Romans 6:3-11; Isaiah 65:17-25; John 20:1-18
It was sure dark in here. It was as dark as in an underground cavern when the guide turns off the lights. We couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces. It’s claustrophobic, like everything was closing in us. Like in a horror movie where the intended victims are caught in pitch darkness and there isn’t a sound to be heard. Yet there is this creepy feeling that there is something unseeable there that is going to get us. We don’t know what or where. Yes, it was dark in here. Dark as a tomb. That’s it. We were buried.
That’s the image that Paul uses. We were buried together with Christ. Before Christ came along, we were dying in sin. Living was like a zombie movie: Day of the Living Dead. Sin was slowly choking us, smothering us, squeezing the last remaining bit of life out of us. We had one foot in the grave and it was only a matter of time until the other one went in.
Then, just as we were about to take the last gasping breath, Christ came along sucked sin out of us. Instead of being totally swallowed up by sin, Christ swallows up our sin – everyone’s sin – and takes it with him to the grave. He allows sin to kill him so that we may have life. It’s like some of the stories of Jesus casting out demonic spirits from people. The demons are cast out and the victim is at first lifeless. Then Jesus presents them alive to their family and friends. In that brief moment, they died to the force that overpowered them. Then they receive the new life of Christ’s redemption. When Christ took away our sins, we died to those sins. Then the new life took over.
We were buried through baptism into Christ’s death. It was dark there, dark as a tomb. Then all of a sudden, we burst out into the light. It blinds the eyes. It boggles the mind.
If you watch a lot of police shows on television or read crime thrillers, you know that sometimes it is necessary to dig up the body of a victim to check for additional forensic details. The technical term is exhumation. The body is exhumed. We were buried, entombed in our sin until Christ came along. Then we were ex-tombed, taken out of death. In the risen Christ we have been ex-tomb-mated, dug out of death, born into the new life, born again, raised.
That’s the simple message of Easter: once we were dead and now we are alive. “Don’t you know,” says Paul, “that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we were buried together with him through baptism into his death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too can walk in newness of life.”
Paul had not been to Rome, although he planned to go on his next trip. We don’t know that any apostle had made it to Rome by that time. Yet Paul states what must have been common knowledge: Christians have died to sin. And if they have died to sin, then they have been raised to new life with Christ. They have been ex-tomb-mated. Easter isn’t a glowing feeling or an emotional experience. It is the sure and certain knowledge that Christ died and that Christ was raised.
This knowledge is what we are baptized into. Greek has two words which we can translate as “baptism.” One is simple. It means to “dip” or “immerse.” The other word begins at immerse and gets stronger. It is the word which is used in the original texts of the New Testament. It always points to a change having taken place by some means. James Montgomery Boice cites an example provided by the Greek poet and physician Nicanor.(1) The Greek offers a recipe for pickles which uses both Greek words. First the vegetable should be dipped in boiling water. Then it is “baptized” in vinegar. It is this second action that changes the cucumber into a pickle.
When we are baptized, we are not merely rinsed. We are changed. Being baptized into the resurrection of Christ changes everything. We are born again, we are new creations. We are ex-tomb-mated from the coffin of sin and made alive in the glory of the Son of God. “This is what we know” says Paul, “the person that we used to be was crucified with him in order to get rid of the corpse that had been controlled by sin.”
When Christ was raised from death, when he was released from the tomb, this is what he did, he got rid of the corpse infected with sin – our sin – and brought us along with him in the new life. And because we have been united with him, we can’t go back. We can’t go back to the sinful life that was buried on that Friday afternoon. We are new creatures. We are changed. We have been ex-tomb-mated. We are freed from the tyranny of sin. To use the words of Augustine, union with Christ through baptism into his death and resurrection has changed us from the state of “not being able not to sin” into the state of “being able not to sin.” Easter is this new state of being for us.
Paul continues, “If we died with Christ, we have faith that we will also live with him. We know that Christ has been raised from the dead and he will never die again. Death no longer has power over him. He died to sin once and for all with his death, but he lives for God with his life.” Paul does not intend for us to think that living with Jesus refers to some future time or state. Yes, there is a future resurrection at the end of the age. In the here and now Jesus has moved from the sphere of existence where death reigned through crucifixion and burial to the sphere of the resurrection, from where he was to where he is now.
When Paul says that “we will also live with him,” he means that we also pass from the reign of death to the reign of grace, to a present resurrection. What Christ has done for us is not something for the end of time or the end of our bodily living. Resurrection – new life – ex-tomb-mation – is for the here and now.
Paul concludes this section of his letter to the Roman faithful with his first exhortation of the letter: “You also should consider yourselves dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus.” Paul has spent the first ten verses of the chapter telling us, reminding us, reassuring us of what God has already done. It has all been God’s work in Christ, through Christ, with Christ. We are joined to Christ not through anything we have done but through what God has done. The resurrection has sealed it once and for all for us.
Paul’s use of the word “consider” brings this home to us in a sharp way. Paul’s use of the word is more than just a pondering or musing about the possibility. The Greek word behind it is an accounting term which is very specific. It doesn’t call for an opinion. It denotes a fact: You ARE dead to sin and you ARE alive for God in Christ Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus and our participation is not wishful thinking. It is not pie-in-the-sky hopefulness. It is a God-given truth.
This reality causes us as post-Easter people to redefine the way we view church. It is not simply a building that we go to on a weekly basis. Church is who each of us is on a daily basis. I am the church, you are the church, we are the church, and we are called to reflect the image of Jesus in our everyday lives. When we take this reality to heart, every aspect of our lives then becomes a mission field, a space to worship in, and a realm to shine our light in. The world is our canvas, and the Holy Spirit wants to use you and me to create a masterpiece known as the Great Commission.(2)
That began when the risen Lord Jesus told Mary to go and tell the disciples what he was up to. And she does: “I have seen the Lord” (John 20:18). We are called to do the same, because we are dead to sin and alive for God.
I had an artistic idea yesterday with neither time nor skill to carry out. Wouldn’t it be something if, while we were in here this morning having our sunrise resurrection celebration, the outside Lobby wall of the Sanctuary was covered with brown craft paper all scrunched up to look like a rocky hillside and the open doors a carved cave entrance. More scrunched up craft paper could be formed into a stone. All this so that when we left this space at the end of the service we understood that we were coming out of the tomb with Christ, that we were ex-tomb-mated, that we were people raised from the death of sin into life for God. Right now. Today. This minute.
Friends, the resurrection good news is this: In Christ, you are dead to sin and alive for God.
Christ is risen! Alleluia! Alleluia! ALLELUIA!
(1) James Montgomery Boice, Romans (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1992), vol. 2, 659.
(2) Jarrid Wilson, http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/275550-christianity-is-so-much-more-than-going-to-church.html.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Sunday, March 20, 2016
The Name
Luke 19:28-40; Isaiah 50:4-91; Philippians 2:5-11
We begin this week called “Holy” with the story of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. For three years, our Lord traveled the length and breadth of the country and ventured beyond its ethnic boundaries. He taught about the Kingdom of God and called the people into a relationship with God, whom he boldly called Father. In his ministry he cast out demons, offered forgiveness, healed sickness. He mentored a group of men and women to follow his leadership style and to tell the gospel after he was gone. He even raised people from the dead.
The crowds thought this was all prologue to what he intended, what they thought he intended. They rejoiced when they saw Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey because they thought he had finally accepted the inevitable: He would be their King.
The tide turned very quickly. He refused to live into the people’s image of the conquering hero. He didn’t call out militiamen as Paul Revere did, nor did he confront the Roman leaders who oppressed the people. Instead Jesus confronted the priests and religious professionals and took umbrage with the day to day attitudes and practices of faith. He attacked the very world the people thought was right.
Backed into a theological corner not all that different from our political landscape today, many, but not all, of the religious elite willingly supported Barabbas, a Jewish insurrectionist who was in Roman custody. Instead of choosing Jesus as their Messiah, they chose the man they thought would lead them to a victory against their oppressor. They thought he would make Judea great again. The leaders didn’t understand that they were oppressed by something greater.
The folks gathered long the road into Jerusalem didn’t have Luke’s hindsight. As we read Luke’s account, the trip into Jerusalem is preceded by a significant event and a powerful parable-story.
The event is Jesus spotting Zacchaeus in the crowded streets of Jericho and inviting himself to lunch at the tax collector’s house. Zacchaeus has two strikes against him. He is wealthy and his wealth was the result of his collaboration with Rome. He was the chief tax collector which meant that he not only gouged everyone, he took a cut from the collections of all the subordinate tax collectors. Zacchaeus has a Greek name, so we can’t be sure he wasn’t a mercenary brought in to oversee the collection of taxes or whether he was a local who had seen an opportunity to make money and seized it. The Greek name brands him as an outcast, as someone who identity has been tainted. He has lost his identity as one of God’s people.
Zacchaeus is one of the oppressors and he needs to be liberated as much as the Jews who were subject to his onerous collection practices and the rest of the Roman occupation enforcement. Zacchaeus is convicted of his sin when Jesus seeks out his presence. In response to his repentance, Jesus declares, “Today salvation has come to his household because he too is a son of Abraham” (Luke 19:9).
Then comes the parable. A man born into royalty has to go away to receive of his kingdom and while he is gone he entrusts portions of his assets to ten servants until his return. When he returned he called for an accounting. Several servants fared well and made the new-crowned king money. But one, knowing the man to be stern and unscrupulous, was afraid to do anything with the money other than keep it safe. The king stripped the man of the money and gave it to the man who had gotten the biggest return.
Because some of the citizens didn’t want the man to become their king, he ordered that his enemies be slaughtered. That would have been a typical response of a king seeking to secure his rule. That was how Rome dealt with people in newly occupied areas. Caesar worked through his local procurators – Pilate – and through puppet kings – Herod Antipas – to rule with impunity.
Many of the people hoped that Rome would be overthrown and driven out of Jerusalem and Judea. They put their hope in revolutionaries and insurrectionists. The Roman forces quickly quelled any rebellion that came along. The hope kept drifting to a future someday.
Luke seemed to say that God’s kingdom has come with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. The battle is set. Those who don’t want Jesus as king are line up against those who whose trust in God has been realigned through Jesus’ ministry and teaching. “Today salvation has come to this household.” And the household is the nation. Jesus does indeed enter Jerusalem as a king, following the royal protocol established ages before.
