The Peace of Christ

Text: John 20:19-31

This passage from John is one of those that quite poetically describes what the church is. It says that: 1) Jesus the crucified is alive and in our midst; 2) in an act of New Creation he's breathed the very life of the Triune God of grace into his followers so that there is now an inseparable union between us and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and 3) Jesus raised and present and our union with him becomes evident as we devote ourselves to the work of reconciliation which is being a community of human beings who are able to love, serve, and forgive as Jesus has done for each of us. Therefore, for the church, reconciliation is our business and nothing else. We are to be the community where human brokenness is healed. If we make our reason for existence anything else we are not the Church of Jesus Christ.

Let us use our imaginations for a moment and put ourselves there in that room with the disciples that evening when Jesus appeared to them. Here we are utterly heartbroken, utterly confused. We've closed the doors and locked them, hiding because we're terrified for our lives. What are we going to do now? The crowds, the authorities – THEM – they crucified Jesus; mocked him, spit on him. He was a bloody mess. We barely could recognize him. Violence! What will they do to us? Jesus hadn’t done anything wrong. Pilate declared Jesus innocent of any charge, but our people, especially our leaders wanted Jesus dead and they want us in the least to be disbanded. Pilate himself had even realized there was an odd “authority” about Jesus; afraid of Jesus I would say. He certainly wanted the priests to know there was something more to Jesus so he “enthroned” him on that cross beneath the title “King of the Jews”. That really ticked off the priests. Is there going to be another revolt? That's not what Jesus wanted! What will they do to us? But wasn't it true? Jesus was the Messiah, wasn't he? What are we going to do now? We really had hoped that Jesus was the Messiah. We came here to Jerusalem really expecting that he was going to get rid of that sham of power entrenched in the Temple and send the Romans “hameward tae think again.” But where's the kingdom of God? Where is it? He's dead. What now? What about us? And what's this that Mary and the other women are saying? His tomb is empty? Jesus is alive? Raised from the dead? They say he said we should go to Galilee and meet him there. This is getting crazy! What are we going to do now?

That’s a good question even for us 2,000 years later? What are we going to do? Maybe by now you're getting the sense of the disillusionment, of the monster emotional roller coaster they were on; torn with fear, grief, doubt, and...faith. And then in the midst of all that Jesus appears to them. Out of nowhere, King Jesus, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, Jesus their Beloved, Jesus their Lord and God appears risen from the dead. Then King Jesus says to them not “Grab your swords. The angels are coming,” but rather, “Peace be with you.” He shows them his wounds and they are moved to joy.  It really is him and he is raised from the dead. He had died and come out the other side.

Then, Jesus again says “Peace be with you.” but, this time adding (and I paraphrase) “As the Father sent me with all his authority to establish the Kingdom of God so also I am sending you forth in my own authority to establish the Kingdom of God (and I will be with you).” And then he performs this act of New Creation; he breathes upon them the breath of New Creation life that is in him, the Holy Spirit. Just as in Genesis the Trinity breathed into Adam the breath of life so that Adam became a living being, so Jesus here breathes the breath of New Creation life, into these children of Adam, that they may be children of God. Then Jesus sends them forth not to go to war to establish his Kingdom nor with moral authority over a society but rather imbued with the authority to forgive or not to forgive the sins of others; thus, God-given power to do the work of reconciliation. Weird kingdom, eh?...not of this world!

Jesus has come not to create buildings on street corners housing institutions associated with him in name only, rather, he has come to create, get this, a new humanity; a new humanity that is distinguished by his peace which is his own presence with us and our union to him in the Holy Spirit. His peace is a gift. It is the breath of the new life of his resurrected humanity freely given to his followers. Just as the Trinity breathed simple life, existential life into humanity in the first place now through Jesus he breathes the new life of his very self into humanity, the Holy Spirit. This gift, this new gift of new humanity thrives in the intrauterine waters of a people empowered by Jesus to carry out the work of reconciliation. This peace that he gives us grows in and through our work of making peace amongst ourselves as a congregation and in all our relationships. Jesus' new humanity comes to us to create new human community, people who gather together to be intentional about healing the brokenness that sin has brought about in their lives.

