The Kingdom of God Is at Hand

Text: Mark 1:9-17
          I was a Biblical Studies major in university and so I got to spend those formative, smart-alecky, know-it-all years of early adulthood poking around rather deeply in the Bible and coming up with some difficult questions.  One of those questions since I was floating around in more evangelistic circles involved the Gospel: What was the Gospel the early churched preached.  You see, I was having trouble finding in the Bible where it proclaimed that Southern Bible Thumper Gospel that was lingering about.  You’ve heard it.  “God created and loves you.  You are a sinner who has stepped outside the bounds of God’s moral law.  Therefore, God who is all-righteous has condemned you to death and you will go to Hell when you die.  But, God in his love sent his Son to become human in order to pay the penalty of death for you.  If you believe this good news and accept Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Saviour, God will forgive you and you can go to Heaven when you die.”  That is what is known as the “Penal Substitution” model of atonement put forth as “THE” Gospel by the Medieval Roman Catholic theologian St. Anselm of Canterbury back in the 11^th Century and has persisted. 

Another more palatable, more recent, and more popular version of that “Jesus stepped in for you” gospel was developed by American Presbyterian and Evangelical leader Bill Bright in 1952 in his booklet The Four Spiritual Laws.  Bright was the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ and thought every Christian should have the Gospel memorized and be able to share it.  Bright’s gospel went: God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life (Jn 3:16, 10:10). Humanity is sinful and separated from God. Therefore, we cannot know and experience God's love and plan for our lives (Rom. 3:23, 6:23).  Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin.  Through Him you can know and experience God's love and plan for your life (Rom. 5:8; 1Cor. 15:3-6; Jn. 14:6).  We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord so that we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives (Jn. 1:12; Eph. 2:8,9; Jn. 3:1-8; Rev. 3:20).  All you have to do is pray the prayer of repentance to seal the deal. This was the gospel Billy Graham preached for nearly his entire career.

The problem that I faced with these gospels was that I couldn’t find them presented as “THE” Gospel anywhere in the Bible.  I assumed that they were there somewhere.  Indeed, the basic Christian tenants they represent are there. Jesus did die for us all the death we deserve due to our sin.  God does have a plan for my life greater than I anything I can come up with apart from Jesus Christ.  Those teachings are there but only as facets of the greater gem of what the Triune God of grace has done in, through, and as Jesus Christ not only for me as an individual, but more so for us as his people and even all of humanity and indeed the entirety of his creation.  

Scot McKnight who is a rather prolific writer and professor of New Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, IL calls particularly Bill Bright’s gospel a very effective rhetorical device developed by American Evangelicals in the 20^th Century explicitly to elicit a particular decision and it is simply not in the Bible in the places where we find the New Testament writers actually proclaiming the Gospel such as 1 Corinthians 15:1-28, the sermons of Peter and Paul in the Book of Acts, the Gospels, and Jesus himself.  He would say that the same applies to the penal substitution gospel but its roots run deeper in history than the 20^th century.

The biggest problem I find with the penal substitution and the four spiritual laws gospels is that Jesus himself did not proclaim those as the gospel.  Jesus never preached either of those two gospels.  Jesus’ Gospel is surprisingly simple.  His ministry was to walk about the small towns of Galilee and Judea announcing, “The time has come.  The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent and believe the good news.”  When he announced this Gospel, he also healed people and cast out demons as well as pronounced the forgiveness of sins.  His Gospel was rooted in the real history of real people rather than simply involving what happens to individuals after they die.  Jesus comes as the Anointed King God had promised to Israel through the prophets.  The King through whom God himself would deliver Israel, indeed the whole creation, from its enemies even sin and death and establish the Kingdom or Reign of God on earth.  For Jesus to say that the kingdom of God is at hand or come near was to say that it is here, with him it is here.  This long expected time in history of God’s present and visible reign began with Jesus and his ministry and continues on today in and through us his followers and our congregations through the working of the Holy Spirit as Jesus reigns from that right hand of the Father and will return.  Jesus proclaimed and enacted the kingdom of God, the reign of God in word and act in history.  That was what he was here to do and what he continues to do in and through us in the power of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father.  The Kingdom of God was the central focus of Jesus’ ministry.  Therefore, it should be the focus of our ministry as well.