When Israel first got a king, Samuel tried to instill in the people the understanding that the king was God’s regent, God’s stand-in, God’s ambassador plenipotentiary. The king represented the people to God and represented God to the people. The liturgy of holy processions had the king processing to the Temple, to the accolades of the people, “Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” Unfortunately Saul didn’t do very well as the first king. David and Solomon did better, but most of the kings who came after them went from bad to worst. Yet "king” was the accepted understanding of rule. Kings led, and for the most part the advantages outweighed the disadvantages.
Luke understood that Jesus went along the palm- and cloak-strewn road as the king who came in the name of the Lord.
In the name of the Lord. We probably don’t fully appreciate that phrase. We are used to having people act as “powers of attorney” on our behalf when we are not able to act. We are used to having attorneys or agents negotiating contracts for us. They act for us with our permission and authority. Jesus was more than that. He was the Lord. He acted on his own authority.
We also don’t appreciate the value of a name. With Shakespeare we ask, “What’s in a name?” Contrary to the Bard of Avon, the answer is everything. That’s the Semitic understanding. A name made or broke a person’s life. A child could be forever branded good or evil, adept or klutzy, revered or scorned by the name given her or him.
As powerful as all that was, it all paled in comparison to the name of the Lord. The name of the Lord was so sacred, it wasn’t spoken. Rabbis reading scripture automatically replaced the written name with another word. Just as a person couldn’t see the face of God and live (Moses and Elijah learned that), so the name of God was thought to be so holy that it couldn’t be said aloud. One of the ten commandments was to not take the Lord’s name “as if it were of no significance” (Exodus 20:7). That’s what “in vain” means. The understanding developed that uttering God’s name could violate that commandment. That has nothing to do with cursing and swearing. I wonder how the scribes could even write it. The name was holy because it was thought to represent or contain the very power of God.
So if Jesus enters Jerusalem “in the name of the Lord,” then the very power and presence of God is riding lowly on that donkey. We can say whatever we want about the fickleness of the crowd whose shouts change from “Hosanna” to “Crucify” by the end of the week. The parade is not about the bystanders. Jesus is in charge. Jesus knows exactly what he is doing. As we will see later in the week, he wishes that there was another way, he wishes that he didn’t have to proceed, yet he knows that this is the only way to accomplish the gift of life which God has determined to grace the world.
The name is everything. Jesus is the all in all. He doesn’t hide behind his divinity, but sets it aside in order to do what needs to be done. In spite of his pending death, Jesus rode in triumph, wearing the muted non-pomp that befits no one other than the Son of God. In that way, after death is conquered and life is affirmed, there will be nothing else believers can do other than bow their knees, their hearts, their spirits at the name of Jesus and confess him Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
As we approach the crucial events of our faith – Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection – what is God’s name for you? Is it just another name or is it the name above all names? Do you accord it the significance that cannot be usurped by any other name? Is it the blessing which goes with you? Is it life itself? The palmed and hosannaed journey down the Mount of Olives can help you decide.
Come, Lord Jesus. Blessed are you who comes in the name of the Lord!
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
We begin this week called “Holy” with the story of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. For three years, our Lord traveled the length and breadth of the country and ventured beyond its ethnic boundaries. He taught about the Kingdom of God and called the people into a relationship with God, whom he boldly called Father. In his ministry he cast out demons, offered forgiveness, healed sickness. He mentored a group of men and women to follow his leadership style and to tell the gospel after he was gone. He even raised people from the dead.
The crowds thought this was all prologue to what he intended, what they thought he intended. They rejoiced when they saw Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey because they thought he had finally accepted the inevitable: He would be their King.
The tide turned very quickly. He refused to live into the people’s image of the conquering hero. He didn’t call out militiamen as Paul Revere did, nor did he confront the Roman leaders who oppressed the people. Instead Jesus confronted the priests and religious professionals and took umbrage with the day to day attitudes and practices of faith. He attacked the very world the people thought was right.
Backed into a theological corner not all that different from our political landscape today, many, but not all, of the religious elite willingly supported Barabbas, a Jewish insurrectionist who was in Roman custody. Instead of choosing Jesus as their Messiah, they chose the man they thought would lead them to a victory against their oppressor. They thought he would make Judea great again. The leaders didn’t understand that they were oppressed by something greater.
The folks gathered long the road into Jerusalem didn’t have Luke’s hindsight. As we read Luke’s account, the trip into Jerusalem is preceded by a significant event and a powerful parable-story.
The event is Jesus spotting Zacchaeus in the crowded streets of Jericho and inviting himself to lunch at the tax collector’s house. Zacchaeus has two strikes against him. He is wealthy and his wealth was the result of his collaboration with Rome. He was the chief tax collector which meant that he not only gouged everyone, he took a cut from the collections of all the subordinate tax collectors. Zacchaeus has a Greek name, so we can’t be sure he wasn’t a mercenary brought in to oversee the collection of taxes or whether he was a local who had seen an opportunity to make money and seized it. The Greek name brands him as an outcast, as someone who identity has been tainted. He has lost his identity as one of God’s people.
Zacchaeus is one of the oppressors and he needs to be liberated as much as the Jews who were subject to his onerous collection practices and the rest of the Roman occupation enforcement. Zacchaeus is convicted of his sin when Jesus seeks out his presence. In response to his repentance, Jesus declares, “Today salvation has come to his household because he too is a son of Abraham” (Luke 19:9).
Then comes the parable. A man born into royalty has to go away to receive of his kingdom and while he is gone he entrusts portions of his assets to ten servants until his return. When he returned he called for an accounting. Several servants fared well and made the new-crowned king money. But one, knowing the man to be stern and unscrupulous, was afraid to do anything with the money other than keep it safe. The king stripped the man of the money and gave it to the man who had gotten the biggest return.
Because some of the citizens didn’t want the man to become their king, he ordered that his enemies be slaughtered. That would have been a typical response of a king seeking to secure his rule. That was how Rome dealt with people in newly occupied areas. Caesar worked through his local procurators – Pilate – and through puppet kings – Herod Antipas – to rule with impunity.
Many of the people hoped that Rome would be overthrown and driven out of Jerusalem and Judea. They put their hope in revolutionaries and insurrectionists. The Roman forces quickly quelled any rebellion that came along. The hope kept drifting to a future someday.
Luke seemed to say that God’s kingdom has come with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. The battle is set. Those who don’t want Jesus as king are line up against those who whose trust in God has been realigned through Jesus’ ministry and teaching. “Today salvation has come to this household.” And the household is the nation. Jesus does indeed enter Jerusalem as a king, following the royal protocol established ages before.
When Israel first got a king, Samuel tried to instill in the people the understanding that the king was God’s regent, God’s stand-in, God’s ambassador plenipotentiary. The king represented the people to God and represented God to the people. The liturgy of holy processions had the king processing to the Temple, to the accolades of the people, “Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” Unfortunately Saul didn’t do very well as the first king. David and Solomon did better, but most of the kings who came after them went from bad to worst. Yet "king” was the accepted understanding of rule. Kings led, and for the most part the advantages outweighed the disadvantages.
Luke understood that Jesus went along the palm- and cloak-strewn road as the king who came in the name of the Lord.
In the name of the Lord. We probably don’t fully appreciate that phrase. We are used to having people act as “powers of attorney” on our behalf when we are not able to act. We are used to having attorneys or agents negotiating contracts for us. They act for us with our permission and authority. Jesus was more than that. He was the Lord. He acted on his own authority.
We also don’t appreciate the value of a name. With Shakespeare we ask, “What’s in a name?” Contrary to the Bard of Avon, the answer is everything. That’s the Semitic understanding. A name made or broke a person’s life. A child could be forever branded good or evil, adept or klutzy, revered or scorned by the name given her or him.
As powerful as all that was, it all paled in comparison to the name of the Lord. The name of the Lord was so sacred, it wasn’t spoken. Rabbis reading scripture automatically replaced the written name with another word. Just as a person couldn’t see the face of God and live (Moses and Elijah learned that), so the name of God was thought to be so holy that it couldn’t be said aloud. One of the ten commandments was to not take the Lord’s name “as if it were of no significance” (Exodus 20:7). That’s what “in vain” means. The understanding developed that uttering God’s name could violate that commandment. That has nothing to do with cursing and swearing. I wonder how the scribes could even write it. The name was holy because it was thought to represent or contain the very power of God.
So if Jesus enters Jerusalem “in the name of the Lord,” then the very power and presence of God is riding lowly on that donkey. We can say whatever we want about the fickleness of the crowd whose shouts change from “Hosanna” to “Crucify” by the end of the week. The parade is not about the bystanders. Jesus is in charge. Jesus knows exactly what he is doing. As we will see later in the week, he wishes that there was another way, he wishes that he didn’t have to proceed, yet he knows that this is the only way to accomplish the gift of life which God has determined to grace the world.
The name is everything. Jesus is the all in all. He doesn’t hide behind his divinity, but sets it aside in order to do what needs to be done. In spite of his pending death, Jesus rode in triumph, wearing the muted non-pomp that befits no one other than the Son of God. In that way, after death is conquered and life is affirmed, there will be nothing else believers can do other than bow their knees, their hearts, their spirits at the name of Jesus and confess him Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
As we approach the crucial events of our faith – Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection – what is God’s name for you? Is it just another name or is it the name above all names? Do you accord it the significance that cannot be usurped by any other name? Is it the blessing which goes with you? Is it life itself? The palmed and hosannaed journey down the Mount of Olives can help you decide.
Come, Lord Jesus. Blessed are you who comes in the name of the Lord!
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
The New Beginning
Philippians 3:4-14; Isaiah 43:16-21; John 12:1-8
Do you want God? I am sure you do. How much do you want God? That’s hard to quantify. Do you want God more than everything else? There’s the rub. If God isn’t at the top of your want list, you aren’t alone. It’s hard. It’s like riding a roller coaster. We go great guns for a while and then we get distracted by something new and glitzy or enthralling.
This is one way of looking at what the first commandment requires: “You must have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:30). All our likings and desires, our hopes and dreams, our fears and our trust should always be directed to God alone. Lutheran pastor R. J. Grunewald notes that “sin, at it's heart, is wanting something else more than God. Anybody who suggests that they truly have no other gods is a liar. The Scriptures call us to love God above all else, to be fully satisfied in Christ alone.”(1)
Paul told us in last week’s reading from 2 Corinthians (5:17), “if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived.” That same thought that is behind what Paul tells the Philippians in today’s reading.
