Wholeness

HELLO
WHOLENESS
COMMUNION SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
1 THESSALONIANS 5: 23-24
OCTOBER 12, 2008

Sigmund Freud was a medical doctor who revolutionized the world of psychiatry. Most historians, most psychiatrists believe that he had a trichotomous view of humanity, a trichotomous view of man, a trichotomous view of the human personality. He spoke of the Id and the Ego and the Super Ego. He Id referred to the primitive desires and cravings of man. That was the Id, primitive basic cravings and desires. The Super Ego referred to the conscious, the mores, the ideals instilled by parents or by society or by the church and the Ego was the conscious mind where decisions were made and real events in life were dealt with. Oftentimes in Freud’s view, the Id and the Super Ego were in conflict. The primitive desires and instincts were in conflict with the conscious, with the ideals, with the mores instilled by parents and society. But it’s in the ego where decisions are made about how to deal with the world and what to do in life.

Now, in philosophy sometimes you also find a trichotomous view of man. Some Greek philosophers spoke of body, soul and spirit as man as “soma., psyche, pneuma.” Soma, (body) tended to refer in Greek philosophical thought to the basis or primitive desires in people, the natural impulses, the instinct and desires—soma. In Greek philosophy the pneuma or the spirit referred to the conscience or to the higher values. It referred to the part of man that longed for God and heard the voice of God. Finally, there was the psyche or the soul which was sometimes was rendered “mind” when brought into English and it was again where decisions were made in real life.

In the Bible you see all of these terms. In the Bible you obviously don’t see Id, Ego and Super Ego but you do see soma, psyche and pneuma. You see body, soul and spirit. In fact, in our passage for today you see these trichotomous terms. You see body, soul and spirit, soma, psyche, pneuma. But we need to understand that the biblical view of man is far more complex and these terms are used in a variety of ways so that the word soma or the word psyche or the word pneuma it’s meaning can only be determined contextually. You have to look at that word in the biblical context in order to understand what it means in that particular passage, a complex view of man.

I think without doubt there are some similarities in biblical thought, Greek thought, Freudian thought. There are many differences as well but on this, the Bible and Sigmund Freud, would agree and that is that mankind is messed up. The Bible asserts that. Freud asserted that. Mankind is messed up and in fact Sigmund Freud himself was messed up. Towards the end of his life, he crafted a paper that circulated all over the world and it was called “Uber Coca.” In that paper he advocated cocaine and he claimed that it had amazing properties and that it could cure everything from depression to constipation. Cocaine. He was himself a user and he was pretty much messed up.

Now, we come to the conclusion on this series “Grace and Peace” and what it means to wish people “grace and peace.” We’ve seen that it means “heaven.” We’ve seen that it means “health.” We’ve seen that it means harmony but we’ve also seen that it means “wholeness,” wholeness in a world that is very much messed up and we’re all of us also messed up which kind of leads to my first of two points. My first point this morning is simply this. We are broken. I am broken. You are broken. Everyone in the world is broken.

When you grew up, particularly if you’re a little bit older but maybe all of us, you probably remember as a child the nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty and you know the words. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the kings horses and all the kings men couldn’t put Humpty back together again.” Most literary scholars believe that that nursery rhyme was originally a riddle and it ended with the question, “Who was Humpty Dumpty?” The answer was an egg. The words Humpty Dumpty mean “short and squat” which is a good description of an egg but if an egg falls, all the kings horses and all the kings men cannot put that egg back together again. It’s just a nursery rhyme or a riddle and in a sense theologically profound because it kind of describes the human condition because mankind has fallen and all the kings horses and all the kings men cannot put us back together again.

If you look at Genesis, chapters 1, 2 and 3 and you see the creation of man by God. You see that man if the crown of God’s creation and you see that God has imparted the imago Dei, His own image upon man. The Bible in the Greek uses words such as “psyche” and “pneuma” and in the Hebrew words like “nephesh” and “ruah.” These are words to describe the “breath of God which comes upon man.” Man is the crown of creation created with the imago Dei. But then you come to Genesis 3, and you have the fall of man and you have the whole Eden account and you have the story of the original parents. You have the story of Adam and Eve and their transgression.

God had given this incredible gift called freedom. God had given moral autonomy. God had given volition. Without volition, without free will, there could be no culpability and so free well was given. It was a beautiful gift and we abused it and mankind fell in Eden long ago. And so, you have this teaching in the Bible that we’re all broken. The Bible indicates that most of us really don’t care very much. We’re broken and we don’t have a huge desire to be put back together.

