Movement | Embodying Jesus to Our Community - John 1:14 | July 28
GENERATED TRANSCRIPT
Well, good morning. After Zach talking now on the microphone, it sounds really loud. But I'm really glad to be here with you guys. Continuing this talk of vision casting of mission, it's something that I'm really passionate about, about talking about what is to come. How can we join together in the mission of Christ as a body? Listening to Zach and Josh talk about what it means for us as a church, what our goals are, and how we are going to accomplish what God has called us to do is really exciting. So to get to be a part of talking about this with you guys, as a church, is really exciting to me.
Before we dive in, I'm going to read our mission statement, and then we'll dive into embodying Christ. Our mission as Mountainside Community Church is to be a place where heaven meets earth, by proclaiming the universal reign of God and embodying Jesus to our communities, inviting our neighbors to join us in becoming real people who are part of a real family, who worship a real God. Today, we're going to be talking about embodying Christ to our communities, and we're going to break it up into two ideas or two parts. We're going to talk about the reality of what it means to embody Christ and our response. What is the reality? What does it truly mean to be the body of Christ?
What I have here is the reality that you and I, the church of Mountainside, as part of the global church, are the very presence of Christ on earth. We're going to break down what that means. Our response is to take up that calling of embodying Christ so that our communities and the very cosmos would know the eternal reign of our King.
A quick caveat, I am still learning. I am super excited to share what I have learned, but we as a church get to go on this journey together, figuring out what it means to embody Jesus. If there are things that I say you're like, "No, I don't know about that," then let's talk about it. I think that's what the church is for. A lot of these ideas are foundational and perhaps very familiar. If we go through and you finish thinking, "Oh, I knew all that," well, that's great. I am seeing this with new eyes, it feels like. I think we're going to be talking about some very foundational or familiar ideas. My prayer is that God allows us to see more of his character.
Before we dive in, we are just going to pray really as a group together. So Father, we just want to see you rightly. We want to know what it means that we are your body here on Earth. As we study your word and as we go out this week, when we meditate on truths, would your spirit be revealing who you are to us?
One of the foundational verses for the idea of embodiment or embodying Christ in our communities comes from John 1. As the body of Christ, we're going to actually stand up and read John 1 and 14 together. This isn't the totality of it, but we're just going to read what's on the screen together. Ready? "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Before we sit down, if you are interested and want to grab a Bible, they are at the end there. I made it easier for you guys to walk over there and get them because you're already standing. If you don't, that's fine as well. We are going to be taking a good trip through Scripture together.
I remember the first time that I learned what "dwelt" meant. Zach talked about it two weeks ago, that it means tenting or tabernacling. It was Christmas 2019, and my mom had my family doing a talent show. It was high stakes. My cousin moved an Oreo from his forehead to his mouth, so it was a big deal. I was in college at the time, and I was studying Arabic. I thought, you know, I'll read John 1:14 in Arabic to my family. I thought that was going to be nerdy and cool. I'm in my room studying, and I come across a word that I don't really know. I didn't know many of them, to be honest, but this one I really didn't know. I Google translated it, and it came up "camping." I thought, that's weird because I don't know where camping is in John. I don't have a framework for camping in the Bible. We know that the Israelites camped in the wilderness, but I did a bit of digging, and it turned out the word was related to "tent." Then it clicked in my mind.
This was before the Bible Project. I don't know if any of you know the Bible Project. Seeing something like this, where my mind realized that John was talking about the tabernacle without having the Bible Project to help me get there, it was like an epiphany. It made me really excited to see Scripture come alive in this way. What we see now, what Zach really identified, was that when Jesus came and dwelt among us, he was meant to be the fulfillment of the tabernacle. For many of us, this passage is familiar. We've memorized it, studied it, and written it on home decor during the Christmas season. It's a foundational verse to being a Christian. It's central to this idea of living incarnationally or embodying Christ in our communities. It's the very reason we are Christians. We believe that this man from Nazareth, born of the Virgin Mary, was the very image and being of Yahweh made flesh. That idea alone, the unseeable God becomes seen, is truly enough for us to end on today.
That being said, we're going to continue to press into this mystery of why God would do this. Why is God a God in pursuit of humanity, of men and women, me and you? John's writing is not written in a vacuum, but it is drenched in the language of the Hebrew Scriptures. We're going to look at a few of those scriptures today to help fill out our framework for what John was calling Christ, the tenting of God among us. We're going to start, as Maria von Trapp would say for those of you who are fans, at the very beginning, in Genesis 1.
