To You, O Lord, I Lift up My Soul

Text: Psalm 25

One thing that children do quite often and even before they can speak is to take something and lift it up to show you; a simple yet loaded with meaning. It could mean something as simple as “look.” Or, “Let’s play I give it to you, then you give it back or I'll scream.” Lifting things up to adults is one way infants and toddlers discover that their world is relational. They can interact with it and have some influence in it. It can also be a way that little ones invite someone to be their friend. A toddler will do this by picking up a toy and walking it across the room to give it to you and then go back for another. It may just be that they are showing off their ability to walk, but it sure makes us big people feel important that they want us for a friend.

As William has gotten older I have learned that for him lifting an object up to me is a key part of our interaction that is crucial to how he feels about himself and his world. If he lift’s up a picture that he has just drawn and proudly says, “Look Daddy”, it means he wants praise. If I applaud him for it, it builds him up. If I dismiss it or criticize it, I am in some profound way dismissing and criticizing him. If he lifts up something to me as a gift, it doesn’t just mean “I love you and was thinking of you.” He also wants me in particular to love give him some love back with praise and the assurance that I love him too. If something of his is broken, he will lift it up to me believing that I am the only person on earth who can fix it. I have to at least try because toys are special extensions of the self; hence, IPhones, Blackberries, and remote controls. Sometimes he will lift up a book or Play-Doh wanting me to do that with him as a way of soliciting my companionship. Children lift up things to us not simply because of the height disadvantage. It is their way of creating and maintaining relationship in their world and we are seriously remiss if we don’t get it that the thing they are lifting up to us is the most important thing in the world to them at that moment and it profoundly represents for them their very self.

Then there’s us, us adults. We don’t lift things up too often unless it’s to someone we really trust. We think we have outgrown that behaviour. If we sense an adult is lifting something up to us we will be suspicious because we believe that for an adult to attach their self to an object they are giving to another as inappropriate, manipulative, infantile, narcissistic, or weak. We don’t try to make friends at work by putting a stapler in their lap and then return a moment later with a pad of sticky notes and then our pencil sharpener. We don’t lift up to the boss the really neat bar chart of useless statistics that we think is really cool but we weren’t asked to do and say, “Look at this really cool bar chart I just made, Boss. The black is profit and the red is productivity before and after we went with one-ply paper in the restrooms. They’re both down. Think there might be a connection." All the while thinking, "Like me. Like me. Like me.” Things like that don’t work. Instead, we are told not to attempt making friends with the boss and don’t waste time on things we weren’t asked to do. Moreover, let us not be found believing that a stapler and a bar chart truly are representative of our very self. That’s nuts. Right?

Yes it is highly weird to attach our self's to staplers and bar charts. But nevertheless we do attach our self's to things and lift them up in a meaning loaded gesture. How does it make us feel when our employer throws that project proposal back in our faces saying it’s not good enough and then goes with another? What’s it like when one of our children gets in trouble at school and it is for something that goes beyond just being a kid? Me, I like to cook. I know what it’s like to cook the best pork and beans anybody’s ever going to eat and put it out there for people to pig on only to have my Southern delicacy misunderstood and passed over. It’s not easy to watch people pick through your beans with a turned up lip. Frankly speaking, those beans are my soul. Then, with me being a minister every week I attach my self to a sermon and lift it up to others only to be met with mostly blank stares. Those ministers in those style o churches where the congregation vocally respond throughout the sermon really have it made as far as their egos are concerned.

But anyway, just like infants and small children we attach our self's to the things in life that we consider important for whatever reason. We lift them up to other people in the same relational, self-establishing way that children do with toys and…well...it’s a dog-eat-dog world and we have to either learn to eat dog and/or make sure our coping armour is impenetrable. Friends, this is right at the very essence of the relational nightmare that sin is. Our being as human beings is relational at its most basic level. We are not solitary, self-determining, autonomous, rational animals. Human being is being-in-relationship. This being-in-relationship is the very place in and among us that bears the image of the Trinity yet due to our sin it is a wantonly treacherous place for us to be. Humanity has a beautiful relational way of being innate to us because we are created in the image of the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and yet we mar it so badly.