I was given just this past week by some friends this book which is by Rob Bell and this is his latest book and it’s called, “Jesus Wants to Save Christians.” My friends gave me this book because they know from time-to-time I’ve read Rob Bell or I’ve listened to Rob Bell or I have a Rob Bell DVD. I kind of have this love/hate relationship with the teachings of Rob Bell. There are times when I really love his style. There are also times when I really love his insights biblically and then there are other times when he kind of drives me crazy. I just find myself thinking, “How can he just reach that conclusion?” or “How can he interpret this passage of scripture in that way?” “How did he get from here to there?” Sometimes I do feel like he distorts the meaning of biblical passages, and of course his politics bug me. But I also must say that oftentimes he has insights. In this book it’s no different.

By the way, some of you have e-mailed me from time-to-time and said, “Why would you read a book if you don’t agree with the book?” You see I apparently have a different philosophy of book reading than many of you. I read a lot of books I don’t wholly agree with and I run everything through the grid of the Bible. It’s the Bible I agree with so I run everything through the grid of the Bible, through the teachings of the Bible, and on that basis, I decide what I agree or don’t agree with but I want some scope in my reading and so within that scope I read Rob Bell. That’s a little apologia, a little defense of why I do that.

In any event, he had this one insight early in the book. He has many insights through the book but he has this one insight early in the book where he talks about Eden and he talks about it was a place of wholeness and that in Eden the whole concept of Eden was just a symbol of wholeness; that we are in harmony with God and in harmony with each other. In body, soul and spirit we are integrated and we are what God intended us to be. We are whole and Eden represents that but then you have the fall. You have the sin and you have Adam and Eve removed from the garden, removed from Eden, removed from wholeness and now they’re broken so the human race is outside of Eden and the human race is broken. They go east of Eden as it says in the Bible and east of Eden is broken and so Cain goes east of Eden and to the land of Nod. He is broken and he builds a city. Rob Bell says this is the condition of mankind. We go where there’s no wholeness and we build cities. We put down roots. We don’t long to get back to Eden. There’s not this hunger in our hearts to get back to Eden. We just put down roots in the midst of our brokenness and we just establish ourselves there and this is the condition of the world.

You might think, “Well, he’s stretching the meaning of that passage but there’s no doubt that the message is true. That message is true. We have been banished from Eden and a lot of people just don’t care. We’ve gone east of Eden in the midst of brokenness and we’re putting down roots and building cities. We’ve just kind of embraced brokenness. It’s kind of like, “I’m not okay. You’re not okay and that’s okay.” That’s sort of how mankind is. We’ve just embraced it.

As Christians this cannot be true of us. This is what the series has been about. If you really long for grace and peace, we long for wholeness. We long for heaven. We long for health. We long for harmony. We want to go back to Eden. If we really wish people grace and peace, if we really would speak the hendiadys to people around us, if we would long to see them experience grace and peace, then we would long to see them find Eden, to find their way back. You can’t just put down roots in the midst of brokenness and celebrate your dysfunction, your psychoses or neuroses or whatever. There has to be this longing to get back.

Now, Jerusalem is sometimes called The Holy City. Certainly, in the Bible it is sometimes called The Holy City. In Christian history, Jerusalem has often been referred to as The Holy City. The city literally means, “City of Peace,” Quirya Shalom, the City of Peace, which means that it is the City of Wholeness except that its history has little to do with peace, little to do with wholeness.

Many of you know that in 587 BC, the Babylonians, the armies of Nebuchadnezzar II swept over Judah and swept over Jerusalem and they destroyed the city and they leveled it. They took the Jews, men, women, children. They imported them to Babylon and they left the city of Jerusalem in ruins. Over the course of time the Babylonians themselves conquered by the Medo-Persians and over the course of time Cyrus the Great came to head the Persian Empire and it was Cyrus the Great who allowed some of the Jews to go back to Jerusalem. Those Jews that went back to Jerusalem found it broken. They found it shattered in ruins and the walls of the city were just scattered all over the ground. The stones, the rocks… It was all in ruin.

Over the course of time Nehemiah came to be the cup bearer to Artaxerxes, King of Persia. This is recorded in the Book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament. Nehemiah was a Jew in exile but prominent and he begged Artaxerxes, “Let me go back to Jerusalem. The city is broken. I’ve received reports from my brethren and from my sisters. I know the city is in ruins. Let me go back.” Artaxerxes had grace on Nehemiah and he went back to Jerusalem. It was during that time that the walls of Jerusalem, you remember, were rebuilt.

Josephus, a famous ancient historian records that the walls of Jerusalem in the time of Nehemiah were rebuilt in two years and four months. The Bible says they were rebuilt in 52 days. I believe the Bible. I believe that’s reasonable. In fact, if you’ve ever read Thucydides, and who hasn’t, he talks about how in the 5th century, and this is an ancient Greek writer, he talks about how in the 5th century before Christ they built the walls around Athens and they built all the walls around Athens in 30 days. You see it just has to do with the quality of the construction, the number of workers and how hard they’re willing to work. So, we have the record in the Bible that the walls around the city of Jerusalem were rebuilt in 52 days in the time of Nehemiah.

