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[slide 1]
2 Peter 3:14-18 (New Living Translation)
14 And so, dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen, make every effort to be found living peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in his sight.
15 And remember, the Lord’s patience gives people time to be saved. This is what our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him 16 speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture. And this will result in their destruction.
17 I am warning you ahead of time, dear friends. Be on guard so that you will not be carried away by the errors of these wicked people and lose your own secure footing. 18 Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
All glory to him, both now and forever! Amen.
Let me start out with some math lessons today. They involve zero and infinity. The void and the eternal. Very spiritual concepts but also very familiar to the mathematician. Throughout history there have been some well-known mathematician who were also theologians: Blaise Pascal is probably the most well-known. He is best known for describing our need for God as a God-shaped hole in our hearts that can’t be filled by anything other than God. Pascal was also the father of the principles of vacuum and proved, despite opposition from leading scientists and philosophers of his day, that vacuum did exist – everyone in that time was terrified by the void – nothingness – vacuum –Aristotle’s famous quote "Nature abhors a vacuum" is not entirely true. The vast majority of the universe is more or less empty space and there doesn’t seem to be anything rushing to fill it. To his credit, there are circumstances that do fit this description, but what Aristotle and the leading thinkers of his time were trying to avoid were nothingness and, its partner, eternity.
Eternity is hidden in the strangest places. [slide 2] Measure the distance across any circle at its widest point and now measure the distance around the circle. These two distances can be accurately measured with the correct tools – but something crazy happens if you divide the larger distance by the smaller one – no matter how big or small the circle – the answer will always be the same. And it is not a nice number [slide 3]– it is a number that never ends and never repeats – a little bit of eternity hidden in a circle – since we can’t write a number like that we represent it with a symbol – π [slide 4]. The same thing happens with a square. [slide 5] We have a nice neat perfect square – we can measure the length of a side – they are all the same – let’s say 1 foot long – now we can draw a line from one corner across the square to the other side. Easily drawn and impossible to measure. Again, we find an eternity hidden in this seemingly simply object. Poor Pythagoras was determined to find the ratio but in the end (after drowning a fellow philosopher for suggesting this truth) he had to admit that it was indeed ‘irrational’ – a messy number with infinite, unpredictable digits.
My favorite hidden eternity in math has to do with dividing by zero. When you divide a number, say 1 for example, by zero you are asking “what number multiplied by zero will give me 1?” a question that has no answer because you can multiply by zero all day long and get nothing but zero. BUT we can get really really close to zero say 0.00000000001 and when we divide 1 by this number we get 10 billion – so we add more zeros – 100 more zeros before the 1 and now we are getting ridiculously large numbers when we divide – so as we get close to zero – we are approaching infinity. If we apply this mathematical concept to Einstein’s “field equations” [slide 6]which illustrate the spacetime fabric being curved by matter; we find solutions that approach infinity which give us a simplified description of what we now term a ‘black hole.’ [slide 7]Since density is defined as an object’s mass divided by its volume, when a large star dies, it’s volume (the space it was occupying) decreases – in fact it reduces nearly to zero, and the mass remains fairly constant and so the resulting infinite density of the black hole is similar to division by zero. But because of this immense density, it has a strong gravitational field and any object (even light) that gets close to this hole will be pulled in and compressed into a single point that is infinitely small – sounds a lot like zero.
So even if you have understood nothing of the math I have shared with you today, hold on to this thought: the creation of a black hole happens when a star dies - a massive nothingness pulls down on space and time with a force of gravity so strong that it basically compresses itself to nearly nothing –– all that is left is that strong force – sucking in anything that comes too near the edge.
Pascal’s God-shaped hole idea is found in his writings in defense of Christianity, entitled, Thoughts or in French, Pensées: [slide 8]
"What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him … though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself." - Blaise Pascal, Pensées
He said we had an infinite abyss. Sounds a lot like a black hole to me. A hole created by the death of the perfect relationship with God – destroyed by sin – and all that is left is an empty print – but this emptiness has a pull that will suck everything into its strong force – every relationship, every desire, every pursuit – and compress it into nothing – all that will remain is that force and its never satisfied hunger. Should we join Paul in saying “Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin?”
The answer, according to both Paul and Pascal, is the Infinite – God Himself.
So how do we do fill this abyss with God? Our text today has some excellent advice. “Make every effort to be found living peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in his sight.” This sounds great. But unfortunately it leads to two extremes. The “make every effort” extreme and the “pure and blameless in his sight” extreme.