Let us not take for granted this gift of peace that Jesus has given the communities of people who gather in his name. The image of this peace, the image of God, can be yet again marred if we retain, or grasp upon the sins of others with judgmentalism rather than unconditional love and the sincere desire to see them healed. The image is disfigured beyond recognition when we blatantly refuse to do the work of amends-making for the injuries we ourselves have caused others and when we intentionally hold on to hate, begrudging others. Jesus’ Kingdom truly is a different sort of kingdom. The peace of Christ is the direct result of the good news of his kingdom come, of the Trinity having acted within history to save his creation in, through, and as Jesus of Nazareth the Christ, our risen Lord. The Christian faith, the Church, is not about a system of personal beliefs or ideas and ideals of religion nor is our purpose preserving morality and higher social virtues in an immoral culture that lacks virtue. Rather, we are about the peace of Christ embodied in human community. We are the new humanity made alive by the Trinity’s sending, giving, and placing his very self as Jesus Christ into the old humanity and putting it to death and them making it anew through himself, a newness which becomes visible as we his followers go about the ministry of reconciliation.

There is a practice that many churches do that I think every church ought to do every week. It's the practice of greeting one another with the peace of Christ. It is done to give body and voice to the reconciling and transforming work Jesus himself is here doing in our midst through the Holy Spirit. He is here breathing on us making us to be the new humanity evidenced in reconciliation that will come to it’s completion at his return. To say to another person, “the peace of Christ be with you” is to say “I want everything that Jesus came, lived, died, was raised and reigns for to take effect in you and this gesture, take it or leave it, embodies it.” It is to say, “I want you to know personally the steadfast love and faithfulness of God the Father.” It is to say, “I want you to be filled with the Holy Spirit and made new.” “I want you to know peace in your relationships in such a way as only the God who made you can give it.” It is to say, “You are forgiven. I am forgiven. Indeed, there is nothing that separates us from the love of the Trinity in Jesus Christ.”  Greeting others with the peace of Christ just may be the greatest work of evangelism the church can do.

This act of extending the peace of Christ seemed to start making its rounds in the 90’s back in the days when I was in seminary as a rebirth of an early church tradition. It was amazing to hear the stories that ministers had and still have in getting their congregations to turn to one another on Sunday morning and say, “the peace of Christ be with you.” Most churches had no problem with turning to the people sitting around them and saying “Good morning.” But to say, “the peace of Christ be with you,” was a different matter. It was a little too much Jesus for many and resistance arose. There have actually been instances where church members have secretly organized to get rid of their minister for introducing “the peace of Christ” into the worship service.

In my last church I was overjoyed with the way they received it. When we first did it, I said, “Please, stand and turn and great one another in the peace of Christ.” I was expecting that they would just turn to those seated nearby and say it like they do in the big churches that do it; but there was suddenly a spontaneous eruption of each person getting up and walking around having to go to every person to extend the peace so that each received it from all. I was caught off guard by that like a small taste of what the disciples were caught of guard on that night when Jesus appeared to them. That act of spontaneity made evident, made visible to me “Jesus is here.” In that liturgical act of peacemaking Jesus became evidently present in our midst.

There is a song about the peace of Christ that I’d like to share with you and maybe we can sing it together. Glen Soderholm wrote it. It’s a reflection upon Psalm 133 which reads: “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the LORD ordained his blessing, life forevermore.”

The Peace of Christ

May the peace of Christ be with and also with you.
May the peace of Christ be with you in all you do.

Its like the precious oil that flows down Aaron’s beard.

And as dew falls from the mountain

The blessing bursts forth here.

So we throw down all our weapons and the things we long to control.

And call now for Jesus’ presence

To restore our very souls.

We turn now from the solitaryto the dance of kindred hearts
 And laughing with each other

As each one takes their part.

The peace of Christ be with you. Amen.