Archeologists tell us that those walls, the circumference around the city was on 1-1/2 miles and archeologists indicate that in the time of Nehemiah were indeed built quickly and maybe the quality not that good but they were completed. Here’s what the Bible says in Nehemiah, chapter 6, verse 15: “When the last stone was put in the wall…” They had gone all the way around Jerusalem and finally one last stone. They put that stone in and the Bible says in Nehemiah 6:15, “and the walls of the city were at peace.” Shalom. Peace. Whole again because, you understand, this is what peace is all about—wholeness, “to be put back together again.”

This is our first teaching this morning but it really leads to our second teaching. We’re broken and not whole and we need to be put back together again. This second and final teaching today is the message that “Jesus saves.” As our choir sang so beautifully and majestically, “Jesus Saves.”

In the Bible in the New Testament, the word for “to save” is “Sozo.” It the Greek word sozo and we get the word Sotere which means, “Savior.” It comes from Sozo. Jesus is the Savior and He saves. Sozo does not simply mean, “to secure the soul” or “to grant eternal life.” It’s true when we say, “Jesus saves” we mean that He can secure your soul and He can grant eternal life and He can forgive your sins. Yes, Jesus saves, but the word has more scope than that. When you look at the word “Sozo,” the word means literally “to put back together.” It means, “to make whole” so you look at passages in the Bible. If you look at the little letter of Jude which is only one chapter, look at verse 5 and you’ll see something there. Or go to Matthew’s Gospel and look in chapters 9 and 14 and you’ll see the same thing there. Or go to Mark’s Gospel, the 5th chapter, or Luke’s Gospel, the 8th chapter or even go to the Book of James, the 5th chapter. In all of these places you’ll see the word “Sozo” used in the sense of “putting back together again” or “making whole” so when we say “Jesus Saves,” you’ve got to give it its full meaning. He puts us back together again. He can make us whole. This gives the title of Christ, “Sar Shalom,” “Prince of Peace” new meaning because He’s Prince of Wholeness. He’s “Prince of Peace,” “Sar Shalom,” “Prince of Wholeness” and He can put us back together again.

This past week when I was actually doing a little research on Humpty Dumpty, believe it or not I have four books in my library at home that deal with the history of that nursery rhyme, “Humpty Dumpty.” I’ve kind of researched that just a little bit. Along the way, right next to a discussion of Humpty Dumpty I noticed there was a study of the expression “Hunky Dory.” Most of you have never used that expression but some of you have or you’ve heard other people use it. “Everything is “hunky dory.” What does that mean?

In the old Dutch, the word “hunky” comes from “hunt” which means, “home” or “place of safety.” “Dory” meant “okay” or “all right” so Hunky Dory means, “We’re home. We’re safe and everything is all right.”

I think Jesus saves means in a sense, “everything is going to be hunky dory.” We’re going to be home. We’re going to be safe and everything is going to be all right. Isn’t that true? But, you see, even now there’s a sense in which things are hunky dory because He’s already secured our soul and He’s already sealed heaven for us. His righteousness has already been imputed to us and in a sense we’re okay. But never forget, as Christians, we’re still “humpty dumpties” Even though there a sense in which things are hunky dory, we’re still humpty dumpties. When you think of “HD” don’t think of high definition. Think of humpty dumpty and hunky dory. That kind of sums up the Gospel. Remember, Jesus saves but we’re in process. We’re not there yet. We’re not home. We’re not safe. It’s not okay. We in process. We’re still broken and very much need a Savior to put us back together again.

Just yesterday I got an e-mail from Joe Shulam. Joe Shulam is a Christian Jew and a Jewish pastor in Jerusalem, a Jewish man who pastors a congregation in Jerusalem and a teacher and he loves Christ. In his e-mail, he was explaining how there’s no nation on the earth like Israel and how at Yom Kippur 70% of the citizens of Israel fast. They participate in a 25-hour fast, no food, no drink. Seventy percent of the Jewish population in Israel are citizens. Fifty percent of the Jews in Israel who are secular still engage in the fast. They do the 25 hours, no food, no drink, and they go to Synagogue. Many of them go for 10 hours with prayer and meditate and worship—even secular Jews in Israel who aren’t sure about God—70%.

What’s it all about? Well, Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, but Joe Shulam, in his e-mail yesterday, was saying that it’s about a longing for grace and mercy and forgiveness and the people are crying out for grace and mercy and forgiveness and not just for themselves but for their nation. It goes back to Leviticus, chapter 16, where the sins of Israel were to be remembered on Yom Kippur, on the Day of Atonement. They remember the sins of their nation. They remember the sins of Israel and they pray.

