Lester Start’s Works

1THE PRESENCE OF GOD

L. J. Start

July 30, 1989

First Baptist, Kalamazoo

It is a vivid scene recounted in the Old Testament story of Jacob’s ladder. Here is Jacob far from home or any familiar place, wandering in the wilderness. Weary, at the end of the day, he lies down, a stone for a pillow, and sleeps and dreams. And he sees a ladder stretching from that barren rocky place up to heaven, and he sees angels of God ascending and descending on it, and he hears the voice of acceptance of God and his promise for the future.

I have some trouble with this story. I’ve worked on a ladder. People just don’t climb up and down like that, no matter how divinely wrought. I picture the stones of that place being formed into a broad staircase stretching up –with plenty of room to go up and down.

Anyway, Jacob awakens from his dream, much moved by this vision and says, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not”.

The symbolism is clear. God bridges the gap between heaven and earth and His presence is there even in the wilderness where one might least expect it. This represents the enduring faith of the Hebrews that emerges again and again in their history: in the midst of desolation, privation and suffering, God reveals Himself. In the midst of Jacob’s isolation, loneliness and despair God appears, the gap of estrangement is bridged and one can say, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not”. There is a balm in Gilead.

My theme today is this — the presence of God, and I would urge with Jacob and the Psalmist that it is indeed ever-present. “Whither shall I flee from Thy presence?” God’s presence is where we might expect it in the sunny hours, but also where we don’t -in times and tasks and troubles where indeed the Lord was and we knew it not, because we failed to see Him.

Of course it is possible to look for God in the wrong way. I remember once quite some time ago my wife and I were startled to hear our six-year-old boy announce confidently at the supper table, “You can’t lean on God.” “Oh?” we replied with a question mark. (Sometimes “Oh” is the best response.) “No” he answered briskly, “I tried it in kindergarten today, and I fell right over backwards.” CI think it was his brother at a similar age who on occasion would whirl around to look behind him. It seems he was testing the teaching that God was everywhere, and he was sure that if he were quick enough he just might spot Him.) Religious

education does have its problems.

I remember, too, a saintly old lady in a church I was serving part- time. This was a long time ago. She was concerned that although she had been a faithful Christian all of her life, she had never had a vision of God. This troubled her, not having this assurance of salvation. I think I convinced her that her concern was unwarranted. And if I remember correctly, the hymn we just sang

was helpful in reassuring her. Remember? “I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies, no sudden rending of the veil of clay; no angel visitant, no opening skies, but take the dimness of my soul away.”

But in that same church (incidentally, there is no such thing as a part-time church; the work is always full-time - there are just part-time salaries) there was a middle-aged man who reported to me his vivid experience of several visions of God he had seen in the opening skies of the sunrise. Unfortunately this was curiously mixed up with a paranoid obsession with the threat of Communism everywhere. (This was the hey-day of Senator Joe McCarthy) I could not help him either with his visions or obsessions; he soon had to be hospitalized with severe mental illness.

How, then, do we find the presence of God? How do we recognize this presence? If visions are unreliable, perhaps undesirable, where is the presence of God? How might we say, with Jacob, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not”.

Of course, the most obvious answer is that we see God in His creation. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handiwork.” “The beauty of the earth, the glory of the skies over and around us lies.” “hill and vale and tree and flower, sun and moon and stars of light” — all attest to the creative power, the presence of God. As Browning wrote, when “The year’s at the spring, and day’s at the morn, morning’s at seven, the hill-side’s dew-pearled, the lark’s on the wing, the snail’s on the thorn — God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world.”

But what do we say when the heavens weep and the seas roar, the earth shakes and the sky thunders and we are beset by a sea of troubles? Even here, Jacob’s ladder reminds us, God appears. This is the Hebrew faith that found a sign of God in Egypt when they were slaves — in the wilderness when they were starving and in exile far from home. Even here, one can say, “God is in this place and I knew it not”. He does not leave us comfortless.

Again, the Psalmist is helpful: “God’s way is in the sea” - not just the Eden- like green pastures and still waters of the sun-lit valleys the Hebrews loved, but in the tumult of the raging waters. So even if we take the wings of the morning or dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there God’s hand leads us. There is the presence of God.

