I Am the Man

Text: John 9:1-38

A few years back I was playing music with some friends, a husband and wife duo. She played guitar and he played banjo and Bluegrass Gospel was their thing. After about a half an hour out of the blue he asks, “Have you ever been healed?” He didn't give me time to answer and said. “She has.” Then she began to talk about having Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in both wrists about six months prior. It was so bad she could not play her guitar anymore and something like that is pretty hard on a musician. She went on to say how one day she was walking in a store in Bramalea City Centre Mall and out of nowhere up comes this Southeast Asian man. He stepped up close to her and said, “In the name of Jesus be gone from her.” Suddenly, her wrists didn't hurt anymore. She was completely healed.

As a Presbyterian minister I don't often hear things like that, but oh how I wish I did. As a minister, I quite often pray for people to be healed …physical problems, emotional problems, relationship problems…and nothing happens. I wish I knew why. Why doesn’t Jesus move in the power of the Holy Spirit to heal these needs and glorify the Father? In the Gospels healing was a major if not the predominant manifestation of the Kingdom of God breaking in upon us. In fact the Greek word for healing is also the word for salvation. Yet, it seems like we must resign ourselves to apparently unanswered prayers and having to soldier on with painful realities and calling it faith. Some may think what this woman shared was quite strange, but this minister wishes he could hear more of it. It's Jesus getting real with us. It took a lot of courage for her to share that with a Presbyterian minister. We Presbyterians don't so readily share things like that.

I though of that woman when I read this passage from John and I wondered what it must have been like to have been that man born blind but then Jesus healed him. Being Presbyterian, I also take a careful notice of how he was received by the people and by the religious authorities after he was healed. We Presbyterians are quite cerebral and dutiful in the way the way we go about our faith and we don't leave much room for Jesus getting real and healing people. We like our healings to be by means of the medical profession. So what was it like to be that man and be healed and find one's life utterly changed in the blink of an eye.

Prior to the healing this man born blind had to have lived an unimaginably horrible life. People born with disabilities back then suffered the superstitious stigma that they were cursed by God for some horrible sin that their parents had committed. The man would have grown up in a home where any parental love he received was tainted with knowing his parents were asking what was it that they had done that was so wrong that they deserved this child. He would have had no friends outside of immediate family because other parents would not have let their children play with a cursed child. Most likely, other children would have spat on him and called him names. As soon as he was of age, about twelve or thirteen, his parents would most likely have kicked him out of the house to go and fend for himself. Or, if they were just as outcast themselves, they probably sent the child out to beg so that they could have an income apart from the shame of begging themselves. If that's the way it was for him what would it have been like to have been suddenly healed of what others said was a curse and all of a sudden be able to enter society with those same others as a newly transformed person?

What drew my attention in this text as I pondered it earlier this week was how this now healed man had to define himself, desperately define himself, as the man who was born blind but now could see. I imagine him in great frustration having to scream at the top of his lungs, “I am the man.” Of the people around him some said yes he was that man. Others said that he only looked like that man. So, with extraordinary exuberance he proclaims, “I am the Man.” This man was the man that Jesus had forever transformed by healing him of his cursed blindness and now!!!!!...all of a sudden he has got to figure out how to live in this world with the people who used to spit on him while they threw change at him and with the authorities, particularly the religious authorities who say that what happened to him was not of God...because it happened on the Sabbath. To add insult to injury people kept asking him where the man was who had healed him and he could only rather helplessly answer, “I don’t know.”

One of the most remarkably life-giving things that could happen to a human person by the hand of God happened to this man born blind and all of a sudden he finds himself having to defend the healing hand of God as if he himself had done something odiously wrong. Because the matter involved God and the Sabbath, he had to go defend his healing before the “religious” authorities who basically told him, “Once cursed, always cursed. Get out of here.”

Let's not forget parental abandonment. In the midst of the interrogation the authorities called in his parents to prove who he was. Instead of celebrating that their son had been healed by God himself and that by association they themselves were no longer under some stupid curse, for fear of the “authorities” his parents to their shame abandoned their son saying he’s now an adult and can answer for himself.

