“The Window of God”

There is a story about a man who was stranded on a deserted island. After years of living there by himself he was discovered by the Navy.  As he showed his rescuers around, they noticed three buildings and asked him why he constructed them.

“This is my house,” explained the man, pointing to the first building.  “With all the wind and waves I needed shelter to survive.”  “The second structure is my church,” he said.   “I was alone on this island for 25 years and without my faith I would not have made it.”  “What the third structure?” asked one of the sailors.  The man replied, “Oh that’s the church I used to go to.”

American church-goers can be fickle.  Lots of church shopping going on.  You folks have lots of church options and have chosen Bradley Hills this morning.  Over the years you have had lots of church options and have chosen to commit to this community.  What an amazing time it’s been.  As we begin a sermon series on visions of Jesus and celebrate our church anniversary, we give thanks for the Spirit of Christ which has kept us together over all this time.  Let us pray.  Loving God, thank you for this congregation and for the witness of Bradley Hills over these sixty years.  As we celebrate the Easter season, we remember Christ, the reason for the season.  Amen.

In 1956, a meeting was called in the auditorium of the Parklawn Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland, to select the name of this church.  Washington Heights Presbyterian church had met in the Kalorama area of D.C. since 1902, but was facing significant demographic challenges.  The congregation and Presbytery saw opportunity in moving to the growing suburbs in Bethesda and moved the church here.  There was apparently a snow storm the day they met to consider the new name, so much snow that they had to push one another’s cars out of the drifts, but 90 adults and 24 children braved the weather to come to the cemetery auditorium to name a church on Bradley Blvd which became Bradley Hills.  So they say our church was literally born out of a cemetery.  That is appropriate as Christianity itself was born out of a cemetery at Easter.   When Jesus walked out of a tomb.

There is one symbol which came with the congregation when it moved here.  This rose window here came from our original downtown congregation.  It has lots of colors and symbols and meaning.  At the center of it all, at the center of the window, like in the center of our chancel in the sanctuary, is the cross, the symbol of Jesus.  Through all the changes and activities here at Bradley Hills over the years, at the center of it all, now and always, in Jesus.

This symbol reminds us that whenever we celebrate our history and seek to discern God’s meaning for our future, we do so with Christ at the center. 

In the 4^th century there was another meeting of importance called, where the emperor Constantine brought church leaders together in Nicaea, in Asia Minor, to discuss doctrines of the church.  They debated the role and work of Jesus.  A man name Arius led the group who believed Jesus was a man to whom God had given divinity.  Athanasius led the group which believed Jesus was divine to begin with and became a man for our sake.  The debate threatened to divide not only the church but the kingdom.

It is important to note that by in large those in Nicaea agreed that Jesus was divine.  Both Arias and Athanasius believed Jesus was Godly, a divine model for good living.   They also agreed that he was the savior, that Jesus gives us a path to God which did not exist before.  That in Jesus Christ we are forgiven.  That through Christ we are saved.  That may go further than some of us are willing to go.  Many of us have doubts about parts of Jesus’ life or even resurrection.  Yet our being here today witnesses that we are questing together in the Christian church to seek God.

If everyone at Nicaea agreed that Jesus is a divine savior, wasn’t that enough?  Who cares how he got to be that way?  Why was there such disagreement that threatened to divide the empire?  The debate mattered because it matters where we place our focus in life.  If Jesus started like us and became divine when God made him so, then why couldn’t that happen to us too?  If we are the best Christian in the world, maybe we can be the next Jesus?  If we are the most loyal member of Bradley Hills over the decades or the most conscientious employee or the best student or the most attentive caregiver, perhaps God will choose us next for divinity. 

If Jesus is a glorified peer, then in reality he becomes an unattainable goal of what we could only dream of being.  Not that we shouldn’t seek to be the best we can be.  This church wouldn’t be here without loyal members, conscientious employees, good students and attentive caregivers.  Yet we cannot fill Jesus’s shoes, and if we all decided we should try and be the next savior, I’m not sure the church would have lasted all that long.

The council sided with Athanasius and declared in a statement known as the Nicene Creed that Jesus was of the same divinity as God.  This is the origin of the phrase “not an iota of difference” by the way.  Iota being the “smallest” Greek letter.  What the council at Nicaea concluded based on its study of scripture, theology and Jesus’ witness was that Jesus is not a dream.  He is a window.  A window to God.  When they proclaimed that Jesus is of the same essence, the same substance, co-eternal with the father they meant that Jesus has always been divine.  Jesus is the window for us to see and understand God.  

