A Question to Preoccupy the MInd

Text: Matthew 22:34-46

In my previous church I was fortunate enough to have my in-laws as members.  My father-in-law is an extremely bright man who never seems to let his mind go idle.  This was good for me on Sunday mornings because the "cog's-are-turning" look on his face during the sermon had me thinking that I was putting forth some pretty astute insights.  And so, I would look forward to dinner later that evening in the hope that he might want to discuss the sermon.  Well, rarely did that happen.  It was usually the case that his mind had been occupied with some other hobby related problem for which the solution did indeed come to him during the sermon.  His hobby is making furniture and for some reason sermon time was good for him to be thinking on a project he had going in his shop.

 One of those projects was a library cart for the church he was making out of local Ash.  He designed it himself to function both as a cart and a display case.  He also had his own plaque engraved for it because he didn’t want somebody wasting money on a brass plaque that said “This cart was made and donated by____.”  He has strong opinions about brass plaques and churches.  His plaque since it was the tree that had given the most his plaque read, “This cart is made of local ash.”  He also quoted Jesus here at Matthew 22:37, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” If I remember he put “mind” in italics because he wanted to get the message across that the Christian faith wasn’t something for which we check our brains at the door.  Faith requires study.  Faith seeks understanding and therefore must be informed otherwise its nothing more than superstition.

Well, I don’t think my father-in-law is aware of it, but that verse in itself is an opener to a ponderable question with which we like him would do well to preoccupy our minds this morning during sermon time.  In this verse Jesus oddly misquotes an Old Testament verse that is the heart of the ancient Hebrew faith, a very familiar verse to any Jew of his day and we must ask why.  If we could say that ancient Israel had a creed it is this verse from Deuteronomy that Jesus misquotes: “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 strength” (Dt. 6:4-5).  So, as important a verse as this is, why would Jesus take the liberty of substituting “mind” for “strength” and why would he take this liberty in the midst of what was a couple days worth of ongoing interrogation and testing of him by the religious authorities?  We would think that in the midst of all this he would want to be dotting his i’s and crossing his t’s rather than taking liberties with the text.

Well, let's set our minds to pondering.  Why did Jesus substitute “mind” for “strength”?  The reasons are likely many but I would like to highlight one. I think it has something to do with the relationship between doing and thinking.  I say that because Jesus replaces the doing word of the verse, “strength”, with the thinking word, “mind”.   What we do with this life we’ve been given is profoundly shaped by our "thinking", the preoccupations of our minds.  What we fear, what we worry about, what we dream, what we hope, what we believe about ourselves, what we believe about other people, what we believe other people believe about us, and so on, all these thoughts profoundly shape, indeed drive, what we do. 

To frame this more in the language of faith, faithfulness is shaped by faith Which Whom or What we place our trust in and what we believe about that Whom or What profoundly affects how we go about being faithful.  To say it more in Christian terms – faithfulness or discipleship is shaped and driven by a preoccupation with the question “Who are you Jesus?”  So with respect to our question at hand I think Jesus replaced the doing word with the thinking word because he’s leading these Pharisees rather craftily to seeing that if they want to get their faithfulness right, they are going to have to get who he is.  He is not just a possibility for the Messiah to whom they give the title Son of David.  They must understand that he is their Lord, Son of God.

The course of Jesus’ last few days in Matthew’s Gospel demonstrates this.  Just a couple days prior, Jesus did what the Messiah King was supposed to do; according to prophecy he rode a donkey into town.  All along the way the crowds were shouting: ““Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest heaven!”  Then Matthew says something that certainly helps me make my point.  He writes, “When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” (Mt. 21:9-10) The next couple of days all the main cliques among the religious authorities took turns interrogating him with respect to that question. 

Moving on, the next thing Jesus did was go to the temple and cleanse it of the big business of spiritual abuse that was going on there.  You see, if you were a faithful Jew coming to Jerusalem on pilgrimage and wanted to make the required peace offering at the temple by means of the sacrifice of a dove, you couldn’t just bring your own dove.  You had to buy the temple-raised dove that you could only buy with the temple currency that you could only get from the moneychangers who were happy to exchange your Roman coinage for a price. So, Jesus quite angrily overturns the tables of the moneychangers and the animal vendors saying: “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a den of robbers” (Mt. 21:13).  Doing that Jesus just did something only the God of Israel had the authority do and he also called the temple “My house”.  

