Hope That Is More Than a Wish

Text: Romans 13:8-14

I was in elementary school in the Seventies, a child growing up in the U.S. during the Cold War. I remember not only having to do bomb drills in case someone made a bomb threat, but also having to do nuclear bomb drills. A catastrophic, fiery, apocalyptic end to the world was a fear constantly on my mind, on the nation’s mind. I don’t know what it was like up here in Canada. I’m sure the same fear had to be at least in the back of your minds because any nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. would have occurred by means of Canadian airspace. Yet, besides that menacing fear, life for me growing up was rather hopeful. I looked forward, dreamed of getting a college education, of having a good paying job, a wife and family, and doing financially better than my parents. I had dreams and for the most part I could expect they would come about. That’s hope, real hope, not some wish that life might be good some day. That hope got even better when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed. Peace seemed a real possibility that is unless space aliens invaded earth. You may have noticed that after the Berlin Wall came down the West no longer had a “common enemy” that Hollywood could vilify, so movies about space aliens began to proliferate.

Life must be a bit different for children in elementary school now. Children today are living in the post-Cold War world amidst what we in the West no longer call a War on Terror. Although it would appear that humanity's current problem with terrorism is driven by religious fanaticism, this post-9/11 world isn’t the product of religion. It is simply the aftermath of the Cold War and its accompanying economic and political imperialism. Israel, Syria, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet nations, and the Central American nations were all pawn nations in the Cold War, oppressed pawns. Afghanistan and Central America were the actual battlefields.

At the end of the Cold War everyone thought there would be peace not greater fear. Yet, children now must grow up with the fear of not only a lingering possibility of global nuclear exchange, but also nuclear terrorism; and not just nuclear terrorism, but also simple, random terrorist attacks on public places. Today’s children will also have to live with the effects of global warming, global overpopulation, and pandemics such as HIV-AIDS (which according to the 2007 UNAIDS report appears to have begun to level off and in some places even decline). If current economic trends continue most of our children will not have their share of the pie. Actually, the major disillusion for my generation has been that we are not financially better off than our parents and this trend will continue.

The future for today’s young people does not look hopeful. I don’t think it an exaggeration to say that all they have to look forward to are cooler electronic gadgets, faster computers, extremely life-like video games, and more potent street drugs. Hopelessness defines life today. Our young cannot dream like I did. When they look at the future all they can see is a huge overwhelming mess and the demand for a lot of hard work to clean up after the parties that their parents and grandparents and even great-grandparents have been throwing. It is a twisted world when children have to clean up after their parent’s parties.

Powerlessness defines life today as well. No one seems to believe that we as individuals have control over our lives and can do things that can bring about change. Among ministers we often joke that “there are a few people in that church who need to die before anything will ever change.” Well, there are a few people on this planet who need to die before anything will change, but even when those people die as long as human greed and powerlust are part of the human condition things will not change.

This overwhelming sense of hopelessness and powerlessness is taking its toll on global life. It promotes violence. Fanatics spread the message that if things cannot be changed, then blow something up particularly something that belongs to one of those people who need to die anyway. It also promotes the magical thinking of fundamentalism where if you believe right and live right God will be on your side. Unfortunately, power hungry people with even a little bit of charisma find it very easy to manipulate the hopeless and powerless with fundamentalism whether it be religious, environmental, or political. Materialism and consumerism are also a resulting plague. If there’s nothing in the future to live for, then live for today. Self-destructive and risky adrenalin-inducing behaviours also plague life. In a global culture that is emotionally depressed as we humans are people will do anything to feel pleasure, anything.

But, what about us Christians; we actually claim to have hope. What do we mean by hope? First, we have hope based in the immediacy of God’s presence with us and his intervention in our lives. Second, we have the future of the second coming of Jesus Christ when there will be the resurrection and God makes all things new. Our hope is more than a wish. We do not say I wish God was with me and I wish that he would intervene on my behalf. Anyone who has known the Lord Jesus Christ for any length of time knows certainly that God is personally present with us each and with the congregation where we worship and that God does intervene on our behalf. Our hope is real and if we know the Triune God of grace and his work in our lives now in the present then we know that what he promises for the future will occur. Jesus Christ will come back. He will put his world to rights. Indeed, there will be no more sin and death.

Since our hope is real, based on the fact that God is present and active in our lives; we must ask what difference this hope makes and if we have hope, how then should we live? To answer our first question about what difference our real hope can make in today’s world; well, we know that there is something to this thing called prayer. As far as what we who have this real hope can do; well, first of all pray and then strive to work for the kingdom coming.

There is a street ministry in Hollywood, CA called Youth Link of America. They are located on Hollywood Blvd. which seems to be a Mecca for runaway youth because they have delusional dreams of being or at least meeting a star. On the ministry's website they suggest ways people might assist in their ministry. There is obviously the request that people donate money. Yet, they also give a simple request that people pray for four things: safety for the youth, that they might be able to build relationships with the youth, for the spiritual and emotional strength to reach out to them, and the resources to meet the needs of the young people. I think the prayer request that Youth Link America makes is exactly what is needed for this entire world.