Paul hadn’t really desired God more than anything else. He had put all his hope and energy into external activities and milestones: circumcision, lineage, theological association, doctrinal purity, and the Law. But not God.
In our own ways each of us asks, What is the least I can do and still be a Christian? It’s the same thing we do in this year of political puffery. What is the least I can agree with candidate A, B, or C, and still vote for him or her. It’s a difficult task, because most of us are not one issue voters, but which responses to which issues are deal breakers for a particular candidate. With God we go through the same kind of mental gymnastics. I’ll give you my full attention between 10:45 and noon on Sunday (I won’t even fall asleep in church), but don’t press me on things during th rest of the week. Allow me my bigotries, my prejudices, my unwillingness to listen to other views.
Grunewald notes,
Anyone who has tried to diet, quit smoking, learn to play an instrument, take up a sport, make any significant behavioral change comes to realize that they can’t do it by themselves. The self-help books notwithstanding, we need tutors, we need coaches, we need fellow travelers, we need guides who have gone this way before and who know the pitfalls and rapids. It takes a community.
We all need to lean on each other. That sounds a lot like a row of dominoes set on their ends in such a way that you push the first one and they all go down. In reality the community of Christ – the church – is like the interlocking girders of trestle bridge or the rafters that support the roof above us right now. Each member bears and distributes the weight so that no one member has to do it all.
As Paul struggles to want God more than everything else, he knows his reality.
It is a continual battle. Every day we are issued a helping of manna equivalent to 86,400 seconds. We get a bye for somewhere between 25,000-30,000 of those seconds when we are asleep. But each and every one of the rest of them are up for grabs. Will we want God or will we want a second of life filled with God-denying, God-restricting, God-ignoring less-than-full life?
Paul recognizes the struggle. He wishes it weren’t so. But he also knows that if wanting God completely without any competing wants weren’t difficult then he, and each of us, would never grow into the depth of appreciation for all that God provides through the saving work of Christ Jesus empowered into us through the Spirit.
The other two readings for the day reaffirm this. Isaiah delivers the message of God to the beleaguered, exiled, refugee Israelites caught in the no hope of the future and the fond memories of a time which seems a lot better in retrospect than it did in the immediacy of the moment.
God does not cease to want us. I “give water to my people, my chosen ones, this people whom I formed for myself, who will recount my praise.” (Isaiah 43:20-21)
In the reading from John we see two differing desires. Judas, behind th facade of thinking of the poor, is desiring his own way of life, whether it is for the possibility of dipping into the common treasury as John suggests, or maybe grabbing the glory of being the one to distribute the alms to the needy. (Jesus once noted that even those who are evil know how to make friends for themselves.)
Judas is contrasted with Mary who anoints Jesus with the expensive perfume. Her giving of herself and the perfume – which Jesus declared was preparation for his burial – was a moment of total desire for God whom Mary recognized in Jesus, sitting in her living room, eating at her table. The burial preparation, signaled a coming new beginning. And even though Lazarus had been raised from the dead, no one yet understood the import of that act and of the greater one which Mary was helping to inaugurate with her perfume.
All the new beginnings that God creates are not just for God’s amusement. God earnestly desires each one of us. God wants our God-focused desire to stretch as far as it can so that one day, when the new heaven and new earth become the final reality of creation, our desire for God will climax in its fullness completely removing all other desires.
However much you want God today, keep wanting God more tomorrow, and every day after, until the new beginning promised by God is the reality of your life.
Yes, indeed.
(1) http://www.rjgrune.com/blog/want-god, March 10, 2016.
(2) Ibid.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Do you want God? I am sure you do. How much do you want God? That’s hard to quantify. Do you want God more than everything else? There’s the rub. If God isn’t at the top of your want list, you aren’t alone. It’s hard. It’s like riding a roller coaster. We go great guns for a while and then we get distracted by something new and glitzy or enthralling.
This is one way of looking at what the first commandment requires: “You must have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:30). All our likings and desires, our hopes and dreams, our fears and our trust should always be directed to God alone. Lutheran pastor R. J. Grunewald notes that “sin, at it's heart, is wanting something else more than God. Anybody who suggests that they truly have no other gods is a liar. The Scriptures call us to love God above all else, to be fully satisfied in Christ alone.”(1)
Paul told us in last week’s reading from 2 Corinthians (5:17), “if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived.” That same thought that is behind what Paul tells the Philippians in today’s reading.
Paul hadn’t really desired God more than anything else. He had put all his hope and energy into external activities and milestones: circumcision, lineage, theological association, doctrinal purity, and the Law. But not God.
In our own ways each of us asks, What is the least I can do and still be a Christian? It’s the same thing we do in this year of political puffery. What is the least I can agree with candidate A, B, or C, and still vote for him or her. It’s a difficult task, because most of us are not one issue voters, but which responses to which issues are deal breakers for a particular candidate. With God we go through the same kind of mental gymnastics. I’ll give you my full attention between 10:45 and noon on Sunday (I won’t even fall asleep in church), but don’t press me on things during th rest of the week. Allow me my bigotries, my prejudices, my unwillingness to listen to other views.
Grunewald notes,
[H]ere’s the tension of the Christian life. Being a Christian isn’t about sinning less and wanting God more. Being a Christian is about realizing that sin is an even bigger problem than you thought and that the cross is even more gracious than you dreamed.The new beginning is always difficult. That’s the first message which the Georgie Harris House guests heard yesterday from several speakers who testified about their trials with addiction. But their message was two-fold. The second part was that making the new beginning was well worth the effort.
When I don’t sin, it is the supernatural work of Christ in me, but when I do sin it’s not evidence that I'm not a Christian – it's evidence that my sinful flesh still battles against the new creation.(2)
Anyone who has tried to diet, quit smoking, learn to play an instrument, take up a sport, make any significant behavioral change comes to realize that they can’t do it by themselves. The self-help books notwithstanding, we need tutors, we need coaches, we need fellow travelers, we need guides who have gone this way before and who know the pitfalls and rapids. It takes a community.
We all need to lean on each other. That sounds a lot like a row of dominoes set on their ends in such a way that you push the first one and they all go down. In reality the community of Christ – the church – is like the interlocking girders of trestle bridge or the rafters that support the roof above us right now. Each member bears and distributes the weight so that no one member has to do it all.
As Paul struggles to want God more than everything else, he knows his reality.
It’s not that I have already reached this goal or have already been perfected, but I pursue it, so that I may grab hold of it because Christ grabbed hold of me for just this purpose. Brothers and sisters, I myself don’t think I’ve reached it, but I do this one thing: I forget about the things behind me and reach out for the things ahead of me. The goal I pursue is the prize of God’s upward call in Christ Jesus.Like Paul, we are constantly failing to choose God over ourselves in the business of living. But even in our failures, God still wants us. God still reaches out to grasp us, to grab us close to God’s self and embrace us in holy and eternal love.
It is a continual battle. Every day we are issued a helping of manna equivalent to 86,400 seconds. We get a bye for somewhere between 25,000-30,000 of those seconds when we are asleep. But each and every one of the rest of them are up for grabs. Will we want God or will we want a second of life filled with God-denying, God-restricting, God-ignoring less-than-full life?
Paul recognizes the struggle. He wishes it weren’t so. But he also knows that if wanting God completely without any competing wants weren’t difficult then he, and each of us, would never grow into the depth of appreciation for all that God provides through the saving work of Christ Jesus empowered into us through the Spirit.
The other two readings for the day reaffirm this. Isaiah delivers the message of God to the beleaguered, exiled, refugee Israelites caught in the no hope of the future and the fond memories of a time which seems a lot better in retrospect than it did in the immediacy of the moment.
Don’t remember the prior things; don’t ponder ancient history.Look! I’m doing a new thing; now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it?I’m making a way in the desert, paths in the wilderness. (Isaiah 43:18-19)When we make an idol of the past, remembering the better parts and forgetting the rough parts, we diminish our ability to want God above everything else. We diminish the possibility of faith in a God who has never given up creating and who renews and upgrades life all the time. We close our eyes to the new things that God is constantly doing – the creation of relationships, the healing of broken ones, the growth of new dimensions of relating and the inclusion of new participants in existing relationships.
God does not cease to want us. I “give water to my people, my chosen ones, this people whom I formed for myself, who will recount my praise.” (Isaiah 43:20-21)
In the reading from John we see two differing desires. Judas, behind th facade of thinking of the poor, is desiring his own way of life, whether it is for the possibility of dipping into the common treasury as John suggests, or maybe grabbing the glory of being the one to distribute the alms to the needy. (Jesus once noted that even those who are evil know how to make friends for themselves.)
Judas is contrasted with Mary who anoints Jesus with the expensive perfume. Her giving of herself and the perfume – which Jesus declared was preparation for his burial – was a moment of total desire for God whom Mary recognized in Jesus, sitting in her living room, eating at her table. The burial preparation, signaled a coming new beginning. And even though Lazarus had been raised from the dead, no one yet understood the import of that act and of the greater one which Mary was helping to inaugurate with her perfume.
All the new beginnings that God creates are not just for God’s amusement. God earnestly desires each one of us. God wants our God-focused desire to stretch as far as it can so that one day, when the new heaven and new earth become the final reality of creation, our desire for God will climax in its fullness completely removing all other desires.
However much you want God today, keep wanting God more tomorrow, and every day after, until the new beginning promised by God is the reality of your life.
Yes, indeed.
(1) http://www.rjgrune.com/blog/want-god, March 10, 2016.
(2) Ibid.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, March 6, 2016
The New Reality
2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Joshua 5:9-12; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
We are approaching the midway point of Lent. Our Lenten disciplines have varied and we have wavered in how well we have followed them. Giving things up or taking things on for Lent has about the same track record as New Year’s resolutions. It is hard to do this on our own. Twelve-step recovery programs have known this for years. It takes a village to accomplish many things. It takes a village plus Christ to accomplish the new reality that is faith.