How hard it is to see this! How natural to see God’s hand in our prosperity; how hard to see it in our distress! We feel deserted, lost, rejected when defeat and disappointment loom on the horizon. But Jacob’s ladder reminds us that in the wilderness experiences of life - and there are such for all of us - God appears. From how much bitterness could we be saved if only we could see that in our fears, our failures and disappointments, and loneliness - even here is the place of God, and we knew it not!

It is not the event but our judgment on the event that makes the difference between happiness and misery. So goes the ancient Stoic wisdom. All people suffer doubt, failure, Whether this is taken as final or as an occasion for a new beginning is up to the individual and his vision of the possibilities before him. And the infinite possibilities of renewal are ever before us. When night falls, the stars appear.

But why must there be so much suffering and evil in a world created by a good God and sustained by His presence? There are some answers but no real explanation. There is man’s freedom, for example, and the physical laws and moral rules of God’s creation. We are free to violate these, but we do not break God’s laws. We break ourselves against them. God is not mocked. We cannot be unfaithful and have fidelity as a result. We cannot be dishonest and inspire credibility. We cannot be insensitive to the feelings of others and have them be sensitive in return. And we cannot sow hate and reap harmony; spread deceit and get trust in return. And yet, when we consider the evils that come from the regular laws of nature and the inexorable moral law, would we really want it different?

The old Hebrew dogma that evil and suffering is the result of sin is a pretty good dogma. Man is responsible for most of the suffering we experience. Man’s sin and greed cause all the evils from ecological disasters to violence in all its destructive farms. And when we consider the intermeshed relationships of human life in an ever shrinking globe, we see how the innocent suffer from the sins of others. Sins of fathers affect abused children. We are not separate atoms. We are, as Paul said, one body. No man is an island.

How does Jesus deal with this problem? One day he saw a man who was blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, “Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be manifest in him.” His blindness is the occasion of God’s power in curing him.

What Jesus is saying is this: The problem of evil, then, is a practical, pragmatic problem, not a theoretical issue. Evil exists so that with God’s power we might do something about it. As the Buddha once said, “If one is struck by an arrow, it is idle to stand and wonder why it came or whence it came - what is needed is to pull it out.” Jesus once said, “In the world you will have trouble.” He did not go on to say, “Let me explain why this is so.” Instead, he said, “But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” In the overcoming of evil through the power of God in Christ, there is the presence of God.

There is a sense in which evil seems to be a necessary part of the good. The occasions for evil and suffering are also indeed occasions for good. As Augustine said, “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to have any evil at all.” As the story of the man born blind suggests, God’s power is present to bring about that which is good in all things.

There is a sense in which the process of life and the unity of creation break down into polar opposites working together in creative tension. There are the poles themselves in the earth and in the atom, north and south, plus and minus, day and night, male and female, mountain and valley, hard and soft, wet and dry, hot and cold, life and death, and so on. It is in this context that good and evil seem to imply each other as on the same scale.

Now this is an ancient view. The Chinese spoke of these principles as Yang and Yin united in the dynamic process of the Tao of the universe. The Greeks taught the principle of the tension of opposites. And the Biblical view reflects the basic opposition of the heavenly and earthly, God and man.

The tension of opposites provides a kind of law of compensation that suggests each moves toward its opposite which it requires to be a whole process. Day to night, night to day, summer to fall and winter, winter to spring and summer, life to death and death to life. Augustine said that all life is a series of little deaths in which something new is born. There is a cosmic pattern we come to expect, a swing of the pendulum. And so we say it is always darkest before dawn, and when darkness comes, the stars appear.

In such a way one can accommodate the opposites, the struggles, the conflicts and triumphs which make up the dynamic process of life, and evil can be seen as a necessary foil, something to be overcome.

But there is something unique in the Biblical view of this process. Unlike the Chinese and Greek view, the world process is not seen as a kind of pendulum swinging between opposite forces in perpetual harmonic tension. In the Biblical view God is seen as a part of the process itself, inserting Himself into history. Biblical religion is unique in seeing God as a part of human history, directing the process with a moral purpose.

This is why progress is a Western concept. And it is Biblical, not Greek. The Greeks saw history in terms of cycles that repeated. Asian thought presupposes a dynamic but stable cycle of the order of nature. But the Bible brings God directly into human affairs. That is why He is present as the ground of all our history. Only Islam which draws from our Bible has the same teaching of a God of history — which helps to explain the historic conflicts between Islam and Christianity.

