An Audacious Prayer

Text: Luke 18:9-14

Several years ago then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the US to make a speech at the UN.  While there, he made the audacious request to visit Ground Zero of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center to pay his respects.  This happened during the federal election season and so the request became fodder for immediate responses from both the Republican and Democrat presidential candidates.  Republican contender Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York on 9/11, said, "Under no circumstances…This is a man who has made threats against America and Israel, is harbouring Bin Laden's son and other al-Qaeda leaders, is shipping arms to Iraqi insurgents and is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. Assisting Ahmadinejad in touring Ground Zero – hallowed ground for all Americans – is outrageous."  Another Republican candidate Mitt Romney said, "Ahmadinejad's shockingly audacious request should be met with a vehement no. It's inconceivable that any consideration would be given to the idea of entertaining the leader of a state sponsor of terror at Ground Zero. This would deeply offend the sensibilities of Americans from all corners of our nation. Instead of entertaining Ahmadinejad, we should be indicting him."

Regardless of your opinion of the former Iranian president, one cannot help but admit that, considering the relationship between the two nations and the rhetoric that was exchanged, President Ahmadinejad’s request to visit Ground Zero is pretty much off the scale when it comes to audacity.  For the sake of definition, audacity can mean daring to or willingness to challenge assumptions or conventions and it can also mean showing a complete lack of respect toward another person.  Ahmadinejad would have seen his request as audacious in the first respect.  Most others took it as the second.

Well, in comparison, this tax collector coming into the temple in Jerusalem to pray would have appeared to some as being audacious and the some to whom I refer are the self-righteous such as this Pharisee who thought of himself as being righteous and looked with contempt on others such as the tax collector whom he considered to be unrighteous even wicked.  Tax collectors back then were usually Jewish people appointed by the Romans to collect taxes for Caesar.  They were often quick to use extortion and always took a little extra for themselves. Most Jews in Jesus’ day looked upon tax collectors as traitorous scum who had rejected their Jewish birthright as one of God’s chosen people for the love of money and power.  The Pharisees in particular would have looked down upon tax collectors because they believed themselves to be the only people in Israel to be upholding the righteous requirements of the Law of Moses that came with their birthright as the chosen people of God.  In the eyes of the Pharisee, this tax collector’s presence in the temple would be akin to the audacity of President Ahmadinejad should he have gone to Ground Zero.

But, the presence of the tax collector in the temple is not where the gross audacity lay in this text.  Rather, it lies in his prayer, his request.  We have here that he prays, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  It is translated this way because we no longer have the concept in the English language and in Western culture of what he actually prays.  He is not simply asking God to be merciful to him because he is a sinner. There is a word in the Greek language “eleeo” which means to have mercy, but that is not the verb he uses.  In fact, Luke uses that word exclusively for physical healing from diseases. Lepers and blind people come to Jesus asking for mercy and he heals them.  The tax collector is not asking for a pardon for conscious sake or for a healing and thus was not asking for mercy.

The tax collector uses a different verb which we wrongfully translate as mercy.  He uses the verb, “hilaskomai”, which in this sentence would mean “be for me the sacrifice that removes my sin so that you may show favour or deal graciously me”.  The mercy this tax collector asks for is that God himself be the sacrifice that atones for his sin so that God can show him grace.  That is one very audacious prayer. Asking, pleading with, begging God to be his sacrifice. That was unheard of and indeed would have been considered blasphemous especially from the mouth of a tax collector.  We don’t know why he would ask such a thing other than that his own sense of sinfulness, of shame, of having betrayed his birthright was so great that he knew there was nothing…no lamb, no goat, no bull…that he could bring as a sacrifice that could reconcile him to God due to the extent of his wickedness.

Yet, this prayer in all its audacity is the central message of the Christian faith as we have it in the Bible.  God the Son himself became the man Jesus of Nazareth by the love and will of God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit and has indeed become the sacrifice that atones for all humanity’s sin so that the Trinity can be gracious with us.  The Triune God of grace has made it so that we can have unhindered access to his very self through union with Christ Jesus the Son in the Holy Spirit.  Jesus’ death on the cross was truly more than a mere political tragedy.  He was indeed bearing unto death humanity’s sin in his body so that sin and its stain of shame, guilt, and fear may be removed so that we can be clean in heart by the free gift God’s presence with us as the Holy Spirit who brings us together in reconciling human community.