But, the topic of the Kingdom of God is a difficult one particularly for Christians in the West.  After the first few decades of the church talk of the Kingdom of God all but disappears having been engulfed into that interestingly dysfunctional marriage of Church and State that we call Christendom.  The phrase Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven resurfaced during the Crusades and then persisted with the divine right of kings into the British Empire only to evolve into the American notion of Manifest Destiny.  In the Church a more biblical idea of the Kingdom of God emerged in the late 19^th century among Christian Liberals who taught that by mixing social ministries and Christian mission we could bring about the Kingdom of God on earth.  And so, programs of public education, public health, and public welfare systems came into being along with temperance and restorative rather than retributive penal systems and these programs became the thrust of a global missionary movement.  Yet, since the two World Wars talk of the Kingdom again all but ceased until recently as Christendom has finally all but died.  No longer can we, the church in the West rely on and take for granted our privileged position.  The institution of "the church" is dying in North America and something new is emerging and in the new emerging church the idea of the Kingdom of God as Jesus preached it is re-surfacing. 

Today, to speak of the kingdom of God is not to speak of a mixture of Church and State (though this persists among conservative Evangelicals).  It is to speak of God’s really extending his grace into his creation and this means we need to know what grace is.  It is not courtroom leniency where God just forgives humanity’s sin on account of Jesus’ death on our behalf.  The biblical understanding of God’s grace derives not from the courtroom but from the royal court and involves the idea of having a monarch’s undeserved favour.  God’s grace is that we have been brought into God’s presence in response to his summonsing us to come to him and there in his presence he extends his favour towards us and promises to act on our behalf and truly does so in time in the real events of our lives.  Paul in Romans speaks of grace as being a place in which we stand.  He writes: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand” (Rom. 5:1-2).  Experiencing God’s grace is the reality in which we stand where the power of God’s grace is the authority under which we conduct or lives.  We no longer need be slaves to sin and the fear of death for we are adopted through Jesus by the gift of the Holy Sprit to be children of God and co-heirs with him to his Kingdom, his reign in history right now.

 So, the Kingdom of God, God’s reigning over us according to grace is near.  It is here, at hand ruling over us.  That should lead us to ask how do we know it’s here?  What should be our experience of it?  Though the church has talked almost exclusively about the forgiveness of sins for the last 1,000 years and God’s plan for our lives the last 50, we are not accustomed to seeing the Kingdom come with power with miraculous healings or and the casting out of demons the way that it came with Jesus, though I know people for which both have happened.  Just to make a summary statement here, Jesus didn’t heal and cast out demons for the sake of doing miracles.  They were physical signs of the kingdom’s presence and the end result of them was to restore people to being able to function with dignity within human community.  That provides us with a rule of thumb when it comes to how the kingdom of God comes and the way God’s grace works.  Grace doesn’t dehumanize like sin and death do.  God’s grace re-humanizes people, restores us to dignity as a sign pointing towards the future when Jesus returns.

But back to the questions I was just asking about experiencing the kingdom of God, indeed, experiencing God’s reign of grace in our lives, what’s that like.  Psalm 6 to me is quite descriptive.  It’s written by King David probably in the episode of deep depression he went through after the baby died that Bathsheba had.  If you remember, David abused his kingly power and had an affair with Bathsheba and then had her husband Uriah killed.  Uriah was a very loyal soldier among David’s elite. So David writes:  “O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.  Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.  My soul also is greatly troubled.  But you, O Lord—how long? Turn, O Lord, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise? I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief; it grows weak because of all my foes.  Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.  The Lord has heard my plea;  the Lord accepts my prayer.  All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.”

David was deeply in remorse.  Indeed, depressed with it and so he prays.  He prays and he prays and he prays and he prays, praying “Don’t do to me as I deserve but rather, “Turn, O Lord, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love.”  We don’t know what happened, but we suddenly find David proclaiming that the Lord had heard him and was going to show him favour against his enemies who were going to take advantage of him in his weak state.  That’s grace.  That’s God’s reign breaking in.  And notice the role prayer played in it.