Salvation Belongs to Our God Who Sits on the Throne and to the Lamb

Text: Revelation 7:9-17

Twenty or so years ago the Monty Python cast made a movie called The Meaning of Life in which they attempted to address the question of “What is the meaning of life?” They got into a wide variety of issues. One was the Roman Catholic Church and birth control. The question that arose in that segment was, “If the meaning of life is procreation, what do you do with all the excess children?” The Monty Python answer was of course donate them to scientific experimentation. They then asked is the meaning of life simply to eat, drink, and be merry. For this, they did a skit of an extremely heavy man going to a restaurant and eating everything on the menu. Pardon my crudeness, but he ate and called for the bucket and ate and called for the bucket. At the end of the meal after eating everything on the menu, the waiter taunted him with an after-dinner mint which he repeatedly refused not being able to eat another bite. But, finally he gave in, ate the mint and exploded; and all that was left of him was a rib cage containing an alarm clock for a heart. Then they asked what if the meaning of life is making money. Their answer involved pirates conducting hostile corporate take-overs; except, the pirate ships were skyscrapers moving about the streets of Manhattan. The pirate skyscraper would ram the skyscraper of the corporation it wanted to take over and corporate exec pirates would jump aboard and after much sword fighting, take over. Their point with the movie, I think, is that we are not going to find the meaning of life with our current approaches because they are in the end absurd. Nevertheless, it’s still a difficult question in the broad spectrum of things. We all do search for meaning.

We all have our questions and “what's the meaning of life” probably does not top our lists. At the top of many of our lists is “Why, God, do you let so much evil happen?” The Trinity does have an answer, but I’m afraid the answer is a bit wanting from our perspective, and for the most part, not what we want to hear. Myself, I’m convinced that the Trinity’s answer is, was, and will be in the form of Revelation 7:10; an innumerable number of redeemed people standing in the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in white robes, holding palm branches, and shouting loudly, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Now, if I were a non-believer I think I would laugh at this point in the sermon. It certainly does sound as if I just surpassed Monty Python in the absurdity department. If I were agnostic and somewhat antagonistic against the church, I would say, “Why do you Christians always have to start talking about who’s saved and who isn’t?” Yet, I think the Revelation 7:10 answer is relevant especially when we begin to consider why we ask questions with respect to meaning and holding God accountable in the first place. These are difficult, emotion-laden questions that recognize that if there is a God then either something has gone drastically wrong in that God’s creation and/or that God just doesn’t care. Why is that we have to search for meaning? Why is it that in the Trinity’s good creation we find ourselves feeling abandoned? Why is it that in Trinity’s good creation everything has to suffer violence and be violent, everything? The answer to those questions is blatantly sin, we are fallen and fall short of our created purpose and what a Hell on earth has come about from it. As one of my former New Testament professors, Paul Achtemeier, used to say, “The consequence of sin is having to live with the consequences of sin”. Even so, the answer is, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.” If we are looking for things to be put to right in this world then our Father who sits on the throne and Jesus the Lamb by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit are who are going to make things right.

Let’s step into the Revelation for a moment. There are two questions that this acclamation/proclamation of praise in Revelation 7:10 addresses. Give me a minute to root them out. At the beginning of chapter six the Lamb begins to open the seven seals that were on the scroll of the Father’s sovereign will for his creation as it will be played out in the context of our history. It involves plagues and wars and stuff and I am not saying things like that are the Father's will but that his will has been, is being, and will be done amidst our context of plagues and wars and stuff. The first seal brought a white horse that came to conquer. He is imperialistic war. The second seal was a red horse wielding the sword of wanton violence. The third seal brought a black horse that let loose unjust and unfair economic practices. The fourth seal brought a pale horse who unleashed wanton death on a fourth of the earth. In a nutshell, these horse and riders are not the Trinity’s wrath poured upon the earth. Rather, they represent the consequence of sin, and particularly the consequence of war. The consequence of sin is having to live with the consequences of sin and it is a mess. The four horses are what have happened because we humans became alienated from our Creator.

The fifth seal brought forth the voice of those who have been martyred for being faithful. They ask the first question. “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” Indeed, has their faithfulness mattered? Does the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit simply wink at evil or will he pass judgement on it? Oddly and maybe unsatisfactorily, as an answer they are given white robes and told to wait a little longer until the number of the martyrs is complete.