We have a soul problem. We attach our souls, our very self's, to things and we get hurt and we hurt others in the relational exchange of lifting things up to one another. Instead of our being-in-relationship being in the image of the loving communion of the Triune God of grace reflecting his glory in his creation, humanity looks and behaves like a virus. Yet, there is a way to live in this world that is in line with our created relational nature of being in the image of the Trinity and there is a beauty at the heart of this way that I hope you will seek and find. David writes of this way in Psalm 25:1. “To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult over me. Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame; they shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long. Remember your mercy, O LORD, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old.”

As human beings we will lift up our souls. The human soul is the entirety of who we are before God our maker – body, mind, heart, spirit. Just like infants and small children we invest our soul in and attach our soul to things and people that we hope will bring friendship and fulfillment and it is in those things and people that we put our trust. Thus, they become for us idols. Lifting the soul up comes natural to us, but because of sin it inadvertently winds up being that we love and trust the wrong things in the way we should love and trust the right things which we in turn love and trust wrongly because we love and trust the wrong things rightly. The cure for sin can be experienced by lifting up our souls into the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Paul writes in Romans 5:1,2: “…we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access in this realm of faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” He also writes in Ephesians 2:18: “For through him we have access in one Spirit to the Father.” Jesus has opened the way for us in the Holy Spirit to stand with him before our Father in heaven partaking of their love for one another in the Holy Spirit just as Peter writes in 2 Peter 1:4 that we are “partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” David said “O God, I put my trust in you”. Lifting our souls up to God is putting our trust into the Trinity and more. It is letting our self be in the loving communion that the Trinity is and open to God’s healing work upon our twisted desires.

So, how do we lift our souls to God? First, I recommend three books to you: The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, the anonymous work called The Cloud of Unknowing, and another anonymous work called The Way of the Pilgrim. All these books are trusted works for guidance in spiritual practice. They are all also available online for free. Second, and this is what I do, think of being an Old Testament priest lifting up a sacrifice to God before burning it on the altar. Now, imagine lifting up your being, your self, as if it were your heart from your chest and holding it there before God. Be aware of the emotions you are feeling. Name them and let them go momentarily forgetting them. Do the same with thoughts that are preoccupying you. Start repeating over and over, “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.” Let stillness and trust be your companions. Sooner or later and it may take days or weeks you will begin to feel love for the Trinity or loved by the Father as his child as heloves the Son in the Holy Spirit. That’s where you want to be. Sooner or later and it may take days or weeks a new world will open up to you. You will need a couple of Christian friends to share things with. Do this ten minutes a day to start. You will find ten minutes goes quickly. Then read Scripture and say your prayers and go about your day trying to pray without ceasing as I have been telling you in previous sermons.

To close, here’s a secret teaching for you. The Hebrew verb for lift up, nasa, is also the word for “to bear away” or “to carry away” and one of the Hebrew words we translate as “to forgive”. Verse 18 of Psalm 25 says, “Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.” "Consider my affliction and my trouble, and bear away all my sins." As we lift up our souls to the Trinity, Jesus takes up our brokenness, bears it upon and in his very self, and carries it away. That is what forgiveness is. Think NASA and the space shuttle. Jesus carried/carries away our brokenness like the shuttle taking something into space to send it away forever. The Trinity has given us the means through Christ in the Spirit to lift up our broken self to him and say, “Father, fix me" and he does. He does. Amen.

What Made Them Believe?