Saying that Jesus’ death was a sacrifice is very unpopular these days, actually for the last two centuries.  Modernity in its arrogance dismissed this reality outright by thinking we are smart enough to know that sacrifice is not what its ideal of a loving and good god does.  Theologians and biblical scholars began to say that this stuff about sacrifice in the Bible was just ancient Israelite religion doing what most ancient religions did; sacrifice something to appease the gods so that they will grant one's request.  

Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of what we call Classical Liberalism, replaced sacrifice with experience teaching that if all human beings were honest with themselves they would realize that they have a feeling naturally within themselves which he called “absolute dependence” and it is this feeling that proves that there is a God, but a God which we cannot possibly know. Then he goes onto say that if we just develop our basic goodness in prayer, contemplating this feeling of dependence, and living morally upright lives we will be pleasing to God and will wind up where God wants us to be.  In Schleiermacher’s system sin is simply being bad and we can overcome it by the act of our will and there is no such thing as evil.

Classical Liberalism and its secular brother called Progress ruled the day until WWI when good people entrenched themselves in the bloodiest war humanity has ever known and then came Hitler, the Nazi's, and the Holocaust; brutal proof that we humans are not basically good.  We are not righteous in ourselves as the Pharisees and Liberalism claimed. We humans can not simply pray and will our sin away.  Someone once said that the line between good and evil runs not between us and them, but right down the middle of each of us.  I agree but I would also argue that the extent of sin is that that line often seems to disappear in that the good we do can often have evil effects and so often we must use evil to accomplish good. When we are honest with ourselves what we find is not Schleiermacher’s feeling of “absolute dependence”.  Rather, we find that even at our best we are all capable of and have down some pretty horrendous things.  Even when we thought we were doing good and believed ourselves to be acting according to truth, we have hurt people gravely. The only way to cure humanity’s disease of sin is for God to carry out this tax collectors audacious request and take sin and death unto indeed into himself and and die with it.  We are powerless over sin and death and only a power greater than ourselves can deliver us. Thus the Trinity has done for his Creation.

Schleiermacher and Modernity made two grave errors.  First, they said God cannot be known.  The true Christian faith says that God can be known, that God has revealed himself as Trinity by becoming the man Jesus Christ and this self-revelation continues on by the presence of the Holy Spirit with us.  We know we have met the Holy Spirit when we find ourselves saying “I have been inexplicably changed and Jesus Christ did it”.  That transformation comes with the experience of knowing God has forgiven my sin and relieved my guilt, shame, and fear and now I must live accordingly.  As Paul said, "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 (Gal. 2:20)." God can be known.  Look to and lean into Jesus and you will see.

Second, the sacrifices in the Old Testament were not simply something that ancient people did to get a god on their side.  The Old Testament sacrifices pointed forward to Jesus’ death and resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit.  In the Old Testament sin was dealt with by life passing through death and by being born away unto to death. Several places in the Old Testament it is written that the life of an animal is in its blood.  On the Day of Atonement they sacrificed to atone for sin.  First, they killed a bull and a goat and took their blood and sprinkled it all over the priesthood and the temple to cover over and cleanse away the stain of sin incurred in dealing with people.  Then they took a second goat and the priest laid his hand upon it and whispered the sins of the people into its ear.  It was then led away and set free as the scapegoat in the wilderness where it would be devoured.

Jesus Christ is the only human whose life has passed through death into resurrection and this new life is being sprinkled around all over creation in the gift of the Holy Spirit to Christian communities.  If you want me to say it graphically; since the Holy Spirit is with and in us Christians, Christian churches are to be a puddle of the blood of new life and new creation covering over the stain of sin which is hidden in everyone.  Furthermore, each of us, because the Holy Spirit has come to dwell in us, is a sprinkle of that same living blood. Our sins have been born away and devoured in death by Jesus Christ, our scapegoat.  There is nothing, no sin, no shame, no false pride, no guilt, no fear, that can separate us from our loving and good God because he has gotten his hands dirty and dealt with our sin and evil by taking it upon himself and dying with it that we might be free of it.  Sin and evil are very real and we are all part of it, but God has gotten his hands dirty and dealt with it once and for all.  Friends, hear this good news: This saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, that he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross.  All who are in Christ Jesus are new creation.  The old life is gone and a new life has begun. Friends, hear this good news you are forgiven.  This tax collector’s audacious prayer has been answered for each of us.  Rise up and live as the new creation that you are.  The old life only leads to death. Don’t turn your back on Jesus or dismiss him with modern arrogance for only in him can God be known.  The Triune God of grace has given us more than a feeling.  He has freely given us open access to himself so that we may truly live and learn to trust him.  Friends, come to Jesus and find your life that is hidden in God with him.  Amen.