Bible history teaches that God called Moses and directed him to lead his people to liberation in the promised land. God gives Moses the Law and injects His purpose again and again into the history of Israel. And what more vivid expression of God in history could there be than the doctrine of the Incarnation? God so loved the world! God was made flesh and dwelled among us. Through Christ God’s power is at hand among us to bring about that which is good.

In this Christian revelation, the world is seen as more than a balancing of opposites. The old image of a swinging pendulum is too static for God’s spiritual law. A divine purpose transforms the opposites and creates something new, a new heaven and a new earth.

Jacob’s vision is thus realized. The opposition between heaven and earth, God and man, is overcome not by a staircase of angels but by the mystery of the Incarnation, God’s act of redeeming love. It is love which reconciles opposites in the creative purposes of God. And the law for man is to follow God’s rule of love. “This is the first great commandment,” says Jesus, “thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Only love overcomes hostility, alienation; reconciles the oppositions that divide us. There is a natural temptation to think in terms of confrontation. The other appears as an opposing or threatening center of action. And so we build walls, draw lines. But love breaks down walls, draws people together in a circle of care and concern. And here is where we find the presence of God. Jacob experienced God’s presence as he heard God’s promise and felt God’s love in his inner self, and responded.

It is a mistake to look for God in this place or that, in this event or that. As Jesus said, the kingdom of God does not come by observation. There will be no saying “Look, here it is” or “there it is”, for the kingdom of God is within you; is, in fact, among you.

The presence of God is not in a place but in a spirit. Gad is spirit, the spirit of love. Here according to the first letter of John is where we find the presence of God. “Where love is, there is God, for God is love.” Though God has never been seen by any man, God Himself dwells in us if we love one another. God is love and he who dwells in love is dwelling in God and God in him. We love because He loved us first. Let us then love one another for love is from God.

“And I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation, shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”

(Delivered July 30, 1989 by Lester Start at First Baptist Church)

1THE POWER OF THE CROSS

July 30, 1989

Text: For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God.

The single enduring symbol of Christianity throughout the ages has been that of the cross. It is a symbol which was originally the sign for a shameful death; but through the death of our Lord it has been transformed into a symbol of triumph and glory. The sign of the cross, that rude frame of rough timber upon which Jesus suffered and died, has lived as a potent force in the lives of Christians since the days of the apostles. It has traveled all over the world and been planted on every shore. The explorers carried along with their compasses the cross. But more important it has lived in the hearts of countless Christians as a sign of enduring and eternal power. Since the day when Paul said “the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God”. Christians have looked to the cross as a source of divine strength. A learned Jew at the time of Paul said “no religion can live whose founder was slain as a common criminal and whose symbol is a cross. But the cross has grown through the years to triumph over all enemies; its power endures to our day.

Let us think this evening on the sign of the cross, what it has meant to the Christians who have gone before us, and what it means to us today. Let us see how as Paul says “to those which are saved, it is the power of God.” The early Christians believed firmly in the power of the cross. Even the sign of the cross possessed a power that was divine, and if a Christian could own a piece of the cross of Jesus, he could avail himself of the power of Christ at all times. And so the early Christians carried around bits of wood believed to be parts of the original cross: There was probably little likelihood that they actually had pieces of the original but their belief was strong enough to make the symbol meaningful. Whenever they were asked to do a task, whenever they set out to do something, they used to touch the piece of wood to signify that with the power of the Cross they could do what was asked. And this sign of the cross has endured to the present day although few are aware of it. For most of us when we determine to do something often tap on wood. We have forgotten the reason for it, but this habit or superstition, call it what you will, goes back to the practice of the early Christians of touching the wood of Christ’s cross. And there are other carry overs in our modern life of the power of the sign of the cross although for the most part they have lost their significance. For the early and medieval Christians the cross was a talisman, which protected them from harm and gave them power. Few of us today think of the symbol of the cross in this way consciously, and yet how many of us cross our fingers at a moment of crisis. Keep your fingers crossed, we say, but we do not consider in so doing that we are making the sign of the cross. And it is not a coincidence either that we say, cross my heart, when we wish to convince someone of our sincerity. Today when we are through with a meal, we lay our knife and fork very carefully parallel to each other near the top of our plates. But not long before the days of Emily Post no one would think of setting down their knife and fork, unless they placed them in the form of the cross. For in the Middle Ages the monks were carefully instructed to do this and the practice spread to secular life and continued until almost our own day.