Well, after all the hoopla the man finds himself all alone yet knowing, knowing that the Messiah had healed him. But where was this Messiah? He didn't know. He didn't see who it was that had put the mud in his eyes and told him to wash. And then, there in the isolation of being well in a sick, sick world Jesus comes and finds the man and there in his alone-ness he comforts him and Jesus basically says “I am the man, the Son of Man for whom you have been waiting all your life so that you can be healed and finally live.” Jesus tells him that true seeing/believing is being acted upon by the transforming, loving power of God and knowing Jesus is the one and only who could do this. Suddenly, the now seeing man begins to worship Jesus.

This is a significant moment in the Gospel of John. Believe it or not this is the only time in all of John’s Gospel that anyone worships Jesus. Even when Jesus appears to his disciples after his resurrection. Thomas came close when boldly confessed to Jesus “my Lord and my God” but John doesn't say he worshipped Jesus. It's almost as if this moment is the centre of John's Gospel. There is something quite profound here with this man; the blindness, the healing, the seeing, the worship. True seeing is being transformed by the loving and truly saving power of God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

It is sad that people who have been healed by God in ways that can't be explained so often find themselves feeling abandoned by those closest to them for a lack of an understanding of how amazing God’s grace really is. It takes a lot of courage to say “I am the man.” Big miracles like that don't happen to everybody every day, but this I can say: Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit to the Glory of the Father is at work in each of our lives and in this congregation in some less noticeable but just as significant ways. It takes a lot of courage to step up and attest to what the Lord is doing in your life. If we take the reality of Jesus really acting in our lives in the power of the Holy Spirit out of the church, we take the Kingdom of God out of the church and we find ourselves having a very cerebral duty-filled faith groping about in that unfortunate darkness of having to ask what are we here for. But, when we all get together and attest to what Jesus is doing in each of our lives no matter how insignificant we may think it is and even if we think we're just crazy, when we stand together to say we are the ones whom Jesus has changed the Kingdom of God breaks forth and shines amidst the darkness for everyone to see. That, my friends, is what we are here for. Amen.

Where Do You Get That Living Water?

Text: John 4:1-52

One thing that I found amazing as a child and still do is that you can fill a jar with water from a puddle in the backyard after a big rain and after letting it sit for a few days, it suddenly starts to team with swimming things. It’s like the water is living and spawns life. But, even though the water supports life and would seem to be safe to drink, we know better than just go and drink water out of the yard because some of those swimming things can make you very sick.

Another thing that amazes me though not in a good way is how some of the lakes in Algonquin and Killarney Provincial Parks have no life in them. They look like they should have life but little to nothing is able to survive in them because of the effects of acid rain that resulted from nickel smelting up in that corner of the world. Dana once showed me a picture of one of the lakes at Killarney that is quite small. From above the water is clear and sapphire blue and you can just about see to the bottom as if it were a Caribbean lagoon. But though it is pristine and extremely beautiful, the water is so acidic that nothing at all lives in it. It is dead water. Thankfully, environmental legislation has proved quite successful up there and many of the lakes that were once dead are beginning to live again. Water, clean water, will foster and nurture life.

Well, when Jesus spoke of living water he did not mean a jar full of puddle water with swimming things in it. Back in those days without the medicines that we now have that kind of water could make a person sick enough to die. It looks alive, but it is deadly. Living water, rather, was running water as opposed to stagnant water. The swimming things tend not to live in water that is moving. This makes the Algonquin and Killarney problem a bit deceptive. They are in fact living water as water flows through them from lake to lake, but because of pollution, many of the lakes are dead. Keep these contrasts in mind.

So, it is no accident that John has placed this story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well immediately after the story of Nicodemus, the Pharisee and leader of the Jewish people who came to him at night. Jesus teaches them both about the Holy Spirit. The Samaritan woman gets it. She gets into the flow of the flowing living water of the Holy Spirit and goes back to her town and tells all the people that it is likely that the Christ/the Prophet is sitting out at Jacob’s well (please appreciate the symbology). All the people in the Samaritan town go out to meet him and after hearing him speak, they believe Jesus is the Saviour of the world on his own merits. That’s the flowing of the living water of the Holy Spirit. He sends people forth, brings people to Jesus, and gives them faith.

The Samaritan woman is a prime example of what Jesus taught Nicodemus about the Holy Spirit and those born from above by the free gift of the Spirit. For Nicodemus, Jesus used the analogy of wind. We cannot see the wind. It blows where it wishes. We do not know where it comes from or where it goes. Nevertheless, we hear it when it blows. We feel it. We see its effects. Jesus says this is the way it is with those who are born of the Spirit. The Spirit leads them here and there and through them, people hear about Jesus, and indeed hear him. It is debatable whether Nicodemus caught the drift or not. He came in the night and after Jesus chides him for being a teacher of Israel who yet doesn’t know about the Holy Spirit, he fades away back into the night. To his credit, Nicodemus does show up two times later in John’s Gospel; once to defend Jesus against the Jews and then to bury Him. 

