Admiring Jesus

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship
Sabbath, December 3, 2011

[At the beginning of the sermon, I invited people to text the names of people they admired. My rationale for doing this was John's teachings that those who cannot love their brothers whom they can see cannot really love God whom they cannot see (See 1 John). Similarly our admiration of real, live, down-to-earth people is connected to our capacity to admire God. Admiration is a matter of focus.

Here are the texts sent in response to my invitation:

Josh Grobin
Martin Luther King

President Obama
Hillary Clinton
Bill Gates
Nadine and Karin [women in the church] for facing an uncertain health future with courage and determination
Whoever started Occupy Wall Street
My dad
Mohammed Yunis, banker to the poor.
MLK
My daughter
George Meuller
My mom because she is so strong [This is an abbreviation of a sweet message celebrating a gutsy woman who faces daunting challenges and still adds joy and life to our worship services.]
Herb Montgomery
Mom Lauren for faithfully and cheerfully taking care of her paralyzed husband for seven years.
My wife and kids.
Jerry, Ed, Dawn, Ernie, Dave, Ann, Ken, Jean, Alan, Suzzy, John, Karin, Vivien, Vi [all members of North Hill. After church people who do not text told me of additional people they would have named if they'd had the requisite technology.]
Church kids
God's Gals

I talked a bit about the list. It's obvious that these are not perfect people. Especially the public figures on the list could generate debate about their respective merits and demerits. However, everyone on the list is admired for some good they accomplished or at least pursued. Admiring people, even "imperfect people" is good for our soul. Admiring makes us happy and helps form our own lives in admirable ways.

Occasionally in the middle of the news on All Things Considered, there will be a puff piece, an unabashed admiration of someone. A famous artist or writer or humanitarian has died and it's time to remember them.

The host of the program will say something like this: Henry Smith wrote thirty novels that exerted a major influence on the English language. His works were translated into forty languages. Some say he gave the Northwest its fullest literary identity since Jack London. His wheat farmers and fishermen, engineers and rock singers, small town mayors and governors – all were somehow more real and grander for having been touched by his pen. Here, with an appreciation is Jill Adler.

I like that: Instead of calling it an obituary, they call it an appreciation. These pieces are not analyses. They make no pretense of being careful, balanced reports. They celebrate the good stuff. The reporter clearly admires the person featured.

One of the central elements of worship is admiration. In worship we admire God the Father. We admire Jesus. This is the heart of our worship. It is the heart of our faith. It is the center of our theology.

The New Testament – the book created by the Christian Church and the book that serves as our constitution – begins with four appreciations of Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Each writer offers his own special version of an appreciation of Jesus. They admire Jesus and their point in writing is fuel our admiration as well.

Matthew begins his book with these words: “This is a record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”

Jesus has the right genealogy. He comes from good stock. He is the direct descendant of Abraham and David. And not only “a descendant.” He is “the descendant.” Jesus is the “seed” promised to Abraham, the dynastic heir promised to King David. The Jewish people, prompted by prophets and the entire ethos of their religion, have anticipated a special person who will set the world right. The perfect king, the perfect priest, the supreme prophet. That's Jesus. He will be the Lamb of God, the holy sacrifice, the gleaming lamp of the temple, the ultimate shrine of God's presence.

Before Jesus was born, an angel appeared to his father and confirmed that Jesus was fathered directly by God. Adam and Eve were the children of God, every other human after Adam and Eve was a grandchild. Until Jesus. His mother was Mary, but his father was God Himself!

After telling Joseph that Jesus' father was God himself, the angel told Joseph what to name the baby: Call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.

In concluding this section of his book, Matthew declares, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel which means, 'God with us.'”

No wonder we admire Jesus.

To make sure we get it, Matthew includes in his book the story of the Magi from the east who came to admire Jesus. These men, nobility if not royalty, traveled a thousand miles to admire Jesus in person. Wise men admire Jesus. Fools, scoundrels, losers – these are the people who get sucked into jealousy or merely fail to awaken to admiration.

Here is the great heart of our faith. There are many good things we share with many other religions. Basic morality is exhorted by every major religion. Compassion, honesty, faithfulness, integrity – these are not distinctively Christian virtues. They are universal virtues.

Our special heritage, our special spiritual treasure is Jesus – the perfect embodiment of all these virtues. All these virtues are admirable. And we are privileged to witness them in Jesus, so our admiration of virtue becomes anchored in a person. We admire Jesus because he embodies all the most wonderful virtues. And we see the great virtues more clearly and more happily because they are embodied in the person of Jesus.

Admiring the goodness of God as it is revealed in Jesus helps to shape our own lives into a more admirable pattern.

Recently I got to thinking about an acquaintance. Everything I remembered from our conversations was negative. If the conversation touched on politics, he made a point of saying that all politicians were wholly corrupt. The only reason they went into politics was for fame and power. They had no interest in actually helping anyone. Doctors: well, everybody knows the only reason they decided to become doctors was because they had dollar signs in their eyes. When I protested that my friends became doctors because they dreamed of making people whole, Bill dismissed my naivete. Bosses were all jerks. They regarded employees merely as expense centers to be minimized as much as possible without incurring lawsuits. Truck drivers: they're all uneducated men stuck in jobs they hate and lacking the brains to do anything else. Bible translators: they twist the Hebrew and Greek to support the theology of the people paying their salaries.

