But Do We See Jesus<title> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../../sermon.css"> <style fprolloverstyle>A:hover {color: #FF0000} </style> <style type="text/css"> p { font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify; } </style> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../2002/sermon.css"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" vlink="#0000FF"> <table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=4 > <tr VALIGN=BASELINE BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td COLSPAN="2" BGCOLOR="#000080"> <b> <font color="#FFFFFF"> <span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">  But Do We See Jesus </span> </font> </b> <font color="#FFFFFF"><br>A Sermon based on </font> <a target="_blank" href="http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&version=NIV&passage=Psalm+8,Job+1:1,2:1-10,Hebrews+1:1-4"><font color="#FFFFFF"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Psalm 8, Job 1:1, 2:1:10, and Hebrews 1:1-4</span></font></a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN="2" width="640">  <small><strong>Special Note:</strong> On Monday, October 2, 2006, Kayse Schoolfield, thirty-three and daughter of long-time Cliff Temple members Don and Susie Caldwell, died after suffering a pulmonary embolism. She is survived by her husband of nine years, Clay, five-year-old Lane and three-week-old Jessica. This sermon is dedicated to her memory.</small> <hr /> <p>Two weeks ago tomorrow, Nancy and I found ourselves standing on the southern rim of Valle Grande, in the Valles Caldera National Preserve, about an hour's drive northwest of Santa Fe. It's a sight to behold. A caldera is a volcanic crater many times the size of the original volcano's vent that is formed when the volcano collapses due to some kind of indescribably massive explosion. Valle Grande is about fifteen miles in diameter. It was formed when a volcano erupted there 1,000,000 years ago, collapsing the volcanic dome that had grown there from a previous eruption 300,000 years earlier. Rocks and ash from the eruption have been found as far away as Lubbock, Texas, hundreds of miles southeast. Valle Grande is rimmed with mountain peaks that were formed by subsequent eruptions that pushed magma to the surface that later hardened. What can be seen now is a spectacularly peaceful valley, fifteen miles in diameter, rimmed by peaks of magma that long ago hardened into mountains. The highest peak in the ring around the Valle Grande is Redondo Peak, at 3,000 feet above the flat prairie below.</p> <p>As we stood there, we couldn't hear a sound, especially not anything produced by humans. The silence was almost overwhelming. Looking out at the remains of what was once one of the most violent volcanoes on earth, it's hard to imagine it was ever anything but the peaceful big valley it is now, covered with amber waves of wild grasses blowing in the wind and crisscrossed by crystal streams that have fed wildlife since before recorded history.</p> <p>The thing that struck me most as I stood there in the silence under a sky as big as half the world was how small I felt. Something like what the Psalmist must have felt when he wrote, "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?" When I look at the world through the prism of my own experience, my problems and fears seem so big. When I see myself through the prism of God's larger purposes, I'm amazed that I'm even here at all. Perspective. That's what I sensed standing on the rim. The perspective of time and size. All of this happened 1,000,000 years ago and I can still see it. One million years vs. the average life expectancy of an American male, seventy-four years!</p> <p>Again, looking at life through the prism of my personal experience, everything seems so overwhelming, and problems and fears take on Jolly Green Giant proportion. When I consider the larger purposes of God, it gives me the perspective of humility and gratitude that I've been given a place in it at all. That's the perspective I'm seeking this morning. How about you?</p> <p>It's been one unusual week for all of us. Think of all that's happened since we gathered last week at this altar to pray. North Korea has threatened to test a nuclear weapon and shots have been fired across the Korea demilitarized zone for the first time in years. Yet another congressional sex scandal came to light, a scandal so sordid in the life of an elected official trusted with national leadership that not all of it all can be reported, even on television waves that regularly use sordid sex to entertain. It must have been bad. The New York Stock Exchange made us feel a little better for a little while, reaching its highest level ever. But, there is still a sick feeling inside of all of us about what happened in that one-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania.</p> <p>And, on the same day the Amish nightmare was unfolding, we all got a call that broke our hearts. Kayse Schoolfield died Monday, three weeks after giving birth to Don and Susie Caldwell's precious granddaughter, Jessica. We don't need another week like this one for a while. What we do need, what I need, is perspective. What does all this mean?</p> <p>I find myself wishing I were standing on the southern rim at Valle Grande this morning, where there is no human noise, or at least needing to get far away enough from the city lights to see the stars so I can have one of those "who is man that you are mindful of him" moments again. Perspective. That's what we need. And, if we were given it, what would we see?</p> <p>Would we see life from Job's perspective? He'd been through enough to make any human experience a psychotic break with reality. Then, God let Satan have yet another whack at him. Covered in sores, sitting in a pile of ashes and using pottery shards to scrape away the pus of infection, having lost everything and then some, Job's own wife encouraged him to forsake the God who seemed to have no interest in anything but making his life more miserable. "Get it over with!" Job's wife taunted him. "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die."</p> <p>What's worse still is that, of all people, Job didn't deserve it. Even God acknowledged that when he taunted Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil." Job could have been the poster child for the story about when bad things happen to good people.