So, who is Jesus and what has he come to do, the Jerusalem religious authorities ask.  Well, Jesus by his doings demonstrates that he is the God of Israel come to put things to right starting with cleansing his own house of spiritual abuse.  By his teachings Jesus wants the Pharisees to see that faithfulness isn’t the faithfulness of outward appearance that they had so astoundingly mastered.  Faithfulness begins with loving the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul or being, and with all your mind; which is preoccupying your inner self with wanting to know who God is, and so then wanting to know who Jesus is.  It follows from there that faithfulness will manifest itself as loving our neighbour as we love ourselves, which is something that cannot be done without knowing the steadfastly loving and faithful way God is towards us each.

To give an example, several years ago I took to the spiritual discipline of memorizing the Sermon on the Mount.  I tried to do it a verse a day and it took about 120 days.  Every morning I would memorize a verse and then I would attempt to just keep saying it to myself over and over throughout the day as best I could during times of mental idleness.  My purpose in undertaking this disciple was to train my mind to ponder the things of God rather than the worries and fears and judging and self-bashing with which I am so inclined to be preoccupied.  In those days I went for a run almost everyday and it was during that time that I really worked at focusing on that day’s verse.  Well, lo and behold, about halfway through the Sermon, more than fifty days in, Jesus gave me a glimpse of who he is.  He really is non-judgemental, forgiving, and gracious.  I really know and trust that about him.  It was like learning something of who my wife is, not something about my wife.  I can figure out all kinds of things about Dana, but sometimes it happens that I catch a glimpse of who she is and it changes me and the way I am in our relationship.  So, it was with Jesus that day.  I caught a glimpse of who he is and changed me and has been changing me ever since.

So, winding this all down, may I humbly make an invitation to you?  How about giving a shot at preoccupying your minds with who Jesus is?  Take up a spiritual discipline that will involve the mind like prayerfully pondering the Scriptures, praying the Lord's Prayer over and over.  Take up a spiritual discipline and I suspect Jesus will indeed reveal himself to you and it will prove transformational changing the way you treat yourself and your neighbour. Amen.

The Proper Attire for God's Feast

Text: Matthew 22:1-14; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

A Trinitarian definition of righteousness would sound something like living in the love of the Father freely given to us through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in the communion of the Holy Spirit.  Righteousness, this right relationship to God, is given to us freely in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ made real in and among us through the fellowship building work of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus, the incarnate Son of God has done it all for us with respect to getting humanity, indeed us, right with God and therefore God has placed his Spirit, himself and his way of relating, into a particular community of people, including us, that stretches across every place and time and race and nation.  This is what Paul means by the fellowship with/of Jesus Christ in our reading from 1 Corinthians.  Jesus Christ is in his church, in his body, and that means that we are organically different than any other communion, community, group, or organization on earth.  We are where God himself is.  We are his temple.  It has been the pattern of the church throughout history to lose site of this or just be flat blind to it and be something other than God created it to be.

Jesus told his disciples “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends (Jn 15:13).”  “This is my command: Love each other (Jn 15:17).”  He said this because this is who he is.  God is the Trinity, the communion of self-giving and reciprocating love within mutually constitutive relationships, i.e., the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who gives himself for and to us.  In the giving of himself to us he creates a community, a communion, a fellowship that is to be in his image.  The question the Gospel asks is primarily whether we will participate now in our future glory by reciprocating God’s love to God and to one another.  Let this loving communion permeate worship and our relationships. 

To draw an analogy to the parable of the wedding feast this is what it is to be properly attired for the wedding feast.  There is a proper way to come to the feast and a proper attire.  Salvation is the kingdom of heaven given to us now, growing in our midst as the proof that Christ will come with the fullness of the kingdom when the Father says its time.  Salvation is Jesus Christ present in our midst…the fellowship with/of Jesus Christ…in the Holy Spirit.  We are the living body of the living Lord Jesus Christ.  The wedding feast that the King has prepared is here, right now, in our midst, the question is will we participate in it. 

This parable explains that the Trinity has prepared a feast for us and has invited us to it.  The Trinity has placed his salvation in our midst right now and we are invited to come and feast, to come and participate.  There is an immediate consequence if we do not, the obvious thing being that we just don’t get the feast.  We opt out of living in the life of God through communion with/of Jesus Christ as the Holy Spirit opens us up him.  