The sixth seal is then opened. I call it the seal of the Gospel for the Word of the Trinity’s grace and love spoken in the incarnation of God the Son in Jesus Christ is a catastrophic Word the shakes the powers and utterly turns them upside down and inside out so that they hide in fear. Everyone who is not under the altar asks the second question, “Who can stand?”. The Revelation reads, “They called to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?’” Who can stand by their own merit before the Triune God of grace and glory revealed to us in Jesus Christ?

Well apparently, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will make it so that an innumerable multitude will stand before him, the tribulation ended, praising him and shouting, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.” Nowhere else is there salvation. Not in Mohammed, not in Moses, not in Buddha, not in Spirituality, not in Nature, not in Progress, not in Technology, not in Wealth, not in Power, not in Politics, not in Altruism, and certainly not in Self. Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. This is what so many churches are not saying today or are totally misunderstanding.

John leans on the Old Testament for his definition of salvation; something that the church in the West has not done since the fourth century when the Roman empire ceased persecuting us and instead institutionalized us. A survey of the Old Testament on what it is to be saved discloses that Salvation is the Trinity's actively delivering his people from evil, from oppression, from the consequences of sin as I mentioned earlier, and even from our own idolatry, and then ultimately from death. The Trinity presently acts in our lives to deliver us, to rescue us from our own demise in sin. John says the Trinity will spread his tent over us to protect us. This is metaphorical language for the Trinity sheltering us with his own presence, the Holy Spirit, now and forever. This sheltering is the washing of our robes in the blood of the Lamb that reconciles us to the Trinity, the washing made possible only by Jesus’ once and for all atoning death on the cross by which he has made us able to stand. The Trinity does not remove us from the trial of faith that this world brings against us. Rather, he saves us by sheltering us with his very self until we come out the other side of it. Only in true biblical faith do we find a God, any god, so actively present with his people as to shelter them within his very self.

Finally, in the midst of God’s sheltering we have Jesus the Lamb as our shepherd who leads us to living water. The Trinity does not shelter us so that we can do our own thing. The way to living water, water that heals, is in following Jesus Christ who set us the example of being faithful even unto death and makes able to be faithful. Healing is another strongly Testament understanding of salvation. The way of the cross is the way of new life in Christ. This way is a total reorientation of our self’s, in fact a dying to the self, in actively seeking to love the Lord with our entire mind, being, heart, and capabilities and our neighbour as ourselves. It’s training the mind to pray and meditate upon Scripture. It’s letting our entire being be present to the Lord. It’s training our hearts to worship. It’s using our capabilities to serve the Lord and one another. It’s the obedience of wasteful and extravagant love for others.

Back to where I started, we do have difficult painful questions that overshadow our lives and in most cases seek to destroy not only our faith but ourselves in the process. What is the meaning of life when so much seems meaningless? Why does the Trinity let so much senseless evil persist in his Creation? In a nutshell, sin is a reality and the consequence of sin is having to live with the consequences of sin and it get's evil. Why the Trinity doesn't act immediately to end it is a question still left hanging. Yet, do know that in the midst of our brokenness the Father is sheltering us with the presence of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, stand up and follow the Lamb to the living water; the spring of healing that is in him. Amen.

Then I Heard Every Creature in Heaven and on Earth

Text: Revelation 5:1-14

In the wake of the near total collapse of the U.S. banking industry in 2008 the U.S. government went looking for culprits to blame, culprits who took advantage of the U.S. Government's negligence to appropriately regulate the banking industry in ways that protect the little people. It took two years for the U.S. government’s Securities and Exchanges Commission to finally find a culprit and it was Goldman Sachs, Wall Street’s biggest investment firm whom they charged only with fraud.

Oddly, catching people at Goldman Sachs in a criminal act was a bit of a shocker on the streets. We the investors like to assume that the biggest, wealthiest, and most powerful investment firm in the world who has a hand in just about everybody's financial security in one way or another would be or must be somehow impeccably honest. In this world of "Onceler's" who go on biggering and BIGGERING and BIGGERING at all cost, why would we assume that the biggest of the big guys got there honestly and without eating a lot of puppies in this dog eat dog world. We are truly naive when it comes to the assumptions we make about the people and the institutions in whom we must place ultimate trust. We so often do so without question particularly if it appears that there is a better than average payoff.

