“Contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Jude 3b
The Epistle of Jude 1-4, 17-23
May I have your attention please?
May I have your attention please?
Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
I repeat will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
For those who know those rap lyrics, I bet you never thought you’d hear that from a pulpit. It’s hard to believe that fifteen years have gone by since that raunchy, Slim Shady song topped the charts all over the western world and took numerous awards. I can’t approve of the lyrics. In fact, I didn’t know the lyrics until I looked them up on the Web this week, but the repetitive lines of the chorus I do remember, “Please stand up, please stand up!” Those words have lived for years in people’s memories because, like it or not, the song was played extensively over popular radio and television and many of us got, at least those lines. After reading the x-rated lyrics, I have no idea what the song is about. I looked that up too. Some said it was a shot at various elements of the pop culture at the time. Some said that there was no meaning. Others thought that the lyrics were related to Eminem’s alter ego – the crazy, out of control side and, perhaps, that’s why the video was set in a psychiatric ward. Regardless, these words live on, “Please stand up, please stand up!” They echo on as a part of our culture and probably suggest, will the real person “stand up.”
With the 148th Canada Day approaching, we sang “O Canada” at the beginning of the service. The tune goes back to the work of Calixa Lavallée in 1880 and the English lyrics to Justice Robert Stanley Weir in 1908. Prominent among the lyrics are the words, “We stand on guard for thee,” O, Canada, we stand on guard for thee.” In nine short lines the phrase occurs three times, encouraging us to love and protect our nation; to keep it glorious and free. And, why not? We have this great land. It may be a bit chilly at times but it provides well for us. It’s beauty is overwhelming. Last summer, I flew over the Rockies for the first time and was astonished as I looked down to see the majestic mountains. I puttered around on the coast of British Columbia and went up Grouse Mountain. Stunning views and you don’t have to go that far to find other stunning views; we have them in Ontario. Then there’s the peace we experience. After growing up in a troubled Belfast, I have found this country a wonder. We need to keep that, keep this nation peaceful and glorious and free. Every time we sing the anthem, we vow to do that but one wonders, if and when the time comes, how many will stand on guard. Will Eminem have to run around saying to our people, “Please stand up, please stand up!” because people aren’t?
It’s not easy to stand up in the midst of opposition and conflict. For many of us, there’s a tendency to let others have their way, to not cause any waves, or protect ourselves. Apparently, this was an issue in the first century, as a man named Jude, or Judas, encouraged true Christians to take a stand. He says that he had been eager to write to his fellow Christians about the wonder of their “common salvation,” but instead, due to circumstances within the early church, he had to appeal to them “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered” to us in Jesus Christ. He was saying, “Please stand up, please stand up!” or “stand on guard” for the purity of the gospel.