Over the first three weeks of Lent we have focused on community. All the faces at the cross remind us that there was a veritable crowd of unique individuals who faced the cross. Paul reminds us that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. Jesus’ stories and activities throughout his ministry were aimed at enlarging the kingdom. Most of Paul’s letters are addressed to communities of faith.
Our Lenten discipline has far less to do with giving up chocolate or donuts and lot more with living into a broad and generous understanding of what being the people of Christ is all about. We can participate in lots of spiritual exercises. Saying extra prayers, doing more Bible reading, attending mid-week services, memorizing scripture, or singing hymns around the house may be good in themselves, but none of them assures us of spiritual perfection or being right with God.
Paul understood this first hand. As a Pharisee he had tried zealously to achieve a fully satisfying relationship with God. But he had failed. In the midst of this failure he was overwhelmed by the realization that he now had friendship with God through Christ Jesus. He likened it to being a new creature or, as the gospel writer John termed it, “born anew.” By the gracious gift of God in Christ, we, like Paul, now possess the right relationship God desires to have with us. What a new reality that is!
Three key words jump out at us in this brief passage from Paul: reconciliation, world, ambassador. All three reflect the new reality which the gospel of Christ inserts into the lives of believers.
Paul has a passion for the word reconciliation, as well he should, based on his experience with Christ claiming him and commissioning him to deliver the gospel. In one grammatical form or another, he uses reconciliation five times in the space of three verses. For Paul reconciliation means a renewed relationship with God established through Christ’s life, death and resurrection.
The verse before today’s reading, 2 Corinthians 5:15, offers the key to how reconciliation can be experienced day by day. Eugene Peterson (The Message) renders it this way: Christ “included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.” Our new reality is that we have a far better life with Christ than we would have without Christ.
The next key word is world. The Greek word kosmos occurs 46 times in the Paul’s writings. It can mean the inhabited world around Paul, but it could also represent the whole of creation. Given Paul’s theological training, it is likely that he saw the kosmos as the reality where human rebellion and alienation from God existed and festered, and where humanity was under the domination of evil. Christ died to remove this alienation and hostility and to break the power of sin and evil enslaving humanity.
Reconciliation between humanity and God was an absolute necessity. That reconciliation must happen in the world. How? Through believers. But Paul says that it is more than believing. Believing is an internal thing. It is in the mind or the heart. Reconciliation has to happen in the world, and that means that it happens outside of individuals. It happens in the world which is thirsty for a new, living relationship with God. Yes, God can and does work in individuals. But God also works through individuals with individuals for individuals.
That’s where the concept of an ambassador comes in. An ambassador represents and interprets his/her country to the government of another nation. It was an ancient and honorable profession even in Paul’s time. Having an embassy with an ambassador in another nation’s capital demonstrates respect for the other nation and the goodwill which should exist between nations. Withdrawing an ambassador is a sign of strained or deteriorating relations.
Paul believed that because we have been given a new relationship with God through Christ, we are now God’s representatives in the world which God has destined for re-creation. We are not people of high rank, of great esteem, of noble birth. Yet God has made us ambassadors to the world. It’s a perfect match, because the world we inhabit is not a world of A-list celebrities, tenured faculty of world-renowned universities and think tanks, or government officials of the highest level. We are ordinary people who live among ordinary people. Jesus put aside his divinity to rub shoulders with humanity. Jesus asks us to put aside the pretense of our imagined greatness and allow our humanity to mingle with the humanity of those around us, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to express God’s reconciling love.
Whether apocryphal or not, there is a splendid story that illustrates the centrality of this text. It is reported that Swiss theologian Karl Barth was once asked what he would say to Adolf Hitler if he ever had the chance to meet the monster who was destroying Europe. Barth’s interviewer assumed that he would offer a scorching prophetic judgment against Hitler. However, Barth replied that he would do nothing other than quote Romans 5:8: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Only the unparalleled mercy and forgiveness of God, the unstinted gladness and grace of the gospel, could prompt the Führer’s genuine repentance.(1)
Because we have been reconciled to God, we have the privilege of encouraging others to accept God's free gift, to become reconciled as well. This is called the ministry of reconciliation. Since Paul experienced reconciliation through Christ, it became his mission to preach that message: “If we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son while we were still enemies, now that we have been reconciled, how much more certain is it that we will be saved by his life?” (Romans 5:10).
The new reality is that we are reconciled to God. We didn’t do it for ourselves, we couldn’t do it for ourselves. Only Christ could and did. What a joyful reality for us to receive. Yes, we have to receive it, believe it with our whole being that it really is true, no matter what deep stains soil our past. We are reconciled. Thanks be to Christ.
Today, the church owes it to the world to keep on spreading the message of this new reality. We are continually living into new realities. The Israelites experienced the new reality of the promised land when they survived on the fruit of the land instead of God’s manna. Both the younger and the elder son experienced the new reality of grace when the prodigal father welcomed the wandering son back home. What the father did in dividing the family’s resources, then later celebrating the younger son’s return, was an outrageously wasteful, careless, and unprecedented deed. It was unconscionable to forgive and renew the broken relationship in this way. Yet this is how grace functions in God’s realm.(2)
Brother Roger wrote in The Rule of Taizé, “Never resign yourself to the scandal of the separation of Christians, all who so readily confess love for their neighbor, and yet remain divided. Be consumed with burning zeal for the unity of the Body of Christ.”(3)
As we move toward the new reality of a risen Savior, let us live into that new reality by receiving God’s reconciliation for ourselves, by knowing that God’s reconciliation is for the whole world, and by being the empowered bearers of that reconciliation in order to break down the divisions of the world.
Welcome the new reality in your life. Be the new reality for the lives around you.
(1) Cited by Ralph C. Wood, “2 Corinthians 5:16-21: Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) Year C, Volume 2, 110.
(2) Cited by John Shearman, “Opening Comments for Sunday March 6 2016 which is the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Year C,” midrash@joinhands.com, Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 3:48 PM
(3) Brother Roger, The Rule of Taizé (Taizé: Les Presses de Taizé, 1961), 14-16.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
We are approaching the midway point of Lent. Our Lenten disciplines have varied and we have wavered in how well we have followed them. Giving things up or taking things on for Lent has about the same track record as New Year’s resolutions. It is hard to do this on our own. Twelve-step recovery programs have known this for years. It takes a village to accomplish many things. It takes a village plus Christ to accomplish the new reality that is faith.
Over the first three weeks of Lent we have focused on community. All the faces at the cross remind us that there was a veritable crowd of unique individuals who faced the cross. Paul reminds us that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. Jesus’ stories and activities throughout his ministry were aimed at enlarging the kingdom. Most of Paul’s letters are addressed to communities of faith.
Our Lenten discipline has far less to do with giving up chocolate or donuts and lot more with living into a broad and generous understanding of what being the people of Christ is all about. We can participate in lots of spiritual exercises. Saying extra prayers, doing more Bible reading, attending mid-week services, memorizing scripture, or singing hymns around the house may be good in themselves, but none of them assures us of spiritual perfection or being right with God.
Paul understood this first hand. As a Pharisee he had tried zealously to achieve a fully satisfying relationship with God. But he had failed. In the midst of this failure he was overwhelmed by the realization that he now had friendship with God through Christ Jesus. He likened it to being a new creature or, as the gospel writer John termed it, “born anew.” By the gracious gift of God in Christ, we, like Paul, now possess the right relationship God desires to have with us. What a new reality that is!
Three key words jump out at us in this brief passage from Paul: reconciliation, world, ambassador. All three reflect the new reality which the gospel of Christ inserts into the lives of believers.
Paul has a passion for the word reconciliation, as well he should, based on his experience with Christ claiming him and commissioning him to deliver the gospel. In one grammatical form or another, he uses reconciliation five times in the space of three verses. For Paul reconciliation means a renewed relationship with God established through Christ’s life, death and resurrection.
The verse before today’s reading, 2 Corinthians 5:15, offers the key to how reconciliation can be experienced day by day. Eugene Peterson (The Message) renders it this way: Christ “included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.” Our new reality is that we have a far better life with Christ than we would have without Christ.
The next key word is world. The Greek word kosmos occurs 46 times in the Paul’s writings. It can mean the inhabited world around Paul, but it could also represent the whole of creation. Given Paul’s theological training, it is likely that he saw the kosmos as the reality where human rebellion and alienation from God existed and festered, and where humanity was under the domination of evil. Christ died to remove this alienation and hostility and to break the power of sin and evil enslaving humanity.
Reconciliation between humanity and God was an absolute necessity. That reconciliation must happen in the world. How? Through believers. But Paul says that it is more than believing. Believing is an internal thing. It is in the mind or the heart. Reconciliation has to happen in the world, and that means that it happens outside of individuals. It happens in the world which is thirsty for a new, living relationship with God. Yes, God can and does work in individuals. But God also works through individuals with individuals for individuals.
That’s where the concept of an ambassador comes in. An ambassador represents and interprets his/her country to the government of another nation. It was an ancient and honorable profession even in Paul’s time. Having an embassy with an ambassador in another nation’s capital demonstrates respect for the other nation and the goodwill which should exist between nations. Withdrawing an ambassador is a sign of strained or deteriorating relations.
Paul believed that because we have been given a new relationship with God through Christ, we are now God’s representatives in the world which God has destined for re-creation. We are not people of high rank, of great esteem, of noble birth. Yet God has made us ambassadors to the world. It’s a perfect match, because the world we inhabit is not a world of A-list celebrities, tenured faculty of world-renowned universities and think tanks, or government officials of the highest level. We are ordinary people who live among ordinary people. Jesus put aside his divinity to rub shoulders with humanity. Jesus asks us to put aside the pretense of our imagined greatness and allow our humanity to mingle with the humanity of those around us, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to express God’s reconciling love.
Whether apocryphal or not, there is a splendid story that illustrates the centrality of this text. It is reported that Swiss theologian Karl Barth was once asked what he would say to Adolf Hitler if he ever had the chance to meet the monster who was destroying Europe. Barth’s interviewer assumed that he would offer a scorching prophetic judgment against Hitler. However, Barth replied that he would do nothing other than quote Romans 5:8: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Only the unparalleled mercy and forgiveness of God, the unstinted gladness and grace of the gospel, could prompt the Führer’s genuine repentance.(1)
Because we have been reconciled to God, we have the privilege of encouraging others to accept God's free gift, to become reconciled as well. This is called the ministry of reconciliation. Since Paul experienced reconciliation through Christ, it became his mission to preach that message: “If we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son while we were still enemies, now that we have been reconciled, how much more certain is it that we will be saved by his life?” (Romans 5:10).