Every person on this planet needs to know safety and it is the work of Christians to pray and to strive for real peace in this world. God has not made himself present to us and intervened in our lives so that we simply continue on like everybody else. We are called to change, to follow. Jesus said blessed are the peacemakers, not blessed are the money makers. It is our task in this world to make peace by calling evil, evil, and evil doers, evil doers; to call injustice, injustice; to call greed, greed. It is our task to call the offender to honesty and the victim to forgiveness. Real peace, safety is based in honesty and forgiveness.

Every person on this planet needs to have relationships where trust and unconditional love can be found. Friends, this is why there is a church. This is why Jesus commands his followers this one commandment, “Love one another as I have loved you.” The ultimate result of God’s presence in our lives is the creation of human community where love in the image of the Trinity can be found. God has made himself known to us so that we might build relationships with others in which the unconditional love of God, the Trinity himself, can be known and is known.

Every person on this planet needs the emotional and spiritual strength to move forward in life. Everyone needs to know the freedom and healing that comes with knowing Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit; freedom and healing from enslavement to addictions, the pain of childhood neglect and abuse; freedom from bearing grudges; and the freedom and healing that comes from forgiving. The greatest healing came in my life when Christ Jesus showed me that he loved and was gracious to certain people I was bearing a life-time grudge against, even though my grudge was based in the right. You see, there is a fine line between wanting God to avenge the wrongs done to us and bearing a grudge that becomes our life’s major pre-occupation that only results in self destruction and petty retaliation. The church is the only human community where forgiveness (rather than retribution) is the rule of the day, and praise be to God, he gives us the strength to forgive and to move forward.

Finally, it is not only the work of Christians to pray that everybody in the world gets their daily bread; it is also to work for the equal distribution of wealth around the world. This means that we Christians in the West need to put a limit on what honestly is enough and give the rest away. It means that we must simplify our lifestyles. This is more than just reducing our carbon footprint. It is learning to live with and on much less than we are accustomed simply for love of neighbour and love of God. We who know that the future is in God’s hands because we know his presence in the present, simply cannot model to the rest of the world a lifestyle that lives for the present. We must model the lifestyle that respects in love the needs of all peoples and that strives for the end of poverty not only with what we put in our refrigerators, but also for whom we vote.

We’ve been graciously given a real reason to hope, my friends; a very real reason. The Triune God of grace is with us…and we know it. Let us not take his graciousness towards us in vain. Let’s live this hope openly before the world. Amen.

Let's Take Jesus' Ministry out of Our Boxes

Text: Jeremiah 23:1-6; Luke 23:33-43; Colossians 1:11-23

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:16, “We are the temple of the living God.” The Trinity comes to dwell in us – his own, his church - in the midst of our fellowship, indeed in each of us. The Triune God of grace, the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit lives in us by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ (his presence with us, his favour poured upon us, his acting on our behalf for our good) in the communion of the Holy Spirit due to the love of the Father. We, the church, have got to get a handle on that. If we don’t have God right as the Triune God of grace and what he has done for his creation in, through, and as Jesus Christ, what we are as congregations will be something other than the church of Jesus Christ. God is the communion of the personal, relational love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who so powerful that he can raise the dead, so powerful he created and holds the whole universe together, and so powerful that he can and will put it to rights.

Humanity, on the other hand, bears within itself in its relational way of being a very marred image of the Trinity. Yet, in us, the church, the Trinity is restoring his image within humanity through the reconciling work of the one true Shepherd, Jesus Christ in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in the power of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father. As the fullness of the loving communion of the Trinity dwells in Jesus in his relationship with the Father in the Holy Spirit, so also his fullness dwells in us as we are his body sharing in his relationship with the Father by the communioning work of the Holy Spirit.

           Sharing in Jesus' fullness of God the Trinity (his relationship with the Father in the Holy Spirit) exhibits itself in and through us as we share in Jesus' ministry of reconciling the world to the Father in the Holy Spirit. His ministry is relational which means people oriented and geared at real needs and healing in all its forms. Jesus' ministry is not programs for this and activities for that which we pay staff to come and do for us. It is each of us entering into real relationships with people in authentic, self-giving, self-sharing, and unconditionally loving ways. Jesus ministry is the ministration of God’s love for each of us personally, a love marked by the way of the cross. This means we must enter into the lives of others through our own weakness and do so sacrificially at our own cost expecting nothing in return.