It is this question that Philip was seeking an answer to in our second scripture for today.  He said, “Jesus, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”   At some level we go to church to ask the same.  We yearn to know God.  Carved on the pulpits of many churches is the phrase, “We want to know God.”  St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.”  We aren’t satisfied until we see God.   We approach life’s end and wonder what God is like.  Jesus responds to Philip by explaining that he shows us God.  That frees us to rely on God’s grace.

Paul Rauschenbusch is religion editor for the Huffington Post.  His grandfather wrote one of the defining religious books of the 20^th century, Christianity and the Social Crisis.  I moderated one of Paul’s book talks on it a few years ago.  When Paul turned 50 last summer he wrote a list of life lessons and wisdom of what he had learned in his time.  #1 on his list was “Don’t try so hard to be respectable.”   

What the church leaders in Nicaea found is what we all ultimately discover.  That the gold star of salvation does not arrive through our putting our lives on a frustratingly difficult trajectory of trying to be the next Jesus.  Any congregation that has been around awhile realizes that there is only one Jesus.  Yet that is enough.  No matter how much we like our pastors, or session members or deacons or choir members or spiritual role models now, or miss the ones who came before, none of them or us are Jesus.  Our role is not to dream of being a new savior or worse yet putting that pressure on someone else.  

Our role as Christians is to look at the window.  Jesus became human for our sakes so that we could see God.  Jesus is the light of the world, whose divine light shines on us and on what is holy.  The window through which we see God. 

The ancient Israelites lived in a difficult agricultural climate.  They were tempted to hoard what they had in their storehouses.  The prophet Malachi encouraged them to trust and offer what they had to God.  Theologians often look to the book of Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament, as one that foretells the coming of the Messiah.  If Jesus, the one Malachi foretells, is just a man, then we should put our trust in ourselves and keep what we have in our own storehouses.  If Jesus is God, we can place our trust in God.  The one who has opened the windows of heaven and pours down an overflowing blessing for us.  When we internalize that Christ is our most clear window into what God is like, we see anew the life we are to lead and where life ultimately leads.

The abundant life, the real salvation, the Easter promise comes to you and to me through grace.  Through the grace of a God who so loved the world that in Christ died and rose for us.

Our home is right here where Jesus is.  It’s where two or more are gathered.  It’s here at Bradley Hills in the body of Christ where we have been called.  Through Jesus we can see God.   What is there to see is so good.

Throughout the history of Bradley Hills there have been some people who grew up Presbyterians and some who grew up Catholic, Episcopalian, Evangelical, Baptism, Jewish, and no religious background.  Those who were born in America and many who grew up overseas.  There are conservatives and liberals.  Many with long time employment and many looking for a job.  We are gay and straight.  Young and mature.  Men and women.  We don’t all agree on every issue of polity, politics, theology, or in what room to hold our 60^th anniversary service.  Or even on all the nuances of Jesus’ actions.  Yet we are united in seeking to see and understand God through Christ.

When Christ is at the center, the focus in not on what makes us different.  It’s on what unites us.  Through many a disagreement, hard financial time, crisis or challenge, a focus on the window of God has allowed Bradley Hills to thrive.

Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”  The great theologian William Barclay writes that this may be the most staggering thing Jesus ever said.[i] 

Greeks thought God was the great invisible one.  For Jews it was an article of faith that no one had ever seen God.[ii]  Even when God showed his glory to Moses in Exodus 33, God made clear that God’s face shall not be seen.  Like Phillip asking to see God, Moses asked God to “Show me your glory.”    God responded, “You cannot see my face, no one can see me and live….I will put you in the cleft of the rock and will cover you in my hand while I pass by.”  Meaning God was going to give life by protecting Moses in the cleft of the rock from the effects of seeing God.

In Jesus life comes in a new way.  In the 1770’s, Augustus Toplady wrote the hymn Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me.  It is one hymn which was often sung here in the 1950’s, including as the closing hymn on the first Sunday we worshiped in this room (the first service at Washington Heights PC was April 27, 1902 and the first service was in this Memorial Hall was in April 1957 but the congregation was founded in 1955 so we hold this anniversary service in April, 2015).  In it we sing of Christ as the cleft of a rock which gives us life.  Rather than preserving life when our eyes are shielded from God as Moses found, in Christ we find life in seeing God through him.  In hiding ourselves in Christ and seeing God through the window Jesus offers.  That is why Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4 that the knowledge of the glory of God comes in the face of Jesus Christ.

Jesus allows us to see more clearly the glory and love of God.  Jesus calls us to follow him, by living faithfully, generously and gratefully—and in doing so discovering God’s Easter gift of love and abundant life.  Life and love which only comes from God’s grace.  In doing so we more clearly see how to love each other.

On a day when we celebrate our congregation’s history, we celebrate Christ as the center of it.  Christ is our model, savior and the window to God.  Remembering that may be the best way to ensure we are around for another 60 years. May it be so.  Amen.