Sunday, February 18, 2007
February 11, 2007 Sermon: Through a Glass Darkly
Note-sermons taken from loose outline notes of pastor. No video or audio available.
Scripture: I Corinthians 13:9-12
You know, our vision of Heaven, despite it being paradise, involves a lot of negatives. No need for tears, food, drink, time, no need for art. We do get one positive, however: the Vision and enjoyment of God. That is a huge positive! Since that is a great plus, we hold correctly that it is better than the minor others. However, a question develops. Can our present view of that great Positive outweigh our present views about the negatives?
The concept of the Vision is difficult, somewhat abstract based on limited experience, while our ideas of the negated things is vivid, persistent, intense. The Negatives seem to have an unfair advantage. The exclusion of the lower goods begins to seem THE characteristic of the Vision of God. We begin to think that the Vision will come to destroy our nature rather than revealing our nature.
Think of this story. There is a woman who is locked in a dungeon. She bears and rears a son. They see nothing in the dungeon except the walls, ceiling, and a small little patch of blue sky. However, the woman was an artist, and she smuggles in with her pencils and a drawing pad. She constantly teaches her son about the outside world by drawing pictures--the wavy fields of grain, the waves of the ocean, rivers. She teaches her son about all of these. He listens and tries to believe in it.
One day, he says something that makes the woman realize he has lived under a false view--He thinks the world is full of lines drawn in pencil! Huh? She tries to tell him, and in so doing shatters his world. So it is with us. WE know not what we shall be, but we may be sure it is more, not less than what we are on EArth. Our current experience (the five senses) is like a drawing, with lines of grease pencil. Those lines, those barriers, vanish in the Resurrection, vanish as pencil ines from landscape. They vanish not as a candle flame that is put out but as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blinds, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen Son!
Scripture: I Corinthians 13:9-12
You know, our vision of Heaven, despite it being paradise, involves a lot of negatives. No need for tears, food, drink, time, no need for art. We do get one positive, however: the Vision and enjoyment of God. That is a huge positive! Since that is a great plus, we hold correctly that it is better than the minor others. However, a question develops. Can our present view of that great Positive outweigh our present views about the negatives?
The concept of the Vision is difficult, somewhat abstract based on limited experience, while our ideas of the negated things is vivid, persistent, intense. The Negatives seem to have an unfair advantage. The exclusion of the lower goods begins to seem THE characteristic of the Vision of God. We begin to think that the Vision will come to destroy our nature rather than revealing our nature.
Think of this story. There is a woman who is locked in a dungeon. She bears and rears a son. They see nothing in the dungeon except the walls, ceiling, and a small little patch of blue sky. However, the woman was an artist, and she smuggles in with her pencils and a drawing pad. She constantly teaches her son about the outside world by drawing pictures--the wavy fields of grain, the waves of the ocean, rivers. She teaches her son about all of these. He listens and tries to believe in it.
One day, he says something that makes the woman realize he has lived under a false view--He thinks the world is full of lines drawn in pencil! Huh? She tries to tell him, and in so doing shatters his world. So it is with us. WE know not what we shall be, but we may be sure it is more, not less than what we are on EArth. Our current experience (the five senses) is like a drawing, with lines of grease pencil. Those lines, those barriers, vanish in the Resurrection, vanish as pencil ines from landscape. They vanish not as a candle flame that is put out but as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blinds, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen Son!
# posted by Mark : 3:37 PM