Jude is an interesting little letter, tucked away near the end of the Bible, just before Revelation. You may not even have heard of it. It isn’t a favourite among preachers; in fact, it could well be that Jude has never been used as the basis of a sermon in the entire history of TEMC. In basing three sermons on the letter of Jude, this summer, I feel like I’m going where no preacher has gone before. But Jude is an interesting little letter, perhaps most because Jude actually quotes from two other Jewish writings that the Church and Judaism consider apocryphal; the book of Enoch and The Testament of Moses. We don’t even know who Jude was, although there’s been a long-standing tradition that Jude was a younger brother of Jesus. He seems to be writing late in the first century (v.17) to a body of believers still heavily influenced by their Jewish heritage (vv.5ff.). As with many of the New Testament letters, Jude writes to address a problem. Certain “ungodly” people had crept into the church, “people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
There are two problems here. The first involves the issue of antinomianism. Anti-nomian is a combination of Greek words that literally translate into English as “against-law.” People had infiltrated the church and were teaching others to forget about the law of God, the Torah. These people took the grace of God to the absolute limit and they taught that once you have faith, it doesn’t matter how you live morally. You can do as you please, God’s grace will cover you. Now, we know from Paul that God is a God of grace, that where sin abounds, grace abounds much more (Romans 5:20). We know that God is a God of steadfast love and that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases (Lam.3:23). But that doesn’t mean, according to Paul and John and the other apostles that God winks at sin and evil and doesn’t take it seriously. The apostles also tell us that the person who comes to faith cannot continue in wrongdoing (Romans 6:1, 1 John 2:6; 3:9). Faith should transform the human condition (Eph.4:22-24). Faith changes people for the better. But there were people around who felt God’s grace covered all. They were in the Church. They were teaching others. They were leading people astray. They opposed apostolic teaching. Jude doesn’t mince words. He calls them godless, he calls them dreamers, blasphemers, “grumblers, malcontents, people who follow their own sinful desires; loud-mouthed boasters, showing favouritism to gain advantage (vv. 4, 8, 10, 16).” He lumps them in with the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Hebrew people who worshipped the golden calf. God will judge them, he says. They will be sent into “the gloom of utter darkness forever (v.13).” In the meantime, however, he says to the Church, to the people of God, “Please stand up, please stand up!” “Contend for the [true] faith that was once for all delivered” to you.
The first problem is with antinomianism and ungodliness. The second issue faced by the Church was that others were denying Jesus Christ as “only master and Lord.” There were people who had infiltrated the Church, perhaps enjoyed the community but were causing people to question all that they believed about Jesus. They were straying from the reports of the eyewitnesses of God’s grace, the disciples of Jesus Christ. Peter and Thomas, for instance, had experiences that caused them to fall on their knees and say to Jesus, “My Lord and my God (Mt.16:16; John 20:28).” They had experienced extraordinary things in Jesus that changed their lives and drove them out to share with others what they had seen and heard, no matter what the cost. But these others were infiltrating. They were taking the approach of, for instance, Scottish comedian, Billy Connolly, who once said that he didn’t really believe that Jesus was Lord but he thought that he was a good man who taught a number of important things. Like Billy Connolly these people were questioning Jesus’ credentials, his messiah-ship, his relationship to God. They denied the words of Matthew that Jesus was the Church’s only teacher and master (Mt.23:8-10). Again, Jude says to the Church, “Please stand up, please stand up! Rise up, stand on guard for the true faith that was passed on to us by those who walked with Jesus.”
From time to time, it seems, the Church runs into these kinds of issues. They occurred in Jude’s day, and similar things are happening around us today. I was at a presbytery meeting a couple of weeks ago and was quite astonished when one of the leaders of the worship time asked us to sing a hymn. The word “God” was in the hymn and this leader said, “If the word God offends anyone please substitute something that works for you, “Earth,” or whatever. I paused for a moment before saying to the person sitting next to me, “Really! Is this what we’ve come to that we can’t even speak about God?” Here we were among the leaders of the Church in our area, ministers and senior lay leaders from each congregation and someone assumes that the word “God” may be offensive to some of these Christian leaders. I am still astonished. And I can hear Jude saying, “Please stand up, please stand up! Will the real Christians please stand up.
It isn’t that long ago that the thoughts of one of the United Church moderators made front-page news in Canada. In the 1990s, it was still quite sensational that a Church leader would question the divinity of Christ. I remember being astonished as the leader of our denomination claimed that Jesus was a human being who embodied as much of the divine as any human being possibly could. He went on to deny the resurrection and stated that he wasn’t sure about the afterlife either. That may have been sensational in the 90s, but I wonder if it is any longer. I find lots of people questioning everything. In a postmodern world people are less likely to believe just because the Church says so or the Bible tells them so. People are prone to questioning everything. Recently, in one of our theological colleges, a student training for ministry said quite openly that he didn’t agree with the Church’s statements of faith and wasn’t sure about Jesus. The professor affirmed the student’s thoughts and carried on. But I was left with questions: How can we have a faith without God? How can we have a Christianity without Christ? How far will we go with this? Can we deconstruct our Faith so much that we come up with something quite different to the beliefs of early Christianity and yet still claim to be Christian? Does a time not come when our beliefs are simply no longer “Christian?” Yet people have crept into the Church these days who are saying, “Believe what you want, we support you on your journey.” I hear the voice of Jude saying, “Please stand up, please stand up!” Will the real Christians please stand up, stand on guard, and contend for the faith that is ours in Christ Jesus.