The Holy Spirit comes to us by means of hearing those who are full of the living water of the Holy Spirit and who proclaim Christ. Along with that proclamation, we hear Jesus himself. By the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Jesus we proclaim meets us in and through the proclamation of him as he did both the Samaritan woman and Nicodemus. When we proclaim Jesus, he does come and create a moment for people to meet him in order to drink the water and catch the drift. Well crafted sermons meant to convince people are bunk in comparison to our simply proclaiming that Jesus is Lord and letting the Holy Spirit do his work.

Well, it is interesting that John wants us to know that it was the Samaritans and not the Jewish authorities who first received Jesus and proclaimed him to be the Saviour of the world. Samaritans and Judeans did not associate with each other. The Judeans considered the Samaritans to be racial half-breads who worshipped the LORD wrongly. Why? Well, five times the region of Samaria had been ruled over by the rulers of other nations who sent their own people into the lands they conquered in order to intermarry. In Jesus’ day, Samaria had a sixth husband, the Romans; but the Romans were not allowed to intermarry with the locals. Though the Samaritan blood line was not pure, they still clung to the Jewish faith and probably more strictly than did the Judeans. The Samaritans only accepted the first five books of the Bible in which Mt. Gerazim, located in Samaria, rather than Jerusalem is the mountain that was the central worship place for the Israelites. The Samaritans also rejected the books of the prophets yet it is significant that the Samaritan woman would call Jesus a prophet. Moses told the Israelites at the end of Deuteronomy to expect a prophet greater than he to come and be the Christ. This prophet would be the only prophet the Samaritans would accept.

In the midst of all that history, bad blood, and religious dissent this nameless Samaritan woman who's had five husbands and for some reason probably economic necessity still likes to have a man around is according to John the first evangelist, the first to flow in the living water of the Spirit. This is in contrast to Nicodemus who is named, who is a leader among God's chosen people, who is a man, who is wealthy, who is very devout in the Jewish faith, and yet he finds it very difficult to catch the drift of the wind of the Holy Spirit. The living water of the Holy Spirit flowed to and through the Samaritan people who biblically speaking according to the prophets and the historical writings at least, would have been should have been like stagnant water, mixed with swimming things that would be deadly. On the other hand, Jesus says that salvation comes from the Jews, yet the Jewish religion back then especially of the Pharisees was like that lake in Killarney – beautiful and you’d think they were full of life; but nothing lived in them.

This nameless Samaritan woman who's had five husbands and for some reason probably economic necessity still likes to have a man around is on the ball. She knows that Jesus isn’t just talking about wells and water. He’s talking about faith and a living relationship with the living God which flows from the Father through him in the power of the Holy Spirit and then in worship - in adoration and faithfulness - in the power of the Holy Spirit it flows from us through Jesus the Son back to the Father. Nicodemus, on the other hand, upon hearing Jesus talk about such things gets deeply confused and so asks how this living relationship with the living God can be. “How can these things be?” Nicodemus was deeply under the impression that Law observance was the way to get ready for the Messiah and the Kingdom of God. The Samaritan woman, on the other hand just simply wants that living relationship the Prophet greater than Moses was to bring, receives it, and wants to tell others where to get it. She finds Jesus to be the fulfillment of everything Moses had said.

So, what does this thirsty nameless Samaritan woman who's had five husbands and for some reason probably economic necessity still likes to have a man around have to do with us? And, if I may tack to that question, what does the contrast between her and Nicodemus have to do with us? Well, grace is the word. Indeed, it is the Triune God of grace’s desire to share his self with us through the Holy Spirit freely on account of Jesus’, God the Son’s, faithfulness, indeed faithfulness unto death. We are all sinners. Everyone is. Not one of us is worthy to be in God's presence. But, Jesus has been faithful for us to the extent that he has in his self scapegoated our sinfulness away unto death and in the power of the Holy Spirit begun something new with us. God's grace isn't that he will show mercy to us by acquitting us if we just confess our sins, say we're sorry, and toe the Jesus line until its heaven when we die. The Bible's understanding of grace does not come from the courtroom but rather from the King's court. Grace is that the King of all creation has summonsed and brought us into his presence and even though we have been unfaithful servants he is pouring his favour upon us and will act on our behalf. That understanding of grace does not make sense unless we are talking about the Holy Spirit who is God's presence with us gluing us to Jesus and in him working in us to heal our brokenness and create us anew to be more and more as Jesus is, the resurrected incarnate Son of God who has defeated for us the sin and death to which we so readily succumb.

