101: We Are No God

OT Lesson: Genesis 3:1-7 (AMP)

Now the serpent was more crafty (subtle, skilled in deceit) than any living creature of the field which the Lord God had made. And the serpent said to the woman, “Can it really be that God has said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees of the garden, except the fruit from the tree which is in the middle of the garden. God said, ‘You shall not eat from it nor touch it, otherwise you will die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You certainly will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing [the difference between] good and evil.” And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was delightful to look at, and a tree to be desired in order to make one wise and insightful, she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of the two of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they fastened fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

NT Lesson: John 3:1-10 (NRSV)

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

Sermon

Introduction

Good morning. We will have the congregational meeting after the worship service in the sanctuary. We have two businesses. One, to elect the nominating committee. Two, to report the budget and finances of this fiscal year. Speaking of the finance, let me give you a Bible quiz. Among all the people in the Bible, who is the very best investor, or the financial advisor? If this is about the present time, the answer is obviously EDJ, I guess. If you want to invest, talk to Allen. But the quiz is about the Bible. Again, who is the best investor or the financial advisor in the Bible? The answer is Noah because when the whole world was literally in liquidation, only his stocks soared up high. So Noah, it is.

Some of you may know, Samuel will attend the PPM from next week because it is on break this week. Hannah began to work from Thursday the week before. So I have been with Samuel the whole day for a week and two days. And I have to say that it was not easy. Everyday I wanted to yell at him for like ten times, which I did not. I have no idea how Hannah handled this rascal so far. Last week I was reminded of what some of my friends said before when they had children of age 4 or 5. What my friends told me was that those children are angels when they are asleep but they are demons when they are awake. At that time, I was single and told my friends, ‘Don’t say that about your own child.’ But now I cannot agree more. So the preschool teachers are kind of dealing with the demons daily basis. They are kind of performing exorcism. Maybe we can put up a sign in front of the church door, instead of “Heroes Work Here,” but “Exorcists Work Here.” And I need some exorcism to stay sober, but I have to wait for another week.

Zillion Debate

Speaking of preschool, when Hannah and I used to volunteer to serve at the Sunday school for preschool class at our home church. There were two worship services. We served the preschool class for the first worship service, and we worshipped at the second service. The class we were at was for 3-4 year old children. They were really cute because the class is not for whole day but less than an hour. It was also Sundays, which means the exorcism was already performed. So those children were like talkative angels. One Sunday, they were debating among themselves, and the topic was ‘What is a zillion?’ So what do you think a zillion is? Those little people were so into the debate among themselves and they did not even notice my presence—usually they say hello to me pretty well. One of them said, “I think a zillion is about eighteen.” The other said, “I think it’s twenty-five.” “No. It’s thirty-four.” So they were kind of throwing random numbers, but the numbers were increasing. So definitely they were going to the right direction. Then a girl said, “I think it is eighty-nine.” Then all the other children responded like, “Wow. No. Where’s that from? That’s too big to be a zillion!” This was quite fun to watch the children debating. It was cute and they kept the number below hundred. And I thought that might be how God sees us when the most brilliant human theologians debate each other. The heated debate on Trinity can be like we say that a zillion is twelve or twenty-three. The human comprehension, understanding, and intelligent is nothing but laughable and cute in God’s eyes. As I said, it was cute and fun to watch the children’s debating on zillion. Now, let’s imagine a slightly different thing happened. In the middle of the debate, a boy suddenly began to yell at another boy saying, ‘A zillion must be thirty-four. It cannot be twenty-five. You are wrong! Take my number!’ And he began to beat up the other boy to win the debate. Would that be still cute and fun to watch? I don’t think so.

Amish Debates

For this zillion debate, you may think ‘Well, they are children. Children are silly. They speak silly. They debate silly on silly things.’ But are adults any different? Or are the serious theologians any different? You may have heard about the medieval debate of ‘how many angels can stand on the point of a pin?’ Can you guess a number? Twenty-five? Thirty-eight? Or a thousand? I don’t know and I don’t care. 

I have been in Lebanon now for two months and a week. And I have not seen any Amish people people. I used to see them everyday. The parking lots all have a few poles to tie the horses. They sell veggies and fruits from their buggies. Sometimes they knock door by door to sell the strawberries. But here in Lebanon, I have seen none. Amish people may look all the same but they are all different, community by community just like Presbyterians are different by the Presbyteries having different sets of rules. When I was a hospital chaplain in Chicago suburb, the local Amish people came every Wednesday noon selling their produce. And the thing is that they all had iPhones with credit card reader. The other Amish people that I met at Rochester, IN did not have an iPhone but their buggy was equipped with car headlights with batteries. But the Amish people that I used to see in down in Lawrence county have none of those things. They do not use electricity at home. They light up candles at night. Their buggy has no car headlights, not even reflectors. And as you know, the Amish buggies are all complete black. At night, especially when there is no moon, you don’t see the buggy while driving on highway at night unless the buggy is literally right in front of your eyes. I also had several close call moments, actually not my close call but theirs. But I tell you, there are quite frequent car accidents with the Amish buggies, and in most cases, they get injured pretty badly. Many died. I witnessed an accident once. It was before the sunrise and a car way ahead of me hit a buggy on the high bridge over the White river. The buggy and a man fell into the river, a horse and a lady did not fall down into the river but were thrown onto the road. According to the news and police report, the driver said that he did not see the buggy, and I believe him. On the Saturday after the accident, I went to the local farmer’s market and overheard the heated debate among the Amish people. Some people said because it is too dangerous at night, they may put up some reflectors on their buggies. Others said, to paraphrase, they should not use it because if you use the modern technology, they will go to hell. Yet another guy said, ‘I don’t think God will send us hell just because we have reflectors.’ From my view point, who has not only reflectors but an actual car with headlights, radio, touch screen, etc, this debate is causing me to sigh. This debate is no better than from the zillion debate. To them, it is a matter of life and death, heaven and hell. But to me, it is kind of laughable. But they were just verbally debating and talking, which is OK. But imagine those nice Amish people were stabbing each other instead of talking. That would be horrible.