To give an example and since the mayor of Toronto has brought substance abuse and addiction to the fore lately, Alcoholics Anonymous discovered long ago that no doctor, preacher, friend, spouse, counselor, etc., can get through to an alcoholic as effectively as another alcoholic in recovery who is willing to once again share his own humiliating story. A common feeling and thought pattern that comes along with the mental illness and chronic disease that alcoholism is is a profound indeed shame-filled awareness of “nobody knows what its like to be as unlovable as me.” What an alcoholic finds in Alcoholics Anonymous is an unconditionally loving community of people who know damn well how that feels but are getting better, healing and who have by an act of God had the compulsion to drink taken away. Outside of AA alcoholics will be perpetually stigmatized, but in AA alcoholics are always welcomed in the hopes that they will find/be given sobriety. The Trinity is powerfully and visibly at work in AA. I can think of no better example of how the church should be in and amongst humanity.

Similarly, we who know the healing love of God in Jesus Christ because he has built a loving, healing relationship with us by bringing us into himself through the presence and work of the Holy Spirit are to go to those who suffer our same, common human weakness and share his ministry with them. Indeed, let Jesus minister to them through us. Jesus ministry is his presence with us in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit bestowing care to each of us by which he then compels us to love one another as he has loved us so that he then continues his ministry beyond us through us. This is the communion of the Holy Spirit. I would dare say if the life of a congregation is not marked by this ministry of Christ’s cross–bearing love so that it reflects the Triune life of God, it is not the church. Any organization can give money and do things to help the poor and so forth. We, the church, on the other exist to get to the heart of the brokenness of all people. As AA exists to get to the particular brokenness of still suffering alcoholics, so we disciples of Jesus Christ, the bearers of his ministry, are here to be the unconditionally loving community where any person can find welcome and healing in the new humanity that the Trinity has wrought in, through, and as Jesus Christ.

Christ’s ministry has a purpose. Michael Jinkins Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Austin Theological Seminary in Texas defines ministry like this: “the purpose of our common ministry is the transformation of persons into the likeness of Jesus Christ whom humanity crucified and God raised from the dead.” The transformation of persons into the image of Christ Jesus as exhibited in his life and death is what our shared ministry in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is all about. We do this transformational ministry by building one another up in love, speaking the truth to one another in love, worshipping with one another, praying with one another, even simply just sharing a cup of tea with one another yet meeting one another in our weaknesses, rather than our strengths. This transformation of our very being happens in the context of our relationships, which includes our relationship with God, and it comes about as we learn by the Spirit’s prompting to choose to be compassionate with each other until it becomes our nature.

Learning to love one another is the cross we all must bare. In the face of all brokenness from the depths of our own weakness we must choose to love as Christ loves us. He gave up his strength and became weak not only for us but with us. So must we and so also he is still with us. Carrying this cross of sharing and bearing our weaknesses with one another will put to death in us all those things that are contrary to God’s nature and we will find ourselves raised to a newness of life that we know can only come from the Trinity. We are not here to cater to the insecurities of one another or to avoid conflict at all cost. That’s not love. Rather, we are to augment each others giftedness and to expose each others flaws and to help each other past them. We are here to bear one another’s burdens. It hurts when our flaws get exposed yet this is exactly what happens in the life of the church as we learn to love one another. The cross is our standard and unfortunately it is typically the case that we want to judge each other according to it rather than examine ourselves.

To ensure that this transformative ministry occurs in the church (and indeed this learning to love one another is most certainly what the reign of Christ looks like), to ensure his ministry in the church Christ calls forth shepherds in the church. In the Presbyterian church we call them elders and ministers (not pastors. There is only one Pastor.). Everything one would expect from a minister is the shared responsibility of the elders and ministers. The nature and task of church leadership is to bestow Christ’s care upon the people. The Hebrew word in Jeremiah’s text which is translated as “bestow care on” very well suits the concept of being personally present with God’s flock at the point of their needs, needs judged according to cross. As Jesus Christ is our Pastor and his reign over us is his compelling us to love one another as he loves us according to the cross, so church leadership is to live his ministry, his reign, before and for his people. They are here to listen, to pray, to bear with us our burdens, and to see to it that the transformative work of the Holy Spirit is happening in us. Church leaders are here to ensure that we are carrying the cross. Never ever should a minister and church leadership be seen as the CEO and Board of Directors of an institution. To sound archaic, let that idea of church leadership be anathema.

I believe that small churches are truly privileged with respect to Jesus' ministry. I say privileged because their size helps them to resemble more clearly the church of the New Testament...yet, with a basic difference which too often can become fatal. The early church was house based rather than church building based. Early on, the church was basically a few households getting together in someone’s house to worship, pray, study, and share the Lord’s Supper. It wasn’t until the 300’s AD that church buildings began to appear and that was because Emperor Constantine made it legal to be a Christian and saw
Christianity as beneficial to holding the empire together. It would not be a stretch to say the church moved into church buildings so that we could have a temple just like all the other religions. We are apparently reluctant to think of our fellowship and our very selves as being God's temple.