Text: John 2:1-11

Every Friday evening at sundown faithful Jewish families celebrate a meal together to welcome the Sabbath, a day of rest which lasts until sundown Saturday. At some point during the meal they will lift a cup of wine and say the kiddush, a prayer: “Blessed art thou, O Lord our G-d, creator of the fruit of the vine. Blessed art thou, O Lord our G-d, king of the universe, who chose us from every people, and exalted us among every tongue, and sanctified us by commandments and favours us with the holy Sabbath, and lovingly and graciously bestowed upon us your holy Sabbath. We praise you, O G-d, who sanctifies Shabbat.”

Similarly, on the night that they share their annual Passover meal, the Jews drink four cups of wine (very small cups). Before they drink a cup they say again: “Blessed art thou, O Lord our G-d, creator of the fruit of the vine.” After the fourth cup they say: “Blessed art thou, O Lord our G-d, king of the universe, for the vine and for the fruit of the vine, for the yield of the field, and for the land, pleasant, goodly and broad which thou favoured and gave as an inheritance to our fathers, to eat of its fruit and be sated with its goodness.”

It would be rather short sighted of us not to notice the high regard that Jews have for wine. In the Sabbath cup it represents the goodness; I would say the apex, of goodness in God’s creation. With the joy provided by the wine, they welcome their participation in God’s Sabbath rest. In the sharing of wine on Passover they commemorate the joy of God’s delivering them from Egypt and blessing them with the abundance of Canaan. The most notable point, though, in these prayers is that God is the Creator of the fruit of the vine, the source of the wine.

To put all this together maybe we should ask what Jesus was trying to pronounce with turning water into wine. Obviously, there’s more to it than him being some kind of a very talented alchemist at Hogwarts Academy. This sign was a revelation that Jesus is the source of the wine, which is the emblem of the abundant life. He is the one who gives Sabbath rest. He is the one who delivers us from our enslavements. He is the one who blesses with the abundance of life. More over, in this act he’s making a very strong claim about his relationship to God, the Creator of the universe. Later, in the Gospel of John Jesus says: “The Father and I are one (10:30)...even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father (10:38).” This mutually indwelling relationship that Jesus has with the Father in the Holy Spirit, this love that they share and are, is the unity of God. He is in the Father and the Father is in him and the water of life is turned into wine of abundant life.

An interesting point to make is that only a few people—Jesus, his mother, his disciples, and the stewards who filled the jugs with water and drew out the wine, knew what Jesus had done. This sign was surgically directed so that Jesus might divulge his identity to his disciples and John says his disciples believed in him. So we might ask what exactly they believed for Jesus says at John 3:15 "whoever believes will in Him have eternal life." Jesus clearly demonstrated in this sign of turning water into wine that he is the one who gives life of the eternal nature, abundant life that comes from eternity and will keep us throughout eternity. Jesus also remarks at John 17:3, "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." Jesus has life to give to us, life that comes through knowing who he is and trusting him with our whole lives as the disciples.

Since there is life eternal, life abundant in this Jesus, the life of knowing Jesus and his Father, then how do we come to believe in him? What made those first disciples believe? Now, I’m not one who believes that coming to faith in Christ is something we just up and do. We just don’t come about and say, “I believe. I've studied the evidence that demands a verdict from me and I have decided to follow Jesus." That’s not what faith is. Faith comes about from knowing who Jesus is, and it’s not the "I read it in a book” kind of knowing. Faith is knowing the personal presence of Jesus in one's life, knowing the one who reveals himself to you and communicates to you in very real ways with the exception that we just can’t see him so I must simply trust that what I am experiencing is really him. Jesus told Thomas the Doubter, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe (20:29).”

Just as the full presence of God was with the disciples in Jesus so is God with us in the Holy Spirit. God is Spirit. God is the love of the mutual indwelling of Jesus and his Father in the Holy Spirit. We do not see them, but the Holy Spirit brings us into their relationship and enables us to know them in their unity of love for one another. Our belief or faith or better our trust of God flows forth from the foundation of being brought into the very life of God, the eternal life of their communion of love. Though I wish everyone had this life, it is not within my power to give it. All I can do is bear witness that it is there. In fact it is here with us. Only God in Christ through the Holy Spirit can give us the faith to believe and he will. I can’t give it to you, but I can tell you how to start looking.

