Sermon: "Before the Beginning"

1st in the "Relational Theology" series.
Delivered February 8, 2009 by Rev. George Antonakas.
Sermon Text: Genesis 1:1; John 17:1-5,24

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Good morning. It's so good to see you all, and we're going to read from John, chapter 17, today... just a few verses in just a minute. The passage we're going to read is one of the most detailed prayers that Jesus ever... that's ever recorded that Jesus prayed. And there's so much in this chapter about Jesus' prayer and what he asks for. We're just going to look at a small section to start off a series on Relational Theology.

We are not going to be talking about techniques of relationships like communication techniques or active listening or anything like that. We're going to be reminded of the theological basis for healthy relationships. And so since that's our purpose, and I think everybody needs to be taught or reminded about the nature of relationships since it pretty much covers most of our life, you can think of this series as a relationship stimulus package, okay, for the next three weeks.

And the three weeks are going to go this way: Today we're talking about God, about the nature of God as the basis for all human relationships. Next week we're talking about an understanding of ourselves from out of which we can form relationships, and then lastly we're going to be talking about the mystery of the sexual relationship as a reflection of God's desire for intimacy with us. I'm thinking most of us will be there for that third week, right?

But it's not going to be 'R' rated, but however the children's ministries and the worship staff said, "You know, maybe you should tell them it could be PG-13." So if in this service especially, if you have kids from second grade to fifth grade that normally might be in here, you may want to have them somewhere else. I don't know. I mean, we're not going to name body parts or anything, but I just think we need to give you that disclaimer because sometimes we have gotten feedback that we can be maybe more pointed than we need to be about some things. So there you have it.

Well, we must begin here because the original intention of relationships starts with God. I think it takes more faith to believe that we evolved into our current relationship realities than it does to believe that we are created in the image of God who is relationship in the Trinity, in the understanding that we have of who God is from revelation.

We are born into relationships. We are baptized into relationship. No one here can tell me who you are without referring to a relationship. It's impossible. But everything relational is based on the supreme relational being of God. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," it says, but before the beginning there was relationship personified in God. And so we're going to look at the text today, John 17:1-5, and then 24, and think about it a little bit.

Let's pray: Lord, we thank you for the revelation of your Word. We would be so blind apart from you coming to shed light in the dark place, and we ask that as we read this text we would hear it in a different way even if we've heard it a hundred times before. And we pray by your spirit that it would be transforming for us through Christ our Lord, Amen.

John 17, after Jesus said this... everything that he said from chapter 13 to 16, instructing his disciples before his death:

"After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: 'Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.'" Twenty-four, "'Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.'"

You know, there are three questions that we could possibly ask when we start to think about the beginning of all things, or creation, or God. We can ask, "When did it all happen?" We can ask, "How did it all happen?" And there have been books and books and books and speculation galore over trying to answer some of those two questions, whether you're a scientist or a theologian. But those first two questions aren't as important as the third one that I think could be asked when we think about the starting point of all things and life as God intended it.

The question is, "How can I get in on that life? How can I experience life as God intended?" I don't know how your life's going these days. I don't know if it's going well or if it's going poorly, but many times, things happen in our lives to turn us back to the reason for our being, which is a relationship with God. Now Jesus' prayer in these first few verses gives us a serious response to that third question, "How can I get in on things?" Because the... amazingly... his relationship with God as it's depicted here with the Father can become ours.

In fact, that's what he prays will happen. He prays that we will get to know God as he does. He says that. "Father, I pray that they... I might glorify you by giving them, the ones you've given to me, to you, that they might know you. And here's how they might know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. To know you is eternal life."

Eternal life isn't again chronologically quantity life; it's the qualitative life of God in us. The way we get to know God is through faith in Jesus Christ. And he prays for that. And then we see that he prays, "Lord, I want all these believers to have the same experience of understanding your glory, being there with me where I am, that I had with you before the foundation of the world." That's an amazing prayer. That we can get in on that kind of life with God is beyond understanding unless it's revealed to us.

Just to underscore how our relationship with God was conceived before the beginning, I want you to look at just a few verses with me from the Scriptures. We're going to look at them in rapid fire order. Ephesians 1:4 is the first one. "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love..." Second Timothy 1:9, "God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life-not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time." Titus 1:2, "A faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time." And then 1 Peter 1:20, "He was chosen before the creation of the world, [speaking of Jesus] but was revealed in these last times for your sake."