In Genesis 1, it says this: "Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Then God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. The image of God is manifest in humanity with the mandate to fill the earth with the image of God. It is a humanity blessed and sent to rule and reign over the earth, perpetuating and advancing the image and nature of God.
As our topic this week is embodying Jesus to our communities, we start at the very beginning to see what was the original design. We find that it was humans ruling and reigning in the image of God, ruling over the whole earth. This is crucial to understanding Christ and our role in the current historical moment. While we don't necessarily see the tabernacle in the image here, the narrative is rife with imagery. Humans are created as the very image of God. In the lines and pages following, we see that Adam and Eve, instead of ruling in accordance with God, step outside of God's design and decide to grasp after power in their own way, leading to a fracturing of the design that God had.
But the story continues. Even then, God is not done with humanity or his vision and call for humanity to be his image. The story picks up with Abraham, and that's where we'll pick up the story. God says to Abraham, "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." This blessing is repeated to Isaac and then to Jacob. It's repeated all throughout the rest of Genesis. It's this idea that through the offspring of Abraham, all the families of the earth were going to be blessed. The descendants of Abraham are going to be a family, a nation that carries out the original call to Adam and Eve, to be the image of God that fills the earth.
The story really gets exciting for what we're talking about today. It picks up in Exodus. Israel has just fled from slavery and they're at the base of Mount Sinai, where God met Moses in the burning bush. They are meeting with God. The cloud of God, the glory of God, is on the mountain. God says to them, "And you, Israel, shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." A little while later he says, "Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst." This is where the idea of "dwell" really picks up steam. God wants to move towards humanity and make His dwelling place among them.
God says that He will make Israel into a nation of priests. Israel will now be the group of people that intercede on behalf of humanity before God, and they will reveal God to humanity, and so on. It's interesting in this passage that God says that He will make His dwelling place in a tent. I want to make a note here that I think John was trying to articulate in his Gospel, and that is that God dwells in the same manner as humanity. Here in Exodus, what were the Israelites dwelling in? They were dwelling in tents. And so what did God choose to dwell in? He dwelt in a tent.
In the time of David and Solomon, I don't think it's a coincidence that it's only after David has built his house that God builds the temple. That's something we can think about and meditate on. Maybe that is just a coincidence, but as I read Scripture more and more, I find that, like Zach says, there really are no coincidences. Then Jesus comes on the scene as the image of the invisible God, and in what manner does He come? He comes as a man; He comes in the same manner.
Perhaps one of our first takeaways for living incarnationally is that we are, as the body of Christ, to be in the same manner as our community. If we're called to inner-city missions, then we live in the inner city. If we are called to the mountain climbing community, then we mountain climb. If we're called to be soccer moms, then we engage with the soccer mom community. We know this through Paul's writings too; as Christians, we are to seek to be like our communities in the same way that Christ became human to restore humanity.
We know that the tabernacle became the place where God dwelt, where the infinite God was among humans. Israel was meant to be a unique nation, a nation that pursued righteousness, right relationships, and hated injustice. Israel was meant to be a nation that protected the orphan and widow, the stranger and the foreigner. They were to be a nation that lived according to the wisdom of God, not grasping after their own knowledge of good and bad. But we know they did not do that. They oppressed the poor and the vulnerable. They made military alliances instead of trusting in God, and they failed to represent God to the world. They failed to intercede on the world's behalf before God.
So God hands them over to the consequences of their choices, which is exile. Even through exile, God was not done with His vision for humanity. God was still working to make a dwelling place among humanity. So we pick up the story in Ezekiel. Even in the moment Ezekiel is writing during exile, and it seems that all hope is lost, the prophets enter the scene and begin to describe that God is still in pursuit of man.
Here's what Ezekiel says. It's a long passage, so we're gonna read it together: "And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name," says God, "which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when through you, I vindicate my holiness before their eyes." Notice God's preoccupation with how the nations perceive Him. God's vision was always for all people to see the character and goodness of God. So God says to Israel, "I will take you from among the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. And I will sprinkle clean water on you," that's baptism imagery, "and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules."
A little while later, he says, "And my dwelling place will be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore." What Ezekiel is looking forward to is the day in which God's presence is not distant from humanity but present within them. God is speaking to an exiled people, encouraging them that He has not abandoned them. He is working through history for the fulfillment of His ultimate plan. Here in Ezekiel, God says that He longs for His dwelling place to be with humanity forevermore.
