whatsyourvantagepoint?

Series: Vantage Point
Sermon: whatsyourvantagepoint
George J. Saylor
March 2, 2008

Our vantage point makes all the difference. When I was on my ski trip out west two weeks ago I learned this lesson every day. On the second day at Alta we were in a back country section and I came upon a cliff with no tracks and fresh powder. When my brother and I were at the top of that cliff, it looked like an endless fall. My brother, who really is every bit the skier that I am, chickened out! He said no way; but I’ll ski around and film you. Of course once he said that I had no choice- I had to jump. I took a deep a breath and sent myself off that cliff thinking this is gonna be awesome, this video is gonna go viral. I crested the edge of that cliff and felt like I was just suspended there in midair forever. I thought how high is this? 20 ft? 30 ft? 50 ft! In my head I had just made the new world record. But the thing is, my brother did get a video if of it- here it is...




And after watching that yet again I have to say, that's really not very impressive. I paused the video and sized up my jump and I estimate, roughly, that I plummeted a mind boggling 1o ft.

I suspect in today’s digital age we’ve all had our vantage point corrected. I thought I was an extreme skier, until I saw the video. You thought you were a great dancer, until your friend posted it on you tube. You thought you looked really cool in that outfit, until you saw the pictures.

And our vantage point of things we’ve seen or experienced is very subjective to our perspective and point of view. Honestly, if you listened to guys watching sports on TV you’d be convinced that every single referee in professional sports should be branded as legally blind. Not only that, every overweight armchair athlete would make a way better goalie, way better quarterback, way better whatever. Our vantage point from the comfort of our living room affords us the luxury of calling the plays and carrying them out way better than those guys getting paid millions!

Did you hear the one about the three umpires? They were talking about all the flak and ridicule they receive on a daily basis and were trying to justify some of their calls to with one another. The first umpire finally says, "Well, there are balls, and there are fouls, and I call them when I see them." The second umpire took a slight different view and says, "Well, there are balls, and there are fouls, and I call them as I see them." But the third umpire says, "The way I see it is that there may be balls, and there may be fouls, but they ain’t nothing until I call them!"

The joke is told as a description of our worldview, our vantage point of reality. The first umpire is kind of the pre-modern mind. He sees and knows reality as it truly is. The second umpire is kind of the modern mind- a little more enlightened, he believes there is a reality, but he can only see it from his limited perspective. The third umpire is the post-modern. Reality is what he makes of it. Reality is his call. Reality is his vantage point.

Over the past 20 years folks suspect that this has been the predominant worldview. We live and breathe this postmodern culture that often reduces reality to our own life experience. One of the most quoted stories to try and justify this vantage point is "The Blind Men and the Elephant,” as told by American poet John Godfrey Saxe. It came from a fable that was told in India many years ago. It basically tells the story of six blind men of Indostan who went to see an Elephant. The first feels the elephant’s mighty side and declares that the animal is like an impenetrable wall. The second feels the tusk and declares it’s like a warriors spear. The third feels its tusk and says it’s just like a mighty snake. The fourth takes hold of its leg and says it’s grounded like tree. The fifth feels its ear and says it’s must be able to fly like a bird. The sixth feels its tail and says it’s slight like a rope.

The poem concludes,

“And so these men of Indostan disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong!

So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen!”

And so, the argument goes, all religions are the same because they only see part of the truth. All of us are like those poor blind men grasping for the truth- limited by sight, by senses, by time, by whatever.

However, the fact still remains- there really is an elephant, and it really can be seen and known. The problem of misunderstanding and misinterpreting the elephant is in no way the elephant’s fault. If the blind men could have had there eyes opened, if someone could have taken them by the hand, they could know the elephant for what it really is. And we we have now moved beyond the intellectual short-sightedness of relativism, recognizing that relativism itse;f is an exclusively held worldview- that any view we hold by definition is exclusive.

But I digress. And now, if I may mix my metaphors a bit, Jesus is the elephant in the room that first, we want to acknowledge, that he really did exist, then second, get ourselves to a vantage point where we really can see him and understand him and know him for who he truly is. That Jesus was is undisputable. Who Jesus was has been answered from a multitude of vantage points.