Peter mentions something to this effect in the next few verses “those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted [Paul’s] letters to mean something quite different…this will result in their destruction.” We see in Paul’s letters how he feels about the “make every effort” extreme which we will call “legalism” – or a rigid following of rules. “If I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? … As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!” Strict adherence to rules is not a way to fill that black hole with God. We can join the rich young ruler and say to Jesus, “Teacher, all these [commandments] I have kept since I was young.” But we will be found lacking. The law wasn’t given to us so that we could have a holiness checklist of do’s and don’ts. The law is meant to show us God’s perfection and our imperfection. The Law is the measure of God’s holiness – an infinitely large number that, even if we spent every waking moment counting, we would never reach. It’s like we are trying to solve a cosmic equation [slide 9] { me + x = ∞ } - the only solution is something infinite – because we can add any number large or small to infinity and the result is still infinity. So God solved this equation Himself by becoming a man and perfectly fulfilling the law so that the new equation looks like this [slide 10]{me + ∞ Jesus = ∞ holiness}.
This leads to the other extreme, the “pure and blameless in His sight” extreme, the “I’m saved so it doesn’t matter how I live” extreme, we will call ‘antinomianism’ [slide 11]– lawlessness. Paul had something to say to these people too, “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!” This extreme is an immature response to God’s grace and forgiveness and leads to rebellion. It is like the Prodigal Son using his renewed position as son to invite his old friends over to party. Alfred Norris says “Though there is everything to be lost by rebelling against the Lord Jesus, we can be absolutely certain that, so long as there is human nature, for so long will obedience be irksome and rebellion attractive.” Oh, the rebel – how we love thee. “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love” When we justify our godless actions and entertain our lawless thoughts we grow ever closer to the edge of that deep aching need of our soul and, if we are not careful, the pull will be too great and we will find ourselves destroyed by that which we desired.
[slide 12] We can often feel ourselves close to the edge of this cosmic waterfall and, even though we paddle with all of our might, the pull is stronger than our ability to fight it. “Be on guard so that you will not be carried away...” Peter says in our text. Don’t go near the edge, guard your salvation, be wise about the company you keep so that you don’t slip and fall. Rather, he says, preferably, grow in grace, grow in knowledge, GROW UP! Fill yourself with infinite truths.
How do we do this? By living in eternity. By practicing the presence of God. By storing up treasures in heaven. By setting our mind on things above. As C.S. Lewis puts it by “listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.”
In my job as a math teacher, I am reminded of hidden eternities – mysteries so vast that we replace them with symbols so that we can apply them. Where are your hidden eternities? Do you find them by looking at the stars or a leaf? Keeping death daily before your eyes? Imagining heaven? Talking to God? Talking to each other about God? When people are in love, almost anything can be a reminder of the other. When I am away from my family, there are a thousand little things that remind me of them. And it’s surprising how much their names come up in conversations with those around me. Because my home is with them and I long to be with them.
It is the same with God. He is crazy about us. Psalm 139:17 says “How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!” And He has placed infinitely many reminders of Himself around us so that we don’t lose sight of Him. Our text begins with this thought, “And so, dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen, make every effort to be found living peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in his sight.” The things we are waiting for are described in Revelation 21 “God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.” A mystical and eternal union of God and man.
A here-and-now example of this is Brach and Hannah – who are getting married in February – they are looking forward to their day. They are buying the things they need and fixing up their apartment and spending time together. They are not making a list of do’s and don’ts NOR are they seeing how much they can get away with before they tie the knot. This looking forward, this waiting, creates in them a deep desire to be pure and blameless.
While I think I could end here and have covered the whole text, I missed a deeply significant part of it. And I would have missed it entirely if I had not elicited some help from my students for this sermon. I handed a sheet of paper with the scripture to a few of my students and asked them to write down their thoughts and return it to me. And all of them zeroed in on a part of the text that I skipped right over: “remember, the Lord’s patience gives people time to be saved.” A thought that we see earlier in this same chapter “The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.” One of my students put it this way, “if you haven’t led a perfect life – it is not too late and don’t tell yourself it’s too late to turn to God and repent” and another underlined this portion of the scripture and wrote “comforting”. Another student said, “He gives mercy and forgiveness to those who still looking for God and those who aren’t on their best.” But my very favorite (I know, I’m not supposed to have favorites) and I will end with this quote, was what Ellen wrote (she told me I could use her name) “We are so blessed to be with such a forgiving God.”