So, what did the big dog do? Well, it appears that another company came to Goldman Sachs to get them to create a hedge fund in mortgages at the time when the housing market was starting to collapse. This other company knew the hedge fund would loose heavily and so they bought insurance to protect themselves and when the inevitable collapse happened they wound up making a lot of money; i.e., they were speculating on people losing their homes and made a lot of money doing it; and, its apparently legal to do that. Goldman Sachs was charged with fraud because they weren’t telling other investors that this hedge fund was actually set up to lose money. You see, hedge funds are supposed to protect against losses. This sort of risky tricky business was one of the puppy-eating practices in the banking industry that helped cause the recession from which the global economy is still recovering. One wonders if the collapse of the housing market in the U.S. would have been less devastating if the world's biggest wealth generator had done more to protect homeowners rahtering than appearing to have had an interest in wanting to see the housing market collapse. Nevertheless, a handful of very wealthy and powerful big dogs profited from it while everyone else suffered.

To rant a little more, for the life of me I cannot understand why anybody with any moral or ethical sense would call the investment business “securities and exchanges”. There is nothing secure about it and the fact that people would speculate and indeed prosper on people losing something as fundamental to their existence as their jobs and their homes just makes me want to vomit. Just because governments say they regulate these exchanges in no way makes them secure. We live in the midst of and are vulnerable to a global economy in which the only certainty is that greed and power lust will find a way and that a few will inevitably prosper at the unfortunate expense of the multitude of others. Indeed, Capitalism needs greed to thrive.

Speaking for myself as a puppy who is ultimately powerless before power and greed, I tend to become a bit of a conspiracy theorist and ask what or who is behind it all. It is staggering that a couple of big and powerful Wall Street wolves can have the means to nearly destroy the global economy and yet profit from it. Should we call the whole business Satanic or evil? It certainly seems that way. Yet, let's not be so brazen. There is good behind it all too. The global free market economy has proven thus far to be the best way to raise the living standards of all peoples. The one thing we can say for sure is that this global economy is fallen just as we each are. It is good and evil at the same time, just as we each are. But anyway, what is the really real reality behind this economy in which we are forced to find security? Is it truly free, simply blown by the winds of “market forces”? Or, are there really some people, just a handful of people behind it who make a game of making it do what they want? Who can know?

Well, in the face of global economic insecurities and exchanges the Book of Revelation leads us to make the bold assertion that the will and reign of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is ultimately driving the reality behind the world in which we live. Though it may appear to us that all Hell has broken loose in human history, what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is doing in history will culminate in every creature every where, and indeed all of creation, worshipping him in wonder, love, and praise. The culmination of history is beautifully summarized in the testimony of this elderly, exile named John the Beloved. He says, “I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever!’” The security that we have to lean on in the midst of overwhelming insecurities is that no matter whatever evil may befall us (and it will) when all is said and done what the Trinity has in store for his creation is so unimaginably good that the universe and every creature therein will be spontaneously moved to worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This “vision” here in chapter five of the Revelation is about human history, indeed the history of all creation, that it is integrally bound to Jesus Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Lamb who was slain, God the Son become human, the one who is in his very being the indestructible reconciliation of God and humanity (Col. 1:22), the one whose very existence says we are forgiven of the evil we have done and will be healed of this disease of Sin which perpetrates Evil and leads only to Death. Jesus crucified and risen, as John the Beloved says, is the only one worthy to open the scroll which contains the will of the Trinity for his creation in history. Human history is integrally bound to Jesus Christ. Only Jesus can reveal and effect the will of the Trinity. He is the Risen Lord of the universe. The Apostle Paul says that he is "the icon of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. All things in the heavens and on the earth were created by him, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers. All things were created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things are held together so that he himself may become the first in everything." (Col. 1:15-18).