I think it's pretty clear by those verses that there was a 'before the beginning' that God had you in mind. We're speaking of things revealed and what is revealed in this prayer speaks of the elements of healthy relationships with God and with others. And I would say if I could boil it all down to its essence, healthy relationships are grounded in love in communication. When I say that, as soon as I say that, it's redundant. Because if we really understand the fact that God is love, there's going to be communication. But one of the greatest aspects of expression of the love of God was that he communicated to us through his Son, who is called the Word, the Logos.

So love communicating is the essence of healthy relationships which explains so many things, even the existence of chick-flicks. If you think about it... if you think about it, movies like The Wedding Planner or What Woman Want, or Sleepless in Seattle, or Pretty Woman, or Runaway Bride, or Notting Hill, or Jerry McGuire, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or any of those movies... no, not that last one. Love and communication... what are these movies about? They're about love and communication, not connecting, breaking down something happens, and all of sudden something else happens and people affirm love and communicate honestly and live happily ever after. The downside of those movies is that they have nothing to do with how God helps that to happen, but that's usually what is going on with these movies, and we watch them because they express a longing. They express a longing. This stuff points to God in some strange way.

So our relationships are intended to mirror, even though imperfectly, the perfect harmony of love and communication which is God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We have to take it by faith. When Jesus lifted his eyes up to heaven, he didn't say, "Oh some of all being transcendent reality." He said, "Father." Personal. Intimate. Connected. Close. God is personal in his being, and the prime mover in everything. Therefore our relationships... our relationships can only thrive when we center them in a relationship with God through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Not that they can't survive, but they can only thrive in the way God intended when we connect with God through Christ.

God has revealed his personal love and communication, and the only way that God can be known is through personal response. Again, John 17:3, "That they may know you, the only true God." That is a constant, continuous knowing, and it has a starting point. And that's what God desires: that we would continually get to know and understand who he is. Just like a good marriage relationship, that people don't marry and say, "Oh, I know everything about you the day we're married," but they continue to learn and grow and understand and forgive and interact, and love each other more deeply, more deeply, as years go on.

If two people are going together and finally one person takes the risk and says, "I love you," and the other person says, "Yeah?" Or, "I know you do." That relationship is not going to go very far, right? There needs to be a response that's equivalent. And God says, "I love you. I want to know you. I want to experience intimacy with you, and I want you to have the same thing that Jesus and I have." That's what God desires. And then that calls for response.

Now, in the time that we have left, I want to do a left-brained thing and a right-brained thing. For all the left-brained people I want to give just three quick, logical understandings of what relationships should be based on, based on the Trinity, and then I want to do a total turn-about and do a right-brain experience to help you understand the mystery in a more mysterious way. Okay?

Three eternal personal elements revealed in this passage that show us how our relationship can best reflect God at work in us. There are three things, and where else can we go for this? Doctor Laura? Doctor Ruth? Doctor Freud? Doctor Phil? Who are we going to go to? All that stuff... Dr. Mom... all that is finite. They've got good things to say, but this is infinite basis of relationships.

Number one, there is an intense desire in the mystery of God that each person of the Trinity... Father, Son and Holy Spirit... be glorified, be exalted, be pointed to, be spoken well of. "Father, the hour has come, the hour of my death, the hour of salvation for the world, glorify. I want you to be glorified and I want you to glorify me through this act." To glorify is to praise and honor through obedience and submission. Application: honoring each other in speech and service reflects God in our midst; speaking poorly of each other in families or in church family obscures the image of God in our midst because deep relational relating has to do with wanting the other to be lifted up.

This is why affirmation is so important. Guys, you know what Saturday is? No, you don't? Woo, you better be listening to this. It's Valentine's Day. Okay? Affirmation. Praise. Healthy relating is full of positive exchanges and honor. Okay? I don't want anybody calling me for an appointment next week. Okay? "My husband... " You know. That's the first thing. Glorification, first G.

Second G, second revelation is in this exchange is how much of love and communication centers in giving. Besides glory or glorify, giving is the word most used next in these verses that we've read today. The Father gives the Son all authority. Jesus speaks of the Father giving all the disciples to him. Jesus gives eternal life to those God gave him. God gives glory to Jesus. Jesus gives glory to the father.