That leads us to the question of from what do you need saving.  Where in your life do you, like David did, need God to prove he is the only steadfastly loving and faithful god?  It doesn’t have to be that you are depressed and overwhelmed with your own sinfulness.  Maybe it’s a grudge or a resentment you’re bearing.  Maybe it’s somebody you love, somebody you know just needs to know the Lord?  Where do you see the need for God to step up to the plate and prove he is the One and Only steadfastly loving and faithful God?  Look around here in Stokes Bay.  What do you see people need saving from?  Friends, the time has come.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent and believe the Gospel.  “Repent and believe” that means pray and be disciple.  Look at those needs, pray, get involved according to the love of God.  And when those prayers are answered tell about.  30 years I have prayed for my best friend growing up to know the Lord.  One month ago he got baptized.  He’s a changed a man these days.  He’s peaceful on the inside.  I know many alcoholics involved in AA whom God in answer to prayer has taken away their compulsion to drink and is healing them on the inside and in their bodies of the damage alcohol has done.  I could go on.  The Kingdom of God is at hand, my friends.  Pray and be a disciple and watch the Kingdom come.  It will.  Amen.

Love One Another

Text: John 15:9-17

John 15:9-17   "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.  ¹⁰ If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.  ¹¹ I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  ¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.  ¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command.  ¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.  ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-- fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.  ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.

“Love One Another”

Ed White was a church health and growth consultant for the Alban Institute.  Alban is one-stop shop for all things involving how to do church.  Mr. White had a neat question he liked to ask churches when he worked with them.  He would ask, “What business are you in?”  Now, that’s a very pointed if not prophetic question for congregations here in the last 25 or so years when to our detriment business models have risen to dominate the way churches go about being the church.  The question is a play on words.  We can substitute busyness for business.  Yet, Mr. White’s question isn’t asking how we make our money as churches but rather it comes at why we, the church, are here.  It’s like being asked by the Border Patrol to state our business in Canada. 

So, why are we here?  What’s our business?  I think, and please correct me if I am wrong, most congregations these days are having a very difficult time answering that question.  We do things we think churches ought to do, all the while seeming to have forgotten why we do them.  Fortunately, Jesus at John15:15 gives us a subtle hint as to the nature of our problem.  He says: “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business.  Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”  We are good, very good servants of the Lord.  Yet, how many of us shy away from being able to talk about Jesus being our friend and how he’s been faithful to us each.  That shyness affects how we go about our Master’s business.  In fact, it makes us look as if we don’t know it.

You know, that hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”?  It’s not about “doing” or being a servant.  It’s about friendship with Jesus.  Jesus’ friendship has every thing to do with prayer; with his bearing our sins and grief and sorrows which we unload on him in prayer; his going through our trials and temptations with us.  It has to do with us discovering his faithfulness, his encouragement, his strength, his comfort.  He knows our every weakness and doesn’t reject us.  He’s always there with us even when we are sinning.  He’s always placing his life before us for us between us and our perishing to heal us.  He’s our truest friend.

Jesus calls us friends but somehow, somewhere we have resolved ourselves and the purpose of our churches to being places where we just sign up to do something that we believe churches are supposed to do rather than being fellowships where we come to share Jesus’ friendship with each other.  We like to talk about, or should I say we like our ministers to talk about Jesus being a friend to everybody, but we don’t want to share how he’s been a friend to each of us personally.  How he’s befriended and loved “me”.  Unfortunately, our reserve in this matter pretty much makes irrelevant our message to others that they too have no greater friend to find than Jesus…and that they can find the same kind of friendship among his friends.

Jesus calls us his friends because he has made known to us everything he has learned from God the Father.  He makes known to us love and a particular kind of love; a love which compels us to position, to orient our lives to be for or on behalf of our friends in Christ.  If I might answer Ed White’s question - our business is loving one another the way Jesus has loved us each.  “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Let’s talk about love for a few minutes.  Love is probably the most misunderstood word in the English language.  The problem is that we allow a very wide range of meaning to one, little four-letter word.  Love can be anything from a feeling with no action, a crush, to an emotional bond to an action with no feeling.  The Greek language of the New Testament, on the other hand, is more specific.  It has four words to our one little word.  The first Greek word is eros.  We get the word erotic from this one.  Eros means romantic love.  The second Greek word for love is storge.  This is the love that binds family together.  Next is the word philos, the love bond of friendship.  And finally, if you have been around the church long enough, then you have heard the word agape.  Agape is the heroic sense of love.  It is situating the entirety of one’s being – our heart, spirit, mind, and strength – to be for or on the behalf of others.