The new reality is that we are reconciled to God. We didn’t do it for ourselves, we couldn’t do it for ourselves. Only Christ could and did. What a joyful reality for us to receive. Yes, we have to receive it, believe it with our whole being that it really is true, no matter what deep stains soil our past. We are reconciled. Thanks be to Christ.
Today, the church owes it to the world to keep on spreading the message of this new reality. We are continually living into new realities. The Israelites experienced the new reality of the promised land when they survived on the fruit of the land instead of God’s manna. Both the younger and the elder son experienced the new reality of grace when the prodigal father welcomed the wandering son back home. What the father did in dividing the family’s resources, then later celebrating the younger son’s return, was an outrageously wasteful, careless, and unprecedented deed. It was unconscionable to forgive and renew the broken relationship in this way. Yet this is how grace functions in God’s realm.(2)
Brother Roger wrote in The Rule of Taizé, “Never resign yourself to the scandal of the separation of Christians, all who so readily confess love for their neighbor, and yet remain divided. Be consumed with burning zeal for the unity of the Body of Christ.”(3)
As we move toward the new reality of a risen Savior, let us live into that new reality by receiving God’s reconciliation for ourselves, by knowing that God’s reconciliation is for the whole world, and by being the empowered bearers of that reconciliation in order to break down the divisions of the world.
Welcome the new reality in your life. Be the new reality for the lives around you.
(1) Cited by Ralph C. Wood, “2 Corinthians 5:16-21: Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) Year C, Volume 2, 110.
(2) Cited by John Shearman, “Opening Comments for Sunday March 6 2016 which is the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Year C,” midrash@joinhands.com, Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 3:48 PM
(3) Brother Roger, The Rule of Taizé (Taizé: Les Presses de Taizé, 1961), 14-16.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
The Mission
Luke 13:31-35; Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1
A year ago NASA released an image of the Andromeda galaxy, which is the closest galaxy to us. They captured the image using the Hubble Telescope, but they outdid themselves. They took 411 images and put them together to create the largest image ever taken. It’s a whopping 1.5 billion pixels and requires about 4.3 GB of disk space! [See the video.]
The image takes you through over 100 million stars and travels more than 40,000 light years. It’s likely to make you feel like you are a very, very, very small part of a universe which we are only beginning to understand the true size of. It is truly mind-blowing.
“The Lord . . . brought Abram outside and said, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars if you think you can count them. This is how many children you will have.’ Abram trusted the Lord” (Genesis 15:4-6).
Abram didn’t have the light pollution that we have. On a clear night he could see thousands of stars. But he couldn’t see the millions of stars that Hubble can see. And Hubble keeps seeing more. Our vision of the universe keeps expanding.
The African slaves in the 18th and first half of the 19th century southern states had to think beyond their present circumstances. They put their hope in the promised kingdom, a kingdom not born or controlled by the powers of this world. One of their spirituals describes the kingdom of God this way: “There’s plenty good room, plenty good room, plenty good room in my Father’s kingdom.”(1)
We could say that this thought is a central theme in Luke’s Gospel. In story after story and encounter after encounter with the leaders of the religious institution of his time, Jesus was building a bigger kingdom. He kept tearing down walls, opening doors, and building bridges to get people into God’s kingdom.
God’s passionate desire from before the time of Abram, through the nation building with Moses, the judges, and the kings, through the trials, tribulations, and chastising of the prophets, and finally through the Word become flesh – Jesus Christ – is to gather God’s human children closer and closer in God’s embracing love and grace. “How often I have wanted to gather your people just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings” (Luke 13:34).
God is building the kingdom one person at a time, just at the universe is built one star, one solar system, one galaxy at a time.
I understand building. It has been part of me since childhood. Before I was born my father built on a sunroom on the family house. When I was six or seven, he redid the kitchen. Several years later they built on a major addition to make a first floor garage and second floor master suite. I used scrap lumber to build a small log-style cabin.
In high school I took an interest in the Connecticut Western Reserve of Ohio (land set aside in northeast Ohio by the early federal government as a way of paying the Connecticut citizens who served in the Revolutionary War. I became very interested in the old homes that dotted the area. I dreamed of restoring one someday.
Over the years, I have avidly watched “This Old House” and a number of shows on HGTV. Living in the manse, which is now a nearly 120 year old house, has filled my desire to work on an old house. We have done a lot to preserve and enhance its style. It has been fun.
It was a thrill to be involved in the design and building of this facility. Set against the wooded backdrop, it was designed to be open, welcoming, flexible, inviting, useful. The hope was that it would be a community gathering place. We are still working on that aspect.
How do we enlarge our part of the God’s kingdom? How do we tear down the walls that separate people? How do we create open, inviting and safe space for people from many backgrounds – ethnic, economic, educated, racial, gender – to be in the presence of God and each other so that everyone may grow and benefit from the vastness of experience, knowledge, and faith? How do we dissolve the sameness which acts like a force field repelling the very diversity which nurtures fuller life in the majesty of God’s love?
It seems that we live in a world where everyone has a different notion of God’s kingdom, as well as how to enlarge it, how to live out the ministry of welcome. In Luke’s gospel, the first people to see Jesus after his birth are a bunch of shepherds. They represent a necessary but highly undesirable class of people within the society. As Jesus goes about his ministry, he associates with all sorts of people who are at the margins of society, the people who are not deemed respectable enough be at the center of things.
A peasant girl is chosen to be Jesus’ mother. A wayward son is welcomed by an extravagant father whose love seems reckless. An outcast Samaritan willingly exercises compassion toward a robbed and beaten traveler. The penitent thief is remembered and welcomed into paradise.
We have heard the thoughts of Judas, who argued for and ultimately acted on a very different idea about kingdom building. The insurrectionists could not abide Jesus’ otherworldly kingdom talk, his lack of direct and decisive action. The people wanted action, not the preaching of God’s grace and gentleness of soul.
There’s a Peanuts cartoon which speaks to this reading from Luke’s gospel.
In the first frame, Lucy is standing next to a tree. Looking up, she shouts to Linus, “What are doing in that tree?”
Linus answers from the branches of the tree, “Looking for something.” Then he adds, “Can you see Snoopy? We climbed up here together, but now I don’t see him.”
Lucy unsympathetically shouts back up the tree, “Beagles can’t climb trees.”
The next frame shows Snoopy falling out of the tree right on his head with a loud “KLUNK.” “You’re right!” Snoopy concludes.
Then Lucy lets Snoopy have it, “You stupid Beagle, what are you doing climbing around in a tree?” Snoopy’s sore head is still spinning.
Linus interrupts from the tree, “Don’t yell at him…. We’re trying to find a strange creature in a nest….”
Lucy walks off saying, “You’re both crazy! Go ahead and knock yourselves out! I couldn’t care less!!”
Then Snoopy with his head still sore and spinning thinks, “Rats…I was hoping for a hug!” (2)
Don’t similar scenes happen to us? We hurt ourselves – perhaps physically or emotionally or spiritually. A parent, friend, pastor, parishioner gives us a lecture about how stupid we were. “Rats,” we may say to ourselves, “I was hoping for a hug!” There are those times when what we need most is to know that somebody still cares and loves us, because we already know we have acted like jerks.
One of the most dreadful Christian sins is that we too often act like Lucy. We are too quick to open our mouths and give lectures to others. It is so easy for us good and righteous believers to judge and condemn others for their stupid mistakes. What compounds our sin is that we think that we are doing the proper and right thing by giving them all our good advice. “You shouldn’t have done that. You should have known better. You’re getting what you deserve.” And so on.
Sometimes people need good teaching. Jesus is often teaching the people, but many times, especially after making a stupid mistake, people feel more like Snoopy: “Rats…I was hoping for a hug!” The image of a hen wrapping her wings around her chicks seems a lot like a hug to me – and that’s what Jesus wishes he could do.
The mission of the church of Jesus is to give hugs, to embrace, not to push away. On the way to the cross, Jesus attempts to embrace, to gather under his hen-like wings the entire world. The gospel writer John put it in different words: “God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).
How big is God’s world? How are you making it larger?
(1) Cited by Michael B. Curry, “Luke 13:31-5 – Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word; Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) Year C, Volume 2, 69.
(2) Cited by Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday,” 2 Lent C Exegetical Notes on Luke 13:31-35 (http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=51bd49db6caae596e13e44534&id=c726dc3928&e=e9babc8d38)
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
A year ago NASA released an image of the Andromeda galaxy, which is the closest galaxy to us. They captured the image using the Hubble Telescope, but they outdid themselves. They took 411 images and put them together to create the largest image ever taken. It’s a whopping 1.5 billion pixels and requires about 4.3 GB of disk space! [See the video.]
The image takes you through over 100 million stars and travels more than 40,000 light years. It’s likely to make you feel like you are a very, very, very small part of a universe which we are only beginning to understand the true size of. It is truly mind-blowing.
“The Lord . . . brought Abram outside and said, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars if you think you can count them. This is how many children you will have.’ Abram trusted the Lord” (Genesis 15:4-6).
Abram didn’t have the light pollution that we have. On a clear night he could see thousands of stars. But he couldn’t see the millions of stars that Hubble can see. And Hubble keeps seeing more. Our vision of the universe keeps expanding.
The African slaves in the 18th and first half of the 19th century southern states had to think beyond their present circumstances. They put their hope in the promised kingdom, a kingdom not born or controlled by the powers of this world. One of their spirituals describes the kingdom of God this way: “There’s plenty good room, plenty good room, plenty good room in my Father’s kingdom.”(1)
We could say that this thought is a central theme in Luke’s Gospel. In story after story and encounter after encounter with the leaders of the religious institution of his time, Jesus was building a bigger kingdom. He kept tearing down walls, opening doors, and building bridges to get people into God’s kingdom.
God’s passionate desire from before the time of Abram, through the nation building with Moses, the judges, and the kings, through the trials, tribulations, and chastising of the prophets, and finally through the Word become flesh – Jesus Christ – is to gather God’s human children closer and closer in God’s embracing love and grace. “How often I have wanted to gather your people just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings” (Luke 13:34).