In hindsight and in my opinion as a soapbox historian, moving the church from homes into church buildings wasn’t a good idea. Inevitably, the more institutionalized the church became the more religious and superstitious things became. I would even go on to say, (and this according to my tailgate expertise on the subject,) that our associating the church with buildings makes it easy for us to separate the Trinity from our daily lives, from our homes, from the fellowship of families; away from the people and rather way off somewhere. Then we begin to believe that we need the special boxes which we now call “our church” to meet with God. Inside these special boxes, the Christian “faith” tends to be simply the Christian “religion”. Inside the boxes we turn what should be a living faith, a life-trust in a personally present God among a transforming fellowship of believing friends, into being a system of religious rites and rules owned by a priesthood; a system where faith actually becomes magic. A priesthood pontificating rules and administering rites is a far cry from the ministry of “bestowing care upon” the flock of God’s pasture. The history of Christianity demonstrates well that when the ministry becomes a priesthood dealing in rules and rituals, that’s when the flock begins to get destroyed and scattered and God’s own sheep get driven away.

Jeremiah mentions God’s pasture. God’s pasture is the Kingdom of God and it is everywhere Jesus Christ is. It is Jesus’ personal ministry to each of us, among us, and through us into the world. I could be accused of being overly simplistic here but I surmise that one of the beliefs that hinder congregations from being living revelations of the Kingdom of God where there is peace and healing in the presence of God is that we believe the pasture is inside the building rather than out there in our homes, our jobs, the neighbourhood, the marketplace, indeed, in the whole universe. The Apostles in the early church took the Good News to temple courtyards and marketplaces, indeed house to house, and there proclaimed that God has created a new reality that was evident in the midst of their fellowship in which everyone was welcome, a new way of being human ordered according to the way of the cross. Jesus Christ has reconciled this whole creation to the Triune God and especially humanity, estranged as we are. It is the work of the church not to get people in its doors to get a confession of faith out of them so that the institution of the church will continue, but rather to go out into the streets and announce the Good News that the Kingdom of God has come near so that people can know what God is up to and believe and have hope and turn and be transformed. It is to take the transformational ministry of Jesus Christ to all people by sharing how Jesus made himself weak for us to be with us and heal us in our weakness. It is to meet others in their weakness by taking the humiliating step of saying “I am weak too, but Jesus is changing me. Come and see.”

God has made peace with us to heal us and out of this new reality he is causing a sprout of righteousness, of peace, of true justice to begin to grow here on earth and guess what? It’s here. He’s here. He pours his heavenly reign upon us and enables us to be a fellowship which echoes the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a fellowship which strives to be a blessing to the world, that strives for peace and justice and righteousness in this world full of fear and dismay. We are the temple of the living God. We carry a remarkable hope in our midst. Let’s not keep it behind the walls. Let's take the ministry out of our boxes. Amen.

By Patient Endurance You Will Gain Your Life

Text: Luke 21:5-19

The topic of this sermon is our life in Christ and particularly how it is a matter of patient endurance in the world in which we live because this world, life as we know it, is at enmity with Christ. Because of our association with him in the Holy Spirit and by our actions in this world as his disciples we will suffer that enmity as well. Please allow me a moment to throw some Scripture around.

Paul writes in Romans, “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:4-11).

Then in Chapter Eight he writes, “But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you” (8:9-11). At the beginning of Chapter Three of Colossians, Paul writes, “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Col. 3:1-4).

Paul’s thinking is pretty straight forward here. Our baptism was our sharing in Christ’s death. If we are united with him in his death, then we certainly will be united to him in his resurrection. Thus, we must consider ourselves dead to the present life and alive in him for the life that is to come. So, as we are alive in Christ and Christ lives to God, so must we. We cannot deny what we are as part of the new creation that is to come. As we are united to Christ in the Holy Spirit and our lives lived to self are dead and dying, our new life is hidden with Christ in God. Since we have been given new life in Christ, pursuit of the old life is only death. So, we must live in and for the new to know, to have the new life.

In our passage from Luke today, Jesus makes it abundantly clear that because of our association with him, which according to Paul is an association that is an organic or living union with him in the Holy Spirit, we will find ourselves at odds with the powers that be of this world. Therefore, it will be by patient endurance that we will gain, acquire, or secure the gift of this new life, the new life of the new creation in Christ Jesus. New life in Christ and new life in the new creation are a free gift from God but a gift that comes with a cost. Firstly, the cost comes as what we must presently leave behind that is attached to the old life and its consequence of death. Secondly, the cost comes with that we must live according to the new creation now while patiently enduring the opposition that this fallen world has to Christi Jesus. If we do not stand firm in Christ, we do not find our new lives in him. There is no real change in us.

