Rev. Rob Jones
April 25, 2025

OT Lesson: Isaiah 2:11-17 (NRSV) 11 The haughty eyes of people shall be brought low, and the pride of everyone shall be humbled; and the Lord alone will be exalted on that day. 12 For the Lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up and high; 13 against all the cedars of Lebanon, lofty and lifted up; and against all the oaks of Bashan; 14 against all the high mountains, and against all the lofty hills; 15 against every high tower, and against every fortified wall; 16 against all the ships of Tarshish, and against all the beautiful craft. 17 The haughtiness of people shall be humbled, and the pride of everyone shall be brought low; and the Lord alone will be exalted on that day.

NT Lesson: 2 Corinthians 10:1-7 (NRSV) 10 I myself, Paul, appeal to you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away! 2 I ask that when I am present, I need not show boldness by daring to oppose those who think we are acting according to human standards. 3 Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments 5 and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ. 6 We are ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete. 7 Look at what is before your eyes. If you are confident that you belong to Christ, remind yourself of this, that just as you belong to Christ, so also do we. 

“If you want to know what God is like,” Christian Theology says, “look at Christ.” And “If you want to know what real humanity is and how you can live a genuinely human life, look at Christ.” Ultimately, “If you want to know what God is doing in the world and your individual lives, look at Christ.” For Christian theology, the person and work of Christ are the key to all truth about God, us, and the world we live in. (Guthrie 1994)

This is a remarkable statement, and I wish I had written it. But Professor Shirley Guthrie of Columbia Theological Seminary wrote it.

As Christians, Jesus stands at the center of our lives and should be at the center of all Christian thought. However, this is not a magical catch-all answer for everything we will encounter in life. 

This poetic statement is true. For us, it is especially true. But we (Christians) should not be so arrogant as to claim that we have all the knowledge of God, understand human beings, and know what is best for the world. We should not be so arrogant. Arrogance is the point of our OT lesson for today. 

So, to say that Jesus is the center of our lives and leave it is just lazy Christianity and lazy theology. 

In the 10^th chapter of 2 Corinthians, Paul writes more than a claim that he is bold in writing and meek in person. He says, “³ Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; ⁴ for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments, ⁵ and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.” 

Presbyterians do not hold the monopoly on thought about Christianity. To push that thought further, Christians do not control the monopoly on thinking about God. Many Christians forget that 39 of the 66 books in our Bible are the OT, which is the Jewish Bible. Only 27 are in the New Testament. So most of our knowledge about God comes from the history and traditions of a group of people with whom we disagree theologically. And suppose we get technical inside the history of the OT. In that case, the traditions and rituals found in the OT evolve as the Hebrew people encounter new peoples and customs, face conquering armies, and experience exile, and so forth. 

Think of it like this: Presbyterianism is just one branch, of which there are many, of a reformed thought. And reformed thought is just one branch of Christian thought. Christian thought is one of the three major branches of religion that claim to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

My point is that God may have had a chosen people in the OT, but the rules of the Church do not bind God. God did and does use non-chosen people to influence the chosen people. It was when Israel took their focus away from God that God gave them trouble. Paul tells us to take every thought captive. In order to take it captive, we must know what it is we are capturing. We must at least listen to the thoughts. To ignore it is arrogance.

Isaiah called it “haughtiness.” Isaiah said, “The haughty eyes of people shall be brought low, and the pride of everyone shall be humbled; and the Lord alone will be exalted….” When Israel became arrogant, thinking that their success was of their own making, their talents were their own, when they did not give God the glory, when they did not praise God properly. God sent Isaiah to remind them. Ultimately, they would not heed the warning, and they would be “brought low,” as Isaiah put it.  

Israel’s arrogance caused its faith to be focused on itself and not God.

Faith can be thought of as a pendulum that is constantly swinging. Haughtiness is one way the pendulum of faith can swing. We can have too much faith in ourselves and let our focus turn inward. We begin to think, “Wow, I’m good at what I do.” “Look at how successful I am. I have worked hard for what I have, and I deserve this.” The arrogance builds. 

We begin to forget about our faith, and we slowly turn away from God. Our arrogance blinds us, and we do not give God the glory when times are good. When we are arrogant and turn away from God, it is incredible how quickly we can blame God when things turn sour. 

But the pendulum can swing the other way as well. We can become so self-absorbed in our faith that we believe our religion has all the answers. We hyper-focus on scripture and doctrine. We look for simple solutions to complex questions, and when we find a simple answer, we latch onto it and defend it relentlessly. Our religion becomes Dogma. 

As the pendulum swings in this direction, we have every intention of being Christian and focusing on God, but we forget to do so. Again, we focus on Tradition, Scripture, and Doctrine. We hear and say things like, “Well, the bible says,” “My church does it this way,” or “they are not ‘real’ Christians.”

This pendulum swing is one of the most dangerous things that can happen. These actions can take place in the name of God, but God is not always part of the action. In early church history, these actions would be called heresy. So, you see, a heresy from within is a lot worse than one from without. At least when it comes from outside the church, we can see it’s not from God. 

In 1933, a Group of Christians was so enthusiastic about the Bible, religion, morality, and the Church that they decided to incorporate these beliefs into local government. They wrote these words, “We want a living People’s Church which is the expression of all the religious powers of our nation.… We demand a change in the legal constitution and open battles against Marxism, hostile to religion and to the nation, and against its socialist-Christian fellow travelers of all degrees.… We want an Evangelical Church whose roots are in the national character, and we repudiate the spirit of a Christian cosmopolitanism.”

Not so bad, right? Good wholesome Christian values in government would be a good thing. Well, these were the words of the “German Christians,” and they became the religious wing of the Nazi Party in Germany and lent religious authority to the killing of millions of innocent people; Jewish, Gipsy and anyone else considered impure. 