God is building the kingdom one person at a time, just at the universe is built one star, one solar system, one galaxy at a time.
I understand building. It has been part of me since childhood. Before I was born my father built on a sunroom on the family house. When I was six or seven, he redid the kitchen. Several years later they built on a major addition to make a first floor garage and second floor master suite. I used scrap lumber to build a small log-style cabin.
In high school I took an interest in the Connecticut Western Reserve of Ohio (land set aside in northeast Ohio by the early federal government as a way of paying the Connecticut citizens who served in the Revolutionary War. I became very interested in the old homes that dotted the area. I dreamed of restoring one someday.
Over the years, I have avidly watched “This Old House” and a number of shows on HGTV. Living in the manse, which is now a nearly 120 year old house, has filled my desire to work on an old house. We have done a lot to preserve and enhance its style. It has been fun.
It was a thrill to be involved in the design and building of this facility. Set against the wooded backdrop, it was designed to be open, welcoming, flexible, inviting, useful. The hope was that it would be a community gathering place. We are still working on that aspect.
How do we enlarge our part of the God’s kingdom? How do we tear down the walls that separate people? How do we create open, inviting and safe space for people from many backgrounds – ethnic, economic, educated, racial, gender – to be in the presence of God and each other so that everyone may grow and benefit from the vastness of experience, knowledge, and faith? How do we dissolve the sameness which acts like a force field repelling the very diversity which nurtures fuller life in the majesty of God’s love?
It seems that we live in a world where everyone has a different notion of God’s kingdom, as well as how to enlarge it, how to live out the ministry of welcome. In Luke’s gospel, the first people to see Jesus after his birth are a bunch of shepherds. They represent a necessary but highly undesirable class of people within the society. As Jesus goes about his ministry, he associates with all sorts of people who are at the margins of society, the people who are not deemed respectable enough be at the center of things.
A peasant girl is chosen to be Jesus’ mother. A wayward son is welcomed by an extravagant father whose love seems reckless. An outcast Samaritan willingly exercises compassion toward a robbed and beaten traveler. The penitent thief is remembered and welcomed into paradise.
We have heard the thoughts of Judas, who argued for and ultimately acted on a very different idea about kingdom building. The insurrectionists could not abide Jesus’ otherworldly kingdom talk, his lack of direct and decisive action. The people wanted action, not the preaching of God’s grace and gentleness of soul.
There’s a Peanuts cartoon which speaks to this reading from Luke’s gospel.
In the first frame, Lucy is standing next to a tree. Looking up, she shouts to Linus, “What are doing in that tree?”
Linus answers from the branches of the tree, “Looking for something.” Then he adds, “Can you see Snoopy? We climbed up here together, but now I don’t see him.”
Lucy unsympathetically shouts back up the tree, “Beagles can’t climb trees.”
The next frame shows Snoopy falling out of the tree right on his head with a loud “KLUNK.” “You’re right!” Snoopy concludes.
Then Lucy lets Snoopy have it, “You stupid Beagle, what are you doing climbing around in a tree?” Snoopy’s sore head is still spinning.
Linus interrupts from the tree, “Don’t yell at him…. We’re trying to find a strange creature in a nest….”
Lucy walks off saying, “You’re both crazy! Go ahead and knock yourselves out! I couldn’t care less!!”
Then Snoopy with his head still sore and spinning thinks, “Rats…I was hoping for a hug!” (2)
Don’t similar scenes happen to us? We hurt ourselves – perhaps physically or emotionally or spiritually. A parent, friend, pastor, parishioner gives us a lecture about how stupid we were. “Rats,” we may say to ourselves, “I was hoping for a hug!” There are those times when what we need most is to know that somebody still cares and loves us, because we already know we have acted like jerks.
One of the most dreadful Christian sins is that we too often act like Lucy. We are too quick to open our mouths and give lectures to others. It is so easy for us good and righteous believers to judge and condemn others for their stupid mistakes. What compounds our sin is that we think that we are doing the proper and right thing by giving them all our good advice. “You shouldn’t have done that. You should have known better. You’re getting what you deserve.” And so on.
Sometimes people need good teaching. Jesus is often teaching the people, but many times, especially after making a stupid mistake, people feel more like Snoopy: “Rats…I was hoping for a hug!” The image of a hen wrapping her wings around her chicks seems a lot like a hug to me – and that’s what Jesus wishes he could do.
The mission of the church of Jesus is to give hugs, to embrace, not to push away. On the way to the cross, Jesus attempts to embrace, to gather under his hen-like wings the entire world. The gospel writer John put it in different words: “God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).
How big is God’s world? How are you making it larger?
(1) Cited by Michael B. Curry, “Luke 13:31-5 – Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word; Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) Year C, Volume 2, 69.
(2) Cited by Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday,” 2 Lent C Exegetical Notes on Luke 13:31-35 (http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=51bd49db6caae596e13e44534&id=c726dc3928&e=e9babc8d38)
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
The Journey
Luke 4:1-15; Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Romans 10:8b-13
There are still a few people in Pike County who have never journeyed out of the county, some who have never been to the big city of Chillicothe, or to the even bigger metropolis of Columbus. Those numbers are decreasing rapidly, because of the ubiquitous automobile, and the places people have to go to get health and social services. With the advances of the internet, a person could leave the county a lot less, but that would be a whole different generation.
We travel. Just over fifty years ago I traveled thirty miles to attend a boarding school. It was an hour’s drive, but it was a lifetime away from all that I had ever known. And I know that I am largely who I am because I said yes to making that journey.
I remember my first airplane flight. It was from Allentown, Pennsylvania, to Denver, Colorado. I know that we had to change planes somewhere, but I don’t remember where. One year later I was flying from Cleveland to New York JFK on to Edinburgh, Scotland, to begin my seminary education.
Many of us have made similar journeys for social, educational, or career reasons. For some, it was because Uncle Sam pointed his finger at you and you didn’t have a choice. For others, it was all choice – I want to do this and go there. Some of us have sailed the seven seas, plied the European rails, trekked up mountains. I have a friend through the Presbytery who is on a three month journey which includes South Seas islands, the coast of Chile, and Antarctica.
The journeys of life change us. The destination is less significant than the actual journey.
The Book of Deuteronomy comes across as Moses’ memoir of the forty-year journey he took as God’s appointed leader of the Israelite people. We know that Moses lost his cool on several occasions. The incessant cries of the Israelites, “Are we there yet?” would have been enough to wear down the most seasoned tour guide. But this wasn’t a busload of weary travelers, it was thousands upon thousands according to the records. Think of the million-person march on Washington DC without the assistance of law enforcement personnel.
The journey from slavery in Egypt to nationhood in Canaan was a journey through a sci-fi time warp. It took all of the forty years to begin to shake the traditions and “we used to”s out of the people, and then as the biblical record after Deuteronomy reports, the attitude adjustment and reprogramming for a new life hadn’t completely taken, even after a whole generation died on the journey and a new generation was born.
The premise of the promised land was that it flowed with milk and honey, that is, everything would be all right if the people would buckle down and follow the commandments and keep the Lord God first and foremost in their thinking. For that honor and privilege God expected gratitude, first-fruits, early harvest thanksgiving.
Was that too much to ask? Apparently so. As the later history depicted it, people were busy counting seeds, lest they give God too much and not keep enough for themselves. All that manna – just enough for both those who collected a lot and for those who couldn’t collect much – hadn’t made an impression on them. Even in the midst of plenty the Israelites were in a wilderness of disobedience, greed, disbelief. Their journey was not over. Not for a long time.
Jesus was a traveler. In utero he traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem. As an infant he traveled from Bethlehem to Egypt. As a child he traveled from Egypt to Nazareth. As a 12-year old he traveled to Jerusalem for Passover, possibly after his bar mitzvah, and stayed behind, learning from and questioning the teachers of the law. Then about age thirty, he joined the caravans of people who were traveling to the place in the Jordan River where his cousin John was baptizing people for the forgiveness of sins. The Spirit descended and announced him “Beloved.” The water’s edge wasn’t the end of his journey, it was the embarkation point.
Jesus entered the wilderness for forty days. He gave up more than chocolate or the internet or red meat. In a sense, he gave up his soul. That is, he didn’t protect it. He didn’t shield it from whatever he would encounter. He was hungry. He was thirsty. He had questions. He wondered what the time in front of him was going to hold for him. Stripped of every defense, every comfort, every connection with those who would have tried to dissuade him and pull him back from the brink of the ministry to which he had been called, Jesus could experience every temptation in its full intensity. This was tightrope walking without a safety net.
Our Lenten Calendar asks “What does it mean to “fast”? Fasting is more than food. Fasting is not only giving up something. To remove something from our lives creates a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. Vacuums fill up quickly and easily. The vacuum created by fasting needs to be intentionally filled by giving something more of ourselves as an expression of faithfulness. By giving up things that fill our lives for ourselves, we release time and energy to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with our God, to use the words of the prophet Micah (6:8).
Jesus’ wilderness experience sounds alien to us. We find it difficult to understand this story because we think of Jesus being perfect and sinless. But when we think that we forget that he was fully human as well as fully divine. We wonder how temptation was a question for him? Especially since we are tempted by so many ordinary and unnecessary things. He had nothing and no one to hide behind. But he also had no distractions.
The temptation in the wilderness was not an easy forty days for our Lord. Jesus doesn’t need to be standing in a bakery to be tempted by bread. He is able to turn stones to bread, but it was important for Jesus to journey in the wilderness so that his focus would be where it had to be: on God and God’s word. The devil forced Jesus to confront more than flesh, power and faith; Jesus had to think about the ministry he was about to begin. Jesus faced human and divine temptations.
Jesus did not prove himself to be the Son of God by turning stones into bread or by testing God’s faithfulness with foolish actions like jumping off the roof of the Temple. Jesus proved he was the Son of God by dwelling in the presence of God and relying on God’s faithfulness. Jesus did not come to feed the hungry, to rule over the nations or to be a famous preacher. Jesus proved himself to be the Son of God because he turned to God’s Word and God’s promises as the foundation for everything the did. He came to die, to bring forgiveness and healing to a world that was sick and dying from sin. The journey through the wilderness led to a cross, to an empty tomb, and to eternal life for all who believe, who call on Jesus’ name.