Jesus spoke this parable to the chief priests and the Pharisees in Jerusalem just after his triumphal donkey ride into town days before he was to be crucified and it angered them to the point that they began to plot to kill him.  The chief priests and Pharisees were the temple authorities and a particular sect of the Jewish faith known for being rigorous in observing rules of conduct that would keep them from transgressing the laws of the Old Testament.  They were not representative of all Jewish people or of Judaism as a whole back then or today.  The chief priests and the Pharisees back then were blinded by their assumption of religious authority and the false faith they had created.  They knew the Scriptures and therefore should have known who Jesus was, but thier desire to have power and control over the things of God had gotten the best of them. 

In this parable Jesus indirectly refers to them as the “invited ones”, the ones who had received the invitation prior to the feast being ready.  These “invited ones” knowing the Law and the Prophets should have been waiting with great expectation for this feast to occur.  So, it is mind boggling to see what their response was.  When the wedding feast is ready and the summons sent, these invited ones just don’t want to come.  Again the king sends his servants with a more adamant summons, “the food’s on the table.  You don’t need to bring anything.  Come.  Celebrate.”  This time they just didn’t pay attention.  Went to their farms and businesses to do what they do.  Too busy for the feast I guess.  Yet, there were some who took notice of the messengers and treated them shamefully and killed them.  So, the king destroys them for their insolence.  The response of the “invited ones” makes no sense.  It’s like expecting God to do something all your life and then when God does, you don’t want it.  The point of this parable to the chief priests and Pharisees was the kingdom of heaven is here, at hand, with and in Jesus Christ…and they gobsmackingly don’t want it.  They were living in expectation of that kingdom and here it was.  God was acting with the fulfillment of his promise that he gave through his prophets.  “Ho hum,” they said.  “What’s going on in our lives is more important than your silly little kingdom.”  Some got belligerent.

Well, to unyoke the burden of the analogy from the shoulders of the chief priests and Pharisees, let me push closer to home.  We, too, are the “invited ones”.  The word in first Corinthians that we translate as “called” is the same word Matthew uses for “those invited” both originally and after the king sent the servants out into the streets with a blanket invitation. Paul uses the word to describe himself, the people in the Corinthian church and all believers as the called ones, the invited ones…called to be an Apostle…called into the fellowship with/of the Son.   This fellowship with/of Christ Jesus that is in our midst is the wedding feast, the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of heaven, indeed Salvation.  The loving communion that is in our midst by God’s very self being here with us and in us is what God promised for ages through his prophets and what he promises to bring in its fullness some day hopefully soon.  The church is to be a communion where we love one another sacrificially and build one another up in love.  The relationships that we have in this congregation should be the primary person-building relationships that we have in our lives.  The love we give to and receive from our sisters and brothers in Christ should be what defines us as persons.  The self-giving, cross-based bond of love in our midst and how we share it is our small taste of salvation now freely given to us, to everybody, good and wicked.  When we shake each other’s hands in the warmth of the bond of friendship in Christ and say “The peace of Christ be with you” we are living in our salvation.  How deep are we willing to let this communion become?  The bond in Chrisit of this church is freely given to us.  That is why we say salvation is freely given.  God freely gives us himself so that we may participate in the ever-new, ever-renewing bond of love as it exists in the church under his Lordship exercised in the way of the cross.   He lives for us and we live for one another in him.

We are the “invited ones”, called by the king through his servants to come share in the feast.  How do we respond to the invitation?  In the past, this question has been directed to those outside the church as to why they don’t participate in it.  I think it is more rightly directed to us in the church.  Do we respond with not wanting to come to the feast meaning do we come to church not really wanting to participate in the bond of love, not really wanting to leave the comfort zone and get involved in the lives of our sisters and brothers in Christ who sit “you in your small caorner and I in mine” from week to week?  Do we come just because its our moral duty or just wanting a little spiritual direction to get us through the week or the next two or three weeks depending on when it’s convenient for us to get back and decide we missed the place?   After all, things do get busy around the farm and the business and the kids keep us hopping.  Or, do we have our own idea of what church ought to be and how Christians out to be and oddly kill the communion with good intentions?

The church, where salvation is manifestly present on earth, involves the relationships we share here and now; relationships which are the means through gift of the Holy Spirit of how Jesus builds us up in love to be persons in communion in him.  Our response, our participation in the feast, involves loving God with worship and taking time to get to know him and his ways through prayer and studying and ruminating upon the Scriptures privately and together and all this so that we may love each other and those outside this fellowship as Christ loves that the testimony of Christ Jesus might be authentic.   This is what it is to be enriched as Paul says, “For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge—because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you.” 