Cry out! God Hears You!

Text: Luke 18:1-8

           Being a widow in Jesus’ day was no cake walk. Because they were women, widows had no inheritance rights. If they had sons, the husband’s estate was passed onto them. This was the widow’s best bet for she would go along with the estate. If she had no son’s the husband’s estate including her would be passed onto the closest male kin. Usually, the estate was taken and the wife rejected. This left the widow suddenly without resources. Moreover, there was a religious superstition overshadowing widows. Most believed that if a woman’s husband died before he was old then he was being punished by God for some unknown sin and thus the punishment should be passed on to his widowed wife as well. This often led to the ill-treatment and exploitation of widows. Begging was often the only recourse for a widow.

           Regardless of what God’s people did to widows, God himself had great concern for their plight. The prophet Jeremiah quotes the LORD saying, “Leave your orphans; I will protect their lives. Your widows, too, can trust in me" (49:11). Isaiah even quotes the Lord saying that he will bring vengeance on those who abuse the orphan and widowed, “See how the faithful city has become a harlot! She once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her-- but now murderers! Your silver has become dross; your choice wine is diluted with water. Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow's case does not come before them. Therefore the Lord, the LORD Almighty, the Mighty One of Israel, declares: "Ah, I will get relief from my foes and avenge myself on my enemies. I will turn my hand against you; I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove all your impurities” (1:21-25).

           That sets the stage for Jesus' parable here in Luke's Gospel in which he uses a widow’s persistent pleading with a wicked judge to grant her justice against her enemy as an analogy for his disciples to pray continually and not to give up. The parable immediately follows Jesus giving to his disciples a rather cryptic description of his death and then his second coming and he paints a picture of the time between the two being a difficult time which will try their faith. The parable seeks to say that the disciples’ prayers and their relationship to the Trinity are not like an exploited widow having to continually pester an unrighteous, uncaring judge as the only means for her to receive justice against her enemy. Instead God the Father does indeed care for his chosen ones and will speedily work justice for them against their enemies.

The Triune God of grace hears us when we cry out and does indeed work in our lives to put things to right for us, but maybe not so speedily. It often takes time, quite a bit of time. The image that the New Testament Greek implies is that God has to work it out, to make the justice come about in our real lives. It is not just a simple decree. There must be time for consequences to play out. People must take responsibility for their actions. Therefore we are to pray continually while we wait and not give up on the Trinity in whom we abide.

For further definition of what it is to pray I took a tour of the word “prayer” through Luke’s Gospel to see what sort of thing the people in Luke’s world prayed for and how they prayed. Since Jesus tells us to pray continually I think it would help to know what sorts of things we should occupy our prayers with and how and why. Luke’s first mention of prayer is when Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, went into the Holy of Holies in the temple on the Day of Atonement while people stood outside praying. While in there, an angel appeared and told him that his barren wife, Elizabeth, would bare a child (1:10). This shows a correlation between the people of God praying before and during worship so that those who lead worship will hear a message about what God is really doing in the life of his people.

Next, after Jesus was baptized by John he stood there in the water praying and Luke says heaven was opened so that we catch a glimpse of God, the Trinity – Jesus the Son in the water, the Spirit descending as a dove, and the Father saying this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased (3:21-22). Here we see a correlation between prayer and knowing that in Christ through the abiding of the Holy Spirit the Father does indeed claim us as his own beloved children. God the Father loves us as he loves his only begotten Son, Jesus, as we are in familial union with him because the Holy Spirit has come to dwell in us.

Next, we discover that Jesus often slipped away to wilderness places (5:16) and up onto mountains to pray. One night Jesus spent a whole night on a mountain praying and when he came down he chose the twelve disciples (6:12). Another time Jesus was praying alone with his disciples nearby and he asked them who the crowds said he was. In the conversation Peter makes the confession of faith that Jesus was the Messiah from God (9:18). Thus, we see here that there is a correlation between prayer and knowing one’s calling and who it is who calls us.