Did I say it was Valentine's Day next week? I'm gone Saturday. You know not just honor, praise, affirmation -giving. Giving something. You think I'm telling you to remind you, I'm telling you to remind me. Right? My wife is shaking her head. She says, "Yeah, that's right." Love and communication in tangible ways is the mark of God-centered relationships, giving generously to one another.

Thirdly, the third revelatory fact about eternal relating is that it is grounded in obedience and commitment. True, healthy relationships must include commitment. Jesus states that he finished the work that God the Father gave him to do. When we are lazy, when we are selfish, when we are under-responsible, and everybody around us has to be overly-responsible, we destroy relationships.

Look at 1 Timothy 5:8; it's a fantastic verse. I mean, it is so amazing that Paul says this as he does... the connection between responsibility and love and faith. "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." That is an unbelievably powerful verse that speaks to the essence of relationships being grounded and responsibly doing what God has called us to do in those relationships. It's not uncommon to see marriage relationships hit the skids because somebody is always overly-responsible and someone seems to always be under-responsible. It's an equivalency of responsibility that leads to mature relationships.

Okay, so glorifying, give, grounded in responsibility.

Now we're going to take a complete 180-degree because to stop here with just an outline would frustrate us a bit because we're looking at a mysterious reality that cannot be wrapped up in a tidy explanation or outline. This is beyond knowledge unless it's revealed. It's an invitation... this whole text today is an invitation to start or restart or jumpstart a relationship with the eternal God that can help me understand and makes sense of my life.

So, from a more experiential angle, I want you to look with me at a clip or two from a film. And many of you have probably seen this film because it's not new. It's been around some time. And it's called... the name of the film is Contact. It helps us as we look at these clips to move beyond explanation and rational thought to mystery and experience.

So the film... let me set it up for those of you who might not remember or haven't seen it. It's a film about a scientist, played by Jodi Foster, who in this film has no real room for God in her life at all. In fact, she would probably be classified as an atheist. She plays a character named Ellie, the daughter of a man who encouraged interest in astronomy when she was little, but her father died in her early teen years, and yet she committed herself to astronomy for her whole life.

And she is, according to the film, the first scientist who is sending radio transmissions out into space, the first scientist to receive a response of returned radio transmission from decades and decades ago. And so through this contact she is allowed, she is chosen, or she's the one who is able to... it's transmitted how to create a travel machine so that we can travel through space.

And so this rich industrialist builds this thing and she gets to be the one who travels. And she goes through worm holes and all this stuff, and the first clip that you're going to see is her first encounter with the mysterious that can't be put into words. So look at this first clip and just again, look at her experience and her reaction beyond knowing.

Film Clip from Contact

ELLIE: Some celestial event. No... no words. No words. Indescribable. Poetry. They should have sent... a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful. So beautiful. I had no idea. I had no idea.

Okay, we're going to fast forward just a little bit because from that first experience she now is going to have a close encounter with an ET, we don't know what it looks like, but it comes to her in the form of her father. Somehow they've downloaded her memories and so they can appear... this ET appears as her father, and says (and we won't see this part) but that they thought it would be easier this way so as not to frighten her. And in many ways this part illustrates how God can take us by the hand and gradually lead us to understand things that we simply could not apart from a personal encounter with one who is so much greater.

Film Clip from Contact

TED ARROWAY: You're an interesting species, an interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.

ELLIE: What happens now?

TED ARROWAY: Now, you go home.

ELLIE: Home? But I have so many questions, do we get to come back?

TED ARROWAY: This was just a first step. In time you'll take another.

ELLIE: But other people need to see what I've seen, they need to see...

TED ARROWAY: This is the way it's been done for billions of years. Small moves, Ellie. Small moves.

Now we're going to fast forward it just a little bit more because this person who was such a rationalist, such a thinker, and somebody who excluded that which was transcendent is sitting before a Senate committee, trying to give explanation for what happened to her in her experience. So she's rationalist turned evangelist of sorts, and the thing that's so powerful about this scene is as she tries to relate her experience, it's in terms of the humble receptivity of what's happened to her that she tries to communicate even though it's been very... it's very hard to explain it.