If we are going to feast, then we’ve got to be properly attired.  God is here.  Giving himself for us to partake of, but we have to let him build his loving self in us by molding us to actually visibly care for one another.  It is amazing in the church as a whole how we just don’t get it that being a fellowship that loves one another is all we are called to be and strive for.  We seem to know this instinctively, but we will come up with anything and everything for the church to be and do other than strengthen our bonds of love.  We’ll focus on getting people saved or fun and fantastic programs to get people in our pews.  But, to look across the room at these people we hardly know and say “I’ll be the best friend you’ve ever had just because of what Jesus has done for me and I can’t help it…,” well, that’s not so easy.  It means we must change in accordance with the transformation Jesus is working in us in the power of the Holy Spirit or we miss the feast.

The love of God is freely given to us through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in the communion of the Holy Spirit to be our bond, but honestly, too often we prove ourselves simply to not want it at all.  Getting saved don’t count if we have not love for one another.  So, beloved friends, let us guard our unity in Christ, our bond in Christ with every ounce of prayer we can muster.  Let’s love one another deeply from the heart.  Let’s build this congregation around building one another up in love.  We don’t need all those programs we think churches are supposed to have.  We have each other and there is one really wonderful feast going on here.  That’s all we need.  Let’s just be the church.  Amen.  

Striving for the Kingdom

Text: Matthew 6:24-34

            Have you ever heard the phrase “like a dog worrying a bone”?  That’s Southern for describing the way a dog goes about gnawing a bone.  For the dog, this seems to be some sort of stress relieving compulsive obsession.  They get this determined blank stare that says content but obsessed.  They will gnaw until their mouths bleed.  A dog worrying a bone fairly well describes the way worry gnaws away at us.  It is as irrational and compulsive as a dog with a blank stare just gnawing away and most people do it in an odd attempt to comfort themselves. 

Worry is a powerful sub-person within us.  At least that is how I experience it.  It is almost like having another person in me.  There’s my voice and then there’s this other thing that keeps throwing fearful scenarios at me that cause me stress.  Worry is intrusive.  Sometimes, it seems we are powerless before worry.  In fact, I would offer that we are addicted to it both emotionally and physiologically because it releases certain chemicals in us that we become dependent on having in our system.  Then, if we do not get them we will go into withdrawals and indeed find something to worry about.  Worry can only be silenced by the truth and that usually involves going to the source of your worries both the internal and the circumstances we are worried about. 

If I had to define worry theologically I would have to say that it is the exact opposite of faith.  We worry because we do not know down deep within our hearts and minds that we can trust our heavenly Father.  The part of us where worry comes out of is the part that needs to hear and be transformed by the Good News of God’s loving-kindness the most.  Worry is the proof of our broken relationship with God. 

We tend to think of sin as morally bad behavior, but that is reducing a disease to just one of its symptoms.  Sin is relational.  It is broken trust.  The story of Eve and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden describes this fairly well.  The Serpent came to Eve with the intent to make an untrue scenario seem like the truth to get her to not trust the word of the Lord.  They had a conversation by which they made the loving-kind God out to be an irrelevant, power-mongering, jealous liar who could not be trusted.  Adam and Eve, having reasoned themselves into not trusting God, therefore strove to become gods and ate the fruit God said not to eat.  Worry has been with us ever since and it is still a rational sounding irrational voice within us that tells us there is no God and if there is we cannot trust it, so be your own god.

In verses thirty-one and thirty-two here in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus is doing the exact opposite of the Serpent by making a rational argument for why we don’t need to worry and can trust God.  Jesus’ first point is that it’s the pagans who don’t know God nor the Truth of his loving-kindness who worry and strive unfulfillingly to meet their needs.  This is sort of a backdoor way for Jesus to highlight to his disciples that they do know the Truth about God for he, Jesus, has shown them that our Father in heaven is loving-kind.  Secondly, we who know God is loving-kind should know he knows our true needs even before we ask and will provide.  This is the Truth.  Therefore, we do not have to worry and we do not have to strive in an unfulfilling pursuit of meeting our own needs.  Rather, we can now strive first for God’s kingdom and his righteousness. 