It is no chance occurrence that Jesus chose the waters of ritual washing to convert into wine. The water here is very significant as well. Around the first century the Jews were a people obsessed with ritual bathing, with making or keeping oneself clean before God. Archaeological digs from the period show that all over the place outside and even inside of houses were little bathing pools for dipping into as a ritual for keeping oneself religiously clean. Moreover, John the Baptist was trying to make the Jews ready for the coming of Christ by baptizing them in the Jordan River, cleansing them. These water jars were there at the wedding so that the people could ritually wash their hands and the utensils used in the meal so that nothing going into them might make them wrong with God. We can only guess why they were so obsessed with purity. Most likely they felt cut off from God because of Roman oppression, a corrupted priesthood, wars, and the “Greek-ness” of their culture. These were some people who felt their only hope was to make themselves right with God the only way they knew how. Wash it off and stay clean.

This sign of turning ritual purity water into wine as I see it can mean two things. Either it is that Christ turns the waters of our efforts at repentance into the new wine of eternal life or it is a pronouncement that our shame, our need to wash, is healed. I’m inclined to go with the later. In the first, it would appear that God’s grace is only available to those who earn it through turning and by their own efforts cleaning up their act. That’s not grace. In the second case, it all depends on God’s grace. Jesus was saying to his disciples that he was the way to eternal life and he is here standing in our midst to give us eternal life, life in the very life of God whether or not we’re clean.

We should note and note with a bit of assumption that the jars probably weren’t being used that day. In all likelihood they were sitting unused and empty for they had to be filled with water so that Jesus could use them for this revelation. I would venture that the folks in Galilee had set aside their religion of ritual washing to get God’s favour because it wasn’t working in the same way that our attempts to please God don’t work either. Why should we try to earn what he is willing to freely give? What works is knowing who Jesus is, knowing personally that he is in the Father and the father is in him and the life they share is in us through the work of the Holy Spirit.

So, what must we do to believe to live in the life of the Trinity? I’ll tell you a mystery. We already are. We are in the Trinity and the Trinity is in us because of the very fact that God became human in Jesus the Christ. This means we can stop trying to trying to please the Father and rather accept the fact that we, his broken children in need of cleansing, are as a given fact his beloved children and he is well pleased with us on account of Jesus, his faith and obedience, and his praying for us. He lives. He stands before the Father to pray for us. Did you know that?

If we don’t have to please God to earn eternal life then what must we do to have it? Well, just start hanging around him. Pray. Read and meditate upon the Scriptures. Take interest in Jesus life, because he already has taken the utmost interest in ours. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. He will reveal himself to you. Amen.

Defining What’s Proper

Text: Matthew 3:13-17

What is it to be proper? One way of defining the word is as appropriate, suitable, or right to a situation. It’s not proper to talk with food in your mouth. It’s not proper to use that language at the table. It’s not proper to speak of bodily functions except in a medical sense. Here proper means social appropriateness. Another way of defining proper is to say that it is a specific characteristic of something’s nature. It is proper to zebra’s to have stripes. Walking upright is proper to humans. Sin (alienation from God and one another or broken faith) is proper to human nature. There is yet another way of defining proper; the established or set way to do something. When making a deposit at the bank it is proper to use a deposit slip and have it prepared ahead of time. This makes everybody’s banking experience pleasurable. So there you have it, three ways to define proper…social appropriateness, specificity to nature, or a set procedure. Having the dictionary under our belts we should be more apt to arrive at what Jesus meant when saying about his baptism “it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness” for his doing so would seem improper in every respect.

