The Contemporary Christ

The Contemporary Christ

"Teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age"  Matthew 28:20

A Salvation Army officer on one occasion asked a cultured, native Christian of the Orient, “What, in a word, is the real difference between Buddhism and Christianity?” His answer in effect was, “Christianity has light and power --- for at its center is a living Christ.” Christianity is the only religion that can boast a founder who is contemporary with His followers. If you journey to the grave of the founder of Buddhism and cry aloud,”Buddha!” the answer returns, “here.” And if you journey to the tomb of Confucius and cry aloud his name, the answer returns “here.” And if you should continue westward to the crypt of Mohammed and call forth unto him the answer would be the same. Then if you continue your journey to the garden of Joseph of Arimathea and cry aloud, your words would echo and re-echo in the empty. In a while a heavenly visitor would answer, “He is not here, He is risen.” If your amazement and perplexity should linger in the garden the Master Himself would appear and say, “Fear not, I am He that liveth, and was dead, and, behold, I am alive for evermore … Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Christians worship not at the tomb of a dead prophet but bow in humble reverence and obedience at the feet of a living Savior. Our Christ is with us Today.

Vital as it is to our religion that we believe in the Christ of Prophecy” and in the “Jesus of history,” it is much more important that we place a trust in the “Jesus Christ of Today.” Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd,” “I am the water,” “I am the living bread,” “I am the resurrection and the life,” “Go ye, into all the world … for Lo, I am with you.” Jesus Christ is not so much the Christ of yesterday or the Christ of tomorrow as He is the Christ of Today.

And yet it is amazing how much of our religion is a delving into the musty records of the past. On the twenty-fifth of December we commemorate His coming. Leaving our packages at home tied with red ribbons, we make our way to the Church and with a certain wistfulness listen to the song that fell across the Bethlehem hills. And then we go out into the Christmas season with a memory! It isn’t long until Easter comes, with its flowers and brilliant anthems. We Sing “Christ the Lord is risen today,” and yet all the time we think of an historical event which happened nineteen hundred years ago. We celebrate the anniversaries of His birth and Resurrection and fail to learn that the Christ of Christmas would be born today in our hearts, and that the Christ of Easter would walk with us today on the highway to Emmaus.

Too much of our religious experience is spoken in the past tense. We remember with reverence the picture of a sainted mother and grandmother seated before an open fire, with an open Bible upon her lap and a look of peace, joy and serenity upon her countenance. We wish that we could have such an experience. We recall the day we gave ourselves to Christ, here and there perhaps some shinning hour when with bated breath we stood in the very presence of God. We long to recover such an experience because the Christ of yesterday who made such an experience possible is the Christ of Today.

The Christ of today, the living Christ is with you, always. A young Scottish minister visited an old parishioner who knew her Bible well. As he left he thought it his duty to leave a text of comfort with her, so he said, “What a lovely promise that is, “Lo, I am with you always” She replied, “”Hoot mon, it’s not a promise, it’s just a fact.” Sitting beside you is the living Christ. As you walk homeward, as you journey the highway of life, He goes with you:

You and Christ together

Down the long, long trail.

Make no difference whether

Road be hill or dale.

Fair or cloudy weather,

He will never fail.

You and Christ together

Down the long, long trail.

As you sit behind the desk at the office, as you labor in the home, as you stand by the grave of a loved one, as you study in the class room, as you gain relaxation, Jesus is with you.

A minister of the gospel was visiting among the poor one winter’s day in a large city in Scotland. He climbed up into a garret at the top of a very high house. He had been told there was a poor old lady there that nobody seemed to know about. He went on climbing until he found his way into the garret room. As he entered the room he looked around; there was the bed, and a chair, and a table with a dimly burning candle on it, a little fire on the hearth and an old woman sitting by it with a large Testament on her lap. The minister asked, “Don’t you fell lonely here?” “No, no,” was the reply. “What do you do here long winter nights?” “Oh,” she said, “I just sit here with my light and with my New Testament on my knee, talking with Jesus.” This lady had found life’s dearest treasure – the living presence of the living Christ. So you walk with Him and talk with Him? Are you aware that always He is nearer to you than the air that you breath and closer than hands or feet?

There was once a band of Christian Jews living in a large city of the Roman Empire. There condition was desperate; they were hounded by Jew and Gentile alike. It would have taken very little more persecution to cause them to renounce their new found faith and fall back into the ancient ruts of Judaism. It is hard for us to understand the difficulty of their position. They had broken with a thousand dear traditions, and it made them aliens, among an alien people in a foreign land. They had given up the Jewish Sabbath, the Feast of Passover and Tabernacles, the Day of Atonement; they no longer went to the Temple and the synagogue. They were living and worshipping in caves, in the depths of the forest, out on the open hillside or wherever they could escape their persecutors: and all for the sake of a crucified Galilean. Then one night as they gathered for their meeting a letter from the Lord’s Apostle was opened and read: “God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers hath in these last days spoken unto His own Son ….” Up and down fell the pleading of that Epistle to the Hebrews with its oft repeated phrase – “The living God.” As those persecuted Christian Jews left the meeting place, they went with new assurance, they went forth with a knowledge that changed their life, and they went forth knowing that with them went the living God in the person of His living Son.

A knowledge that Jesus walks with you will change your life. The disciples on the road to Emmaus would not have been sorrowful and downhearted if they had been aware that the One who walked and talked with them was the Living Christ. When you are conscious that Christ is ever with you, you will not go where sin’s allurement is; you will not speak those things you would not have the Christ to hear; you will not refuse to do those things that you know that He would have you do. The Church needs many who will practice the presence of Christ in their lives.

If your faith is in a living, ever present Christ then your faith will be living, growing, developing. Christianity is not static, it is dynamic. It never stands still, it moves on to new heights. It is life; it is growth; it is development. Yet many Christians are at the exact same place in their Christian experience as they were years ago. A group of ministers in a conference together determined to have a testimony meeting. One minister after another arose and told what Christ had done for him years ago. Finally one brother could stand it no longer and leaping to his feet said, “Men and brethren, isn’t Christ doing anything for you today?” If this be true of the clergy it is equally true for the laity. Too many of us are boasting in what Christ has done rather than in what He is doing today. If he is walking with you now, and He is, then He is doing something for you now. Become aware of it; be quick to see His hand in your life that your faith might grow thereby. Live in the here and now with a living Christ.

The Christ walks with you today as your constant companion is the same Christ who overcame the gloom of the cross and the defeat of Calvary. He lives with you to dispel the gloom, darkness and despair of your daily crosses. He walks with you that He might impart unto you the victory that characterized His entire life. The disciples went out from the Upper Room to turn a world upside down because they knew that the Jesus who was with them in the days of His flesh was with them now. You, too, can have power to overcome if you will walk in life’s’ pathway conscious that Jesus is with you.

But there are many sincere Christians who fail to get the comfort and strength from their Christian experience that we believe God means for us to have. They have never been able to secure an abiding consciousness that their Lord is walking with them in all of the paths of life and that His hand is constantly guiding and upholding them. Is not this because they are too concerned with their own plans? Jesus said unto His disciples, “Go ye into all the world, make disciples of all men, teaching them to observe whatsoever I have commanded you and Lo, I am with you always.” Go ye do my will and lo I am with you. If you would truly know that Christ lives and walks with you, then live for Him.

Dr. Robert W Kirkpatrick

Saint Albans Presbyterian Church April 22, 1945