Another way of saying this is that we are in this world yet not of it. Rather, we are of the world to come because of our union with Christ Jesus in the Holy Spirit. As far as this world, this age, this old way of being human; we live now with the purpose of announcing what God has done for humanity and all of his creation in, through and as Jesus Christ and in so doing living according to the new creation that has begun with his resurrection as living proof of it. This living accordingly is simply put in what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “But y’all, brothers and sisters, do not grow weary of doing what is right” (2 Thes. 3:13) and by right we mean right in the eyes of God not in the eyes of people. This is not a simple task. It is not easy to do what is right in the eyes of God. Because of this world’s enmity to Christ Jesus even what seems right in this world will too often be at odds with the love of God. We will struggle against ourselves. We will struggle against our brothers and sisters in Christ. We will struggle against those closest to us who do not share in this faith. We will struggle against the society, culture, and community in which we live. Therefore, we will find ourselves always having to patiently endure the temptation to be as the culture we live in and the persecution that arises because we live according to God’s demands on our lives. Let me say more on these things.

First, we will struggle with our very selves trying not to let sin and death continue to reign in us. Sin and death are tricky adversaries and our lives are complicated things. We do not instinctively know what the right thing to do in God’s eyes is. Because something feels or reasonably seems right according to our culture or gut or whatever does not mean its right in God’s eyes. If we do what feels right to us we are only catering to our sinful selves. If we do what is right in the eyes of other people we are only catering to that part of us that wants to be accepted in the eyes of others. I know from my own personal experience when I have asked others for their advice in what I should do, I’ve tended to only agree with those who have agreed with me. Indeed, some of the most significant hurts I have suffered in life have come about because I did what felt right not what the Bible said was right. This is why it is important for us to know the Scriptures and to know them prayerfully. God does not let his children who are made alive by his Spirit go on for too long living contrary to Scripture. As the one who loves us more than any of us can think or imagine, God works in our lives disciplining us to do what is right in his eyes. I can say with the utmost sincerity when God is at work with us, disciplining us to do the right, it does not feel good. Indeed, it hurts. But, when he is done with the lesson, we are better persons more compassionate, gracious, and understanding than we ever thought we could be.

Second, in addition to the constant struggle with ourselves, we must also patiently endure in our relationships with those closest to us. This struggle is quite painful. We as humans need close friendships. We need people we can trust unquestionably and we need people who love us unconditionally. Christ Jesus created the church to be such a place where we can find people we can trust and by whom be loved unconditionally. Yet, our friends in Christ are not here just to be positive support in our lives. Christ Jesus has given us close friends in Him in order to hold us accountable to being and doing what is right in his eyes. So, Christian friendship at times can be quite humbling.

Christian faith is more than simply my private relationship to God. It must be intensely about our relationship with one another with and in Christ and how we love another, build one another up in love, and hold each other accountable. The Christian faith is not about how relevant a church is to the world around it so that it can fill the pews. Nor is it about about having programs that "everybody knows" ought to have because of the altruistic role it has played in Western society. It is about our relationship with one another with and in Christ. We are called to fellowship in the love of Christ, a fellowship in which we hold one another accountable to what is right in the eyes of our Father in Heaven who is steadfastly loving and faithful to us on all accounts. It can be incredibly humbling when we speak the truth to one another in love for it is a painful struggle to accept the truth about ourselves. Yet, when we do the grace that moves in us to heal and change us is powerful. Sometimes Christians can’t handle the truth and in pride begin to retaliate. Christians who do not accept the truth about themselves can indeed become anti-Christian.

Another thing along this line we must patiently endure as Christians is people close to us who are not Christian. Who don’t understand why we do not live according to the same culture-dictated goals and values as they do. I know my family struggled with this when I first began to pursue the call to ministry. They didn’t feel the ministry was a safe profession for the little boy they knew to be so shy. They also struggled with my accepting calls to a church in West Virginia and then to a wee small church in Canada. It hurts when those closest to us don’t seem to understand. But, my pains in that area are nothing compared to those in our midst who are married to spouses or have family members who are actually belligerent to the faith. To these I say pray and patiently endure, you are especially close to Christ and are blessed to know him in his sufferings.

I spoke last week about our struggles with the world and how our mission of exposing evil and of forgiveness runs contrary to the powers that be so I will not comment there and finish up with a word of encouragement. A few years back when I was in West Virginia there was a state senator who for some reason had to divulge his financial status. People in his district thought that it was remarkable in a bad way that he was $245,000 in debt. I used to be a member of the Rotary Club there and one afternoon while we were doing our annual trash pickup along a highway, some of us began to discuss this senator’s situation. The local pharmacist who had a bit of change in the bank himself and probably a similar if not greater amount of debt said, “If you ain't at least $245,000 in debt, then you ain't even in the game.” Well, the game he was referring to was that of being a wealthy person. The same can be said about patient endurance and the Christian faith. If we are in Christ and are not patiently enduring the inner struggles and the inter-relational struggles that come as the cost of having been freely given new life in Christ, then we had better check and make sure we’re in the game. If you are patiently enduring, know in all confidence that you are in Christ and he is in you. Therefore, seek him out in prayer and prayerful reading of Scripture and in Christian friendship and you will find that he is with you and it is joy unspeakable. Amen.