Agape is key to understanding the Greek notion of love.  All the other forms of love are shallow without it.  Eros is nothing more than infatuation if it is not made complete by agape.  Eros may get me into a relationship, but marriage is built on agape.  The family bond is a mystery.  It’s powerful and unless agape undergirds that bond, the family can be a very destructive place.  Friendship is nothing more than acquaintance unless friends are actively for one another.  In the Greek mind agape is what makes any kind of love to be love.

Looking at John’s gospel, agape is the word for love that Jesus most frequently uses.  He uses philos as well, but not as frequently.  Some translators would say he uses them interchangeably, but there is a subtle difference.  For example, in the last chapter of John’s Gospel Jesus now resurrected meets the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and eventually confronts Peter about Peter’s denial of him.  He asks Peter, “Simon son of John, do you agape me more than these?”  He meant “Do you lay your life down for me more than you do for these others?”  Peter, wisely avoiding the comparison, responds, “Lord, you know that I philos you.”  “I love you as the dearest friend.”  So, Jesus accepts Peter at his word that he loves Jesus dearly as his friend and then commands Peter, “Feed my lambs.”  You see, to love Jesus, to position yourself in life to be for or on behalf of Jesus is to serve his disciples.  We love him by loving one another as he has loved us.  This is particularly true of church leadership where modeling agape must come before anything else even things like meetings and preaching.  If we leaders, elders and ministers, do not agape our people, everything else is hypocrisy.

Well, this point is such a big one that Jesus again asks Peter, “Simon son of John, do you agape me?”  Peter again answers, “Yes Lord, you know that I philos you.”  “Take care of my sheep,” Jesus tells him.  Jesus is really beginning to cut to the core of Peter’s problem.  Peter denied him when push came to shove.  His philos for Jesus had no agape, no laying it down for Jesus.  So Jesus must push Peter to see if Peter will do the same with Jesus’ disciples.  Peter’s problem was that his agape was for himself out of fear for his own well-being rather than having true agape-based philos for Jesus and being loyal to his dearest friend.  So he denied Jesus.  Peter has to come to realize that to agape Jesus is to be more than just his friend, it is to put fear and self-agape aside and situate himself to be and act for Jesus’ followers in agape love as Jesus has done for them.  Denying Jesus himself is one thing.  We will do that…daily.  It is a failure of philos.  But, turning our backs on one another is entirely another.  That’s a break down of agape. 

A third time Jesus confronts Peter yet this time Jesus changes it up a bit, “Simon son of John, do you philos me?”  He uses philos here rather than agape.  This hurt Peter’s feelings.  Peter truly is quite remorseful for his denial of Jesus.  He truly loves Jesus as his dearest friend.  Peter responds, “Lord, you know all things, you know that I philos you.”  Jesus is really pushing here to get Peter to realize that loving Jesus as a friend is more than just a bond of friendship and loyalty.  So again Jesus commands again, “Feed my sheep.”  Surprisingly, Jesus who knows all things and does indeed know that Peter loves him dearly tells Peter he will eventually be martyred for Jesus and commands him, “Follow me.”  Peter’s strong bond of friendship with Jesus will due to agape for Jesus lead him to die for Jesus.  Yet, for now Peter must show his philos for Jesus by showing agape to Jesus’ followers.

In the passage we read today Jesus commands us to agape one another, to place or position ourselves in life to follow him by serving one another.  The fellowship of agape love in the Christian community is the heart of what the Christian reality is all about.  It is our business, so let’s make it our busyness.  Jesus did not come and live and die for us to get a bunch of people to decide to believe in him so they could go to heaven when they die.  Jesus didn’t live and die just to get a bunch of people to show up periodically to get their moral compasses realigned so they can get on with being good citizens.  In, through, and as Jesus of Nazareth the Christ the Trinity – the loving communion of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - was and is making a new humanity renewed in his loving-communion image.  We are human beings now indwelt by the Holy Spirit who binds us to Jesus the Son to share in his resurrected humanity so that we are able to agape one another in Christ in order to show the world the Trinity’s agape for it.  The Christian church is not a gathering of people who share common private beliefs about Jesus and who strive to live morally upright lives so they don’t go to Hell.  It is the communion of people who have in various ways met Jesus Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit and in, with, and through him experienced the steadfast love and faithfulness of God the Father and are therefore now able to agape others, to position our lives for others…and we do so. 