H.G. Wells wrote,

“More than 1900 years later a historian like myself, who doesn’t even call himself a Christian, finds the picture centering irresistibly around the life and character of this most significant man…The historian’s test of an individual’s greatness is ‘What did he leave to grow? Did he start people thinking along fresh new lines with a vigor that persisted after him?’ By this test Jesus stands first.”

It has long been understood that even if the bible didn’t exist we still have historical documentation from other sources that verify there was a man named Jesus who called Nazareth his home, he gained a following as a teacher and the reputation of being a miracle worker. At the height of his popularity he has a following of hundreds. But he ended up dying a criminal’s death on a cross. His followers then, instead of moving on, claimed that Jesus rose from the grave, and then the movement that Jesus started began to truly take traction, and has, without exception, continued to grow with each successive generation.

When we add the bible as the most reliable ancient document known to humanity into the mix the picture begins to grow come into focus. And the story begins as the almighty God becomes an all-vulnerable baby. He was born in obscurity and under a shroud of controversy- an illegitimate child of a teenage Jewish girl. Aside from his escape to Egypt as a baby, he never traveled more than 100 kilometers from his hometown. To his mother Mary and her fiancé Joseph Jesus is the miracle child, conceived miraculously by the Holy Spirit of God. Shepherds come to his birth and worship him as savior. Mysterious kings from the east come to hail him as king. One paranoid king named Herod sees him as a threat to the throne and sends death squads to clean up the situation. And then some thirty years later this baby is a man, and when he is baptized in the Jordon by his older cousin John, the heavens open and we see from the vantage point of heaven who Jesus was- a voice calls out, “This is my son, whom I love, with him I am pleased.” And the Spirit descended upon him like a dove, resting on his head. We see in perhaps the clearest way of all the vantage point of the triune God of grace and love- the Son in the flesh, the voice of the Father, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

He was trained as a carpenter, but learned the Old Testament word for word. For thirty years he was an unknown figure, but for the last three years he became a lightening rod of activity. He was a homeless preacher traveling from town to town. He called on men to follow him, and they left everything to do so. Some said he was a rabbi. Some said he was a prophet. Some said a miracle worker. Some said he was demon possessed.

He drew cords to himself, teaching them about the love and mercy and grace of God. The next day he drove them away when he told them to count to cost of following him. He worked healing wonders in one town, and was powerless in another. He was un-swayed by public opinion or his families own urging, but moved to compassion by aliens and outcasts. He was a man of peace who made a whip cleared the temple. He told his followers to take up there swords, and when one did he rebuked him. He taught the law of God while simultaneously being accused of breaking it. He lived a perfect life but was called a drunkard and party animal. He had uncompromising views on wealth and morality, but enjoyed the company of the rich and immoral. He seemed to know all things about everything one moment, then seemed just a perplexed as you and I. He fled from arrest on one occasion, then walked willingly into a trap. He was betrayed by a friend, deserted in his darkest hour. He did not open his mouth when accused, beaten and hung on a cross, but when he died the earth railed out in anguish. He was buried in hast and under the eyes of the state. And despite his enemies best efforts, his body was never found, his followers re-banded, and they claimed to have meet the risen and very much alive Jesus.

Today if you walk across the street and into Chapters you’ll find more books on Jesus than any other person or topic in literary history. You’ll find every conceivable vantage point- Jesus the political revolutionary, the Che Guevara of Israel, a magician, a mystic, a charismatic, a teacher, a preacher, a leader and a loser. You name the vantage point you want to see Jesus from, and you can find a book to back it up.

But now let’s take ourselves to a better vantage point to see the truth. And let’s look at Jesus’ from the vantage point of the man himself. It’s usually a pretty good practice to start with the source. Near the height of controversy in Jesus’ own life he gathers with his disciples and asks, what’s the word on the street?

Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, "Who do people say I am?"
They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets."
"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
Peter answered, "You are the Christ.”
Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. Mark 8:27-30

The vantage points of Jesus, while many, boil down to one of three main positions. All revolve around this affirmation of Jesus as the Christ (like we often need to be reminded, Christ was not his last name, it was his title). It meant the Messiah, the chosen one, most literally, the anointed one- anointed to be the Lord. Some saw him as a
political Christ,
some a false Christ,
and others, a different kind of Christ entirely.