Let’s go back to the question of the nameless Samaritan woman who's had five husbands and for some reason probably economic necessity still likes to have a man around, the question of where to get that living water. Well, we find it in Jesus. Jesus’ has made it so that his new life in the Holy Spirit that lives to the glory of the Father is freely available to anyone who wants it and he's even at work in some who don't know what it is or even want it...that would be those good ole religious folks like Nicodemus and like us the good ole church going type. Even a nameless Samaritan woman who's had five husbands and for some reason probably economic necessity still likes to have a man around wants it and can have it. God did not withhold his very self from someone like her. That's grace and we've got to note and take to heart that it was the religious folks who had a hard time with grace.

As we have gathered here to proclaim and hear this Good News, the Holy Spirit has been working to make us open to Jesus who wants only that we share with him in his relationship with his Father in the Holy Spirit. Just drink. Just start partaking in that relationship. It is freely available to you. Read your Bible regularly, God will speak. Pray, God will answer. Share it with others. All that's going to happen is that you will find yourselves wonderfully accepted and loved. Just drink. Just drink. Amen.

Faith and Signs

Text: John 3:1-17; Numbers 21:4-9

A couple of years ago a major event in the circles of odd news was the event of a 13 year old Kansas boy and his grandmother who bought an old Polaroid camera at a garage sale for a dollar. Later that evening he opened the camera and found a picture of a man and woman and he showed it to his grandmother. She stared at it for a moment in disbelief and then told him the man in the picture was his uncle who died in a car crash 23 years prior. They checked back with the seller who said he knew neither the people in the photo nor where he got the camera. The boy’s father, the brother of the deceased was a bit taken aback noting the astronomical odds of this happening. You can’t explain what brought his son to this camera and its photo. Nevertheless, he found comfort in the fateful find. He said. “When you have faith, you believe they’re always with you and when you see signs like this, it kind of reaffirms that.”

I have to admit that this incident is more than a bit freaky. If it happened to me I know my first inclination would be that it meant something, but what? Even the great German theologian Karl Barth said, “God’s voice may also be heard “through Russian communism, through a flute concerto, through a blossoming shrub or through a dead dog” (CD, I/1, 60). I am not above thinking that. The boy’s father goes that way saying that faith and signs are involved, but I don't think he meant that God was trying to tell him something. Rather, faith here appears to mean simply a belief in a spiritual realm that we can’t see but which manifests itself from time to time by signs and when a sign occurs it is a communication not so much from God but from someone in the spiritual realm carrying some sort of secret and specific message for the believer. For this man it was confirmation that his deceased brother was nearby in the spiritual realm. No one can say for sure whether this incident was anything more than an astronomically rare coincidence, but I should point out that we need to be a bit careful about holding out faith and signs as mere belief in and evidence of a spiritual realm. In the Bible faith pertains to a relationship, a relationship with the Trinity – a relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ the Son in the Holy Spirit -- and signs are strictly meant to point us in that direction. If mysterious events like this one do not somehow point us to Christ Jesus, then maybe we should be careful how much meaning we place in them.

If you want to spend some time mulling over faith and signs, John's Gospel is a good place to go. Faith and signs are a frequent topic there as all of Jesus' miracles to John are a sign indicating who Jesus is as the Word of God incarnate. This is certainly the case in our passage today concerning Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. At the very beginning of the conversation Nicodemus came to Jesus and noted that the Jerusalem authorities had surmised that Jesus had a God-sanctioned ministry because of the evidence of the signs he was doing, but they don't yet believe in him. In John’s Gospel for belief to happen God would have to open their eyes to see Jesus for who he is and enable them to receive him as Lord, entrust themselves to him, and worship him. Faith or belief is a gift to us initiated by God’s revealing his self to us.