Indeed, Jesus has chosen us each for this very purpose.  There has been a wealth of materials written in the last thirty years helping churches to discern their purpose.  Everywhere you turn now congregations, Presbyteries, whole denominations are coming up with vision and mission statements to say what we are here for.  I did my doctoral thesis on it and therefore I can say with learned and earned authority that a lot of words have been spent on trying to re-invent the wheel that Jesus so plainly gave us and we so stubbornly avoid.  That wheel?  Love one another.  That’s our purpose.  Love one another as he has loved us and people will know that we are his disciples.  People will know because the Holy Spirit, the real and felt personal presence of God will make that very clear to them.  I’ve never heard of someone leaving a church with their excuse being “those people were so loving that I knew God was in their midst.”  No, that’s the reason people give for why they choose to stay at a church.

Jesus’ command to agape one another as Jesus himself has agape-ed us is a difficult task for us.  It is a difficult task for us because it is our nature to be like Peter and out of fear agape ourselves rather than one another.  John says something very interesting at the very beginning of his gospel.  He writes: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (3:19).  The word for love there, for loving darkness is agape.  We will love the darkness in the same way that Jesus has loved us.  Our tendency is to position ourselves in life on behalf of ourselves, for what we perceive to be to our own benefit or gain.  We are self-minded rather than communion-minded. 

Being truly God-minded is to show agape to one another in Jesus name.  The light that has come into the world is Jesus, God the Son become human.  He revealed to us that God is within himself agape.  Loving, agape-ing one another is what church is all about.  Not saving souls, not choirs and robes, not guitars and praise songs, not dinners and fundraisers, not moral uprightness or spiritual edification.  Being a human community of people placing the entirety of our very selves on the table of life to be for one another rather than for ourselves is why we are here.  What the hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” says about how Jesus is a friend to us each is the way we are to love one another.  We are to bear with one another in our sins and grief and sorrows.  Share with one another that we can pray for one another.  Strengthen one another in the midst our trials and temptations.  In the midst of our loving each other as he has loved us Jesus will indeed make himself known so that we more deeply discover his faithfulness, his encouragement, his strength, his comfort.  Just as he knows our every weakness and doesn’t reject us.  So we would share our weaknesses with one another and not reject each other.  Church is a place we are to come not in our strength but in our weakness. Stick by one another that healing from sin may arise.  Sin’s power over us is the shame that makes us feel alone, powerless, and hopeless.  True, authentic human friendship should mark the relationships that Jesus’ followers have with one another.  For, you see, agape-based community is where God has chosen to make his agape readily available.  A better way of saying this is that the Trinity makes himself readily and unhinderedly available in the midst of Jesus followers who devote themselves to the very hard work of agape for one another. 

There is a huge repent and believe that comes along with what I’m saying here.  Jesus’ command for us to agape one another places a huge need for the re-prioritization of our commitments.  If we are the followers of Jesus and do want to know him and his philos for us, then we must put the agape of our brothers and sisters in Christ before other commitments we have.  One thing that I treasure about smaller churches is that agape stands more evidently at the fore of what we Christians are about.  It is this agape that comes so naturally in smaller churches that we must learn to give to our surrounding communities with the expectation of nothing in return.  Agape is not agape if it is done with the motive of saving a religious institution that is addicted to buildings and paid ministers who will do everything to keep themselves employed.

To close, it has unfortunately befallen the church in our culture today that we be dwindling.  A major worldview shift has hit our culture in the last fifty years and the institutional security of most churches is gravely threatened.  Our culture has taken a very narcissistic turn.  An agape of the darkness abounds.  But we, each of us, are whom Jesus has chosen to shine his light of agape through to the world, the light of God’s very self through to this world that loves the darkness.  He’s chosen each of us to be crucial participants in his own laying down of himself in unselfish love for this world that he also loves.  For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son.  You each are part of that.  Love one another.  Love one another deeply from the heart.  Listen to one another.  Support and encourage one another.  Discipline one another.  Pray for one another.  Study the Bible together and together feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, help the poor, clothe the naked, visit the captive.  People will know you are Christians by your love…and because of that love they just might be inclined to hang around.  Amen.