The cross is woven into the very fabric of our lives whether we are conscious of it or not. Wherever we look we see the cross. Have you ever noticed how the panels of most doors are made? There are usually two small panels at the top and two longer ones at the bottom of the door. And the pieces of wood which separate these panels form the sign of the cross. There is probably a door like this somewhere in each of your homes, but few of us realize that the sign of the cross is there. This is no coincidence either. In the sixteenth century the carpenters’ guild in Germany adopted the sign of the cross as the symbol of their guild, it being the custom that each guild have a distinguishing trademark. And the carpenters chose the cross and worked it into the doors of each house they built, to provide everyone with the power of the cross. During the Lenten Season it is customary to eat buns decorated with a cross formed by sugar icing. In medieval times people believed that bread thus marked was consecrated, that it could never become corrupt and mold or rot. Today we think of hot cross buns as just buns, and yet we think they are a little special. The cross would be famous if it were only for its use during the time of the Crusades when under its shadow the knights battled against the crescent of the Muhammadans. Each Crusader had his tunic and armor decorated with the cross, and believed that by its power he was carrying on a holy war. And in later history Joan of Arc led the armies of France to victory with this sign as her guiding source of power. In olden times people were buried at a crossroads for a very definite purpose. People thus buried were usually suicides who had forfeited the right to salvation by taking their own lives. And so they were buried in unmarked graves because they could not be laid in the consecrated grounds of a church cemetery; and yet, the cross of the cross roads might possibly give them the power to be saved. Today the symbol of the cross has a noble place as the symbol of the Red Cross Organization. [Christmas]

The cross has played such a vital part in the lives of the Christians of the ages that its influence is seen everywhere; we cannot escape from this sign. Whether we are conscious of it or not, the cross faces us almost everywhere we look. And it has meant various things to different people throughout the years. It is a simple figure in form, and yet in the world today there are over four hundred different forms of it. And there are just as many different ideas of what it means. Today we do not have the same faith and belief in the cross that the early and medieval Christians had. We in the Protestant church, at least, do not believe any more that it has a miraculous power in itself in spite of the fact that we still retain some carry overs of this ancient faith. We do not believe as did those people of the Middle Ages that a cross on the door will keep witches and evil spirits away. We do not believe that carrying an image of the cross will be a talisman against harm. We have spiritualized our interpretation of the cross and see in it a source of inspiration and spiritual power which comes not from a piece of wood or metal, but from God. We know that the cross does not mean quite the same thing to us as it did to these earlier Christians. But if it does not mean the same thing, if we have given it a spiritual interpretation, what exactly should it mean to us today? There are over four hundred different forms of the cross in the churches and homes of the Christian world. How many forms are there in the hearts of men? We have lost the early type of belief in the cross; but what should it mean to us today?

It is important that we do know what the cross should mean, for as we look back and turn back the pages of history, we see that men have used the cross as the power behind. Deeds which Jesus would never have condoned. The terrible Spanish Inquisition was carried out under the shadow of the cross. Witches were burned according to the divine judgment which the cross symbolized. We should understand the meaning behind the sign of this cross which we honor so conspicuously in our everyday life, and find the source of the power of God which it gives. The cross is the power of God, Paul tells us. Crosses are the ladders which lead us to heaven, for without the cross there can be no crown.

We can best see the meaning of the cross for us today if we try to understand exactly what it meant in the life of our Lord. By reflecting on the story of the crucifixion, we see how Jesus suffered for our sins and faced death with the calm assurance that he was committing himself to God’s care. And with the power of God he was enabled to be victorious over the cross and change the symbol of defeat to one of triumph.