I was reading this past week in Genesis and when I came to a section in Genesis, chapter 15, God was saying to Abraham that He would give Abraham a long life and that Abraham would live out his days in peace but God tells Abraham in Genesis 15:16 that the Amorites, his great enemies, would continue for 400 years. God said, “The sin of the Amorites will not reach completion, will not reach fullness—shalom—will not be at peace. Their sin will not reach completion for 400 years, four 100-year generations. God’s going to forebear them their sin.

I just read recently in Archeological Magazine about an archeological dig at Ugarit. Ugarit is in Syria and today it’s called Ras Shamra but in biblical times it was Ugarit and it’s on the coast of Syria. In 1929 they did this great archeological dig there and they unearthed all the ruins of what once was Ugarit and that’s where the Ugaritic language developed.

I had a seminary professor who was the Head of the Greek and Hebrew Departments. He supposedly was fluent in 27 languages and has written textbooks in eight languages. One of his languages was Ugaritic, which comes from Ugarit.

In this archeological dig in 1929 they found these old stones and carvings and engravings and they described the sins of the Amorites because the Amorites were in that region. The sins of the Amorites were many. Some of them were sexual sins. Some of them were sins of oppression and violence and some were unthinkable—human sacrifice, child sacrifice, the sins of the Amorites. I thought, “Wow! How could God have withheld judgement upon the Amorites for 400 years?” And yet God is a God who has mercy on nations. God has great patience.

So, what about America? What is God going to do with us? There’s no holy nation on earth. I hope you know that. I love America. I pray for this country as I know you do. We have a long list of sins and we’re going to sin more in the future. We pray for God to have patience and to forebear us and to withhold judgement.

After 9/11 I saw where some TV evangelists were saying, “Well, this is God’s judgement on America because of the gay agenda or because of wholesale abortion or because of some list of sins, that it was God’s judgement and divine wrath.” I found myself thinking, “Well, how do they know? How do they know that 9/11 was God’s judgement? If God was indeed judging the nation—if he was in ANY sense judging this nation—how about other sins? How about our materialistic greed, materialistic greed that has in some sense driven our economy to the condition it’s in. What about the full scope of hedonistic sins in which most of us find our lives sated? How about pride? Jesus spoke more than anything about the sins of pride.” And so, we pray not only that God would forebear and have patience with us as a nation but we pray that there might be revival in our time.

One of the things that happened during the Great Depression of 1930, and I know some of you are concerned it could happen again… One of the things that happened after the Stock Market crash in 1929 and then into the decade of the ‘30’s, pockets of revival broke out all across America. As people lost their underpinnings they began to turn to God. Maybe, at least in some measure, we need that again. I don’t want any of us to suffer but I would just pray. God sometimes uses and gets our attention in harder times. We are a nation that needs revival. Every nation needs revival.

As you come to the Table, you want to remember to pray for America but also for yourself because we’re kind of like the Amorites. We’re kind of like Israel and we’re kind of like America. Our sin is not full. It’s not yet complete. We have sin in the past and we’ll have sin in the future. I’ll tell you what’s different is once we’ve come to the cross, we don’t have to worry about judgement. We’ve already passed out of death into life. Our soul is secure, and we’re bound for heaven but we still need God’s mercy and grace and His loving patience in our lives. We need forgiveness and sanctification. We need our own little revival in our own lives as we come to the Table and as we pray and we say, “Jesus saves” and we celebrate His grace and His mercy and His ability to put us back together again and His ability to make us whole.

I think we come to the Table like the woman in Luke 7. Nobody knows who the woman in Luke 7 is. In the past there were some who thought she was Mary Magdalene because Mary Magdalene is mentioned in Luke 8 but there’s really no connection. We don’t know who this woman was in Luke 7 but she came into the home where Jesus was eating, the home of Simon the Pharisee. She was a sinner from the streets. The implication is lots of sexual sin. She came in and she was repentant and longing for grace and mercy and forgiveness and to be put back together again. She cried as she came in and she knelt before Jesus and she washed his feet, you remember, with her tears and wiped His feet with her hair, her long hair. Then she took out costly perfume or oil and anointed Him. The Pharisee thought, “How can you let this sinner do that?” Jesus just talked about love—her love, His love, forgiveness—and Jesus told this woman she was forgiven. He said to her, “Go in peace. Eirene Shalom. Go in peace, wholeness. You’re being put back together again.” Jesus saves. Jesus can do that. So we come to the Table.

I know we’re all broken physically, emotionally, mentally, relationally, financially broken but Jesus saves and He’s the hope of the world so we come to the Table and ask for His grace and His peace, not only in our lives as we conclude this series but wishing grace and peace for those around us. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.