Being Christian in Society

Text: 1Peter 2:11-3:12

In our section today Peter deals with the practicalities of living the Christian life.  I’ve tackled a big section of this letter making it difficult to cover it as closely to the text as I would like.  I will try rather to develop the big picture behind the text or the underlying principles that govern how a Christian should live in this world.  The first basic point is that Jesus himself serves as our primary model for how to live.  He lived sinlessly.  As we are in fact dead to sin, on account of his faith and obedience, so we strive to live in his faithfulness and obedience, making his life evident in our lives.  Since he lives in us, we live accordingly.  He lived righteously and he lived honourably, subjecting himself to the powers that be even though he was free of them, and he suffered and died for it.  Accordingly as he suffered for doing good in this sin-distorted world, so will we.  In the end this will bring glory to God and perhaps convince a few of God’s future plan.

Now let me spell this out a little further Peter says at verse thirteen, “For the Lord's sake accept the authority of every human institution.”  One view about the ordering of society that is presented in the Bible is that societal authority originates with God as a gift from God for a peaceable society.  Government, marriage, family; all these orderings are a gift from God.  Living righteously in these orderings should result in a just and peaceable society, but unfortunately, sin has mucked up the way we relate to God and one another, corrupting it totally.  Instead of an ordered harmony among people that glorifies God, people use these orderings for the pursuit of their own pleasure and gain.

Peter deals with two societal orderings in our text today: government and the household.  In his world as in ours the household is the basic building block of society.  In his day, a household consisted of husband and wife, children, and servants.  The economy to a large extent was also built on family business, which involved the household or an estate.  Government was the means that provided for the peaceful co-existent of households.  In Peter’s thought the household and the government were to be ordered under Christ.  In the household, the relationship of husband and wife should reflect the relationship between Jesus and the church.  So did the relationship between household servants and the master of the house.  Peter also tells the people to honour the emperor because in a perfect world the relationship between emperor and people was to reflect the image of Christ and the church. Peter’s insight into how to live the Christian life is that if we each pattern ourselves after Christ’s way of life, the human institutions of order in society should begin to reflect Christ to the glory of God resulting in harmony, justice, and peace in society.

          I would like to teach you a big word to help you understand Peter’s teaching.  It is homeostasis.  The word roughly means the state of being home or home base.  It is somewhat of a plumbing term based on the law that water mysteriously seeks it’s own level.  Every body of water has a flat, level surface.  Someone a long time ago learned that if you put water in a pipe with up turned ends, when the water is the same distance from each opening, you have a level line between the two points and thus you have a level for creating orderly and sturdy structures.  This self-leveling ability, when you apply it to a system, such as plumbing brings about homeostasis.  If you have many points in you’re level environment and lower one point, all the water will rush to the lowest point because of gravity.  This is why you always place you’re septic bed downhill.  

          I bring all this up because every societal grouping has it’s own state of homeostasis at which it has learned to function except it is grossly corrupted by human sin.  Our global community has developed it’s own homeostasis which needs war, disease, famine, and at least one third of the people to live at or below subsistence levels so that less than eight percent of the population can have their SUV and grow obese.  Every nation has its own homeostasis.  Each family has it’s own unique homeostasis or pattern of relational balance that is normal to them.  Reflecting on Peter's teaching, society has a homeostasis in which Christians must continue to live.  We cannot withdraw from it nor can we take it over.  Peter deals here with government and the household.  With respect to government, we must respect the authority of government even if it means suffering for doing what is right.  Peter sums it up here, “have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind” this approach by individual Christians is our participation in God’s will to heal the sin-diseased homeostasis in human society and restore his image within the creation.   

          Peter next provides us with the homeostasis of the household.  Remember that the household is the basic building block of human society.  The way Peter words his thoughts about marriage has largely been misunderstood and misapplied.  His telling wives to subject themselves to their husbands' authority has unfortunately too often been used towards the subjugation of women all the while, if you dig a little deeper, you find Peter is saying the opposite.  He sees men and women as equal in God’s eyes as we are both inheritors of the gracious gift of life.  The church believes that marriage between a man and woman reflects the relationship between Christ and the Church.  A husband’s authority is that of Christ and Jesus' authority is based on the principle that in weakness there is strength.  So, husbands a husband lay down his life for his wife and family serving them as Christ served his disciples when he washed their feet.  Husbands should listen and be understanding of their wives, bring honour to them, and not make them feel degraded or ashamed.  Peter’s word to wives is for them to take a subordinate place to their husbands as they would to Christ because her husband is to love her as Christ loves her.  She is to do this even if the husband is not Christian because her efforts to be like Christ may convince him.  