Today as we look at the cross we are reminded that there are ruinous forces at work in the world which threaten us. Just as in the days of Jesus the cross symbolized the evil forces that conspired unsuccessfully to destroy him. The world is still full of wickedness which must constantly be combated and destroyed; the religious name for this wickedness is sin. In man there are ruinous and suicidal tendencies that conspire to destroy the godlike in man, forces of evil and sin which are forever threatening anew to crucify the Christ in us. The sins to which we are all prey are too manifold and familiar to require enumeration, but some of them become so familiar that we are likely to take them for granted. For example the sin of slander and gossip is so familiar that we are all too likely to accept it as normal and not too serious. But this as much as anything else conspired to crucify our Lord as malicious tongues spread misunderstanding and hate about him. Our secular life today is shot through with sins which keep recrucifying Christ by destroying the ideals for which he lived and died. Racial prejudice born of a false belief in one’s superiority destroys the ideal of the brotherhood of man which Jesus taught. And war keeps the Prince of Peace suffering still on his cross. A British sergeant in the last war said that it seemed to him that every shot which passed between the lines went through the body of Christ who stood between the warring children of God. In our modern world we are developing a contempt for the sacredness of personality, destroying the ideal that Jesus taught that all men are precious in the sight of God. In our personal life sins like unchastity no longer seem to shock or worry us. It is the expression of sex we say and quite natural. But it shows the same contempt for personality that was shown when a mob drunk with hate hanged Jesus on a cross. But if one believes himself redeemed by Christ, he cannot hold himself cheap.

The cross then, first reminds us of the evil forces at work in the world, for as we look at it we are reminded of the evil which crucified Jesus. We do not completely understand why this evil is in the world; we have no answer for it and can point to no solution. But we do have a figure to set before our mind’s eye, a Fellow Sufferer who died placing himself in the hands of God. And by his faith in the power of God he became victorious over the forces of evil and triumphed over them. And as we look at the Figure of Jesus we see the power of God shining through the darkness of sin and dispersing the shades of evil as the sun scatters a morning mist. Then we can become encouraged and inspired and know with Paul that the cross is the Power of God. Then the cross becomes transformed in our eyes to a symbol of victory as we see God’s power conquering even over this. With the example of Jesus before us we can know that God through us is strong enough to meet every evil we face. This knowledge gives us such a new and refreshing outlook that we say we enter a new life and are saved from evil and sin through our faith in Christ.

We must remember however that the cross means the power of God,

that Jesus is the Savior, only to those who obey the will of God. The cross means redemption for us not so much through faith alone, but through sacrifice and service. An African convert to Christianity, one who had spent his life in the darkness of the Belgian Congo, expressed this idea cogently and beautifully when he said, “The cross of Christ condemns me to be a saint.” Christ is Savior to those who obey him, and follow his example. We find the power of the cross as we dedicate our lives to the life he led and follow his teachings. Just as Jesus found the power of God in a life of service and sacrifice for his fellow man, so we can partake of this power as we live to carry out the will of God. Just as Jesus transformed the cross from defeat to victory so we can transform the evils we see in the world to show the glory of God. But we cannot partake of this power of the cross, this power which comes from God and still retain our sinful natures by accepting and adding to the evils of the world. We must be worthy of the risen Christ whose spirit is always with us when we listen for it. We must use the power of God to destroy sin and evil wherever we find them, for only then do we have the power of God. And if we become discouraged and faint as we see how far from measuring up to the spirit of Christ our world is, when the evils and sorrows seem too great to bear, remember that it was a man who knew Calvary who said: God is Love.

In conclusion: the cross is no longer to us a magic object which has power in itself. It is a symbol of spiritual aspiration and power if we but heed its meaning. But when we fail to answer its call to take it up and follow Jesus, when we persist in following evil instead we are crucifying the spirit of Jesus anew. Edwin

Arlington Robinson expresses this message in his poem Calvary better than any words of mine might do.

Friendless and faint, with martyred steps and slow,

Faint for, the flesh, but for the spirit free,

Stung by the mob that came to see the show,

The Master toiled along to Calvary;

We jibed him as he went, with houndish glee,

Till his dimmed eyes for us did overflow;

We cursed his vengeless hands thrice wretchedly,

And this was nineteen hundred years ago.

But after nineteen hundred years the shame

Still clings, and we have not made good the loss

That outraged faith has entered in his name.

Ah, when shall come love’s courage, to be strong!

Tell me, 0 Lord tell me, 0 Lord, how long

Are we to keep Christ writhing on the Cross!

How long? The answer is for you to decide.

May the power of the cross lead you.