Because we humans have a broken relationship with God and do not naturally know in our hearts that we can trust our Father in heaven who knows our true needs and will provide them, we spend our lives on delusional wishes and in turn strive rather aimlessly in the pursuit of acquiring what we think we need to survive and to be fulfilled.  In turn, we miss our created purpose.  Oddly, the New Testament Greek word for sin is a word from archery, hamartia.  It means to miss the mark.  We miss the mark because deep in our hearts we do not know or do not believe we can trust God and so we worry. 

Jesus uses two words for seeking or striving in this passage and that is a clue we should dig deeper.  The first word that the NIV translates as “run after” is epizeyteo.  It means to strive wishfully, with no aim.  It means to seek but not know what you’re really searching for.  It is a wishful way of life that is ambiguous, worrisome, and indeed prone to idolatry.  This is what we are doing when we serve the false idol of Mammon by trying to provide for ourselves out of a lack of trust in God.  But, we who know the Truth, that God is loving-kind, cannot serve two lords.  A slave cannot have two masters.

Therefore, Jesus says that we who know the Truth must strive or seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness. The word Jesus uses here for seeking or striving is zeyteo rather than epizeyteo.  Zeyteo means to seek or strive with a purpose or result in mind, the purpose of knowing.  Seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness is not a futile pursuit.  We can know them both.  Zeyteo means to seek as if it was a scientific pursuit.  We can actually know God, his kingdom and righteousness.  They are part of our observable reality; not simply matters of personal belief and metaphysics.  They exist.  If you want to know an orange you must observe it and interact with it and it will reveal its orange-ness to you.  So, it is with God, his kingdom and his righteous, loving-kind rule. We must interact with God and pursue his kingdom and God will reveal himself and his reigning power of transforming love to us.

  So, how do we seek or strive?  Well the answer to that question is in the Gospel itself. Jesus came proclaiming the Gospel that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, repent and believe the Good news.  Repenting and believing is how we seek.  Repentance is letting faith become deeper and deeper in our hearts and minds to take the place of worry.  The Greek word for repentance, metanoia, actually means to change the mind/heart where worry takes place.  To repent is to let faith replace worry and to let striving for God’s kingdom and his righteousness replace the aimless pursuit of serving the false god of self-provision called Mammon.  It is to think upon the things of God rather than the things of man letting God’s loving-kindness take over our hearts and dispel the compulsion to worry.   We do it by striving to forgive, to love our enemies, to be faithful to our vows – marriage especially, to love our enemies and make peace, and being aware of our poverty in Spirit.  Moreover, we strive by storing treasures up in heaven not on earth through giving to the poor, by praying under the guidance of the Lord’s Prayer, and by living just and equitable lifestyles.  These pursuits leave us with a sense of God’s loving-kindness, the Truth that dispels all worries.  Amen.

Who Are We Waiting For?

Text: Isaiah 25:1-9

As Jim and I were corresponding earlier this week about the service I asked him what “Examining the Scripture” was there in the order of the service.  He wrote that it is something new he’d been doing as a way to try to fill you in on the historical background and what not of the passage before getting into the sermon and it wasn’t anything that really had to be done if time didn’t allow.  Well I got to thinking about this passage from Isaiah and thought well we’ll just do some examining of the Scripture and skip the sermon because time probably won’t allow for it so just crack you Bibles back open to Isaiah 25 and we’ll take a walk through it.

The first thing we need to take into account is that the passage has no direct historical referent.  Actually it lies in a whole section of Isaiah that lacks a referent.  There is no specific event in the history of Israel to which Isaiah is referring.  Isaiah refers to a city laying in ruins but we have no idea what city or when.  That being the case, it doesn’t mean there is no history associated with it.  It is not a-historical.  Rather, it is description of all of history from the slant of all of humanity’s relationship to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  This is Isaiah summing up what’s going on in all of history.

In verse one Isaiah points us to what our human purpose is within history.  It is to point to God and stand in awe, give voice to that awe, and know we can trust God.  He says: “Yahweh, you are my God. I lift you up high.  I praise your name.”  Actually, the word for praise there isn’t the usual word for praise. It’s meaning is more like “I publically confess you are God and I am not.”  We make this confession based on the awe-demanding things that God has done.  Not only has the God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Big Bang-ed this Gobsmacking universe into existence.  Look at this picture of the Hubble Deep Field.  Those bright spots aren’t stars.  They’re galaxies over 13 billion light years away.  Just as sure as God created those galaxies so he gets involved in each of our insignificant little lives.  He’s got plans for us, plans from long ago, plans that are sure and certain indeed trustworthy.  They will come about.  God is God.  We are not.  He does wondrous things so let’s praise him and trust him with our lives.