I’m not talking about a dumb, anti-intellectual faith here when I say these things. I am speaking about a faith that is filled with intellectual rigour yet one that is still faithful to the rich heritage that we have. I’m speaking about a faith that can say with Deuteronomy, “Shema Yisrael, adonay elohenu, adonai ehad.” “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might.” I’m speaking about a faith that still has a special place for Jesus as God’s messiah, crucified, buried, and risen, and does not bend or flinch on these truths. I’m speaking of a faith that still stands with the Church of old and hears the Word of God in the holy scriptures. I’m speaking of a Church that can stand with the apostle Paul and say, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith (Rom.1:16).” Please stand up. Please stand up! “Contend for faith that was once for all delivered to us,” says Jude.
There are some speeches that are so well known that one only has to utter a few words and people know what you’re talking about. Whenever the words, “I have a dream,” are said, thoughts immediately go to the public speech of Martin Luther King in 1963 calling for the end of racism. But there was a man with a similar name who gave a speech some 450 years earlier to a similar effect. It too has words that have resounded through the centuries.
Martin Luther was ordained in 1507 and was asked to teach theology at the University in Wittenberg in 1508. Several times as he laboured in Wittenberg, Martin Luther felt that the Church was not being true to its heritage. One thing, however, pushed him over the edge. A man named Tetzel in 1516 was selling indulgences to raise money to rebuild St. Peter’s in Rome. Roman Catholic theology stated that faith alone could not make a person right with God, faith is connected with charity and good works and one way that the benefits of good works could be obtained was by donating money to the church. The idea behind indulgences was that one could be forgiven one’s sins, even future sins, by purchasing an indulgence. Tetzel, it is thought, became particularly enthusiastic and supposedly said, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”
Luther was appalled. He had been devoting himself to the study of God’s word and became convinced that the Church had lost sight of several central truths of the faith. He noted particularly in Paul’s letter to the Romans how the righteous lived by faith and he scribbled into his notes, sola fides, faith alone. Luther uncovered that a person could not buy a position with God. Our place with God is founded on faith and God’s grace. And so Luther, in 1517, put together a list of ninety-five issues that he had with the Church, sent them to his bishop, and then published them in Latin and German. His work struck a chord with others and spread like wildfire. It caused a stir and over the next few years he faced a number of disputations with Church leaders. In 1520 he was excommunicated because he would not recant. In 1521, he was ordered before the Diet of Worms with the Emperor Charles V presiding. These were days in which people could go to the stake for crossing the Church and Luther had to rely on the prince of Saxony for safe travel to and from Worms. At the trial, Johann Eck presented Luther with copies of his writings, laid them out on a table and asked him if the books were his and whether he stood by their contents. Luther affirmed that he was their author, but requested time to think about the answer to the second part of the question. He prayed, consulted with friends because of the danger to him. The next day, he responded with these words:
Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. Here I stand, I can do no other. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against my conscience. May God help me.
The words, “Here I stand,” lived on to become synonymous with Luther’s stance and speech. They marked a turning point for the Church, a reformation. Martin Luther stood on the gospel and the Word.
I wonder, today, in the midst of so many fuzzy thoughts around Christianity if there is a willingness to stand, a willingness to contend for the true faith that has come to us through the apostles and prophets (Eph.2:20). These are the words of Jude to us today. Please stand up, please stand up! Let us stand on guard, not only for our nation, but for our Faith.