So, what is the reality behind what is going on in this, our world, in which every person and every event is both good and evil? The question might be better stated as who is the reality behind this fallen reality because everything that goes on in this universe is integrally tied to him. Reality is that Jesus the Lord has conquered so let us worship. The Trinity gave Sin, Death, Evil, and the Evil One enough rope and we hung the Incarnate Lord of the universe instead of ourselves. Yet, the cross was a victory. It was a victory over Sin and Death that in the end reconciles us to the Trinity curing us of our alienation from him, each other and the whole Creation. The cross was a victory, a victory proved when God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead publicly declaring him to be the Son and making a public spectacle of all other powers. There was nothing private about the resurrection, no "believe it and you will see it". Indeed, the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is better attested than nearly any other event of the first century. Jesus was raised and therefore has defeated Sin and Death and Evil at its own game. He absorbed it to himself and died with it. God the Son, became fallen human being, sinful human flesh and suffered death yet subjecting it all to the power of his indestructible life (Heb. 7:16). He took Sin and Death into death and the Father ever loving, ever faithful did not leave him there. Rather, in the power of the bond of the Trinity's indestructible relationship within himself the Father, by the powerful power of love raised Jesus the Son from death still incarnate, still with a human body and the scars to prove it. Jesus is the firstborn from the dead and the Seed of the New Creation. In him, through him, as him Humanity has been saved.

Now, in the power of the Holy Spirit Jesus is calling forth people to live in his resurrected life, his life that has passed through death; to live freed from slavery to sin and death and to proclaim the Good News of Creation’s salvation. He calls us forth from the tomb of Adam to speak prophetically and to live prophetically against Sin, Death, and Evil in this world even at the expense of their own lives. In the way of the cross lies the reality of the New Life in Christ.

Jesus has bought, ransomed, redeemed people from the slavery of sin to be people of God and he did it at the price of his own blood. My saying "the price of his blood" is not some sort of revivalist gimmick to get us all to feel guilty. To the Hebrew, the blood was the life of a person or animal. On the annually recurring Day of Atonement blood from a bull and a goat sacrificially slaughtered was life that had passed through the death. The High Priest took that blood-life that had passed through death and sprinkled it on the people, all over the Temple, and finally on the Mercy Seat which was the lid of he Ark of the Covenant where the Presence of he LORD abided so that the people and the LORD were united in that blood-life that had passed through death. Also on that day, the High Priest would whisper the sins of the people upon another goat, the scapegoat, who would bear them off into the wilderness where it was certain to be devoured. Accordingly, Jesus gave his life once and for all, passed through death, and has sprinkled us with the Holy Spirit uniting us to himself and bringing us to share in his relationship with the Father. He absorbed to himself our sin and death and bore it out into the wilderness of death where it has been destroyed. No longer shall we fear it.

Moving on, Jesus bought us so that we might be the people through whom the Trinity's will is being done on earth as it is in heaven; God’s people. As God’s people, we are a kingdom of priests called to lead the entire Creation in worship. We are an organized realm of blood-life sprinkled all over this earth through whem the reign of God is becoming evident. Unfortunately, there is a lot in the news that tells the world that the church is still a fallen, human organization where good and evil happen; but even still, within this institution called the church, the reign of God breaks forth.

I once went to a healing service at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian in Brampton. The Trinity actually healed people. Some physically, some emotionally; people got healed – in a Presbyterian church of all places. This wasn’t at some snake-handling-quasi-faith-healing-freaky-deaky-TV preacher-for profit revival. It was Saint Andrew’s, the Presbyterian big steeple in Brampton. Jesus is alive and reigns and his reign is breaking through in the church despite the church!

Jesus has paid the price and made us to be priests who lead Creation’s worship. We have immediate access to God. We proclaim forgiveness. We pray. We worship. In this fallen world we are those who say “worthy is the lamb who was slain” and we do so boldly in the face of those who slaughter the innocents for greed and power lust.