</p> <p>You can be sure of this. When I'm at my lowest, I'm counting on Nancy to still have a grip on reality. If it got so bad that even Nancy would be encouraging me to give up my faith and, worse, taunt God into just dumping molten lava on my head, it wouldn't take anything else to push me over the edge.</p> <p>Job seemed to have another perspective that helped him see things differently, other than just in terms of what he was experiencing in the most immediate moment. "Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" It was this same man, pushed to the limit of human capacity, who had some kind of perspective about God and his dependence on God, who later said, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him" (Job 13:15, NIV). How is it that, when the world we live in seems so out of control, we retain the perspective of hope?</p> <p>This past week I went to speak the South Texas Children's Home in Beeville, Texas. Jerry Haag, the President there, hosts an annual dove hunt for pastors in that area. Before the dove hunt, they always have Bible studies conducted by three different teachers. I went to teach, not hunt. I haven't held a gun in over twenty years. The last time I did, I shot a rabbit and grieved for a week. Given my love affair with all things animal, I had decided that my hunting days were over.</p> <p>But, Jerry encouraged me to give it a run. Sure enough, after having gone through an entire box of shells, I shot one dove. When I went to retrieve it, it was flopping around on the ground. I had only winged it. As all dove hunters know, the next thing I had to do was pick up this poor innocent bird and ring its neck. Just moments before, that beautiful, innocent dove had been winging its way peacefully into the sunset and a preacher with a shotgun got lucky. I'll probably be in therapy for a month.</p> <p>One of the other pastors who taught a Bible study was Don Guthrie, pastor of the First Baptist Church in San Antonio. Don said something that has stuck with me all week. He said, in our day, the challenge for believers is demonstrating their true hope as our culture collapses.</p> <p>As our culture collapses. Hadn't quite thought of it like that. Is that what's happening? All up and down our street are houses that could have been Wally's and Beaver's home. Not anymore. The American family has morphed into something Ward and June could never have imagined, not to mention the larger American culture and the world. We talked last week about how the church that has shaped our lives is no longer the predominate force in shaping the culture. Then, the news about scary North Koreans and scandalous Congressmen and sadistic torture in an Amish school. What is the world coming to? Is it collapsing, before our very eyes?</p> <p>This is what the writer of Hebrews thought about all of this. "In these last days [God] has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word." Of course, these "last days" words were written 2,000 years ago! To really appreciate how God measures time, we need to stand again on the southern rim of Valle Grande and think about what 1,000,000 years means to God. It gives another perspective to those of us who tend to be hooked on immediate gratification and call anything over seventy-five years old an antique. While we stand there, we need to think about something else. It's something that came to me on the rim of that volcano. Perspective. That in all these millennia, people have plotted to do their worst, but God has never ceased doing his best despite our worst.</p> <p>When we stand on the rim of our collapsing culture, or our collapsing dreams or our collapsing family or whatever, we need to remember this: when everything that means anything to us collapses, God's larger eternal purpose will still be done, including his place for us in it. God's will, will be done!</p> <p>In Valle Grande, all kinds of life is sustained in a valley created by what once collapsed. So, what do we see, standing on the rim of all that seems to be collapsing? We see the collapse. Do we see more? The writer of Hebrews, writing in what he or she thought were the last days, put it this way about the world collapsing. "But we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings."</p> <p>This is what I understand these words to mean. People of faith see more than just what appears to the human eye. They have an eternal perspective. A perspective that transforms even they way look at suffering and death. Some look at suffering and death and see only that God has cheated them. There is another way. A way that comes to us only when we truly believe that it is for God and through God that all things exist. So much so that he was even able to take death, the collapse of Jesus' life, and transform it into the means by which you and I will all see life.</p> <p>We see Kayse's death. But, we do see Jesus, too. And, we know that in the places where her death collapsed a lot of dreams, God will create a peaceful valley that will nourish life and hope again. That death cannot do anything to her, or to those she left, that is outside of God's greater purpose to give her and those she loved life. God's will, will be done! Just like a violent volcano was transformed into a peaceful valley that has nourished life and beauty for millennia, so, too, will our deaths be transformed into wide vistas of hope, stroked kindly by heaven's breezes of grace and crisscrossed by peaceful streams, alongside which God will cause us to lie, and find our rest.</p> <p>We see the collapse of all that was once familiar to us, and peaceful. But we do see Jesus, too. When you see Jesus, well, that gives you a perspective, kind of like the Amish have. The quote of the week this past week? "We will forgive you," they said. It was made by the families of those little girls whose final moments were filled with terror and death. "We will forgive you." That's what they said of the man who took their dreams from them. How do you do that?</p> <p>Only when we step back and get the perspective of eternal hope. We see what happened this week.</p> <p>But we see Jesus, too.</p> <hr WIDTH="100%"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Glen Schmucker, Pastor </td> <td> <div align=right>  October 8, 2006 </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN=2> Copyright © 2006, Glen Schmucker </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>