So, there with Nicodemus in the dark Jesus rather bluntly lets him know that he/they are not going to believe who Jesus is or understand what he has come to do and be a part of it until he/they see the sign that reveals how God loves the world; the sign of Jesus the Son of Man/the only-begotten Son of God, the Word of God become human and dwelling among us, the light of the world, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world hanging on a cross like the bronze serpent of Moses’ day; Jesus lifted up (glorified, exalted) to the effect that every believer in and in association with him has eternal life which John later defines at 17:3 not as going to heaven when you die but as knowing the Father and the Son.

It is safe to assume that Nicodemus came to Jesus with the agenda of trying to sort out for himself whether or not Jesus is the Messiah who has come to establish the Kingdom of God. So, in a bit of a humorous exchange, Jesus tells him that no one can see or enter the Kingdom of God without first having been "sired from above" or rather "conceived anew" by means of the regenerating indwelling of the Holy Spirit and Baptism. This means that unless God has opened our eyes by revealing his very self to us (the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), we are simply unable to see God's reign in this world through Jesus. Moreover, without that eye opening plus committed participation in the Spirit-filled communion of Jesus' disciples, no one can enter into the New Creation reign of God that is breaking in on us from the future right now, even as we are gathered here in Jesus name.

I cannot emphasize enough here that the ability to see and enter the reign of God in Jesus comes by the means of the personal working of the Holy Spirit at the Trinity's initiative and doing and not of our own. Jesus makes this very clear with the born again-anew-from above teaching. The word we translate as 'born' is better taken as referring to the moment of conception rather than the moment of breaking forth from the womb. Just as we were conceived and birthed into this fallen creation as sinners, so must we be conceived anew from above by the Holy Spirit to live in an embryonic state of New Creation now as faithful disciples of Jesus and as his co-heirs sharing his relationship with God the Father in the Holy Spirit until we are birthed into the New Creation at the Resurrection.

With that in mind let's take a poke at John 3:16 and what it is to be a believer in Jesus, the Son of Man who was lifted up, since salvation, knowing the Father and the Son, seems to hinge on that. Jesus is working with the analogy of Moses lifting up the bronze serpent in the wilderness so that the Israelites could look at it and be healed rather than die due to bites from poisonous snakes that the LORD plagued them with for wanting to return to Egypt and Egypt's gods. A very literal translation of John 3:16 would read: Indeed, in this manner God loved the world; he gave his only begotten Son with the effect that every believer in and in association with him absolutely does not perish but certainly does have eternal life.

John 3:16 is not a conditional statement saying we must believe in Jesus so that we may have eternal life. It is a statement concerning the way things are for those who find themselves presently believing in and in association with Jesus. These believers absolutely are not perishing in this world even though the situations of their lives may beg to differ. Rather, they are certainly having eternal life. Umm, eternal life? In John's Gospel eternal life means the same as what salvation means in the rest of the New Testament; that Jesus has brought us into the Kingdom of God which at its heart is a living, personal and communal relationship with God the Father through Jesus the Son in the Holy Spirit. In John 17:3 Jesus says this fairly clearly: "And this is eternal life, that they (his disciples) know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Eternal life is knowing the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit. Eternal life is being in relationship with the Trinity, the relationship in which God conceives us anew and enables us to live for the New Creation now. This relationship, eternal life, is a certainty for all believers in and in association with Jesus.

So then, what is it to believe? Well, believing begins with knowing and acknowledging that Jesus is the One whom God has sent in his own name to save the world, the Son of Man the prophets foretold come from heaven to defeat and destroy everything that stands between God and his creation, that he is the very Word of God by which God created everything come into the world to create it anew, that he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. As I have been saying, the ability to know and acknowledge who Jesus is comes to us by the eye-opening work of the Holy Spirit. Due to our utter blindness because of sin we are unable to perceive who Jesus is.

Knowing and acknowledging who Jesus is must progress to receiving him, to showing him hospitality in our lives through prayer and Bible Study and Christian fellowship and just trying to walk the walk, just simply letting the Holy Spirit do his healing and transforming work on us. It is sitting at the table with and in the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit enjoying eternal life in the midst of this world's death. This is the personal devotion side of believing.

Next, knowing and acknowledging and receiving Jesus for who he is must then become entrusting our lives to him and obeying him, living according to his way, truth, and life in this world, taking up our crosses and following him, laying down our lives for one another rather than living in accordance with the fallen powers, standards, and values of this world. Faith necessitates faithfulness.