Work for I Am with You

Text: Luke 20:27-38; Haggai 2:1-9

Just shy of fourteen years ago my father died. It was cancer. He was just 60. I remember the evening of the funeral home visitation. The place was packed by the time I got there. I had one objective in mind of getting to the casket to see my father but I had to push through all those relatives and family friends and be cordial along the way. I finally got to him. The Lord only knows what I was expecting. My brain was humming and for an instant I almost passed out. My always inappropriately dramatic step-mother was trying to distract me because she thought I was going to lose it or something. Nevertheless, there was Dad and there he was not. Where did he go? My father, my truest friend. The one who topped the list of the very few people in this world that I feel love me unconditionally, whom I feel safe around. Where did he go?

Fourteen years later, I still grieve. I miss him. These past few years there have been times when I really needed him and he is gone. I'm really angry and heartbroken that my children have no idea who that man in the picture is. Will they ever meet him? You people know what I'm talking about. Death has touched us all. It's brutal. Death is serious business and not easily euphemized or should I say euthanized with fairy tales of what happens to us when we die...let alone our pets. Boy, I'd better lighten it up here a bit. So, looking there at my dad there in that casket, where did he go? What happens to us when we die? What should I tell my children when they want to know where my daddy is? 

Well, there's myriads of pop-culture ideas floating around that we have borrowed from ancient Paganism and still people espouse them. A common theme among these ideas is that we have an immortal soul that leaves us and goes somewhere else where we will be forever. Sometimes we say something like we become a star or an angel and look over our families. Or, we are still here watching over things but we just can't be seen. Or, we're eternally doing all those things we loved doing like driving tractors or hunting deer. Though nobody ever says what happens to the deer that get killed in heaven. Do they go on to another heaven where they get to hunt the humans or something? Sometimes our immortal souls get stuck between here and there and we become a ghost. Then there's the really bad among us. They can go to Hell.

Now, I'm going to shock you here for a minute. There is a pop-Christian Gospel that we are all familiar with that states that if we believe Jesus died for our sins and serve him in this life our immortal soul will go to Heaven when we die and conversely, if we do not repent of our sins and accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour in this life our immortal soul will go to Hell when we die. Here's the shocker. The Bible never claims we have an immortal soul. In fact, nothing about us is immortal, at least not yet. Only Christ Jesus has immortality (1 Tim. 6:13-16). Rather, what the Bible says is that because of God’s grace extended to us in Jesus Christ by the gift of his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, in us, we will live for a time in paradise or heaven with Christ without bodies until Jesus returns and the Trinity makes all things new and in the midst of that there is the resurrection of the dead when we are given new, immortal and imperishable bodies. It is the Holy Spirit in us by, with, and through whom we live past death. Go and read Romans Chapters 6 and 8 and particularly Rom. 8:11 which reads: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” N.T. Wright, an Anglican New Testament scholar likes to quote another scholar's analogy that our software gets uploaded into God's hardware until the time he restores it all. When we die everything about who we are in our entirety as persons, the Trinity somehow keeps with and in himself until he restores us to our bodies made anew when he raises us from the dead.

When I tell my children where my Daddy is I say he is with Jesus and we'll see him when, as my kids like to say, God has a body. They picked that up around Easter a couple of years ago when their Sunday School teacher was trying to explain resurrection to them. Bodily resurrection is our hope. Resurrection and embodied life in a creation made new, a creation in which there no longer is sin or death and as Isaiah said in chapter 11:6-9, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowing of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”

The Day will come when God's kingdom will indeed come and his will will indeed be done here on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus will return and reign over his creation unhindered, visibly, and righteously. He will put things to right. In Jesus' kingdom there is justice. We must work for it now. In Jesus' kingdom things are beautiful. We must work to make our lives and our communities and the world around us beautiful with art and music and picking up after ourselves. In Jesus' kingdom there is no poverty. We must work to end it even if it means we ourselves must live with less. In Jesus' kingdom there is nor war or violence or abuse of power. Therefore, we must be leery of how we use power and work for reconciliation now. What we do now towards Jesus and his kingdom coming will endure into the new creation as Paul writes at the end of 1 Corinthians 15, his great chapter on the resurrection. “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:51).

The LORD gave the prophet Haggai a word to give to two Jewish leaders a long time ago that speaks strongly to us today as churches seem to be dwindling away all around us. The Lord said “Work, for I am with you.” This word came to a small yet faithful remnant who had returned to Judah from the Babylonian exile. When they got back they decided to build their own houses, lavishly I might add, to the neglect of the temple and as a result they did not find fulfillment for never having enough. God eventually had to send drought to get their attention and when he had it he told them to build the temple and even though it might not be what it was in its former days, in that place, in that temple he would grant peace. The Hebrew word for peace is Shalom and it is more than simply the absence of enmity. It means contentment, friendship, a kind of prosperity where everyone has enough and no one has too much, and mental and emotional soundness...and it is because God is in our midst.