That’s the message that Paul sent the believers in Rome:
During this Lenten season, as we stand with Mary and so many others at the cross, let us remember that we do not choose to go into this wilderness. We are led there by the Holy Spirit. Though it is a place of temptation, we do not need to fear, for we, like Jesus filled with the Spirit, are not alone.
Let us approach this time with God’s Word in our mouth and in our heart so that we can overcome all the temptations that assail us. We have nothing to fear, for God has already heard our cry and saved us. We live in the Most High’s shelter, we camp in the Almighty’s shade. We have the words to remember our past as we thank God for the present and move into the future, so that God’s story will be written on our hearts and in our minds forever. We have the words by which we have life and by which we live: “All who call on the Lord’s name will be saved.”
That is our Lenten journey.
Thanks be to God.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
There are still a few people in Pike County who have never journeyed out of the county, some who have never been to the big city of Chillicothe, or to the even bigger metropolis of Columbus. Those numbers are decreasing rapidly, because of the ubiquitous automobile, and the places people have to go to get health and social services. With the advances of the internet, a person could leave the county a lot less, but that would be a whole different generation.
We travel. Just over fifty years ago I traveled thirty miles to attend a boarding school. It was an hour’s drive, but it was a lifetime away from all that I had ever known. And I know that I am largely who I am because I said yes to making that journey.
I remember my first airplane flight. It was from Allentown, Pennsylvania, to Denver, Colorado. I know that we had to change planes somewhere, but I don’t remember where. One year later I was flying from Cleveland to New York JFK on to Edinburgh, Scotland, to begin my seminary education.
Many of us have made similar journeys for social, educational, or career reasons. For some, it was because Uncle Sam pointed his finger at you and you didn’t have a choice. For others, it was all choice – I want to do this and go there. Some of us have sailed the seven seas, plied the European rails, trekked up mountains. I have a friend through the Presbytery who is on a three month journey which includes South Seas islands, the coast of Chile, and Antarctica.
The journeys of life change us. The destination is less significant than the actual journey.
The Book of Deuteronomy comes across as Moses’ memoir of the forty-year journey he took as God’s appointed leader of the Israelite people. We know that Moses lost his cool on several occasions. The incessant cries of the Israelites, “Are we there yet?” would have been enough to wear down the most seasoned tour guide. But this wasn’t a busload of weary travelers, it was thousands upon thousands according to the records. Think of the million-person march on Washington DC without the assistance of law enforcement personnel.
The journey from slavery in Egypt to nationhood in Canaan was a journey through a sci-fi time warp. It took all of the forty years to begin to shake the traditions and “we used to”s out of the people, and then as the biblical record after Deuteronomy reports, the attitude adjustment and reprogramming for a new life hadn’t completely taken, even after a whole generation died on the journey and a new generation was born.
The premise of the promised land was that it flowed with milk and honey, that is, everything would be all right if the people would buckle down and follow the commandments and keep the Lord God first and foremost in their thinking. For that honor and privilege God expected gratitude, first-fruits, early harvest thanksgiving.
Was that too much to ask? Apparently so. As the later history depicted it, people were busy counting seeds, lest they give God too much and not keep enough for themselves. All that manna – just enough for both those who collected a lot and for those who couldn’t collect much – hadn’t made an impression on them. Even in the midst of plenty the Israelites were in a wilderness of disobedience, greed, disbelief. Their journey was not over. Not for a long time.
Jesus was a traveler. In utero he traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem. As an infant he traveled from Bethlehem to Egypt. As a child he traveled from Egypt to Nazareth. As a 12-year old he traveled to Jerusalem for Passover, possibly after his bar mitzvah, and stayed behind, learning from and questioning the teachers of the law. Then about age thirty, he joined the caravans of people who were traveling to the place in the Jordan River where his cousin John was baptizing people for the forgiveness of sins. The Spirit descended and announced him “Beloved.” The water’s edge wasn’t the end of his journey, it was the embarkation point.
Jesus entered the wilderness for forty days. He gave up more than chocolate or the internet or red meat. In a sense, he gave up his soul. That is, he didn’t protect it. He didn’t shield it from whatever he would encounter. He was hungry. He was thirsty. He had questions. He wondered what the time in front of him was going to hold for him. Stripped of every defense, every comfort, every connection with those who would have tried to dissuade him and pull him back from the brink of the ministry to which he had been called, Jesus could experience every temptation in its full intensity. This was tightrope walking without a safety net.
Our Lenten Calendar asks “What does it mean to “fast”? Fasting is more than food. Fasting is not only giving up something. To remove something from our lives creates a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. Vacuums fill up quickly and easily. The vacuum created by fasting needs to be intentionally filled by giving something more of ourselves as an expression of faithfulness. By giving up things that fill our lives for ourselves, we release time and energy to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with our God, to use the words of the prophet Micah (6:8).
Jesus’ wilderness experience sounds alien to us. We find it difficult to understand this story because we think of Jesus being perfect and sinless. But when we think that we forget that he was fully human as well as fully divine. We wonder how temptation was a question for him? Especially since we are tempted by so many ordinary and unnecessary things. He had nothing and no one to hide behind. But he also had no distractions.
The temptation in the wilderness was not an easy forty days for our Lord. Jesus doesn’t need to be standing in a bakery to be tempted by bread. He is able to turn stones to bread, but it was important for Jesus to journey in the wilderness so that his focus would be where it had to be: on God and God’s word. The devil forced Jesus to confront more than flesh, power and faith; Jesus had to think about the ministry he was about to begin. Jesus faced human and divine temptations.
Jesus did not prove himself to be the Son of God by turning stones into bread or by testing God’s faithfulness with foolish actions like jumping off the roof of the Temple. Jesus proved he was the Son of God by dwelling in the presence of God and relying on God’s faithfulness. Jesus did not come to feed the hungry, to rule over the nations or to be a famous preacher. Jesus proved himself to be the Son of God because he turned to God’s Word and God’s promises as the foundation for everything the did. He came to die, to bring forgiveness and healing to a world that was sick and dying from sin. The journey through the wilderness led to a cross, to an empty tomb, and to eternal life for all who believe, who call on Jesus’ name.
That’s the message that Paul sent the believers in Rome:
[I]f you confess with your mouth “Jesus is Lord” and in your heart you have faith that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Trusting with the heart leads to righteousness, and confessing with the mouth leads to salvation. (Romans 10:9-10)Whatever we choose to do as we go on this Lenten journey, let’s remember that we aren’t trying to prove ourselves. Lent teaches us how to abide in God as we face the difficulties and temptations of this world. The end of our Lenten journey is not pleasant. We have to face the cross with Jesus, deal with his death and the end of our assumptions about what He really came to do. He didn’t come to feed us, to be our king, or be a adoration generating spectacle. As Jesus hangs on the cross our wilderness shock is that this is not how it is meant to be. Our troubles are far more complex, our pain far deeper than we can imagine. Our sin is beyond our ability to overcome. There was no easy way to fix what was wrong with the world. We have to face that reality on Good Friday when even Jesus cried out to God in his suffering and pain.
During this Lenten season, as we stand with Mary and so many others at the cross, let us remember that we do not choose to go into this wilderness. We are led there by the Holy Spirit. Though it is a place of temptation, we do not need to fear, for we, like Jesus filled with the Spirit, are not alone.
Let us approach this time with God’s Word in our mouth and in our heart so that we can overcome all the temptations that assail us. We have nothing to fear, for God has already heard our cry and saved us. We live in the Most High’s shelter, we camp in the Almighty’s shade. We have the words to remember our past as we thank God for the present and move into the future, so that God’s story will be written on our hearts and in our minds forever. We have the words by which we have life and by which we live: “All who call on the Lord’s name will be saved.”
That is our Lenten journey.
Thanks be to God.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Some People Change
2 Corinthians 3:12-18; Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36
It’s been a short Epiphany season this year. Only five weeks long. That’s not a lot of time for the light of the Savior of the world to penetrate the darkness of our world, not a lot of time for us to get up to speed with understanding that Jesus offers God’s grace to those on the inside of life as well as those on the outside, regardless of who defines inside and outside. For all our intelligence, we are sometimes slow to realize that our definitions carry no weight with God.
Paul tries to get that point across to the Corinthian believers. They are a contentious bunch, even fighting with Paul about the very truths of the gospel which he had presented them. There are times when we can sense that Paul is close to losing his temper with them. Fortunately his theological and rhetorical training constrains him.
We find that his statements to the Corinthians in today’s brief passage represent the core of his understanding of Jesus’ relationship with believers. Paul tells the Corinthian faithful that in Christ they are called out of lives of spiritual bondage and intellectual blindness into new lives which are filled with freedom, hope, and boldness. This is on account of the transfiguring encounter with the Spirit who is the Lord. It is only through Christ that the veil of ignorance and bondage is removed and that true sight comes to their eyes and hence to their spiritual being. Hardened hearts are softened and blind spiritual eyes become sighted as the glory of God is revealed and lives are transformed into God’s image.
There is a lot of not seeing and not believing in the pages of scripture. There are very few instances of seeing and believing. Two of the key instances are presented by the presence of Moses and Elijah in the account of the transfiguration of Jesus. Moses represents the covenant that created a people and Elijah represents the epitome of the prophetic tradition. Each of them saw God in a special way.
We heard about Moses having talked with God when God gave Moses the second set of the tables of the Law. Just before that Moses had begged God to show him God’s glorious presence. God told Moses to stand behind a rock and God would pass by so that Moses could see all of God’s goodness. “But,” God says, “you can’t see my face because no one can see me and live” (Exodus 33:20).
You will remember that when Elijah defeated the 400 prophets of Baal in the whole burnt offering contest on Mount Carmel and then had them slaughtered, Queen Jezebel threatened Elijah’s life. He fled ultimately to Mount Horeb where he sought God unsuccessfully in the wind, earthquake, and fire. Then he met God in the thin, quiet, nearly inaudible sound of near silence (1 Kings 19:12).
Paul earnestly desired that the Corinthians see Jesus in the words of the Gospel and the way the gospel was lived by those who had seen Jesus and by those who had not seen the physical Jesus but had believed in him where sight had not taken them.
It is easy to dismiss the fractured believing and disbelieving of the Corinthians as something that was only effected them. Mis-believing is not something that happened long ago. It happens everyday in the best of congregations. Like the Jews who could not or would not see Jesus as the Christ (3:14-15), we also may be victims to our own bondage and darkness.