Another mountaintop experience was when Jesus took Peter, James, and John up a mountain with him and while he was praying they saw him transfigured in shinning white standing with Moses and Elijah. Immediately following that experience we have a another Trinitarian revelation. A cloud (the Holy Spirit) enveloped them and God the Father spoke to them saying that Jesus was his Son whom he had chosen and they should listen to him (9:28). Thus there is a huge correlation between prayer and knowing who Jesus is and what he has come to do for all humanity and even you and me as individuals and once again we see that prayer is a Trinitarian experience with Christ in the Holy Spirit before the Father.

          What does Jesus say we should pray for? In the first instance he says “Pray for your enemies” (6:28). Once while Jesus was praying his disciples saw him and came and asked him to teach them how to pray and he taught them the Lord’s prayer. “Father, in heaven hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but deliver us from the evil one." This is a good prayer to try to discipline yourself to pray continually. Another thing to notice here as that when people see us praying it just might happen that they become inspired to pray and want to learn how to pray. In our passage today Jesus tells us to pray always crying out for the Trinity to work justice for us against our enemies (18:10).

Next Jesus talks of attitude in prayer. In the passage immediately following this morning’s reading, Jesus condemns the prayer of the self-righteous where we thank the Trinity for how great we are and how good we have it and reminding him of all the good we do and so forth. Have you ever prayed saying “God I’ve down this and that and this for you and I try to be the best that I can be. Could you please do this for me?” That’s praying on our merits of which we really have none. Rather, Jesus tells us to pray the tax collector’s prayer of humble desperation, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” Actually in the Greek it says, “God, be for me, a sinner, a sacrifice that removes my sin.” If we get used to praying like that continually we find that the rest of our lives truly do begin to fall into place. In the Eastern Orthodox traditions that have what they call the “Jesus Prayer” that they continually recite. It goes, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”

Finally, when Jesus entered into the Garden of Gethsemane with Peter, James, and John he instructs them to pray so that they do not fall into temptation and they joined with Jesus in his prayers. They joined with Jesus in his prayers. They fell asleep albeit, but they joined with him in his prayers. Did you know your prayers are never separate from the prayers of Jesus who stands continually before the Father praying for us? His prayers become our prayers and our prayers become his.

To wrap all this up, and emphasize a main point for you, Jesus tells us to pray continually and not give up because it is primarily in prayer that we meet Jesus in the Holy Spirit and in him we share his prayer life before God the Father. People who pray a lot have a deeper sense of who God is as Trinity and who Jesus is, what he’s done for us, and what he calls us to. It takes prayer to know God. Without it we simply won’t come to know the living God whom we claim to serve. So, pray continually and don’t give up. Cry out for God the Father hears you and your prayers as he hears Jesus' own prayers. Amen.

The Other Nine

Text: Luke 17:11-19

So here we find Jesus walking the line between Galilee and Samaria on his fateful trip to Jerusalem. For a little background information, we should know the stigmas the people in Jerusalem and Judea placed on Galileans and Samaritans. Jerusalemites looked upon Samaritans as being half-bred or impure, part Jewish and part Gentile in blood. When the Assyrians conquered that part of Israel in 701 BCE they carried away a large portion of the Israelite population and imported peoples from other parts of the Assyrian Empire. The remaining Israelites and the imported population intermarried. In Jesus’ day a faithful Jew would have never associated with a Samaritan. A Samaritan leper was the lowest of them all.

Galileans suffered a similar stigma in the eyes of the Jerusalemites. Greek culture came to Galilee in the 300’s BCE and the Galileans, because of their distance from Jerusalem, became quite influenced by Greek. The Jerusalemites despised Greek culture. You see, the Greeks liked nude sporting events, gymnasiums, and public bathhouses. They brought foreign gods into the land and their worship usually became a drunken orgy. So, the Jerusalemites looked at Galilean Jews as being tainted due to this influence from Greek culture.

So anyway, Jesus is making his way to Jerusalem along the border between the “half-bred” and the “tainted” and up comes this group of ten lepers. Well the Jerusalemites had a stigma for leprosy too. They saw lepers as unclean outcasts whom God had cursed with a skin disease that made them look like walking corpses. To be unclean meant they were cut off from all society and not allowed to come near any place where the Lord God might be worshipped; certainly not Jerusalem. They were not allowed to touch or be touched by someone non-leprous for they would pass on this uncleanness.