The first vantage point was that he was the Christ the king. Many of the people of Israel, long captive in their own land by Roman imperialism and rule, were looking for the Christ that would come and claim the throne in the tradition of David- the golden days of the Israel, like the era of Kim Cambell. These folks wanted a political leader. They wanted power. But their real vantage point on Jesus- what can we get from Him, what can he do for us. They would be ready to ride his coat tails, as long as it took them to the throne.

Today, many still approach Jesus in this way. What can I get out of Jesus, out of faith? It’s not always a bad thing. There are many things we get and gain from a relationship with Jesus. But there is still, what I believe, a fundamental flaw in this vantage point- it’s a relationship of convenience and of selfishness where we are still the centre, a relationship based on taking, on getting, on using, and leveraging Jesus.

The second vantage point is fundamentally tied into the first. They're the folks on the other side of the equation, the folks in power. They saw Jesus as a false Christ, a political revolutionary, but they didn’t want the revolution. They liked the balance of power. And they would do whatever it took to keep the scales tipped in their favor. Some were his own countrymen, religious leaders who conspired to kill him, others were of the state, the Romans who actually carried out his execution.

And likewise, today, many find Jesus a threat. To truly commit to Jesus and follow him they know will disrupt the balance of their lives. They don’t like this idea of Lordship, or having a king, of giving over their lives, of laying it all down before him. They want to keep the scale of their life tipped toward themselves. From their vantage point, the cost of calling Jesus the Christ costs them too much.

There is a third vantage point. The vantage point that begins to come into focus for Peter and the other disciples. Jesus was in fact the Christ, the chosen one, the anointed one- but that meant something entirely different than any of them could have ever dreamed or imagined.

It meant that he really was the king, but one who lead through service.
It meant he really was a revolutionary, but one that came to revolutionize the way we approached God, the way we related to other people, the way we look at our own lives, and at the world itself.
It meant he really was God himself in the flesh.
It meant he really was anointed by the Holy Spirit.
It meant he really is our savior, saving us from our sin, and from ourselves.
It meant he really is our Lord, the one who we were made to give our lives too.
It meant he really is our brother, that as we give our lives to him, he does not lord it over us, but enters into a relationship with us.

You are the Christ, Peter says, and Jesus did not protest. In fact, we read in another account in, in Matthew’s gospel, that Jesus says you, Peter, learned this not from man, but it was revealed to you by my heavenly Father. Today Jesus still reveals himself through the power of God the Father. And to this day people give testimony of all sorts of wonderful ways that they come to know Him.

Some people just always seemed to have faith revealed to them, and they spend their lives growing in belief. Some people look for the most logically and intellectually honest world view, and discover it revealed in the Christ. Some people go through the dark night of the soul, and come to see the light of Christ revealed to them in crisis. Some people wrestle with pain, and come to find healing in the Christ. Some struggle with addiction, and find release in the Christ. Some wrestle with questions, and find answers in Christ. Some face their death, and find life in the Christ. Some struggle with emptiness, and find purpose in Christ. Some struggle with loneliness, and find communion in Christ. Some people look into the eyes of the poor, and find the eyes of Christ. Some people lay the turmoil of their life at the cross, and find the peace of Christ.

You know, or need to know where we stand as a church. We stand in the vantage point of belief, belief in this other kind of Christ. We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who lived, who died, who rose from the grave, who ascended to heaven, who sits on right side of God the father, who is coming again, and who offers all who call on him as savior and Lord the blessing of life in him, life in God. That is our vantage point.

And if you are here today and you do not come from the vantage point of belief, but are here in an honest search, we think it’s the most awesome thing that you are here. In fact, you are why we’re here. We want you to come, to listen, to ask questions, to challenge what you hear, to wrestle with these claims. Because believing in Jesus as the Christ is not something you are born into. It’s not something that’s passed down from generation to generation. It’s not something that any of us can give or force on you. Believing in Jesus as the Christ is something that is revealed to us. And when it’s revealed to us, we can’t help but believe. In the next four weeks we are going to look at Jesus from different vantage points- four people who saw Jesus in very different ways. Some came to believe in Him as the Christ. Some didn’t. But all of their lives were changed forever. And for those of us who have had our eyes opened to see and know the Christ, we can’t help, but hope and pray that he will be revealed to you as well.