Finally, believing in and in association with Jesus culminates in worship. In Chapter 9 of John's Gospel Jesus heals a man born blind who consequently gets thrown out of the synagogue because of it. Jesus afterwards comes to him and asks him if he believes in the Son of Man. The man responds, “Show me who he is that I might believe.” Jesus says “I am he.” The man explodes forth, “Lord, I believe” and worships him. The way God has loved this world, giving his only-begotten Son for us making us to believe and have fellowship with the Trinity in his very self inexplicably fills us with awe and adoration and drops us to our knees screaming “Yes! Amen!” from the deepest part of ourselves. It is one thing to consider the astronomical odds of a fateful find at a garage sale as a sign from God or evidence of something unseen. But, it is entirely another for Jesus and the Holy Spirit to break forth on us with the love of the Father causing us to be lost in wonder, love, and praise. It is my prayer that the Trinity awakens belief in all of you. Amen.

Recognizing Temptation

Text: Matthew 4:1-11

Many things come to mind when we think of temptation. Often times we think of it as something we think to be really, really good that we shouldn’t have because in actuality it is not good for us; things like desserts or that third drink or a voluptuous cartoon redhead from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”  A temptation is something we think we can resist if we have enough will power. The short of the long here is that we tend to be very stuff oriented when it comes to temptation and usually the stuff is very meaningless in the long run unless it is an addiction and in that case we are not dealing with temptation but rather an illness of the mind. Yet, when we look at temptation as far as the Bible is concerned it is a matter of faith and character. Temptation tests us to place our faith in something other than the Trinity and it tests to see if we are of godly character. Temptation quite persuasively asks us to put aside our self-identity as children of God and simply serve ourselves with our God-given giftedness for our own benefit rather than for serving faithfully. Such was the temptation Jesus faced. Jesus being the Son of God Satan tempted him to use his authority as such to serve himself rather than God the Father.

Matthew writes that the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, led Jesus out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. This happened immediately after his baptism in which Jesus identified himself as a sinner just as we are sinners. We don’t often like to think of Jesus as being a fallen human being just as we are. But that is precisely what he was. He was able to sin. He was able to turn his back on God, to serve himself as his own God, but he did not. He rather kept himself rightly related to God the Father all his life and this was only possible because he was himself God the Son. Satan’s temptations of Jesus were a rather wicked effort to get him to subject his divinity (his relationship to the Father in the Holy Spirit) to his fallen human nature. They were indeed a test of his character and faith. The first two temptations begin with Satan trying to get Jesus to prove who he is and in so doing prove his character. Is he godly or is he fallen? Satan states, “If you are the Son of God, then turn these stones to bread.” And next, “If you are the Son of God, then through yourself down” for Scripture says the angels will protect you. The third temptation is for Jesus to worship something other than his heavenly Father. All of these temptations tempt Jesus to use his Son of God nature and power in a way that is out of line with faith/faithfulness.

The first temptation begins with Jesus having been out in the wilderness fasting for forty days and forty nights. That incidentally was how long Noah was on the ark. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness two periods of forty years. Forty is a significant number and it symbolizes a period of truly coming to rely on God. Having been fasting that long, Jesus was now hungry. Satan comes to Jesus in that weakness and tempts him to turn stones into bread which as God the Son he could do. Jesus responded by quoting Scripture. This is significant for when we look at what is at the heart of Jesus’ character we find a singular and deep foundation of Scripture. Jesus says, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” This reply is deeper than it appears. Its intent is not simply to say that life is more than food. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 which is at the beginning of a section where Moses was reminding the Israelites of how God took care of them in the wilderness while leading them to a land that was very fruitful. God’s purposes and the way he disciplines us to mould our character with faith far surpasses a momentary need for food. God will provide when it is time. It forms our character to wait and rely on the fact that we are beloved children of God.

Next Satan takes Jesus to the highest part of the temple and tells Jesus to throw himself down for if he is the Son of God, the angels will protect him. Satan also quotes some Scripture to Jesus, Psalm 91:11-12. Psalm 91 is a rather beautiful lyric stating that God will protect those who love and trust him. Jesus’ refusal to turn the stones to bread and rather trust his Father and wait on his provision put Jesus squarely in the camp of those who love and trust the Lord. Yet, Satan misuses this passage asking Jesus to be reckless with his status as the beloved of God and take advantage of the fact that God protects those who love and trust him. Jesus responds, “It is also written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” We do will not to put God's love and protection to the test by stepping out on broken limbs just to prove it.