Wrapping up, what’s behind the free market economy is in the speculative realm of conspiracy theorists because it has to remain hidden to do the evil that it does. Yet, the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the Who of the What that the Trinity is doing to save his creation and us with it is made known freely. It may sound lame or far-fetched to say that reality is that God the Father loves his creation and us so much that God the Son willingly became human and was crucified to defeat the powers of Sin, Death, and Evil through death and resurrection; and that he has purchased people from among all peoples by the gift of God the Holy Spirit to be God’s kingdom and his priests. In the end every creature on earth and in heaven will worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in New Creation. It may sound weak and far-fetched to profess that the Trinity's love and will are where our security is, but…look at the alternative. Do we live and die for the security of securities and exchanges where greedy people full of power lust do things like speculate and make money on people losing their homes because they can and because they can get away with it? Not me. I say, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing! To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever!” Let us take up the way of the cross and in living proclamation live the abundant life of Jesus' and his empty tomb. Let the whole creation say, “Amen”. Amen.

The Reconciling Breath of God

Text: John 20:19-23; Philippians 2:5-13

During my first summer in ordained ministry back in 1997 there was a week-long continuing education event that Presbytery required me to attend on the topic of the first year of ministry. One of the things that we talked about was maintaining our devotional lives. Pastors of all people should do that and you would be amazed the number of us who let it go. In one of the seminars they called in a man whom I shall refer to as the Synod guru to talk to us about spirituality. I arrived in the classroom to find books on meditation, candles, CD’s with relaxing music, and the lights had been dimmed. And then he arrived, the “Maharishi of the Synod of the Trinity” from Camphill, PA. He was in his mid-50’s, dressed all in white, and had somehow managed to achieve flowing white hair. If he had a golden sash and scepter, he could easily have passed for the Apostle John’s vision of the heavenly Jesus at the beginning of the Book of Revelation. I can’t explain precisely why, but I got really angry, an anger that needless to say kept me from fully appreciating the guided meditation he led us through. I wanted to grab the man’s neck like Homer Simpson getting a hold on Bart and scream at him, “Don’t give me none of them Baby Boomer, narcissistic, self-indulgent, feel good, candles and voodoo tricks. If you want to know about spirituality then go feed the poor.” I didn’t though. I saved it for the whole class later that day when we talked about what the man had said and done. He really made me mad.

I have to be careful of what I say here. I don’t want to be misunderstood as dismissing the spiritual life of another human being and especially the Maharishi of the Synod of the Trinity, PCUSA. But I would like simply to highlight that we must be careful with our definition of spirituality. What he was teaching us was coming dangerously close to confusing the Spirit of God with getting in touch with our human ability to have “numinous” experience. We live in a highly stressed, pragmatic, scientific, and technological culture that does not have much room for the intuitive, mystical, or dare I say psychic side of being human. What the Maharishi guy was doing was teaching us how to open those doors. That’s not a bad thing. It can help us experience this life more fully and can help us to hear Christ speak to us. The problem is that it is dangerously individualistic and too often a person can let their intuitive experiences supplant the role of reason, reality and community which are crucial elements of a truly Christian definition of spirituality.