Well, Jesus had a different sort of authority when it came to matters of faith. He had prophetic authority and everybody recognized that fact. Yet, as the Gospels tell us Jesus spent most of his life, time, and ministry not among the “good religious people” down in Jerusalem, but rather with those whom the Jerusalemites considered to be the dregs and outcasts of the Jewish nation, the “sinners”. It is in these lands and among these people that Jesus healed and cast out demons while he proclaimed the Gospel “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.” So, it was not unusual that a small leper colony would come to Jesus asking for mercy.

So, that”s what these lepers did. They came to Jesus the one whose power and authority didn't come from robes and rules but from God. Jesus, was their only avenue to the LORD God who could be moved with compassion towards them and heal them. They were tired of being treated as social pariah. They want this curse of death gone. They couldn't go to the priests. They can't go to the temple because the ancient Israelites believed that death could not come into the presence of God. These lepers looked and smelled like death. Jesus was their only avenue to the God of Israel to make their request.

Jesus' means of healing them was a bit odd. He told them to get on as if they were healed, to go and show themselves to the priests; go and face the ones who had the “authority” to make the declaration that they were clean and could return to normal life. So, they set out and as the go, they are made clean. Their leprosy heals. Well, one of the men when he notices that he has been healed turned back to Jesus and began praising God loudly. He falls on his face before Jesus worshipping Jesus and giving him thanks. Luke makes a point of saying, “This man was a Samaritan.” It is ironic that a half-bred leper knows that Jesus is the LORD God in their midst when the religious authorities, the priests, who had the power to declare Jesus Lord and Messiah did not.

Well, the twist in the story comes when Jesus notes that the other nine did not return. So Jesus asked, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?” One could even wonder if they even went to show themselves to the priests. We shall never know. Finally, Jesus says to the man “Stand and go! Your faith has made you well.” Another way of saying that is, “Your faith has delivered you onto salvation.” In Greek the word for to be made well is the same as to be saved.

Now, I want to draw out hear that there is a distinction between being healed as in cleansed and being made well as in saved or delivered into the Kingdom of God. The cleansing made the leper able to be in the presence of God but his resulting act of faith, of actually turning back to Jesus to worship him because he knew the LORD God of Israel was working in, through, and as this Jesus of Nazareth, a Galilean, that's what actually saved him. That turning and worshipping Jesus was his salvation meaning that he was now a resident in the realm of the Kingdom of God delivered from the realm of sin and death. Being cleansed at a word from Jesus of those things that we are ashamed of and which separate us from God and make us feel cut off from God and from others is one thing. Turning to Christ in worship and following him is another.

The Gospel that Jesus preached was “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.” To be saved was to be delivered from this sin infected world into the Kingdom of God. That’s what is to be saved. The wellness that this man was experiencing by his faith in Jesus, his recognition that Jesus is Lord that came as the result of his cleansing and healing was the wellness of the certainty of being delivered into the kingdom of God, i.e., the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was working in the healed Samaritan leper. If one knows oneself to be cleansed or set right before God and cannot help but to turn to Jesus to praise and thank him knowing that he is God, then one knows oneself to be saved, delivered and experiencing now through the Holy Spirit a small taste of Kingdom of God wellness that will be when God makes all things anew. Faith is the result of knowing you’ve been cleansed and healed and its most true-to-heart expression is turning to Jesus to praise and thank God.

This passage is not about the ingratitude of the other nine. The underlying message is about cleansing, healing, and being delivered into the Kingdom of God by Jesus Christ. So, what about those other nine; why does Jesus seemed so shocked that they are not there? I do believe Jesus is quite surprised that they did not turn back to him in faith. I really do not think that Jesus is flipping out on their ingratitude. Rather, it is that they don't realize the full implications of their having been cleansed. They do not realize who he is. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to show us who Jesus is. The Holy Spirit was not showing them. I think that surprised Jesus quite a bit. Where did they go? What did they do? I reckon they just get on with life and did what they wanted to do giving no mind to the fact that their new life is not because of Jesus but in Jesus.