Remember how I described this group? Enthusiastically in favor of the Bible, religion, morality, and the Church. In these words, they describe themselves, but they did not say that they focused on God or Jesus. 

We must always look to Christ as Paul teaches. “Take every thought captive to obey Christ.” And he reminds his readers then and throughout time, “If you are confident that you belong to Christ, remind yourself of this, that just as you belong to Christ, so also do we.”

Fortunately, there was a group in Germany that spoke out against such ideology. Theologians Karl Barth and Deitrich Bohnhoffer were among those who spoke up and produced the Barmen Declaration, which we have as part of our book of confessions. And even in the 1930’s, they called ideology a heresy.

Look at Christ! Paul reminds us. 

So, let’s look at Christ for a minute. First, remember that Christ was not a Christian. According to the Gospel of Matthew, he was born a Jewish male who was exiled to Egypt because King Herod wanted to kill him. When his family returned to his home country, they settled in what was considered a bad neighborhood. 

The Gospel of John tells us that when Philip found Nathan, Philip said, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth.” So, Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Jesus became an itinerant preacher with a bunch of misfits, fishermen, and tax collectors. He ate with those whom mainstream society despised. But what did Jesus say to those who asked him about his methods? 

¹⁶ When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ¹⁷When Jesus heard this, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” (Mark 2)

Jesus sought those outside society. So, likewise, God desires those outside the Church. When we look at Jesus, we can see this. 

In John 10, Jesus describes Himself as the good shepherd who loves His sheep so much that He lays down His life for them. Unlike a hired hand who abandons the flock when danger comes, Jesus stays, protects, and cares for His own, who know Him intimately as He knows the Father. He also speaks of other sheep not yet in the fold whom He will bring in, so that there will ultimately be one flock under one shepherd. (John 10:11–16)

God’s goal, we can find in scripture, is the reconciliation of the world to Godself. Not the God of the Jews, the God of the Muslims, or the God of the Christians, but the God of creation. Jesus tells us this when he says, “I have sheep, not of this fold.” (John 10:16)

Look to Jesus, and we see things that Dogma and Church Tradition do not tell us. This idea is what the Reformation fathers found to be true when they studied Jesus. They wanted the Church (at that time, the Roman Catholic Church) to reform and reorient itself to what Paul refers to as the “Spirit of the Law.”

Jesus himself was a reformer. He upset the status quo, but at the same time, Jesus understood what the strict orthodox religious people of his day understood. So Jesus says in Mathew 5: 

²⁰For I tell you unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Paul expounds upon this notion; he writes, “⁴Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. ⁵Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, ⁶who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Corinthians 3:4-6)

Let me interpret this in modern language. Look to Christ! Your competence is through Christ! Look to the Spirit of God’s law and not the letter of God’s law. The purpose of God’s law, the scripture, the Word, if you will, is to reconcile us to God and us to one another. 

When I hear statements like, “THEY are no good” or “EVERYONE of those (insert descriptive pejorative here) is just bad.” Any they or their language, I think of Jesus and who he spent time with, who he fellowshipped with, those who followed him. 

Just as the faith pendulum can swing far to one side or the other. When we look at Jesus and use the lens of Jesus to reflect on ourselves, we can see where we locate ourselves concerning that pendulum. We may be at different places along the arc at other times of our lives. Since we are not perfect, and we have opinions and feelings, we cannot stop the pendulum from swinging. But if we look at Christ and focus on the commandments he gave us. By loving God and our neighbor, we can begin to self-actualize. We can be reformers. Often, that reformation has to start from within. 

What do I mean by that? Here is what I mean. Look at Jesus, focus on him, and then look at yourselves. Christians tend to focus on the scriptures, and though they are the best witness we have of God and of God in history, we tend to use a historical lens and see ourselves within it. Wealthy people find a God who favors wealth (Prosperity Gospel). Poor people find the preferential option for the poor in scripture (Liberation Theology). Women find the patriarchy and suppressive language (Feminist and womanist Theology). People of Color find a God of color (Black Theology). White people find a God of dominance and justification (white power or white supremacy Theology). These can be extreme cases of theological thought and can lead to exclusionism. For some, it is a quicker road than others. But I would wager that each one of these thought processes started with the best of intentions. 

And we have all done it, every single one of us. We lose track of where Jesus is in the equation. Although we can learn from different perspectives and thoughts about God, we cannot stay inside that thought process for too long. We must emerge and look at Jesus. WWJD

I have said this before. Christ teaches us empathy. This is such a catchphrase word; it sounds like psychobabble and new age, and I cringe a little when I say it. Then I remember to “Look at Jesus.”

The recorded actions of Jesus in the Bible, our one witness, show us nothing if they do not show Jesus’ empathy. He healed the sick and fed the thousands. And most importantly, dying on the cross. 

Look to Jesus, and all theology will tell us the same thing. The way to love God, the only way to love God, is by loving others. Not each other, but the other. Jesus says, " What you have done to the least of these, you have done to me. And what we have done for him, we have done for God. 

Institutionalizing religious practices in government is not the way to do it. Becoming so dogmatic in our personal spiritual practices is not the way to do it. Instead, look at Jesus, learn from Jesus, and reform like Jesus. Be open to others’ perspectives on God, but look at Jesus. Accept that God has a plan for each creature in creation. Our denominations do not bind God, and our theologies do not bind God. It’s something to think about. I will leave you to contemplate this in the name of the great redeemer, reformer, and savior, Jesus Christ.

Bibliography

Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), chapter “The Method and Task of Theology.” 

The Barmen Theological Declaration (1934), in Book of Confessions of the PC(USA), 8.01–8.29.

Clara H. Scott, “Open My Eyes, That I May See” (1895).

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition Bible (NRSVue). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2022.