Jesus is there quoting from Deuteronomy 6:16 which is in a section where Moses starts by stating that the LORD is giving them a land. Therefore, “Hear, O Israel, The LORD is your God, the LORD alone. Love the LORD with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” It goes on to say that the way the Israelites were to obey and love the LORD was to keep all the commandments, study them and discuss them with their children and when they get into the land where they are going to have things really good, they are not to forget the LORD and worship other gods for that is what it is to put the LORD to the test as they did at a place called Massah in the Wilderness when they complained to Moses about the LORD for they had no water and wanted to return to Egypt and the Egyptian gods.

This second temptation asked Jesus to do something to prove that God is his Father for if he is God’s Son then the Father would love him especially and certainly would not let any harm come upon him. It’s like saying “God if you love me, then do this for me for you have promised that you will do thus and such for those who love you.” If Jesus had to test the Father’s love to prove the Father's love, then Jesus’ was stepping outside of his role of simply loving his Father with all his heart, soul, and strength. We've no need to prove the love of God in this world of doubt. We need only love him him back. We need only to develop our relationship with him and be faithful. He'll prove himself in his own time and his own way.

The final temptation is an icky one. Satan shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and claims he can give them to Jesus if Jesus will only fall down and worship him. You may not realize it but with this temptation Satan is making the ridiculous claim that he is God. One thing you notice in the Bible is that it is God who establishes kingdoms and sets up kings. At no point does Satan have that authority. Rather, what God establishes Satan works to corrupt. Jesus calls his bluff, "Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.” Once again Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 6. It is because he loves his father with all his heart, soul, and strength that he can see the ridiculousness of all of these temptations, that Satan is asking him to prove who he is as the Son of God and the Father's love for him for his own benefit.

Well, to close, looking back through these temptations and they are all obviously ridiculous in nature what is obvious is that at the center of Jesus’ character are the characteristics of a profound faith in the Father and a profound love for him rooted in a profound knowledge of Scripture. All three of the temptations have in common that they ask Jesus to prove himself by using his gifted abilities to serve something other than the Father whether it be his own fallen nature or Satan himself as a false god. So what does this mean for us? Well, we live in this tension everyday torn between our faith in and our love for God and using our gifted abilities to serve ourselves or some other false god. To Jesus these temptations were ridiculously obvious, but to us the temptations that we face are not so obvious. It does not come natural for us to know when we are being asked to turn stones to bread in an effort to feed ourselves rather than waiting on God to provide or when we are testing God’s love for us or serving some other false god. To us it may look like a promotion or a way to upgrade ourselves and our lives and make things better for the family and we can look around and say God has blessed me all the while not asking how that promotion or upgrade might distract us from our relationship with God.

Jesus gives us a subtle hint for knowing when we are being tempted and how to resist by the Scriptures he quotes: “Man does not live by bread alone but from every word that comes from the mouth of God.” and “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Faith comes as a free gift from God because he has chosen to get himself involved with us, but we have responsibility to grow in it. A prayerful and intense relationship with God steeped in knowing the Scripture praying and meditating upon it is our life’s breath and we need to fill our lives with them. Lent is a season where we remove things that we think are temptations from our lives. Yet, removal things is not enough. We need also to fill our lives with godly things. God has given us the words of Scripture to help us. Therefore read them, memorize them, discuss them with your families and friends. Train your mind to meditate on them. The more we imbibe and ingest Scripture, the more ridiculously obvious Satan and his temptations will become, but more so the more we will hear God clearly and know him more deeply. Apart from a sincere relationship with God involving the Scriptures the God we know will only look like ourselves. Satan will readily and easily twist that image. Amen.

