Here are items from today’s church activities.
A. The pastor’s sermon revolved around the question of how one can
know God. He talked about his own father and how he learned about a
funny, mischievous, romantic side to his father that he rarely if ever
saw when growing up, a time when he was at odds with his father. The
pastor commented that many people’s picture of God is based on their own
fathers: if their father was stern, they envision God as stern. Another
story that the pastor mentioned was Kipling’s story of the blind men
and the elephant: the blind men were unable to recognize the elephant as
an elephant, for their experience was only partial, as they drew their
conclusions after touching specific parts of the elephant. The pastor
also referred to a statement, which he attributed to Schleiermacher,
that, if there were no God, we would have to invent him. Perhaps we
would be able to invent a supreme moral authority or a clockmaker, the
pastor remarked, but that would fall short of who God is. That is why
God did not leave us to our own devices but revealed himself through
Jesus Christ, communicating his desire for a relationship with us. Jesus
reveals the Father, as John 14:9 indicates, but Jesus also reveals the
Spirit, for Jesus sent the Spirit (John 15:26; 16:7).
B. In Sunday school, one passage that we discussed was John 13. Jesus
loves his disciples and knows he is about to leave. Before supper,
Jesus washes his disciples’ feet. This is an act of service and an
example for Jesus’s disciples, and disciples are blessed if they do so:
people in the class said this blessing is that they become closer to God
and attain attributes of character (i.e., compassion). But the washing
also represents something spiritual that Jesus is doing. People must be
washed by Jesus to have any part of Jesus. But the disciples need not
have their whole bodies cleansed but only their feet, for they are
already clean, with the exception of Judas. A question in my mind
concerns the point at which they became cleansed. They were apparently
clean before they received the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). Were they
cleansed at their water baptism, perhaps by Jesus himself (see John
4:2)? Did that baptism bring them, not only forgiveness of sins, but
also a righteous orientation on the inside? If so, why did that baptism
not “take” with Judas? Or perhaps what cleansed them was their faith in
Jesus as the Son of God (Acts 15:9); Judas, in betraying Jesus but also
in being a thief (John 12:6), may have indicated that he did not truly
believe.
C. We got into a discussion about humility and ego. Someone in the
class said that ego is important because it can give people drive;
otherwise, they would be wimps and not do anything. Someone else
commented that she herself is kind of a wimp: she prefers to sit on the
sidelines rather than getting involved. When she does take initiative,
people recognize that as the Spirit of God!