Hebrews 9:11-15
John 8:46-59
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I AM.”
For once the enemies of our Lord were right about something, frankly, about something that many nominal Christians are wrong about. His enemies understood exactly what he meant by his words, “before Abraham was, I AM.” And, we call this day Passion Sunday because we see the reason, ultimately, that his enemies wanted him dead, and the reason they were unrelenting in pursuit of his execution. They understood him rightly, and because they reacted in the only logical way they could, they picked up stones in order to kill him.
In one of his most famous passages in all his works, C.S. Lewis addressed this very thing that today’s Gospel is about. In Mere Christianity he wrote:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a good moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great moral teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. 1
2 comments:
Dear Fr. Hart,
Yours is a wonderfully uplifting, air clearing, heart & mind focusing sermon on Christ Jesus our Lord, the I AM. Additionally, it is an excellent example of redemptive historical preaching ala Dennis Johnson's book, Him We Proclaim. My thanks for this blessing of the Gospel rightly delivered that my wife and I were able to share, as I read this aloud to her.
Best regards in Christ,
Jack Miller
An absolutely wonderful sermon. It made in a way much better than I was able all the points about epistle and gospel of Passion Sunday.
One tiny quibble very much beside the point, but why is it that we still refer to Hitler as the most evil, when the monsters of communism killed many more and are still with us? Compared to them, as terrible as the Nazi state was, it has been destroyed while the communist myth which has killed and is killing so many more lives on. China, North Korea, Cuba and seeking new life in South American regimes/
Post a Comment