           John’s baptism was baptism with water for repentance. It grew out of a fanaticism with ritual washing as a means to prepare to come before the Lord that was sweeping his day. As far as the Jerusalem Temple establishment was concerned John’s baptizing out there in the wilderness was improper. It was not the proper way to come before the Lord. The proper way was to come to Jerusalem and offer a sacrifice. Sacrifice was the way they worshipped. It wasn’t a sacrifice to appease an offended God. It was an offering up of thanks for something you were going to have to kill to eat anyway. The proper way to take life that God had given was to take it to the priest who took its life in the proper way. He would burn the fat and the guts, take a portion for the priests, and take the blood into the temple to sprinkle it on the altar or on the lid of the Ark of the Covenant otherwise known as the mercy seat where God was supposed to be. They believed that the blood was the life of the animal. So in essence the proper way to take life was to give that life back to God who created it. Moreover, they believed that this life passing through death (the animal slaughtered and the blood taken) and given to God covered over the sins of those who brought the sacrifice. The blood (the life) of the lamb would atone for their sins or cover them over. The Hebrew word for atone, kophar, means to cover over. Atonement was how they kept in right relationship to God. They believed this because that’s what God told Moses that this sacrifice was how the people should approach and worship.

Baptism develops from the OT teaching that one also needed to be clean to go to the temple to worship. There were certain things and people you could not touch, if you did you would have death or disease on you coming into the presence of God. Waiting a period of time and taking a ritual bath was usually the way to make oneself clean. This making oneself clean to come into the presence of God is what John was calling baptism for repentance.

Yet, this act of repentance was not the proper way. John was conducting a ritual that was not in accordance with Scripture as the priests knew it and he was not doing it in Jerusalem, but out in the wilderness. But, there’s significance to his doing this out in the wilderness. In Old Testament times, there was a Day of Atonement when the High priest would offer a sacrifice on behalf of all the people so that the blood, life that had passed through death, might cover over their sins. He would also get a male goat and whisper the sins of the people into its ears and send it out into the wilderness to be consumed by a demon named Azazel (Lev. 16:8,10,26). This was a symbolic gesture of sending sin to Hell more or less. This is also where we get the term scapegoat – “the goat that escapes.”

This was why John the Baptist was out there in the wilderness in a figurative Hell baptizing people in water for repentance and it truly was not proper. Well, in two of the senses of the definition of proper. It was not proper to the prescribed way. It was not proper to social appropriateness for i was offensive to the Jerusalem Temple establishment. But, considering human nature and our bent towards sin, out there in the wilderness in this figurative Hell baptizing people who desperately wanted to be righteous was most proper. These people were desperate. They felt God was coming with a vengeance to cast out the Romans from Israel, judge the people, and establish his kingdom. They knew that the proper means in Jerusalem at the temple was a corrupted farce. The priests had turned worship into big business. That being the case, they had no hope of being ready for "The Day of the Lord" other than to go out there where the scapegoat went and be washed clean by John the Baptist, the only true prophet of God who was calling them there.

It’s to these people that Jesus went. Jesus went out there to that figurative Hell like a scapegoat and had himself baptized in this improper ministry of John’s saying, “It is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness.” Now one might think that what Jesus did was not proper to his nature. That’s what John the Baptist thought. To him Jesus was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and here was Jesus out in the wilderness like the scapegoat the high priest sent to Azazel. Moreover, Jesus was the one they were expecting who would baptize them, cleanse them, with the Holy Spirit, make them righteous in the core with the indwelling presence of God. It would seem logical and proper that with Jesus’ arrival these desperate people out there in that figurative Hell who had repented and made themselves clean with baptism were now ready to receive the Holy Spirit from Jesus.

Yet, that’s just not the proper way to come before the Triune God who is grace. To come running to Jesus saying “baptize me with the Holy Spirit because I’ve repented and cleaned myself up” would be improper. It wouldn’t be grace. The proper is for Jesus to meet us in our Hell of a wilderness and take upon himself our need to be made clean of our shame and to become himself our desperate attempt at repentance by and then take it all away with him into his death. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).” That is the proper way.

