Rev. Brent L. White

Genesis 37:35: All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, “No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” Thus his father wept for him.

Jacob believes that his son Joseph is dead. He’s inconsolable. But when he says, “I shall go down to Sheol to my son,” I’m reminded that, in a sense, this is what God does for us, his children. God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, descends not merely “to realm of the dead,” but to hell itself (on the cross, at least, in the cry of dereliction from Psalm 22:1: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

Why does God do this? For the same reason that Jacob is inconsolable: out of a Father’s love for his highly favored “sons” (and daughters).

One prominent Christian musician made headlines recently, announcing that he had left the Christian faith. He cited as reasons his questions related to suffering, science, and the reliability of scripture. “No one in the church is talking about it,” he said. While that hasn’t been my experience—many Christian apologists have tackled these questions—I’d be happy to talk with him. Besides—and not to make light of his struggle—aren’t those questions relatively easy?

Here’s the hard one for me: Do I believe that my Father loves me the way Jacob loves Joseph—only perfectly? Do I believe that my Father wants to be with me, even me, as much as Jacob wants to be with Joseph—only infinitely more so? This is by far the hardest doctrine in Christianity.

At the risk of great hypocrisy, I believe it. But, dear Lord, let it change my life the way it should!

Sermon Text: John 1:35-51

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Beware of the “Barefoot Beer Bandit.” That was the urgent message that police in Florence, Kentucky, sent out to the public in July. An unidentified man, who was barefoot and wearing a Cincinnati Bengals jersey with the number 32 on it, was captured on video walking into a convenience store and stealing a case of beer. This prompted rookie Bengals running back Trayveon Williams who currently wears number 32, to tweet a link to the story with a facepalm emoji and the words, “Come on, man!”

Understandably, Williams was embarrassed to have this particular fan representing him by wearing his jersey. 

I point this out because, as you’ve probably heard before, the word “Christian” itself means “little Christ”—as if the rest of the world is supposed to learn something about Jesus by watching us. The apostle Paul tells us that we are to be “ambassadors for Christ”^[1]; that is, we are quite literally supposed to represent Jesus in the world and to the world. When I was a kid in church, someone performed a contemporary Christian song that urged us to remember, “You’re the only Jesus some will ever see.” And that message probably made many of us think, “Uh oh.”  Read the rest of this entry »