So how does this apply to us today? Well. because God the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit became human as Jesus Christ and bore in himself all of humanity’s sin and died with it on the cross and in turn God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead every human being there ever was, is, and will be has been cleansed. There is nothing that can keep anyone ever from turning to Jesus Christ in praise and thanksgiving and by and through him experiencing the wellness of being delivered into the Kingdom of God. This wellness is nothing other than the gift of the Holy Spirit who unites us to Jesus Christ and in, with, and through him we experience God the Father’s love for all people as his children. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. We Christians know this by faith because we are united to God in Christ through the Spirit. Moreover, nothing can prevent every other person there is from knowing this too because they also have been cleansed in the one act of Jesus Christ. There is nothing that can separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is the cleansing, i.e. the forgiveness of all peoples, universally so. Everybody is forgiven. A blanket of forgiveness now covers the sins of all peoples because of the love of God in Jesus Christ. He is the Lamb of God who took/takes away the sin of the world. What is surprising is that all peoples do not realize that they have been cleansed by Jesus Christ and thus do not turn to him in worship and instead put their faith in other things and therefore miss out on the wellness of being delivered now into the Kingdom of God. The “other nine” just don’t get it.

We are like the Samaritan leper. We know Jesus is the Lord. We know our lives are incomplete without him and his reign in our lives. The Holy Spirit is genuinely at work in our lives, changing us to be more and more healed and cleansed so that we live as the image of Jesus Christ, the reflection of Jesus Christ forth into the world. Our task as Christians is to live authentically in his image, to be a loving community of his disciples who love one another and our neighbours sacrificially as he has loved us expecting nothing in return so that the “other nine” who surround us will see in our love the Lordship of Jesus. The church in North America has tended from day one to carry on like Jerusalemites who sit in judgement of the moral purity of others all the while having forgotten that we are at heart leprous Samaritans in need of Jesus, his healing power, and his reign. Loving one another and our neighbours authentically as our worship of our Lord is our responsibility knowing who we know, Jesus. As far as the other nine, only the Father knows. Our task is to reach out as the living proof of the love of God in Jesus Christ. Amen.

Participating in Jesus' Ministry

Text: Luke: 9:10-17

The story of The Feeding of the Five Thousand is one that is very useful to us when thinking about stewardship, that terrible topic that shows up on occasion during the Fall of the year. I would define stewardship not as what we do with the time, talent, and money that our Lord has entrusted to us each and to this congregation. This definition of stewardship leaves us asking “can I give a little of my time, a little of my talent, and a little of my money?” I like to think of stewardship in terms of somebody who has died and been brought back or faced death and walked away from. A brush with the finality of death changes people. You have to evaluate what worth there was in your life and how will you live now for life is precious, the people in our lives are precious. How are you going to live this new life, this second chance?

Paul writes at Galatians 2:20 “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.” Talk of Stewardship must begin with the basic premise that we each have died. We were crucified with Christ. The life we live now is lived in the reality of it being Jesus living through us. So then how do we live the this new life of Christ Jesus living in and through us? Do we measure out the amount of time, talent and money we can spare for him meaning the church? This new life in Christ Jesus is lived in the power of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father, a new life that by nature is oriented towards fellowship with Jesus and indeed a type of fellowship that wears off on us making us to be more and more like him in his way of life that is defined by the cross. Stewardship therefore is Cruciformity or conformity to the cross. We stewards of the new life Jesus Christ has given us aren't simply good people. We are a cruciform people.

Well, we learn to become good stewards by spending time with Jesus as he goes about administering his kingdom through us. Therefore, this story of a miraculous feeding is crucial in that it quite beautifully portrays how things work in the kingdom of God. It starts out with a great need that Jesus and his disciples are aware of but differ on what to do about. To the disciples, the need is preposterously more enormous than they could ever imagine doing anything about. There was at least 15,000 hungry people there when you include at least one woman and one child with each of the 5,000 men that were counted. That's like a small city. How was the twelve of them going to feed that? There solution was to send them away where they could fend for themselves. To Jesus on the other hand, the solution is to actually do something about the hungry people. So he instructs the disciples to bring to him what little they had among themselves to eat and then to make the crowd sit for a meal. Then Jesus takes these five loaves and two fish, looks into heaven, blesses them, breaks them and gives them to the disciples to distribute. Everybody eats. Everybody is satisfied. There's enough leftovers to fill 12 baskets, baskets that were nearly as tall as me.