So what does all this mean? It means we don’t have to try to get right with God to gain his love. God loves us. Jesus Baptism was for everyone of us, for all of humanity. His baptism was for the fulfillment of righteousness. It was the sign of God the Son taking upon himself every bit of our sin-diseased human state. It is impossible for us to clean our acts up to the point of where we can say, “God, I’m clean. Show me your face.” Jesus baptism put an end to that. It is proper that he would meet us in our living Hells, take upon himself our need to be clean of shame and our attempts to be made righteous, and be baptized for us (a foreshadowing of his death and resurrection), and take it away.

Then, guess what? He came up from the water and the heavens were opened and then God revealed himself. Because of what Jesus had done for the people they saw Jesus God the Son with the Holy Spirit flittering in, over, and through him, and heard the voice of the Father saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased.” The proper way to knowing God is through Jesus Christ doing it all for us. That’s what grace is all about. Those churches who say you’ve got to repent of your sins and believe before you can receive, those churches that don’t accept the baptism of other denominations simply do not appreciate Jesus Baptism for us to it’s full extent and are still dealing in John’s baptism. Jesus baptism was our baptism, our repentance for us. He’s fulfilled righteousness for us. He who didn’t need it has done for us what we cannot do.

So then, what about our baptisms? When we were baptized, we were baptized into Jesus' death that we might be raised with him and live in his life. Ours was not a baptism for repentance, a way for us to clean ourselves up for God. Jesus baptism did that for us. As his baptism foreshadowed his death, resurrection and ascension, so our baptism signifies our participation in those events in him. We’ve died with him. We live with him. We are baptized in Christ not into him. The end result is that freely, on his merit not our own, he gives us his Spirit who unites us to himself so that we hear the Father’s voice saying to and in and through and to everyone of us, “My beloved children. I am well pleased.” Jesus takes us into himself freely. We are in him whether we want to be or not. The Holy Spirit is given to us whether we want him or not. The Father speaks to us personally saying you are my beloved child whether we what to hear it or not.

The Triune God of grace has created new reality, the New Creation, new existence for us through becoming human as Jesus Christ and his taking our sin upon himself and dying with it and then being bodily raised and ascending to the Father in our humanity. This new humanity is humanity in which the image of God has been restored. I am inclined to say that the moment when Jesus came up from the water is the moment in which it is fully revealed that the Trinity has restored his the image to humanity.

Jesus is the lamb which God has sent who takes away the sin of the world. He doesn't just cover it over so that God doesn’t have to look at it. He takes our sin away. He takes it away by the very means of uniting us and it to his very self. No longer are we nor need we be alienated from God. He is with us, in us, always. If ever we feel the fearful need to get ourselves right with God to cure the angst of shame or feel that God is against us we need only point to Jesus baptism and say, “He’s done it all. God is for us not against.”

Our new existence in Christ is that we live in the Communion of love who is the Trinity. We live in the moment of the opened heavens. Set your minds on that. The more we live in the new reality the more it changes us. Worship. Pray. Read the Scriptures. Do kind things. Sing hymns and psalms to yourself. Live in the new reality. Indeed, that’s what Jesus meant when he said repent and believe the Good News that the Kingdom of God is at hand. Faith is not a decision to believe and repent of our sins so that we can be forgiven and go to Heaven when we die. Faith is what arises in the wake of the revelation that as Jesus Christ God has saved humanity from sin and death and indeed given himself to us in such a way as to take us into the grace-filled Life of his very self. Invest your life to this new reality God has brought about through Christ Jesus. It is truly proper to live in the love of the Father freely given to us through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in the communion of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Stewards of God’s Grace