This is where the narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures and the longing for the restoration of God's dwelling place among humanity intersect. Through the Hebrew Scriptures, we see that God is a God in pursuit of humanity. He made humans in His image to spread across the whole earth, to rule and reign with Him. The offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were to be a blessing to all the nations. God chose Israel to be a kingdom of priests where His glory would dwell. Even through exile, God still wanted to dwell with humanity.
This is the environment, the stage, in which Jesus actually enters the scene. Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of the idea that God is in pursuit of humanity, God dwelling among us. Jesus takes it a step further. In John 14, He says to the disciples, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, for He dwells with you and will be in you. In that day, you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you." A little while later, He says that if we love and obey the instructions of the Father, then His home will be made with us. Jesus seems to be saying, not just "I will dwell among you," but now "I will dwell in you."
We actually see this displayed in Acts 2. The disciples are all gathered together after Jesus has ascended into the skies. They are praying together, and it says, "On the day of Pentecost, when it arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting." And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each of them. They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. This imagery here is replaying the moment where God's glory fell on the tabernacle and fell on the temple. It reveals that these disciples have now become the very temple of God.
Paul uses these words in Ephesians: "Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." There is so much that we could say about this topic, specifically the idea that we are to embody Jesus by literally, perhaps in some symbolic and real sense, being His body. I would encourage you guys over the next week to really look into the rest of the New Testament to see where this theme comes alive. Look at the writings of Paul’s thoughts on the body of Christ, or Peter saying that we are a royal priesthood, quoting from Exodus.
I believe that the New Testament authors truly believed that the church had become, and still is, the physical manifestation, the very presence of Christ on earth. This is fully realized in Revelation when the reunification of heaven and earth is complete. It says that there is no more a temple in the city, for the presence of God dwelt there. "For its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb." This idea is fully realized in that future moment. But for now, we live in the present because that's where we are. So in the present, what is the reality? Where we are now, where has the story come to at this point?
I believe that the story of the Hebrew Scriptures is one where God desires to dwell with humanity. In Christ, the Hebrew Scriptures are fulfilled, and humanity has become the very dwelling place of God, the church. So not just all humanity, but the church has become the very dwelling place of God.
God doesn't just want to dwell with humanity but to make the church and humanity His dwelling place. The church has become the very presence of Christ on earth. As I read this and thought about it, I wondered, are we saying that we've become God? That would be like saying the tent of the tabernacle became God when God's glory dwelt there, which we know isn't true. This reality is worth meditating on. It's not a trite metaphor that we are the body of Christ; it's a deep and mysterious reality.
So then, what do we do if we are the presence of Christ on earth? How do we respond? How do we do this? I think there are two ways. We could probably talk about this for the rest of our lives, but today we're going to focus on two ways. The first one is that we become like Jesus. How do we become more like Jesus? Well, we grow. There’s this diagram that I borrowed from John Mark Comer, the growth diagram. Maybe many of you have seen this from his "Practicing the Way" or are familiar with it. There are several different aspects: teaching, practice, community, time, and experience, all under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit. We're going to break these down a bit, one by one, to think about how we can grow to become more like Jesus.
In Matthew 28, Jesus instructs His disciples to teach future disciples how to observe His instructions. Learning at the feet of Jesus through sermons, podcasts, books, etc., is critical to our growth and becoming more like Jesus. In the New Testament, Jesus gives long speeches and parables to instruct His disciples on how to act more like Him and how to operate in the kingdom of God.
That being said, in modernity, we're descendants of the philosopher Descartes, who said, "I think, therefore I am." We tend to believe that sometimes, especially when it comes to Jesus: "I believe, therefore I am." Yet we know that even the demons believe in Jesus. So there must be something different about us as a body of people, as a group, as we embody Jesus to become more like Him. I think this is where practice comes in. We don't just learn but we actually implement; we practice. We have these holy habits that shape our lives.
We know we cannot just think "I'm a runner" and be a runner. Nor can we say "I want to be a runner" and be a runner. To truly be a runner, we have to run. Depending on how far we want to get into the culture, it can really transform our lives. It can transform the shoes we wear, the clothes we wear, what we eat, when we sleep. Our practices and our habits can shape our affections as we pursue what we love.
A modern philosopher and Christian thinker named James K.A. Smith talks a lot about these practices. His retort to Descartes is, "We don't think, therefore we are. Rather, we become what we love." Smith takes it a step further, saying our loves are shaped by our habits, or maybe our habits shape our loves. He uses the example of a teenage consumerist. What teenager watched a good lecture about being a consumer and then became a consumer? No one. It was through their habits, their daily life, what he calls cultural liturgies (aka habits), that the teenage consumerist is created. Whether that's watching television, looking at their phone, or seeing their friends wear new shoes, through the practices and habits that we have, our loves are shaped.