          Peter is not giving us a mandate for spouses to stay in abusive marriages.  Marriage is the basic building block of homeostasis in human society.  It is a holy institution.  Therefore those who enter into the covenant of marriage are to honour Christ with it, indeed, use it to give testimony to Christ Jesus.  When those in marriage carry on as if they were not married it destroys the basics of human society.  Furthermore, it is just as damaging for those not married to behave as if they were.  God gave us the bond of marriage to order the relationship between men and women in his creative love.  Keep it holy for Christ’s sake.

          In summary, Peter’s thoughts on living the Christian life follow this line.  Through Christ Jesus by the work of the Holy Spirit God has given the means for humanity to come to a new, healthy homeostasis or "normal" in the image of Christ.  We Christians are called to live in this new order known as "in Christ" in the midst of the old until Jesus returns to make it complete.  Therefore, pattern your lives after Christ Jesus who bore our sins in his body on the cross that we might be dead to sin and alive to righteousness.  Live honourably and honour everyone.  “Have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind” especially in your homes.  Amen.

Death Has No Final Say

Text: Psalm 116

Psalm 116 begins with some words that do not often fall from the mouths of us Presbyterians.   Very confidently and with much celebration the Psalmist says “I love the LORD.”  Hmmm.  That's something those hand-waving, guitar-playing charismatics say who just haven't figured out just how Stoic and aloof the old man upstairs really is.  We Presbyterians, now, we’ve got that one figured out real good and so we're more reserved in our expressions of faith.  I've run across many a Presbyterian for whom God is the Creator and Provider who is concerned for the most part only about moral order and would be satisfied if we just be good citizens of the land in which we live.  We would get quite uncomfortable if someone stood up in our midst and simply said "I love the LORD."  That's just doesn't fit with us.  It's simply too emotional.  Nevertheless, passionate spirituality is biblical and love for God is something we should feel.  So maybe we should stretch ourselves and ask what possibly could have made this Psalmist make such a passionate statement? 

Well, the answer to that question is quite straightforward.  The Lord heard his voice.  Heard his prayers and acted.  God heard his crying for help and got really involved in the Psalmist's life and saved him.  The LORD heard and acted to save him and from there arose the Psalmist's love for the LORD.  Love for God is rooted in God's listening and responding to us.  It is very difficult to love someone who doesn't listen you.  I don't think I would be out of line here in saying that our having love for God directly corresponds to how much he has made us to know that he actually listens to us and acts for us in our best interest.  How can I expect my wife to love me if I don't listen to her and act for her in her best interest?  So also, if God expects anything more from us than irrational fear and duty, then he better be listening to us and making it known to us hat he has heard.

I think the Psalmist here in 116 is testifying that in fact, God does listen.  The image that the Hebrew language portrays of the LORD's hearing him is that the LORD bent down to hear him.  I have to do that quite often with my kids.  Sometimes there are things they want to say or need to ask but the situation is too embarrassing or too scary to say it out loud so I have to lean in to hear them.  That's how the Psalmist experienced the LORD's hearing his prayer.  The LORD God loved him enough to lean in to him to hear his rather weak prayer because for some reason it was just too much for the Psalmist to scream it from the rooftops.

The Psalmist doesn’t say exactly what his situation was other than death had surrounded him.  He found himself powerless before the one thing he could not save himself from—death and its friend fear.  That’s a scary place, a humbling and humiliating place, a brutally painful place.  Death is no friend.  Even in times when it seems that dying is the better alternative to living, when death is a relief, death still is no friend.  Death is not a friend in any case.  My father died of cancer.  There were times in his last few weeks when we all wanted him to die.  We were ready for his suffering to end, but death wouldn’t come.  But then it did and with the exception of the occasional dream when Dad shows up, my father is gone.  Death comes and it is to us for now so final. 