Text: Ephesians 3:1-12

           Some of you may have seen the HBO series Rome a few years back. I very much liked it. It was a spectacular visual glimpse into ancient Rome that enthralled me. There were many things relevant to the New Testament to which it gave visual demonstration such as Jesus returning in clouds of glory. In ancient Rome victorious emperors returning from battle would receiving an eventful parade known as a Triumph. The series Rome portrayed two such Triumphs, Julius Caesar returning from Gaul and the series ending Triumph of Caesar Octavian after his defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra in Egypt. At his Triumph the crowds hail Octavian as Caesar (Lord) and Saviour of the Republic. If I remember correctly, they each rode into Rome perched high upon an elephant while the crowds cheered and threw white fluffy confetti-like stuff, i.e., clouds of glory. Moreover, should one want to know why the announcement of forgiveness was/is so important in the Christian Gospel just note that when a new emperor was enthroned during his Triumph he usually put all his enemies to death. Forgiveness meant a stay of execution and permission to live on in the new kingdom as a prisoner/slave of the Emperor. Paul's understanding of himself as a slave and at times a prisoner of Jesus the Christ should be beginning to make a little sense here.

Another key historical glimpse for me from the series was the character of the Senate Crier. He was a podgy man who went out daily into the forum to inform the public of matters of importance such as the pronouncements of the Senate, current events of the Republic of Rome, public service announcements, and even business advertisements. This character of the Senate Crier and the work he did, for me, shed much light into what Paul must of thought of his role and work of being an administrator of God’s grace charged with proclaiming or rather pronouncing the gospel and, and probably most important, what the gospel itself is. Let me touch on that for a moment.

In ancient Roman and Greek society the crier or herald performed the crucial function of keeping the populace informed of important public matters for the simple fact that most people could not read. When the crier brought news about the emperor or a message straight from the emperor it was called a euangelion which is the Greek word which looks like our word "evangel" and which we translate as gospel. Gospel simply means good news, but of a special variety of good news. As the emperor was considered to be directly related to the gods and in some cases a god himself, an imperial gospel was considered to be an announcement of divine good news and was to be met with great joy and public celebration. Furthermore, an imperial gospel was the pronouncement of the events in the life of the emperor like his birth, coming of age, and ascension to the throne, or a great war victory. Therefore, the first thing we should note about the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is that its correlate in the Roman world was an imperial gospel and it should be interpreted firstly in that light. Our Christian Gospel is a divine/imperial decree concerning Jesus the Christ Lord and Saviour of the cosmos and the Reign (Kingdom) of God.

So, about this Gospel of Jesus Christ, the first gospel pertaining to him was the gospel of great joy that the angels delivered to the shepherds that the Saviour is born. Next, Jesus himself proclaimed the Gospel that the Kingdom of God is at hand therefore repent and believe the good news. And following Jesus, the apostles and prophets and, particularly, the apostle Paul, proclaimed the gospel of the victory and enthronement of Jesous Christos to Kyrios kai Soter hemon, Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour.

The Apostle Paul as an evangelist understood himself to be a servant or slave of Jesus Christ, and as he says here a prisoner of Jesus Christ, sent (which is what apostle actually means, a sent-one) to the Gentiles to proclaim the gospel of and from Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. He would go into towns and cities first to Jewish synagogues and then to the marketplace and like a Senate Crier he would proclaim this gospel: Jesus the Christ is Lord over all creation and he has saved it from sin and death. He was the Son of God born a human descendent of the Judean king David to whom God promised one of his descendents would reign Israel forever. On earth he was rejected by his own people and enthroned by them on a Roman cross to be the atoning sacrifice for our sin and yet, by resurrection from the dead he was publicly and powerfully declared to be Son of God in accordance with the Holy Spirit. He has won the greatest victory of all. By his death and resurrection he has defeated sin and death. All is forgiven. Everyone in Christ Jesus by the free gift of the Holy Spirit is New Creation. He has ascended into heaven where he is exalted and enthroned at the right hand of God our Father and from there through the power of the Holy Spirit he reigns on earth eternally. All peoples,Jew and Gentile alike, are called to serve him under his glorious reign of love and forgiveness. The eternal inheritance promised to the Jews now belongs to everyone. O the unsearchable riches of Christ Jesus. He will return soon for his Triumph and assume his throne here on earth bringing in forever the Reign of God. At that time all of creation will be made new and all peoples will be raised from the dead and judged according to how they have served Jesous Christos to Kyrios tou pantou tou kosmou (Jesus Christ the Lord of all the universe). Grace and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

