Tag: Adam and Eve

Bride and Groom

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

Revelation 21:1-6

By Chuck Griffin

Revelation’s author—and the Holy Spirit, I suppose—must drive rigid English teachers crazy with the use of mixed metaphors. Life in the full presence of God is described as both a marriage and a beautiful city (the city at one point is clothed as a bride), and each metaphor reveals something special about God’s relationship with humanity.

Let’s explore the idea of the “new Jerusalem” adorned as a bride for her husband. This metaphor is one of the major reasons Revelation is so appropriate as the closing book of Christian Scripture. Throughout the Bible, there has been a thought running along like a thread from nearly front cover to back. It is the idea of God as the spurned husband and humanity as the unfaithful wife.

In the beginning of our Bible story, it is clear God wanted to be fully present with his creation. When God discovered Adam and Eve’s first act of disobedience, he had gone for a stroll in Paradise in the cool of the day, looking for the people he made. Their sin caused a terrible separation. Rather than a close companion, our maker by his very nature was forced to become distant, while at the same time beginning the plan to overcome sin and restore what once was.

The prophets in particular picked up on the image of God as spurned husband. Jeremiah did. Hosea certainly did, at God’s command taking a prostitute as an unfaithful wife to symbolize Israel’s unfaithfulness.

But in the end, bride and groom will be restored. The Holy Spirit works within the church, healing its members and restoring them through faith in Christ. The bride is being adorned and dressed as we gather in worship and live out the church’s mission.

The metaphor also says much about the value of earthly marriage. When I take couples through premarital counseling, I make a point of reminding them that the union they are about to enter symbolizes the great work Christ is doing.

The husband represents God; the wife stands for the church. And to keep the husband from getting a big head, thinking this metaphor somehow puts him in a position of power, I remind him of Paul’s words in Ephesians 5:25: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

In a culture where marriage is less and less valued—we are so much more about instant gratification and so much less about commitment—we need again to emphasize the symbolic value of marriage. If I could add a third sacrament to our Methodist practice, it would be marriage. Perhaps we would better understand how we participate in God’s grand scheme for creation when taking our vows before God.

Lord, help us to live faithfully, anticipating the day when you dwell among us and all is set right. Amen.

The Constancy of Blood

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

During August, the Sunday sermons will be rooted in stories from the Old Testament. This Sunday’s story is found in Genesis 4:1-16, where we learn about Cain and Abel. If you want to watch the sermon but cannot attend Holston View United Methodist Church, it will be available online.

Today’s text: John 19:33-34 (NRSV): But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out.

By Chuck Griffin

Christianity links the earliest stirrings of ancient faith to a glorious future. It is through Christ that we discover radical ideas about peace and love, giving us visions of a world where all is set right under God, with healing and rest available for those he calls his children.

We need to remember how such visions are made possible, though. The tapestry of our faith is spattered with blood—in places it is soaked in blood. Sin has forced us to live as primitive people, and God had to debase himself through the Son for us to have any hope of eternal life.

This Sunday I will preach about the first murder recorded in the Bible, Cain’s killing of his brother Abel. Even this is not the first case of blood flowing in Scripture, though. When Adam and Eve realized they were naked, God fashioned animal skins to clothe them, a process that must have been horrifying for these shocked new sinners.

The Old Testament stories in many ways seem bound by blood. Brutal wars and repetitious sacrifices all play their part in a cycle of rejoining God and turning away from God, the people never finding a way to full union with the Holy One.

Even The Way is built upon a bloody path, with Jesus scourged and nailed to a cross to die for our sins. The spear thrust and ensuing discharge from Jesus’ side, recorded in John’s crucifixion account, evoke the image of the blood and water gushing from the temple drainage system, as the priests rinsed away the blood of the animal sacrifices. We are to understand that Christ’s body became the temple for all people.

