Nicaea Read Scripture Holistically (a wise model)
Daily Scripture
John 14:28, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, John 10:30, 14:8-10
John 14
28 You have heard me tell you, ‘I’m going away and returning to you.’ If you loved me, you would be happy that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than me.
2 Corinthians 5
18 All of these new things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and who gave us the ministry of reconciliation. 19 In other words, God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, by not counting people’s sins against them. He has trusted us with this message of reconciliation.
John 10
30 I and the Father are one.”
John 14
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father; that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus replied, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been with you all this time? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I have spoken to you I don’t speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me does his works.
Daily Reflection & Prayer
1700 years ago, an inclusive conclave of Christian bishops affirmed the Nicene Creed. They needed to because Arius used today’s first verse to claim Jesus wasn’t truly eternal or fully God. The Creed rejected what we often call “proof texting.” If all we had was the one phrase Arius used, it might seem to say Jesus was less than God the Father. But, in 325 or in 2025, that meant ignoring many texts like today’s other three. Arius wrongly tried to make Jesus’ words about his God-given earthly mission into an absolute: “The Father is greater than Jesus in the sense that the one who sends a messenger is greater than the messenger he sends. Note John 13:16. Here the specific reference is probably to the coming of Jesus into the world, by which he accepts the limitations of humanity, including physical death. But after Jesus’ death God will raise him to the position he had before he came into the world. Note John 17:4–5, which indicates that after Jesus had finished the work on earth that the Father had given him to do, the Father restored him to the position that he had before the world was created.” *
- Okay—that’s heavy theology. It’s tempting to see it as trivial hair-splitting. Pastoral scholar N. T. Wright showed why it mattered and still does: “Those who hear Jesus’ voice and recognize it as the voice of ‘their’ shepherd will be safe for ever. He will look after them, and even death itself, the last great enemy, cannot ultimately harm them. The reason Jesus can be so confident of this is that the guarantee is his own unbreakable bond of love and union with the father, and the fact that the ‘sheep’ he owns are the ones the father has given him. Christian confidence about the future beyond death, in other words, is not a matter of wishful thinking, a vague general hope, or a temperamental inclination to assume things will turn out all right. It is built firmly on nothing less than the union of Jesus with the father–one of the main themes of this whole gospel.” ** Are you grateful that Nicaea stood firm on Jesus’ eternal identity?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, you united God and humanity in your saving person. Thank you for making it possible for me to trust that God’s forgiving love and transforming power can indeed work in me because of what you did. Amen.
GPS Insights
Dawn North
Dawn North, a Church of the Resurrection member and writing volunteer who lives with her husband, Jim, in their comfy cozy log cabin in rural Edgerton wrote today's Insights for us in March, 2024. She was a middle school teacher and now is a ‘sometimes’ freelance writer. She loves hanging out with her kids and grandkids and is an amateur beekeeper.
In A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller asks if our stories are being stolen by the easy life… a life trying to avoid conflict. * That is a deeply personal question each of us must answer. For me, dodging disagreements and discord are highly developed skills. As a Type 9 on the Enneagram, my word descriptor is “peacemaker.” This lady’s inner nature prefers a storyline of harmony and happiness and sunlight rather than darkness.
But God’s Story is a tale quite unlike any other, filled with treachery, disloyalty, persecution, love and grief. And, even harder, it was a story written in the blood of his son. God, the creator of everything, had a love story to write (sounds paradoxical to the words used above, and it should). Rather than a recital of rules written in stone, it would be a love letter tattooed on the hearts of humanity… a story of infinite love and reconciliation of The Totally Divine with The Totally Human. And God would allow nothing to get in the way.
In J. K. Rowling’s bestselling Harry Potter fantasy series, the wizard Dumbledore persistently tells Harry that Harry’s primary weapon is his ability to love. ** Harry finds this sappy and trite. How in the world could love defeat the number one villain on the Most Wanted List of Hogwarts and its hamlets?
Sound familiar? Neither did those in Jesus’s day see love as a powerful weapon or life-changing ammo. But God knew something they did not. Paul said in Romans 5:12-18, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin… so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people.” *** The righteous act Paul spoke of was Jesus willingly exchanging his life for ours on a dehumanizing, dignity-stealing cross.
The Nicene Creed firmly rooted itself in the great story of God. As Harry Potter’s love defeated his nemesis, Voldemort, God’s love truly defeated death through Jesus because of the Father’s unbreakable bond with the Son. Rob Bell, in Love Wins, writes, “Love is what God is, love is why Jesus came, and love is why he continues to come, year after year to person after person.” **** I am exceedingly grateful that God’s Story was not stolen by the easy life.
My tendency to avoid conflict is still around. I am braver than I was, yet not as brave as I want to be. There is no denying that facing difficult challenges has changed me. My story is far deeper and more substantial and amazing because of those conflict-packed, struggle-stuffed events that are a part of my one life. Note that I did not say there was anything easy about it.
* Miller, Donald, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. 2009. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson.
** Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter Book Series, Volumes 1-7. 1997-2007. Bloomsbury, England: Bloomsbury Publishing.
*** New International Version (NIV). Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011. Biblica, Inc.
**** Bell, Rob, Love Wins. 2011. New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
© 2024 Resurrection: A United Methodist Church. All Rights Reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* Barclay M. Newman and Eugene A. Nida, A Handbook on the Gospel of John. New York: United Bible Societies, p. 475.
** Wright, N. T., John for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-10 (The New Testament for Everyone) (p. 156). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.