As believers, we know this to be true. It's why we value worship, why we value coming to church, reading scripture, fasting, praying, or practicing solitude. All of these things shape our affections for Christ. It's important to know that each of these practices is just that: a practice. Paul uses this idea of substance and shadows. The shadows reveal the outline of the substance, but the substance itself is Christ. As we engage in practices, it's important to always desire the deeper thing. As we fast, we should be fasting so that we might encounter Christ. As we read Scripture, we read Scripture so that we might see and understand who Christ is. The question we can ask with practices is: What habits are fueling or stirring my affections for Jesus? And what habits are robbing my affections for Jesus?
This leads us into the next idea: community. I won't belabor this point. I think our churches at Mountainside know and value community. We know that growth occurs through community. Brothers and sisters in Christ support us, call us out, help us see our blind spots so that we might look more like Jesus. You see the words "high control, low control." All that means is you and I can choose what teaching we listen to, what community we're a part of, or what practices we engage in. So we have some semblance of control over that. But there are also things that shape our growth that we don't have control over.
The next one, time, is something that I am passionate about and I think is important for us in our current age. I don't know each of your stories or backgrounds, but some of us likely came from a Christian tradition where the immediate and miraculous working of God was seen as His primary form of working, His Plan A, His primary form of growth and deliverance. Yet the sentiment that God's Plan A is outside of time, I'm not sure if that's a holistic view of the movement of God. We spent the first part of this sermon traversing literally thousands of years for God to accomplish His goal. I think that proves the point that God loves to work through time, bringing us individually, humanity, and the cosmos into looking more like God and being nearer to God. I'm not claiming that God does not intervene outside of time or doesn't work in the miraculous or the immediate, but I do think that God created us to be creatures who inhabit time, and we grow with Him through time.
Our current cultural moment seeks to war against time by making all things accessible now. Yet scripture appears to argue that God is willing to work over thousands of years to accomplish His mission. I wonder, could the same be true about how He moves in our lives? This understanding leaves us extending grace to ourselves and to each other as we each are growing more like Jesus through time.
In his book "How People Grow," Christian psychiatrist Dr. Henry Cloud describes his battle with depression. He often prayed and sought God's Plan A, what he thought would be immediate deliverance from depression. But it wasn't until many years had passed and he engaged with the community of God that he found he was no longer struggling with depression. For him, it was a big awakening to realizing God's movement through time.
The last idea here is experience. John Mark Comer uses the idea of the Hard Knocks of Life, but I’m not a millennial, so that didn’t really resonate with me. I think experiences, good and bad, shape us. They teach us to be resilient or teach us about who God is as we experience life. They have a massive impact on our psyche and spirit. Whether it’s our childhood family life or our adulthood experiences, what we experience shapes us. As Christians, we should seek to have tender hearts that work alongside the Holy Spirit, allowing those experiences to shape us into being more like Jesus.
So, if becoming more like Jesus is one way that we embody Jesus in our communities, perhaps the other way is doing what Jesus did.
Jesus prioritized people. He cared about their deeper needs and moved towards them. No longer was the dwelling place of God in an immovable temple. It was among the people, moving towards them, healing them, and calling them into the kingdom of God. As image-bearers from Genesis 1 and descendants of Abraham, we are called to bless all nations. In Christ, we have become a royal priesthood, meant to intercede on behalf of all people. We are called into a unique kingdom that elevates the lowly, seeks righteousness, and hates injustice. We have become the dwelling place of God, where people encounter God. Our body at Mountainside is part of a global, trans-temporal body that God's Spirit has chosen to dwell in. We prioritize people because that's what Jesus did and that's the character of God who dwells in us.
So, if prioritizing people is essential, how do we do this practically? Here are some intangible, perhaps more ethereal, ways to think about advancing the Kingdom of God in Boone, North Carolina. Whether it's wholeness, justice, beauty, or reconciliation, as Jesus sought wholeness, we too can work towards wholeness. He carried out merciful justice, cultivated beauty, and fostered reconciliation among people and between people and God.
This vision for a new humanity should inspire awe and wonder at the majesty of our King, the King who has made us His dwelling place. Father, there are mysteries we do not understand, that Your Spirit has been placed inside of us and is present among us as Mountainside and as part of the global church. How do You invite us to see You and Your character? Stir our hearts and affections for You. May we grow to become more like Jesus. Through our love for You, may people encounter You as they encounter us and see You for who You really are. Amen.