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Who among us as a child didn't spend hours with neighborhood friends playing hide-and-seek? One person was designated to be "It" while the rest of us found the most ingenious places to hide that we could think of. The person who was "It" would count to a hundred, and then open his or her eyes, turn around and shout, "Ready or not, here I come. Come out, come out, wherever you are!" Those who were hiding would wait for the right moment to come out and try to make it "home" without being caught. There is a replica of William Holman Hunt's "The Light of the World" on the cover of your worship folder. I invite you to look at it now. This painting has illustrated American evangelicalism since the artist completed it in 1853. This is the classic picture of Jesus, standing in a garden, gently reaching out to knock on a closed wooden door. It is getting dark. Jesus carries a lantern, while stars start to twinkle in a blue-black sky. The message seems to be clear: Jesus wants to come into our hearts. But the larger message, as we shall see, is that Jesus wants in so that he can bring us out. Jesus is the divine "It" calling for us to "Come out, come out, wherever we are." Notice the door. Jesus is standing before a door partially covered with creeping ivy. The door's iron hinges and nails are rusty, suggesting that this door has not been opened in some time. Hunt painted doctrines, not pictures. The doctrine Hunt portrays is summarized in Revelation 3:20, "Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me." Hunt's portrait met with immediate and enormous popularity. But it was largely the power of this painting and others that earned Hunt this accolade: "What Bach did for Protestant music, that Hunt has done for Protestant painting," wrote the great theologian/preacher/writer P. T. Forsythe. Now exhibited at Keble College in Oxford, Hunt's work has been called "the single most important contemporary portrayal of Christ" in the 19th century. Like all good icons, Hunt's "Light of the World" painting soon found itself reproduced in stained glass, gilt-framed in small church chapels, pasted inside prayer cards. Later on his image and its various "updatings" (one by Warner Sallman, perhaps even more familiar than Hunt's portrait) found their way onto refrigerator magnets, car-window decals, jewelry boxes and even paper throwaway place-mats for church suppers. This portrayal of Jesus became a part of popular culture, inspiring hosts of hymns about Jesus' "coming into my heart." Hunt painted that closed door as a symbol of a "closed mind" that needed to be opened to Jesus' redemptive message, to the salvation Jesus offers. But for Hunt's picture to speak a new message to the church today, we should re-examine the intent behind Jesus' standing at the door. Today the church lives in a deeply spiritual age. We already are "open-minded." So open-minded, in fact, that it is now common cultural practice to combine Christianity with a whole garden of other transcendent possibilities -- Eastern philosophies, crystal powers, channeling, Native American myth systems -- providing society with a mixed-up spiritual salad to sample. What Holman Hunt's portrait of a door-knocking Jesus reminds us of is that the message and mission of Jesus Christ is not accomplished solely through interior introspection. Faith is not solely an inward-directed, contemplative life. Faith is action. Faith goes outdoors to live and play, to love and work. While it may appear that Jesus is knocking on the door of the human heart to get in, Jesus is also knocking on our door to invite us out -- out to be a part of God's mission in the world. In today's Old Testament text Isaiah's condemnation of the hollow showmanship displayed before God was two-fold. One punch was designed to deflate the Judeans' puffed-up pride in their impressive obedience to sacrificial law. The other criticism sought to prod into action the people's long-dormant covenant conscience. Isaiah makes the road back to obedient covenant-keeping short and straightforward: "cease to do evil, learn to do good."(vv.16-17). This was no small admonition. For Isaiah, "ceasing" and "learning" were not decisions and attitudes -- they had to be actions. The people could not simply abstain from evil and yet do nothing against it. As history has shown us time and again, living silently with evil is to assent to it. In our own century, think of the inaction that allowed the horror of the Holocaust to happen. Or what about the look-the-other-way attitude that allowed Jim Crow to flourish. No wonder Isaiah connected ceasing evil with the activity of "doing good." In case the morally lazy Judeans had forgotten exactly what "doing good" might involve, Isaiah also provided a "list of suggested activities" to guide them in their rehabilitation. The first two are "seek justice" and "rescue the oppressed". But as if Isaiah feared that these "activities" may be too vague for the remedial morality of the Judeans, he goes on to give two absolutely specific examples he expects from his audience -- "defend the orphan, plead for the widow." These activities obviously force these worshipers out of the temple and into the world. This was radical because as "unclean ones," women and children were not even allowed to be present within most of the holy confines of the temple. Isaiah's orders are for followers of God to go out and get their hands dirty, to work in the midst of those who really need their care and protection. Just because we are here in church does not necessarily mean we are listening to God. A story is told by a mother who was watching watching her son's tee ball game. She found herself looking around and noticed a great big loudspeaker used for announcing the games. In that speaker, she saw a small bird had built her nest and was raising her young. Though she doubtless hears all that is going on and is right smack in the middle of the game, this mother bird has absolutely no interest and is certainly not listening. We can be just the same: attending and being seen, immersed in the noise of the praise and worship and life, but not listening to a bit of it. The hard truth is this: Listening to those we love, from our children to our God, takes effort. You have to work at it. We are witnesses to the fact that our senior high youth are listening. They are listening with action. They returned last week from a ten-day mission trip to Homer and Hope. Not only did they get their hands dirty for God, but some of them got their entire bodies dirty! They are the ones who are leading our church into face-to-face, hands-on mission experiences. An opportunity for the rest of us is now being planning by Diana Hearn…a mission trip to Mexico during spring break. These are some of the ways we can come out of ourselves to share God with the world. In grade school if you accidentally bumped into somebody, a standard face-saving, smart-aleck reply was "You make a better door than window!" A new look at Holman Hunt's painting suggests that the same statement may be made about Jesus. Hunt showed Jesus knocking on a door -- gently urging those shut up within to open up and let him come inside. But Jesus is not only knocking on the door to our hearts. Jesus IS the door -- a way out of the closed-up, interior-focused, self-absorbed lives we lead. "I am the door," Jesus said. In high-rise office buildings, the windows do not open. They are present just for "show" -- to "show" those poor cubicle-chained "Dilbert"-type office workers there is a world out there. The way we bring the world in and the way we go out is through the door. Jesus doesn't come into our hearts, into our lives, just to hang around like some eternal house guest. His life and mission is not to provide us with a window view of the world (even if it is a "picture" window) while we stay safely inside. Jesus is a "better door than a window." He makes it possible for us to walk outside ourselves, walk outside the protective walls we have built around ourselves, and step out into a world that needs the message of compassion and redemption that Jesus has given to us. In other words, Jesus comes in to get us out. Note where Jesus is standing: in the garden. Christianity is an out-of-doors religion. Notice the orchard in the background. THAT's where the fruit is. Jesus comes into our hearts to take us out into the garden. Jesus wants us to become part of what God is doing in the world, not to play in our little spiritual sandbox. "Let me in," Jesus says, knocking on your soul. Then Jesus says, "I am the Door, the way out from whatever is trapping you inside. Follow me and come on out." Jesus says to us, as he said to Lazarus long ago, "Come out." Come out from the seclusion of bitterness to risk forgiving those who've hurt you. Come out from the seclusion of elitism that pulls away from those who don't agree with you. Come out from the seclusion of fear that keeps you from trying anything new. Come out from the seclusion of self that keeps you from seeing the needs of others. "Come out, come out, wherever you are." "I am the Door ... an open door, which no one is able to shut." |
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08/12/01 - Come Out, Come Out (Isaiah 1:1, 10-20)
