; we preach Christ Jesus, the Lord. All we say about ourselves is that we are your servants because of what Jesus has done for us. 6 For God, who said, "Let there be light in the darkness," has made us understand that this light is the brightness of the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. But this precious treasure – this light and power that now shine within us – is held in perishable containers, that is, in our weak bodies. So everyone can see that our glorious power is from God and is not our own. (NLB)
I want to unpack this passage for us. He says that we don’t go around preaching ourselves. The message is not about us. We only proclaim Jesus Christ. We pass on his message and proclaim what he has done through his life and death and resurrection.
We proclaim God’s Word and that Word has power. Paul looks back to the first words ever spoken, when God said, “Let there be light.” God has such power that by his mere words, he brought the entire world into being. In the same way, when God speaks his words into our lives, he illuminates our lives with his truth, and he transforms our lives. We are truly changed in to new creatures as we receive his word and behold the face of Jesus Christ.
God’s Word accomplishes what it proclaims. To understand this think about the phrases, “I promise,” or “Thank you.” By speaking them I am doing what they say. I am making a promise to you or I am thanking you. Linguists call these “performatives.” Another example would be if your employer were to say, “You’re fired!” By speaking those words to you, he is terminating your employment.
This is what God’s Word is like. When he speaks his word of grace into our lives, he is not only describing his purpose for us, he is working it in us at the same time. He forgives our sins. He frees us from our guilt and sin. He gives us the power to live a new life. And so his power, his truth and his light really do live within us. This is the Holy Spirit at work in our lives.
What Paul says next touches on our sense of inadequacy. He says that God’s Word, “this precious treasure – this light and power that now shine within us – is held in perishable containers, that is, in our weak bodies.” Paul says that God’s light is in our lives, just like a treasure would be in a clay jay. In the ancient world, clay jars were used for everything—to carry things, transport cargo, to store things. So, Paul’s audience would easily think about storing their valuables in a clay jar.
These jars of clay were the disposable containers of the day. They were the milk jugs, plastic bags and aluminum cans of their day. They were valued for what they held, more than for what they were in themselves. A clay jar wasn’t worth much.
Paul says that this is a great picture that we can use to think about our situation. We may not think that we are much—without education, experience, personal holiness—and in fact, we may not be much, but that is beside the point. What really matters is God in us. What we have to share is his Word, which will accomplish its purpose by its own power.
In fact, Paul goes on to say, it is because we ourselves are not much that people will know that what happens through us is not because of our power, our authority, our eloquence, our charisma, our knowledge, or education. The less abilities we have, the more clear it will be that it is God’s power and not our own. God always uses weakness to reveal his power. This way is makes the work more glorious.
Beauty Out of Baseness
Journalist David Hajdu recently told a memorable story about Wynton Marsalis, one of the most easily recognizable jazz musicians in our day and one of the premier jazz trumpeters of all time. One night, Marsalis was playing with a small, little-known combo in a New York basement club. A few songs into their set, he walked to the front of the bandstand and began an unaccompanied solo of the 1930s ballad, "I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You." Hajdu records that the audience became rapt as Marsalis's trumpet virtually wept in despair, almost gasping at times with the pain in the music.
Stretching the mood taut, Marsalis came to the final phrase, with each note coming slower and slower, with longer and longer pauses between each one: "I…don't…stand…a…ghost…of…a…chance—"
Then someone's cell phone went off.
It began to chirp an absurd little tune. The audience broke up into titters, the man with the phone jumped up and fled into the hallway to take his call, and the spell was broken. "MAGIC—RUINED," the journalist scratched into his notepad.
But then Marsalis played the cellphone melody note for note. He played it again, with different accents. He began to play with it, spinning out a rhapsody on the silly little tune, changing keys several times. The audience settled down, slowly realizing that they were hearing something altogether extraordinary. Around and around Marsalis played for several minutes, weaving glory out of goofiness.
Finally, in a masterstroke, he wound down seamlessly to the last two notes of his previous song: "…with…you." The audience exploded with applause.i
This is a wonderful picture of what it looks like when God uses us. He takes our lowly, mundane, humble efforts and makes a masterpiece out of them, even “weaving glory out of goofiness.” This is what Paul was trying to tell us when he said that we have this treasure in jars of clay. God’s Word and Spirit have been given to us. As we dare to try to speak for him, and to announce the free gift of God’s grace.
And so, evangelism, which is what we are talking about, is really just like trying to get people to accept that $5000 check. God has achieved salvation in Jesus Christ and he has offered the gift of grace FOR FREE. What each man, woman and child needs to do is to accept it. And so our role is to try to convince them that there is no catch. It is not a sham. It is God free gift. Sometimes its their head, or intellect, that gets in the way. Sometimes it is their will or their pride. Sometimes in is their past. And so through our words and our deeds, we want to point to God’s free offer of grace, that our friends and family and neighbors might accept it, and so they too might be changed and transformed.
God has a mission for you. But before you go, he calls you to feed at his table. To find spiritual nourishment at the table of the Lord. The table is another picture of where God takes the ordinary—the bread and the cup—a and uses it for his extraordinary purposes.
iJohn G. Stackhouse, Jr., Faith Today (May/June, 2003), p. 54.