That word is for us too. We are to work at building the temple but let me tell you about that temple. Paul in 1 Corinthians rhetorically asks; “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you (3:16)?” We are the temple; God’s Spirit dwells in us and is evident in the fellowship we share. The temple in the Bible was not simply a place where people came to sing hymns and hear a sermon. It was the place where human sin was dealt with and and borne away. It was the place where God and humanity were reconciled. It was the place where there was Shalom. So, for us now as those who are presently made alive in Christ, who have the hope of resurrection as the Holy Spirit is in us, our first order of work is to be building the temple, building shalom, here and among ourselves. We do this by confronting sin; first the sin in our own lives by prayer and confession and avoiding it. Then, we deal with the sin in our midst by holding one another accountable to the teachings of Scripture. In both cases, healing and reconciliation is the goal. Our second order of work is to bring reconciliation to the world; first, by announcing God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ, then by working for reconciliation in the midst of brokenness of human community around us and in the world. We are those who name sin and evil for what it is and then strive to heal the brokenness left in its wake bringing forth reconciliation. Friends, let us not neglect the temple in which we by God’s grace freely live. Resurrection, New Creation, and Jesus returning to put the world to rights these are our hope for which we strive. Yet, here and now our Christian fellowship is the temple wherein the Triune God of grace lives and moves in his very being to make us anew right now. The way we love one another and our neighbours, the quality of our Christian fellowship, is the living proof there will be resurrection and New Creation and that Jesus indeed is the Risen Lord and will return to put his world to right. The way you people love each other is the proof my kids will one day meet my father. Please do not forget that. Amen.