As these memories were running through my head, I checked myself. That's the way I remembered it, but surely Bill wasn't really that negative. He couldn't despise everybody. So the next time we visited, I asked him, “Bill, is there any one you admire?”

Bill thought and thought. Finally, he said, “No one comes to mind right off.”

No athlete. No politician. No missionary. No doctor. No aunt or uncle. No scientist. No one. Bill didn't admire anyone, at least, no one came to mind. Bill is big on human depravity. All people are thoroughly infected by the corruption of sin, so how could any of them be admirable?

A little later in the conversation, he finally thought of a preacher he liked. I asked if he knew the preacher personally or just knew his sermons.

Bill said he didn't know the preacher personally. He just liked the man's preaching. Which made sense. The preacher specializes in denouncing human evil, self-deception and pride. He's down on people. He constantly hammers away at human depravity.

Which highlights the importance of admiration. We tend to move in the direction of that which we admire. If we admire people who are abrasive, negative, condemning, guess what . . . over time we will enhance our own tendencies to be negative, abrasive and condemning.

If we spend time listening to preachers who berate their listeners, who scold and condemn, and spank and scorn sinners, why would we be surprised if we tend to become negative parents, negative spouses, negative friends?

Admiration matters.

And as Christians the center of our admiration is Jesus.

Matthew admires Jesus as the wisest of all teachers. The rabbi who perfectly teaches the way of God.

The gospel of Mark sets up a different picture of Jesus. Mark says nothing about Jesus' birth. He pays no attention to Jesus' ancestors. He focuses on Jesus activity as a minister, as a rabbi, a teacher.

Jesus is baptized, then immediately triumphs in a daunting confrontation with the devil in the wilderness. Coming out of the wilderness, Jesus enlists Peter and Andrew and James and John then charges into ministry. He drives out demons, heals so many people no one can keep count. He welcomes lepers back into the community and cures their leprosy. He manages theological controversy with compelling authority. Thousands hang on his every word.

Mark shows us a man that nearly every one admires. Even his enemies recognize his power and goodness, even while they do everything they can to trip him up.

The gospel of Luke takes us back to the stories surrounding Jesus' birth. Not only was Jesus birth special, the birth of his cousin John was also supernatural. John's father was visited by an angel and after John was born, Zechariah uttered a fantastic prophecy. John's ministry set the stage for Jesus.

Luke traces Jesus' genealogy not merely back to David and Abraham, but all the way back to God. “Jesus was the son of Adam who was the son of God.”

Luke tells of a choir of angels visiting shepherds on the night Jesus was born. They announced the birth of a Savior in the city of David. A clear reference to Jesus as the Messiah.

Luke tells of an old priest in the temple, Simeon, who recognizes Jesus as the Messiah. Even though from all outward appearances Jesus is merely the unremarkable son of peasant parents, Simeon is informed by God and announces the deeper, more wonderful reality: This is the Messiah of God.

The Jesus we admire is fully human. True. It is equally true that he embodies the presence and grace of God. He is Immanuel, God with us. He is the Savior, the one who will rescue us from condemnation.

Jesus was born of the right ancestry. His birth was announced and witnessed and celebrated by angels. As a youngster, he increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. We admire him because he made God accessible. We admired him because he did the things we hoped God would do.

John, in his gospel, zooms way back in time. Before the angels sang to the shepherds, before the Wise Men saw the star, before Jesus began preaching. John goes back before time. “In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All thrings were made through him and apart from him nothing was made.”

Here we are invited to admire Jesus, not merely as the best human ever, not only as one who made God present among us. We admire Jesus as God, as one, who unlike any other human had an existence that stretched backward into the reaches of unimaginable antiquity.

In John, Jesus is the light of the world, the bread of life. He is the judge of all, the being who enlightens every human who is born, the gift from heaven that secures eternal life for all who believe. John, Jesus is not “born.” He arrives. And in him, God arrives and sets up his tent next to ours.

Have you ever camped with a group of friends. Do you remember how sounds go right through thin nylon walls. You know your friends in a whole new way after you've camped together. Jesus camped with us. He set his tent up in our campsite. And we beheld his glory, full of grace and truth.

No wonder we admire him.

As we move through this Christmas season, I encourage you to admire Jesus. Put away any need to be “above” sentimentality. Dismiss your need to be skeptical, your need to demonstrate your imagined perspicuity. Christmas is a time to unabashedly admire. Sure, human beings provide us with ample justification to be suspicious, wary, cautious, on guard. But healthy, happy life includes admiration, unabashed affirmation of the goodness, beauty, competence, generosity and nobility exhibited by people.

If Jesus thought enough of us to come and live among us, if he admired us that much, we ought to admire one another. As we cultivate our admiration of one another and of Jesus, our worship will become richer. Our relationships will become sweeter. We will find ourselves practicing for heaven. And our practice will make even this world a sweeter, holier place.