And so we have it. This is the way the Kingdom works here on earth. A need arises for which we have compassion. We prayerfully await and discern Jesus' will int the matter. And usually what he would have us do is different than the way we'd do it. Remember that story of the disciples up fishing all night for nought and then when Jesus saw them coming to shore in the morning he told them to go back out and try casting from the right side of the boat instead of the left. They do and the nets almost break from the enormity of the catch. Back to the way of the Kingdom. We take our little bits to Jesus, a very humble if not humiliating gesture and we prepare for Jesus to meet the need. He takes our little bit to himself, gives thanks for it, and blesses. Then he breaks it and in its brokenness he gives it back to us to be used for his ministry.

Well that's being a bit generalistic I know so let me go back and be a bit redundant. Jesus is the Great Steward of the Kingdom of God. Therefore, stewardship is our participation in his ministration of his Kingdom, his ministry. Myself being “minister”, I could go about the business of what I think ministry is but if its not of him, I'll likely only get in his way. Churches can go about doing what they think churches ought to do, but if its not of him then we're just wasting his resources and burning ourselves out.

So with that thought in mind let's return to thinking about how Jesus does his stewardship through us. Again, here’s how his ministry works in and through us. First, Jesus brings us to the point of realizing the overwhelming needs of others. The Holy Spirit works in us to open our eyes to needs and to introduce us to Jesus Christ as the only possible solution to those needs. The world needs Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ and his kingdom, and it is helpful if we his church abdicate our kingdom and yield to his that he through us may come to bear on those needs.

Therefore, we bring of our little bits to Jesus, recognizing that only through him and his ministry can we begin to be a part of his ministry to the needs of the world. This is repentance. Repentance involves a humble admission that our lives are truly out of our control and the solution can only be found in what Jesus is doing in our lives and following his leadings. Repentance also involves committing what we had reserved for the satisfaction of our own hungers to Jesus for him to use in his ministry. Jesus, his ministry, and the community of faith are not simply components which we must find the time to prioritize into our lives. He is our life. We are dead without him. So when we bring our little bits to Jesus we are not to come with simply a tithe or a part. Sacrificial giving of self is the New Testament teaching on giving ourselves and indeed our money.

Having brought our bits to Jesus he takes takes us to himself as he is in heaven. Luke tells us that when Jesus took the loaves and fish he looked into heaven and blessed them. Then he looked into heaven, now he is there. We like to think of heaven as somewhere far and away or above. It might help us to think of heaven as being like another dimension of our present reality that surrounds us, only we just can’t see it apart from it being unveiled. The big story of the Bible is as we pray, God's will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. Heaven is coming to earth. At the end of the Book of Revelation the New Jerusalem comes from heaven to Earth. When we are raised from the dead it will be to live bodily on a new earth where things are on earth as they are in heaven because heaven is finally unveiled and the earth is full of the knowing of the LORD as the waters cover the seas (Is. 11:9) Therefore, now here on earth where Jesus Christ and his ministry in the Spirit is, there heaven is shinning through. His blessing (table grace) is the pouring of the Holy Spirit from heaven upon us here on earth gifting us with gifts for ministry for us to use to build one another up in love so that we resemble him and the unity of fellowship of the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

After he blesses us with his presence he breaks us. What this means is that if we are serious about Jesus Christ and being his disciples, we will suffer for him. The Christian faith is not a world escaping faith. It is world-engaging. It is self-engaging. As followers of Jesus the crucified one we won’t have fulfillment or success by the world’s standards. Engaging this world in his name, in the power of his love will cause us to suffer for him, the crucified one. Yet, he is also the resurrected one so there are moments when we are hit with the awe of God’s presence in our lives that truly makes us praise him in all humility. Our fulfillment will come with the day he brings his kingdom in its entirety. Until then, we suffer by honestly engaging ourselves and this world and our sin. Without a sense of our brokenness, our need, and the needs of our world we will not truly be engaged in Jesus’ ministry.

Finally, through his blessing and our brokenness Christ ministers through us to his body and to the world manifesting his glorious reality in truly wonder-filled ways. He moves us from brokenness to building. In fact, the Greek word we translate as “steward” is rooted in the word for a “building” and to “build.” We are builders through whom Jesus is fashioning the basic infra-structure of his coming kingdom. That infra-structure is a relational network of people who love one another as he has loved us giving his life for us. Authentic loving community in the image of the Trinity is what we are stewards over in his name. May he through us build it. Amen.