Week after week I stand at this pulpit, graciously accorded a measure of authority by you for this responsibility. Yet as a flawed human being who like everyone else needs to repent and seek God’s forgiving grace, I have to ask, am I at times masking God’s word of truth rather than unveiling it? Are some of you here because you don’t know what else to do with a Sunday morning? Or does anything spiritual that happens here roll off you like water off a duck’s back? We all have our veils, our masks, our blinders. Sometimes our faith is like that smudged window that just never seems to be streak-free, no matter how hard we try to clean it.
We are blinded by so many different kinds of things. We are blinded by fear: fear of failure; fear of loss; fear of success; fear of not being able to measure up to our ideal standards or those of someone else.
We are blinded by envy: envy of a lifestyle, be it jet-setting or simple; envy of prestige, renown, recognition; envy of people who have made it and seem to have everything going their way.
We are blinded by tradition: the traditions handed down by our forebears; the tradition of not rocking the boat; the tradition of being second-rate or sidelined so we have to pull our lives around us like a protective blanket.
We are blinded by ambition: the need to get ahead; the need to have everything imaginable; the necessity of always being right; the drive not to get left behind.
All these kinds of blindness separate us from God and from the joy in the Lord which the Spirit desires to lavish on us.
Paul Tillich, one of the leading theologians of the mid-20th century, in a sermon on Romans 5:20 titled “You Are Accepted,”(1) suggests that our personal and societal idolatries often manifest themselves in a kind of “moral reversal.” Rather than seeing the state of our own sin (addictions), we project blame onto the external objects of our addiction. We cast blame on alcohol, drugs, temptresses or tempters, “the system,” the cops, religion, government, the President, immigrants, liberals, conservatives, ivory tower pedants. Other people—parents, spouses, children, friends, or strangers, congregation members—receive our venom.
Paul claims that even today, in spite of everything (3:14), the blind do not see, and even though they “know,” they cannot fathom they are the problem.(2)
In human development and educational circles the ongoing discussion is whether we are who we are because of nature or because of nurture. If we throw the discussion into the theological arena, we are who we are because of nature – we are children of Adam and Eve, we carry the gene of sin and disobedience. But, thanks be to God in Christ Jesus, we are also the product of nurture. We are who we are because of the grace which Jesus brought us through his life, death, and resurrection which transforms us who through the working of the Spirit in us and in those around us. We can be changed. We can have the scales removed from the eyes of our faith.
Paul admonishes the church at Corinth to take a look at their own lives in Christ and to see in their own unveiled faces how they are being “transformed … from one degree of glory to the next.” Paul had enough experience in ministry with the Corinthian congregation and with others to know that no one falls head first into the pool of God’s transforming love and emerges fully formed as a perfect reflection of Christ. The work of God’s justifying and redemptive Spirit moves in human lives from one degree of glory to another, often taking a lifetime to achieve the full reflection of Christ in our shining, unveiled faces.
This is wonderfully good news! No one sails through life without setbacks, without rough seas, without hardships and doubts. Paul is a prime example of this obvious truth. Yet for the follower of Christ, the setbacks or hardships are not the defining events of life. For the beloved sisters and brothers of Christ, the defining event is the gift of freedom offered through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The true identity of the Christian is found in the love of God that has been written upon hearts. No outward circumstances or worldly appearances can change the inward and spiritual reality of God’s justifying and redemptive grace.
The work of the Christian believer – our work – then, is to allow the love of Christ and the freedom of the Spirit to be manifest in daily living. The work of the Christian believer, with Paul, is not to lose heart but to continue — no matter what the circumstances of life — to act with boldness in the direction of God’s redeeming work of love and mercy.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
(1) Paul Tillich, “You Are Accepted,” in The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), 153-63. Available online at www.religion-online.org.
(2) Donald W. Musser, “2 Corinthians 3:12-18 – Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), Year C, Volume 1, 450.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
It’s been a short Epiphany season this year. Only five weeks long. That’s not a lot of time for the light of the Savior of the world to penetrate the darkness of our world, not a lot of time for us to get up to speed with understanding that Jesus offers God’s grace to those on the inside of life as well as those on the outside, regardless of who defines inside and outside. For all our intelligence, we are sometimes slow to realize that our definitions carry no weight with God.
Paul tries to get that point across to the Corinthian believers. They are a contentious bunch, even fighting with Paul about the very truths of the gospel which he had presented them. There are times when we can sense that Paul is close to losing his temper with them. Fortunately his theological and rhetorical training constrains him.
We find that his statements to the Corinthians in today’s brief passage represent the core of his understanding of Jesus’ relationship with believers. Paul tells the Corinthian faithful that in Christ they are called out of lives of spiritual bondage and intellectual blindness into new lives which are filled with freedom, hope, and boldness. This is on account of the transfiguring encounter with the Spirit who is the Lord. It is only through Christ that the veil of ignorance and bondage is removed and that true sight comes to their eyes and hence to their spiritual being. Hardened hearts are softened and blind spiritual eyes become sighted as the glory of God is revealed and lives are transformed into God’s image.
There is a lot of not seeing and not believing in the pages of scripture. There are very few instances of seeing and believing. Two of the key instances are presented by the presence of Moses and Elijah in the account of the transfiguration of Jesus. Moses represents the covenant that created a people and Elijah represents the epitome of the prophetic tradition. Each of them saw God in a special way.
We heard about Moses having talked with God when God gave Moses the second set of the tables of the Law. Just before that Moses had begged God to show him God’s glorious presence. God told Moses to stand behind a rock and God would pass by so that Moses could see all of God’s goodness. “But,” God says, “you can’t see my face because no one can see me and live” (Exodus 33:20).
You will remember that when Elijah defeated the 400 prophets of Baal in the whole burnt offering contest on Mount Carmel and then had them slaughtered, Queen Jezebel threatened Elijah’s life. He fled ultimately to Mount Horeb where he sought God unsuccessfully in the wind, earthquake, and fire. Then he met God in the thin, quiet, nearly inaudible sound of near silence (1 Kings 19:12).
Paul earnestly desired that the Corinthians see Jesus in the words of the Gospel and the way the gospel was lived by those who had seen Jesus and by those who had not seen the physical Jesus but had believed in him where sight had not taken them.
It is easy to dismiss the fractured believing and disbelieving of the Corinthians as something that was only effected them. Mis-believing is not something that happened long ago. It happens everyday in the best of congregations. Like the Jews who could not or would not see Jesus as the Christ (3:14-15), we also may be victims to our own bondage and darkness.
Week after week I stand at this pulpit, graciously accorded a measure of authority by you for this responsibility. Yet as a flawed human being who like everyone else needs to repent and seek God’s forgiving grace, I have to ask, am I at times masking God’s word of truth rather than unveiling it? Are some of you here because you don’t know what else to do with a Sunday morning? Or does anything spiritual that happens here roll off you like water off a duck’s back? We all have our veils, our masks, our blinders. Sometimes our faith is like that smudged window that just never seems to be streak-free, no matter how hard we try to clean it.
We are blinded by so many different kinds of things. We are blinded by fear: fear of failure; fear of loss; fear of success; fear of not being able to measure up to our ideal standards or those of someone else.
We are blinded by envy: envy of a lifestyle, be it jet-setting or simple; envy of prestige, renown, recognition; envy of people who have made it and seem to have everything going their way.
We are blinded by tradition: the traditions handed down by our forebears; the tradition of not rocking the boat; the tradition of being second-rate or sidelined so we have to pull our lives around us like a protective blanket.
We are blinded by ambition: the need to get ahead; the need to have everything imaginable; the necessity of always being right; the drive not to get left behind.
All these kinds of blindness separate us from God and from the joy in the Lord which the Spirit desires to lavish on us.
Paul Tillich, one of the leading theologians of the mid-20th century, in a sermon on Romans 5:20 titled “You Are Accepted,”(1) suggests that our personal and societal idolatries often manifest themselves in a kind of “moral reversal.” Rather than seeing the state of our own sin (addictions), we project blame onto the external objects of our addiction. We cast blame on alcohol, drugs, temptresses or tempters, “the system,” the cops, religion, government, the President, immigrants, liberals, conservatives, ivory tower pedants. Other people—parents, spouses, children, friends, or strangers, congregation members—receive our venom.
Paul claims that even today, in spite of everything (3:14), the blind do not see, and even though they “know,” they cannot fathom they are the problem.(2)
In human development and educational circles the ongoing discussion is whether we are who we are because of nature or because of nurture. If we throw the discussion into the theological arena, we are who we are because of nature – we are children of Adam and Eve, we carry the gene of sin and disobedience. But, thanks be to God in Christ Jesus, we are also the product of nurture. We are who we are because of the grace which Jesus brought us through his life, death, and resurrection which transforms us who through the working of the Spirit in us and in those around us. We can be changed. We can have the scales removed from the eyes of our faith.
Paul admonishes the church at Corinth to take a look at their own lives in Christ and to see in their own unveiled faces how they are being “transformed … from one degree of glory to the next.” Paul had enough experience in ministry with the Corinthian congregation and with others to know that no one falls head first into the pool of God’s transforming love and emerges fully formed as a perfect reflection of Christ. The work of God’s justifying and redemptive Spirit moves in human lives from one degree of glory to another, often taking a lifetime to achieve the full reflection of Christ in our shining, unveiled faces.
This is wonderfully good news! No one sails through life without setbacks, without rough seas, without hardships and doubts. Paul is a prime example of this obvious truth. Yet for the follower of Christ, the setbacks or hardships are not the defining events of life. For the beloved sisters and brothers of Christ, the defining event is the gift of freedom offered through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The true identity of the Christian is found in the love of God that has been written upon hearts. No outward circumstances or worldly appearances can change the inward and spiritual reality of God’s justifying and redemptive grace.
The work of the Christian believer – our work – then, is to allow the love of Christ and the freedom of the Spirit to be manifest in daily living. The work of the Christian believer, with Paul, is not to lose heart but to continue — no matter what the circumstances of life — to act with boldness in the direction of God’s redeeming work of love and mercy.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
(1) Paul Tillich, “You Are Accepted,” in The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), 153-63. Available online at www.religion-online.org.
(2) Donald W. Musser, “2 Corinthians 3:12-18 – Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), Year C, Volume 1, 450.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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