This gospel proclaims something new that God had irrevocably done. In, through and as Jesus Christ our Lord the Trinity has delivered or saved his creation from sin and death. Jesus is Lord over all things and all peoples and in him by means of union with him through the Holy Spirit this salvation is being enacted. Moreover, as this gospel is a divine gospel, a word of God inspirited with the Holy Spirit which does not return to him having not accomplished the Trinity's purpose in speaking it, it has the power to save, to deliver persons from the realm of darkness into the Reign of God. At the very proclaiming of the Gospel people inexplicably come to have faith in and display faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ. They suddenly find themselves transformed in heart by the personal knowledge of the love of God in Christ Jesus. Wherever we proclaim this gospel people experience themselves as being personally summonsed by God to live under his Reign and in his grace through the indwelling and in-working of the Holy Spirit people are transformed in heart, indeed in nature, and drawn together to form new communities called the ecclesia or church where they live according to the Reign of Christ embodying his love. The Holy Spirit acts in and by means of the proclamation of the gospel to save people now, in the very present, so that by means of this newly created community embodying Christ Jesus all rulers and powers are getting a glimpse of what the wisdom of God looks like.

The gospel is not as it has become; a theological proposition about which we make a rational decision concerning the meaning of the death of Jesus which concerns how we will spend eternity. The gospel is the proclamation of the good news that God has saved his creation and everything and everyone in it from the futility of sin and death. The declaration was signed in Jesus’ obedient life, his death on the cross, his resurrection from death, and his ascension to the right hand of God the Father where he now reigns. He is Lord of all creation. Therefore, we in Christ are now presently being saved from sin and death, set free to live under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The question to us now is not whether or not we rationally believe the Gospel so that we can be entitled to its outcome. Rather, since salvation is the new reality enacted in and by Jesus Christ, the question is are we going to live our freedom in Christ or are we going to sit back in fear and continue to live like slaves to sin and death. Are we just going to continue to live like everyone else around us or live in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ? If this is our aim, then we need the church and to be the church. The church is the place on earth where God’s grace is present and administrated. To participate in the life and mission of a Christ-centered church is participation in the Reign, the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

God the Father through Jesus Christ the Son our Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit by means of the proclamation of the Gospel has made us to be like Paul, administrators or stewards of the Trinity's grace which is his presence with us, his favour bestowed upon us, and his acting on our behalf. God’s presence, his favour, and his acting on behalf of people is here in the midst of Christian fellowship and we are entrusted to see to its proper administration. We, the church of Jesus Christ, are the living result of the living word of God which is and undergirds the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, our task is that of living our lives together in a way that is worthy of the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord and as Lord he doesn't behead his enemies at his Triumph. Rather, he forgives them. We must live lives that are compelled by the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord and do this together as the community that embodies the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Since Jesus Christ is Lord, we are free and by the Holy Spirit enabled to live as those not encumbered by addictions of all sorts, by materialism and greed, by hatred and unforgiveness, and by shame and guilt. The old life is gone a new has begun. The secret to living the new life in Christ is not focusing our energies on leaving the old life behind, but rather to fight that fight by immersing ourselves in the new life found in Christ Jesus growing in him by sharing our lives together in loving Christian community, meditation on Scripture, prayer, worship, being compassionate. At his Triumph when we are raised from the dead and asked to give account for our lives, crowns and robes will not be given for hard work poured into leaving the old life behind or even for believing the right things. Rather, crowns and robes will be given for how we have lived the new life freely given in Christ in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. We are stewards of God’s grace. May we live graciously. Amen.

* For grammatical and theological reasons Ephesians 3:12 should be translated "in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence by his fidelity" rather than "in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through our faith in him."