Bloody Religion Conflict

Before the Reformation, the Catholic church executed so many people because of many reasons such as having different ideas, questioning the church and so on. Translating the Bible was forbidden, and whomever found translating Bible from Latin to their local language were executed, mostly by burning. Also whomever found reading Bible beside the clergy were either punished or excommunicated. But that is the good old Catholic. But the thing is, the Protestants did the similar things. There were many religious debates among the denominations and theologians. Well, we have the communion today. So for example, the presence of the Lord in the communion was one of the hot theological topics like the number of angels on a pin was. Lutherans and Catholics say that there is the physical presence of Jesus in the communion, that is, the wine we drink turns into the actual blood of Jesus, and the bread we eat turns into the actual flesh of Christ. On the other hand, Calvin, thus Presbyterians and Dutch reformed say that Jesus Christ is present spiritually. Meanwhile Zwingli said that it is just a symbolic and Jesus does not come in either way. Well, in my opinion, Calvin was the only one right. I don’t think that the bread will become protein today. And I also don’t think it is only symbolic. But so what? Whatever. We don’t have to kill each other over this issue. Whatever we reason, that sounds like in God’s ears that we say twenty-five or thirty-six for a zillion.

Baptism was one of the reasons for the Christians to kill each other among the different denominations. Some are OK with the infant baptism, others are not. The so-called Anabaptists were regarded kind of heresy during the Reformation era by the Catholics and by most other Protestant denominations as well. And thus those Anabaptists were being hunted down and executed. There was a Dutch guy named Dirk Willems who later became an Anabaptist. He practised the teaching of the Anabaptist and encouraged others as well. The church wanted to execute him and he became fugitive, running away all the time. One day during the winter time, he was running away on a frozen river and a pursuer was following him. He heard an ice cracking sound and then a screaming. He turned back and found that his bounty hunter fell through thin ice. If I were him, I would praise God for sure for rescuing me from the hand of the evil pursuer and continue my flight. But Dirk returned and rescued the hunter from death. And as a result, he was captured, tortured, and executed. He exactly knew what would happen if he comes back to save his enemy’s life. Nevertheless he did it. This is how we overcome our theological differences. This is how we debate on sensitive issues—showing mercy and loving the opponent. 

We Are No God

I was on the travel team of McCormick seminary to Europe for the 500th Reformation Anniversary. We went to Germany, Switzerland, and France touring all major reformation sites, and the tour guide was a German having Ph.D on religion. He was quite knowledgeable. Once when we were in Switzerland, the German tour guide said, “We, Germans make products perfect with precision. But somehow the Swiss people always make it 20% better than us. How? I don’t know. I hate them.” I think that tour guide was absolutely right. I also believe, like he said, Calvin is 20% better than Luther, thus Presbyterians are 20% better than Lutherans. And when it comes to theology, I personally believe that Presbyterians are more right than other denominations. But again, my words are same as claiming a zillion to be thirty-five. We are not God. Even our most advanced intelligence, knowledge, comprehension are laughable, childish, and cute to God. Not only we can be totally wrong, but also we will never fully understand the divine mysteries. But the good news is that God does not require from us the complete understanding or perfect knowledge. What God actually requires from us is admitting that we are not God.

I believe you all have read the book, Charlotte’s Web. If you haven’t, it is a good time to read it because the state fair is going on. In the beginning of the book, the father was going to slaughter a weak piglet, and his daughter stops him by asking, ‘Are you going to kill me if I am weak too?’ The daddy replies, ‘Of course not. A princess is one thing, and a pig is another.’ Like the father said, God is God and we are humans. Just like a pig can never become a princess, we will never be like God at all. It does not matter what other people or Satan say. Jesus says what is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. God is God and we are human—period. Eve fell for the sweet lie and tried to play God. So if I claim that the Presbyterian theology is correct and all the others are wrong, then in effect, I am claiming myself a god. So our first step as a Christian must begin by admitting that we are not God. But don’t call it humility. If I say that I am not a millionaire, I am not being humble. I am simply stating the fact. Admitting that we don’t have perfect knowledge and that we are subject to errors and being wrong is not being humble. It is simply stating the fact because that is how we are. Being humble is same as condescending. Condescending has judgemental tone these days. But literally condescending means stepping down to where others are. God is high up in the heavens. God can come down, which He did in the form of Jesus Christ. But we are already down here. There is no other place to go down. There is no way we can condescend. No matter what we do to be humble, that is not being humble but just admitting the reality. 

Then how can we admit that we are not God? That is, admitting that we are not perfect. Our knowledge and understanding is limited and very possibly can be wrong. The other person speaking nonsense to us might be right. And then based on these premises, opening ears to other people and being tolerant to them. That is how we admit the fact that we are not God. If not, we are playing God over the other people.

Conclusion

Friends, I thank God because the Bible does not say ‘whoever has the perfect comprehension of the Holy Trinity will be saved.’ Instead, the Bible says that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. I thank God because Jesus said to one of the criminals crucified next to him, ‘You will be in the paradise with me,’ not because he had complete understanding of the presence of the Lord in the communion, but because he simply repented. I thank God that God does not require from us the infinite knowledge on the divine mysteries, but requires from us the faith, and demands from us the love and grace toward other children of God and toward ourselves as well. So friends, let us be tolerant, gracious, and be loving in the Holy and divine name of our Saviour Jesus Christ who actually condescended for us. Amen.