Up on the Mountain

Text: Exodus 24:12-18; Matthew 17:1-9

          It was Sunday December 5, 1999. I had received a phone call from my brother at about 4:30 that morning to tell me that my father died. The 5^th was a Sunday morning and I had minister responsibilities in my church down in West Virginia. I could have made a few calls and excused myself, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be than in church with my church family. The service went well. Yet, I had to leave immediately afterwards to conduct another worship service at a mountain chapel where I also had responsibilities. To get there, I had to make the drive up Elk Mountain, twenty-five minutes of mountain road to get there on time. It was a warmish December morning and that made it foggy down in Marlinton which was way down in a river valley. Going up Elk about two-thirds of the way up, I found myself suddenly just above the clouds. So, I pulled over at an almost providentially well placed wayside just to take a minute and look around. The leafless trees were wet and glimmering in the sunshine. The clouds were aglow with a glory all their own. I stood about ten feet above them and it was if I was looking down on a sea of clouds that I could step out and walk on. It was beautiful, just absolutely beautiful. It was quiet. It was peaceful. It was good. I got the sensation that God had created this moment just for me on that morning. Dad was finally free of his suffering and at rest and my heavenly Father just loved me enough to let me know that. Not that I didn’t know that already. I sat there a moment and thanked God but I had to go, a mountain top experience.

          I think of that experience whenever I come across the gospels accounts of Jesus Transfiguration though it pales in comparison to the mountaintop experience that Peter, James, and John had with Jesus. Jesus took them high up the mountain and there they see King Jesus in his glory joined by Moses, the bringer of the Law, and Elijah the Prophet who themselves had had very powerful mountain top experiences. Moses received the Law up on Mt. Sinai which described the way of live that would distinguish the people of God. Elijah also had found himself up on Mt. Sinai in a cave running while for his life and there he heard the still, small voice of the Lord telling him he wasn't alone in his faithfulness.

          Struck with awe Peter blurts out how good it is to be there standing in the light of the glory of God and suddenly (there's always a suddenly) a bright cloud overshadowed them; the same cloud that consumed Mt. Sinai like a consuming fire, the cloud of the glory of the LORD; i.e., the Holy Spirit. Then God the Father spoke, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” Realizing that they were in the presence of God and that Jesus, their friend and teacher, is God’s Son, Peter, James, and John went face down on the ground, absolutely scared to death. They knew that they had no right to be there. They were not worthy to be in the presence of God. A common superstitious kind of belief back then was that they should have died on the spot for having come into contact with God.

But, Jesus then said to them not, “Get up and don’t be afraid,” but rather, “Be raised and don’t be afraid!” The Greek word there for the act of rising is in the passive voice. It was done to them. They were made to get up and why every translator misses this, I have now idea. The commentators don’t, but the translators do. It is Jesus who is raising his disciples not the disciples themselves simply rising up on their own efforts. The Transfiguration of Jesus speaks also of our resurrection from the dead. By Jesus’ command and in the same power of person-establishing, creation renewing love by which God raised him from the dead, i.e., the Holy Spirit, God the Father because of Jesus the Son’s sacrifice and intercession and our union with him in through the Holy Spirit will likewise raise us from the dead by the same power of person-establishing, creation renewing love of the Holy Spirit. By Jesus own command and because of his death and resurrection for us, we who are in him have nothing to fear in the presence of God the Father ever if anybody does. We have nothing to fear. We’ve only to bask in the goodness of the glory of the Holy Trinity – the love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We have nothing to fear in the presence of God.

So, back to our own mountaintop experiences, reflecting back on the experience that I shared with you. That was a moment when, I believe, God spoke to me. He comforted me, his beloved child. As Christians, we will have moments like that and they are good. Yet, let’s not major on the minors. There is something greater here that we must take in: we as Jesus' disciples in union with him, the Risen and Ascended One; we, by the free gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; we, are living in the Transfiguration at this very moment and always. What Jesus is now – resurrected and glorified – he is now also making us to share in because our life is in him. He is making us to rise up and be like him. He has poured his Spirit upon us, into us, and it is good. The Father has spoken the Word of life into us and by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit we are being transfigured to reflect Jesus Christ more and more through our own lives and our life together as a church in his name. Yet, let us not hang it all on God’s shoulders. He has also called us to obedience. The Father has commanded us to listen to his Son, to Jesus, and therefore to live according to what Jesus has said. The Christian life is more than just occasional moments of love and assurance from the Trinity and certainly more than just being good and doing our part out of a well-formed sense of duty. The Christian life is found in following; following Jesus, abiding by his teachings, immersing ourselves in prayer, studying and embodying the Scriptures, and laying down ourselves for those around us in unselfish love that they may see the love of God. Having been to the mountain and seeing who Jesus is in his glory and hearing the voice of God, Christian life is found coming down the mountain with him and following in suffering and joy bearing our cross, dying to ourselves, and being raised in him. Amen.