Film Clip from Contact

SENATOR: You come to us with no evidence, no record, no artifacts, only a story that, to put it mildly, strains credibility. Over half a trillion dollars was spent, dozens of lives were lost, are you really gonna sit there and tell us we should just take this all on faith?

Ellie hesitates.

KITZ: Please answer the question, doctor.

ELLIE: Is it possible that it didn't happen, yes. As a scientist I must concede that, I must volunteer that.

KITZ: Wait a minute, let me get this straight. You admit that you have absolutely no physical evidence to back up your story?

ELLIE: Yes.

KITZ: You admit that you very well may have hallucinated this whole thing.

ELLIE: Yes.

KITZ: You admit that if you were in our position, you will respond with exactly the same degree of incredulity and skepticism?

ELLIE: Yes.

KITZ: (Yelling) Then why don't you simply withdraw your testimony and concede that this journey to the center of the galaxy, in fact, never took place?!

ELLIE: Because I can't. I had an experience I can't prove, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real. I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever; a vision of the Universe that tells us undeniably how tiny, and insignificant, and how rare and precious we all are. A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves. That we are not, that none of us are alone. I wish I could share that. I wish that everyone, if even for one moment, could feel that awe, and humility, and the hope, but... that continues to be my wish.

The reality that she was speaking of is only illustrative for our purposes today. That wonder, awe, and mystery... according to the Scriptures... can be experienced in Jesus Christ by faith. It's... he's the one that makes sense of life and grounds all our relationships. I'm going to ask the worship team to come up because they're going to lead us in a special song to help us reflect on some of this. And after that song I want to give you the opportunity to respond to the mystery of God through possibly three ways.

One, today you might have to say no in your response, and today another way that you might respond is by saying yes, and another way may be by saying both. And I'll explain that after we hear the song.

[song -- Above All Else by Vicky Beeching]

We know that that prayer will be answered by anybody who prays it because that's exactly what Jesus prayed for himself... an encounter, a personal interaction in knowing. And so today you might have to say no in your response to God. By that I mean that maybe you've been going a certain direction, you've been going down a certain path, and you're recognizing that it's not leading you to where you want to go.

The first thing that Jesus ever preached when he came onto this earth, the first sermon he ever proclaims he started with a word, "Repent." Repent, turn. Turn from going in your own direction where you're the ruler, where you think you're in charge, but really you've come to realize that you're not. And so today you might say no.

Say, "You know, I'm going to repent. I'm going to change direction. I'm going to turn and renounce evil and renounce ego and look to God as my hope."

Some of you might need to say yes, and that means this, that there are forty times in the New Testament Jesus used another word. It was a challenge and a call that he used repeatedly in the gospels. He said, "Follow me." So yes today would be saying, "You know Lord, I know you and I understand you and I have repented, but I'm really not following you. I've kind of retaken the throne, so to speak." So the call today is to renew your commitment to follow him so that you might experience his call.

And how did Jesus do that? How did Jesus follow the Father? He did it by sitting, by waiting, by worshipping, by listening, by praying. See, lots of times we think that we can... you know we want to know more than we do. Actually the most important thing is that to know that we're known by God. To come and do what we've been doing this last hour, to worship is the most intelligent thing anybody can do because it's experiencing the love and communication of the Trinity. Getting lost in wonder, love and praise is what our relationship with God is all about.

And some of you may need to say, "No, I repent and I follow and Lord I want you to guide me."

So I'm going to just pray and I'm going to pray as I would if I was praying this personally. And if you want to make this prayer yourself then by all means do so, and if you do... love to know whether you did or not by talking to me, talking to one of the prayer ministers that will be available at the end of the service.

Let's pray: Our Lord, we... my Lord, I thank you. I am going to say no today to all those things that have kept me on the wrong road. Lord, I want to turn from my own independent way. I acknowledge you as the one who I was created to know, the one who so many other things in my life point me to because of my longing. And today I say I follow you, Lord. I ask you to come and take up residence in my life again and rule in the way that will help me fulfill my role as your son or daughter. Lord we pray that you would make us the kind of people that you want us to be that today I give myself, I lift up my hands with my heart in it, so to speak, and offer it to you, and ask you to give me the assurance that I need that you're there and that you'll never leave me or forsake me. I ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.

© 2009, Rev. George Antonakas
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org