As I read my Bible there is no call for us to get more “spiritual” meaning more “numinous”. Rather, the Gospel call is for us to live the new life that the Father has freely given to us with and in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit – the life of laying aside any rights or claims we might have to the power to serve ourselves and give ourselves to Christ Jesus for the love and service of others not ourselves.  Truly Christian spirituality is living in conformity to the cross within the community of faith.  Christian spirituality is community oriented over and above being an simply an individual practice.  The quintessential passage of Scripture for us as disciples of Jesus the crucified and risen One is Galatians 2:20-21: “ I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Living the risen life with Jesus in this fallen world is living a life of conformity to Jesus' way of the cross and in that giving of the self, indeed dying of the self in the practice of being for others, we discover the risen life which is truly his presence with us. This way of life certainly will involve such things as contemplative prayer and sitting in the Trinity's presence meditating on Scripture the result of which will be our being reoriented, indeed recreated, around Jesus' resurrected life which he gives to us in the Holy Spirit which is life laid down for others in a community that reflects the image of the self-emptying, self-giving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Christian life doesn’t involve simply the “spiritual” side of life. It involves the whole life – mind, body, spirit, purpose, effort. We disciples of Jesus do not simply awaken our “spiritual” dimension and call that the Christian faith. Rather, we welcome the Trinity’s gracious life giving presence and friendship into our lives as he has welcomed is into his and it is a relationship with himself to which he has welcomed us. Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into us, upon us, and indeed into the very air we breath uniting us to himself so that we share with him his relational bond with God the Father in the Holy Spirit. The transformational effect of our new union with Jesus through the Holy Spirit as partakers of the divine life is the continual cleansing or removal from our lives of the brokenness we feel in ourselves and our relationships and our experience of alienation or being separated from God. He gives us peace, a new communion with the the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit among a new community of people, a community distinguished by forgiveness that leads to reconciliation. For the disciples of Jesus, the “spiritual life” is no private matter. It is primarily an effort to live in community with others in a cruciform way – in the image of Christ reflecting the self-emptying, self-giving love of the relational communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Let us back off the theology for a minute and visit our passage from John. We find the disciples are behind closed doors and afraid. Jesus comes to them to give them peace, to prove that he the resurrected One is still the same One who was crucified, to breathe the Holy Spirit upon them, and to commission them to go forth into the world to spread his peace through the real work of reconciliation. I would step out on a limb here and say that John is using an experience the disciples jointly had of the resurrected Jesus to describe what it is like when we gather together as Christ’s body. We will not see him for he’s ascended but he has given us his peace to sit in together and to rest in together, a peace who is the Holy Spirit, and a peace that manifests itself within our worship and fellowship.

This act of Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit upon his disciples is him breathing the breath, the very life of God onto, into, and around his disciples to bring forth the fulfillment of the Word God the Father has spoken through the incarnation of the Son as Jesus the Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a very Trinitarian act. The Father speaks the Word as Christ Jesus and the breath of God, the Holy Spirit, creates the Word in us, the Word of reconciliation and new humanity. Just as the Trinity and humanity are united in the physical body of Christ, so are we joined together in him and into his union with the Father, into his resurrected and ascended life by in-breathing his breath, receiving his Spirit, and accepting his mission of reconciliation.

There’s a lot of talk today about spiritual experience. A question many people ask is what does God feel like. The generation that came of age in the 60’s and ever since has been hungry for a God that can be really experienced. The underlying though is that if God cannot be experienced, then God is not real. I think John here gives us an indication as to what we should feel in our experience of God whom we know as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and it is the peace of Christ, the assurance of the steadfast love and faithfulness of the Trinity towards us. It goes beyond a simple peace of mind that some find in simply knowing they are forgiven. Pentecostals talk about the anointing or the blessing. St. Augustine and many of the mystics of the church talk about simply being overwhelmed with a feeling of being loved by God and having a love for God. It is something that is not part of everyday life. It comes from beyond us but undergirds every bit of life as we know it in the whole of creation. Yet, we must always stand back and humbly admit that “me” talking about “my” feelings or experience of God is simply talk of my experience of God and in all humility and respect my experience of God is not God. It is just how I experience him.

A true experience of the Trinity will lead us firstly to want to be part of Christian community because it is in the gathering of two or three that we find Christ. Jesus said “where two or three are gathered in my name there I will be in their midst.” The Holy Spirit calls us to Christian community because it is in the cruciform relationships of the community of faith that God is most clearly at work to heal human brokenness with his love, indeed his very self. As God is the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit so is the church to be a communion of self-emptying healing love and support, a communion of true friendship.

Secondly, the distinguishing mark of the Holy Spirit’s presence in people is the desire to forgive and be forgiven and to be reconciled and indeed working towards that end. To forgive those who’ve hurt us and to seek forgiveness from those we have hurt is the one key spiritual discipline in the Christian life. When we do that we experience the work of reconciliation that Jesus was sent here to do. If you truly want to experience God then begin to ask yourself whom you need to forgive and who needs to forgive you and then work at reconciling. Ask how you can in all humility give yourself to and for one who is your enemy. Do that and you for certain will be experiencing Christ and will come to know him most fully, the Crucified and Risen One. Moreover begin to build all your friendships on the sure foundation of Christ's peace, the unconditional love by which he welcomes you into his life. You will find that the Holy Spirit, who is the grace of God and the peace of Christ is very present with you and in you when you work towards these things. Amen.