Let’s not forget, however, that in Scripture, blood equals life. That shedding of Jesus’ divine blood was so perfect a sacrifice that it is continually purifying. We simply have to believe in its effectiveness.

When we take communion to access that purifying grace, we call the bread and juice the “body and blood of Christ.” Using strange, highly symbolic language, the author of the Book of Revelation is able to describe the robes of the believers as having been washed white “in the blood of the Lamb.” 

No doubt, we practice what many would call a blood religion, one with deeply primitive roots. It is astonishing how God has worked among our messes to lift us up to undeserved heights.

Lord, we thank you for your willingness to work through a gruesome and unholy history so that we may find you and establish a full relationship with you. Keep us mindful that while finding salvation is relatively easy for us, it was extremely difficult for Jesus Christ. We are so blessed! Amen.

Keeping Our Past in View

~ Rev. 'Debo Onabanjo ~ Leave a comment

Titus 3:3-5 (NLT)

Once we, too, were foolish and disobedient. We were misled and became slaves to many lusts and pleasures. Our lives were full of evil and envy, and we hated each other. But—

When God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.

By ‘Debo Onabanjo

Vehicles have rearview mirrors for an obvious reason: The driver can see what lies in the immediate past while journeying on. It is more important to keep our focus on where we are heading, which is why I believe the windshield provides such a wide vista compared to the rear-view mirror. But we do need occasional peeks at the past so we can better appreciate where we are and where exactly we are headed. 

I am sure that many of you have heard the saying that “we are all works in progress.” This means that even though we are not where we used to be, we are more importantly not where we need to be. In our focus passage from Paul’s letter to Titus, one of the younger men that he mentored, Paul reminds us of the importance of not forgetting what we were before our rescue.

Paul writes, “Once we, too, were foolish and disobedient.” We were all conceived in sin and born as sinners because sin is a sexually transmittable disease passed down from the first human couple. It would be wishful thinking, however, to assume that those of us who are now believers or born again are no longer disobedient. That would be far from the truth.  

The root cause of our human separation from God was the disobedience of Adam and Eve to the instructions given to them by God. If there is anything we have inherited from them, it is our natural bent to go against the instructions that have been handed down to us in Scripture. The United Methodist Church is for all intents and purposes in schism because of human disobedience and the misguided desire to give new meaning to Scripture to align it with the ever-changing cultural norms.  

If you are under any illusion that we are no longer slaves to the desires of our fallen human nature, just take some time to scroll through the social media feeds of some professing Christians. I hope you would agree that a significant number are far from showing they are truly new creatures in Christ. To say that our lives are no longer full of evil and envy and devoid of hatred would be self-deception. Thankfully, while we were yet sinners, God chose to send his beloved Son Jesus to save us—not because of anything good we have done but because of his own kindness. 

As our brother Paul reminds us in his letter to the Ephesians, our salvation from beginning to end is due to God’s grace and not because of anything good we have done (Ephesians 2:8-9). To be clear, unbelievers are also beneficiaries of God’s prevenient grace and his blessings (Matthew 5:44-48).

According to John Wesley, “Salvation begins with what is usually termed (and very properly) preventing grace; including the first wish to please God.” This means that even before we acknowledge God, his grace is working in our lives.

While we enjoy grace and sin in common with unbelievers, what I believe separates us from those yet to come to saving faith is our Holy Spirit-inspired response to God’s invitation and our experience of justifying grace. As Paul writes, “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand” (Romans 5:1-2). 

We should not boast and attribute our salvation to anything that we have done. As a result, let us stop looking down on unbelievers, thinking we are better than them. The next time you are tempted to look down on unbelievers, take time to look in the rearview mirror of your life and be thankful for God’s grace and the salvific work of Christ on the cross. 

Lord, we thank you for our salvation, which is made possible through your grace from beginning to end. Help us to be humble and not look down on those who are still living far away from you. Use us as carriers of your grace to them as we serve as the hands and feet of your Son Jesus, in whose name we humbly pray. Amen.