For the writer of this Psalm death was coming to him and there was nothing he could do about it.  He was powerless over it.  All he could do was cry out to the LORD, “Save my life” and the LORD did.  The LORD heard him, heard his cry for help, inclined his ear to him and so he says, “I love the LORD.”  Love in this context isn’t some sort of sappy praise song thing where we’re all supposed to feel like Jesus is our boyfriend.  It has more to do with faithfulness.  The LORD was faithful to the Psalmist in this matter of death.  Therefore, the Psalmist would now be faithful.  He would tell God’s people what the LORD had done for him.  He will worship.  He will give his thanks.  He will love and serve the LORD.

Well, that’s the Psalmist who found himself mightily saved - spared from his enemies, spared from death.  When I read this Psalm, I read it in several ways and my reactions are bit mixed.  Of course, I read it like a preacher.  You know, what preaches here?  What’s the message?  What can I say “Amen” to?  What can I get you to say "Amen" to?  But, then there’s that side of me that’s just simply a person, a person like any other, a person whom death has hurt and angered, a person who has more than a few lingering "why's".  That side of me wants to say to this Psalmist, “Well, good for you.  But, why didn’t the LORD spare my father from death?  Why didn’t he answer my family’s prayers and spare him over a few more years?”  The Psalmist says that the death of the LORD’s faithful ones is precious in his sight, but to me that sounds a whole lot like colluding with death.  I think it should rather read “costly in the eyes of the LORD is the death of his saints.”  The faithful one's are precious, but their death is costly; costly to the honour of God.  When death comes I can’t help but feel that God’s reputation of being a steadfastly loving and faithful God is on the line.  Why does the Psalmist get a reprieve on death and not the dozens of other people that I have personally prayed for their lives and they not live?  I can say, “Psalmist good for you, but can you throw me bone on why my dad can’t be here to meet my kids.  Why he couldn’t be here when I got married?  Then there has been a couple other things that I’ve been through the past few years that with him being my dad and me being most like him of all my family, it sure would have helped to have him around to help me sort me out, but…that’s death.  That’s death.  That’s death and death is no friend.

But friends, death has no final say.  Something else happens when I read this Psalm.  Ever since Jesus and Easter, his being raised from the dead and all that, I cannot help but read Psalm 116 as being about him, that he is in fact the Psalmist.  Sure, a few millennia ago a Hebrew priest had a brush with death and it turned out well for him and so he wrote a psalm about it.  But, at a closer look this Psalm reflects the experience of resurrection, of someone having actually died and come out the other side raised to new life.  This is certainly the way the church has read this Psalm ever since the first Easter.   If this Psalm is about Jesus, indeed from Jesus, then we must prepare ourselves to accept that death has even come to God himself.  Jesus, God the Son became human, lived, suffered, and died and his Father, God the Father suffered his death.  In some way that is way beyond our comprehension the Trinity himself now knows death personally as we do.  But, and praise the Lord (can I say that here?), by raising Jesus from the dead God has set in motion death’s utter destruction.  Death is not the final say for us.  Resurrection is.  It will be as Paul says, “Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.  For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.  For, this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.  When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’  ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?’”

I apologize if I sound crazy here but I really do believe this is the truth.  God has done something about death: in, through, and as Jesus Christ God has put death to death.  We will be raised.  Death will have its own end.  We in Christ who have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us now know this for certain.  Nevertheless, it still appears to us now that God hasn’t done what we in the immediacy of grief and the fear of death would hope he would do right now.  I have my list of people that I would rather have alive right now and if God were to cater to me they’d be alive right now.  But, that’s thinking small, thinking small when the scope of what God has done in, through, and as Jesus Christ is the delivering of this whole universe from sin, death, and indeed evil.  The Psalmist prayed, “deliver my life" and God did.  Now, in, through, and as Jesus Christ God has delivered, is delivering, and will deliver all of the creation.

Since this is the case, what can we do now?  Keep praying, keep crying out.  Our heavenly Father does indeed hear us.  That being the case let us live for the Lord doing things that will endure, things that are not in vain.  Let us give testimony to one another when we know God has heard and acted.  Paul tells us to pray without ceasing.  That's a sermon for another day, but one thing is for certain the more we discipline our minds to the work of constant prayer, the more we do begin to see the steadfast love and faithfulness of God everywhere around us and truly life becomes and answered prayer.  We've got 2,000 years worth of Christian writings on prayer that say precisely that.  In prayer our hope is made effective.  So, pray, friends, God is indeed listening.  Amen.