In verse two Isaiah tells us that God has turned a city into a heap of rubble never to be rebuilt.  As a said a moment ago, there is no particular city we can point to so city must mean something else here.  I suspect it means human efforts to be God.  To the Old Testament prophets the “city” often turns up as an image of humanity organizing itself to be its own god. The image that comes to mind for me is the Tower of Babel and what that represented.  God turns humanity’s efforts to be its own god into a heap of ruins, a city never to be rebuilt.  Isaiah says that it is the city of the “estranged one’s”.  The NIV says “foreigners”, but that doesn’t get the sense of the Hebrew word which describes someone who has turned away or become estranged to the extent of humanity trying to be its own god.  In verse three Isaiah calls these people strong and ruthless.  A better way to translate here would be terror-striking people.  Isaiah says that God will in the end makes these ruthless, terror-striking people fear or revere him, bring glory to him.  As Paul says at Philippians 2:10-11: “…at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.”

Coming into verse 4 we have some very beautiful imagery describing how our God is with his faithful ones as we live in the midst of those who are terror-striking and estranged.  God, his very self, his presence with us, is a refuge like a shelving rock in the midst of a torrential downpour or like the shadow of a cloud passing over out it the middle of a desert.  That a cloud shadow passing over is your only relief from the heat out in the desert truly points to God being our only source of hope and comfort in this world amidst a humanity estranged from its God and source of life.  Verse five is summary; only God’s presence with us, in us can silence the war-roaring of life estranged from God.

Verses six through eight are one of the most powerful images in all of Scripture of what God is up to in history, indeed in each of our lives.  “On this mountain” in one sense refers to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem where in ancient Israel it was the place where God dwelt but figuratively it means God’s presence.  All things necessary for God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to deliver humanity from its estrangement from him come forth from this mountain.  On this mountain where God is, God has made and will one day ultimately make a feast for all peoples that for is like feasting on the finest of meats and wines, but it is also of God’s once and for all swallowing up of death.  The mountain is what God has done, is doing, and will ultimately do for all of his creation in, through and as Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, our Lord and Saviour.  God the Son as Jesus of Nazareth took upon himself our estranged existence and died with it and God the Father through the powerful working of the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead making a new humanity being made new by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit who awakens faith in us.  God has swallowed up death in victory forever.  Resurrection is humanity’s end.  God himself does and will wipe our tears away.  We who have stood and continue to stand faithful in steadfast hope and patient endurance in this world of estranged humanity that tries to put us to shame for striving to be faithful, we are being delivered from that death right now because God is not just with us, he is in us making us to live anew, changing us to be more as he is.  I like the way verse eight ends: “Indeed, God has spoken.”  Indeed.

Finally verse nine chimes in with “And it will be said on that Day, ‘Look!  This is our God.”  Our God, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Our God is the only God through out all of history to really get involved in the details of human life for the good of humans.  He’s been our refuge, our shelving rock, our cloud shadow in the midst of a humanity that is estranged from him and is ruthless towards each other and especially to those whom our God calls his own and has given the faith to patiently endure.  Our God is the only God that will do away with death and make all things new.  Our God has made a feast for all peoples.  The feast of his death-swallowing, tear-wiping, resurrecting, all-things healing very self he makes available to everyone. 

Friends, that Day is present now.  That Day came with Jesus.  It’s not here in its completion but Jesus is fully here through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit who organically unions us to Jesus so that we share in his relationship with God the Father now, a relationship that will blossom into the healing of all Creation when this Day reaches its fullness at Jesus’ return. 

Today is World Communion Sunday.  Christians all over the world are celebrating the Lord’s Feast as a sign of unity.  But also, today we gather around the banquet table in the midst of a world torn with the effects of humanity’s estrangement - viruses out of control, terrorism, poverty, war, economic oppression, abuse, climate changing due to pollution, the list goes on – we gather on this Day as a global Christian community to say “This is our God, the God we are waiting for.  He has given himself to make all things new.  He is reducing the city of our estrangement to rubble, swallowing up death along the way, and making all things new.”  Today we say to this estranged world, “Come and feast.  Come and rest.  God is here, victorious over death, and he will wipe away your tears.”  Amen.