An Enviable Position

Text: Psalm 32
          I heard the results of a poll the other day concerning the most irritating words and phrases in English.  Apparently, it is important that we know what irritates people I guess so that we might better irritate them.  My own thoughts on that poll are: “Whatever…you know, it is what it is.  Anyway, at the end of the day it’s fairly unique.  But, I personally at this moment in time with all due respect don’t care, absolutely don’t care."  So, are you irritated yet?  You should be at least 12 times over according to the poll.
          Well, if there was a poll on biblical words that people find irritating, at the top of the list for me would be the word "sin".  It’s not that I have a problem with sin.  It is that much of the Church for centuries has taught that sin is primarily a moral problem and in so doing has reduced the Christian faith and work of the Church to simply being the maintenance of morality in society.  But, morality is not the primary business we, the church, are in.  Our business is proclaiming that Jesus Christ is Lord and that he has defeated sin and death by his death and provided a way for us to be healed from its effects both now and when we like him have been raised from the dead.  To pretend that sin is primarily a moral problem is to do it the very great favour of underestimating the full extent of its power over us.  If sin were just a problem of moral behaviour, then we would be able to take care of it ourselves by not doing it and doing good instead.  If that is the case then what did Jesus die for?  Was it just an example for us to follow where we do the moral good until it gets us crucified?  
          Usually, those who teach that sin is only a moral problem will explain Jesus death as simply being the means of forgiveness that gets us into heaven.  For them forgiveness is simply a legal transaction that Jesus’ death secured for us by assuming upon himself the penalty of death we deserve for having offended God by our sinning.  All we have to do is believe this legal fiction and we will find ourselves acquitted come judgment day and it’s off to Heaven we go.  Friends, sin is bigger than simply being a moral problem and the forgiveness Jesus wrought by his death is more than a legal transaction that in no way touches our inner self that suffers because of it.
          Sin is a relational problem, a relational disease more caustic and deadly than any cancer.  Its death rate is 100%.  It eats us up on the inside and eats away at our relationships.  The forgiveness the Bible proclaims that Jesus wrought with his death is an internal act of grace in which we are healed of
inwardly of shame, guilt, hatred, hurt, and so on, the darknness that we carry deep within us because of sin.  It is also an internal act of grace upon the network of our relationships that are so marred by our sinning.  An integral part of the Gospel the Bible proclaims is that being healed of the internal and relational effects of sin is a result of God’s reign breaking forth here on earth now as it is in heaven.   
          Let’s return to the word “sin” for a moment.  Part of my problem with the word sin is that it is right down to its etymological roots not the right word to use and unfortunately we do not have a word in English that adequately translates the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible.  If you find yourself a good dictionary you can find where our word sin comes from.  Linguists trace it back to the Proto-Indo-European language in which most European languages are rooted that was spoken by people in the area of the Black and Caspian Seas around 4,000 BC.   Their word was “es-ont” and it meant “to be truly the one (who is guilty)”.  “Es-ont” made its way into Old English as the word “sinn” which meant “a moral wrong doing”.  Our word sin means a wrong doing that incurs guilt.    
          The ancient Hebrew words come from a different people who had a much deeper understanding of this thing we call sin.  In Psalm 32 David uses three of their words.  The first one, pesha, which we translate as transgression, means a breach of relationship between two parties and in its most extreme, rebellion.  To transgress is to throw off the yoke of the bond of relationship between persons by breaking trust.  It is a refusal to live with other people in a way that is conducive to peaceful community.  Next is the word, khata’a, which we translate as sin means to miss the mark, to fall short, or to fail to live up to expectations.  
          The third word David uses is ‘awon, which we translate as iniquity.  Iniquity automatically comes with transgression and sin.  Iniquity is an inner state of self-reproach for wrongdoing or supposed inadequacy that flows out into one’s relationships and is characterized by deceitfulness (Is 59:13), a distorted love for this false sense of "independence" from God (Amos 4:4), a dullness and apathy in one's knowledge of the right (Hos 8:1; Ps 51:13), and a hard-heartedness towards correction (Jer 2:8, 29; Hos 7:13; Zeph 3:11; Amos 4:4).  Iniquity is a perversion of the inner self.  It is that sense of a gulf between oneself and God and oneself and others and manifests in a tendency to hide one’s actions (Job 34:6), apathy (Ps 36:1), illness (Ps 107:17), a love for strife (Pr 17:19), a sense of enslavement (Pr 12:13), a quickness to anger (Pr 29:22).  If one still chooses to come to worship while iniquitous, one comes as a hypocrite (Isa 58:1) and with a sense of defilement (Ezek 14:11) that is a heavy crushing weight (Isa 24:20).  
          Ever felt this way?  Iniquity is the given of the inner life of being a human being and I haven’t even added what happens to us when we are on the receiving end of the sins of others; the shame, the self-blame, the anxiety, the sense of futility, the rage, the depression, the disconnectedness, the hatred.  All this pain and hurt that we bear and cause others to bear is why sin is more than just a problem with morality and why forgiveness has to be more than just an external transaction of religious legal myth.  Only God can take away iniquity.  Only the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can heal iniquity.  Jesus died to take away our sin and heal us of our iniquity.  Come back on Good Friday to hear that sermon.  But for now let’s briefly look at Psalm 32.
          David writes in verses 1 and 2: “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit (actually breath) there is no deceit.”  The word we translate as blessed is more like blessedly happy in an enviable kind of way.  A blessed happiness achieved by someone who has done something that is worthy of congratulation.  It is strived-for contentment that others find enviable.  David is describing an enviable position to be in because what you have done is worthy of being congratulated for, an ‘at-a-boy that everybody would like to hear, but not everybody is going to try for it.  According to David, this blessed happiness is having your transgression not legally forgiven, but in Hebrew it means rather "born away", "lifted away" and this by God himself.  It’s having God cover over your sin with his very self as if sweeping your sin under the carpet.  It is living free of a mind full of iniquity.  It is when your breath (spirit) doesn’t smell like a lie.
          David then tells us how to get that clean mind.  He recounts how he was withering away on the inside because of iniquity, how God’s hand was heavy upon him wanting him to do the right thing.  Finally, in an act of personal worship David admitted his sin and confessed his transgressions to God.  He couldn’t hide anymore.  The result of this worshipful confession was as David writes, “And you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”  
          The Hebrew word we translate as forgive is nasa.  Yes, think NASA.  It will help you remember.  Nasa means to lift up, to carry away.  The Hebrew idea of God’s forgiveness is God’s lifting up our iniquity and carrying it away.  It is a real inner cleansing of the self.  This is why Jesus died.  In or by his death Jesus lifted up and carried away the iniquity of our sin and transgressions.  Like Moses raising up the serpent in the desert when we look to Jesus in the act of prayerful and worshipful confession, he gives us that healing of the inner self and from that healing the relationships in our lives that have been broken by our transgressions will also begin to heal.
          Imagine what your life would be like if you were a part of a group that gathered together weekly or more frequently to sit in a circle and without fear of judgement we admit that we are powerless over sin and that our lives are truly unmanageable because of it; that only the Triune God of grace by his act of grace in, through, and as Jesus the Christ can deliver us and restore us to our true humanity; and therefore, we yet again turn our will and our lives over to the care of God who is the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Imagine being in a group of people who have owned up to the fact that they are sinners and are there only to listen and share your struggles and who only want to help and to see each other find healing of the inner mess that iniquity is.  Imagine being able to pull aside one person whom you’ve come to envy for their blessed happiness and admitting the specifics of your iniquity to them out loud and their only response to you is “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.”  Friends, what I am asking you to imagine is true church, truly the kingdom of God here on earth.  It’s where you will find Jesus, the Lamb of God who carries away the sin of the world.  Do you want this blessed happiness, this enviable position? Amen.