Jesus, Show Your Face

Text: Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37

My grandfather was a quiet man.  My Grandmother, on the other hand,…well, she was one of those who could talk non-stop, relentlessly.  I know that’s redundant, but it helps to make my point.  My grandfather usually found a way to cope with that.  Usually with work, civic groups, and staying busy.  But, when Granddaddy retired he had to come up with something quick . It did not take long for the number of TV sets around their house to increase.  He could turn on and tune out while Grandma yattered on.  He even put one in the kitchen.  Grandma could watch her shows while she piddled in there throughout the day, but mostly it was to give Granddaddy relief at meal times.   I have a fond memory of that TV.  I was there for dinner one evening.  The news was on.  Grandma was “givin’ ‘er” with the chatter on family and neighbourhood news.  In the midst of this I noticed Granddaddy staring at the TV and becoming agitated in a way very unlike him, so I turned to look at what was on.  It was a news story about how the face of Jesus was beginning to take shape in the rust on the side of a water tower somewhere in Ohio.  Granddaddy was as angry as I’ve ever seen him, if I ever saw him angry and he blurted out, “The Bible says that when Jesus comes back he’s coming on clouds of glory not on the side of some water tower.  Ain’t that right, boy?”  I said, “That’s right”.  He shook his head in righteous indignation and went back to eating.

Now, I cannot say much for Canada, but I know that down in the Southern U.S. where I’m from, down in the Bible Belt, people are as superstitious about their so-called face of Jesus appearances as the Roman Catholics were about their “relics” back in the Middle Ages (a piece of the cross here, another head of John the Baptist there, here a finger of Peter, there a toe of Paul).  I have actually heard it reported on the news in just the last ten years that the face of Jesus has appeared on the tin roof of a barn silo, a piece of toast, on a tortilla chip, and in the mould on a bathroom wall of a run down little house somewhere in South Carolina.  I’ve even heard a news report on a Madonna and Child taking form in a Cheeto.  And, the Jesus’s all look the same – the bearded European, Shroud of Turin-y, crusader-looking guy who bears next to no resemblance to a Middle Eastern Jew.  I don’t want to be stereo-typical about the facial features of certain races, but the silo Jesus, the water tower Jesus, the tortilla Jesus, the bathroom mould Jesus, and the Cheeto Madonna none of them in any way looked like Middle Eastern Jews.  Well, the fact is we wouldn’t know Jesus to see him if we saw him, but Channel Whatever News all over the South reports these things as if they are factual proof of the existence of Jesus and people get giddy about it. 

I’m with my grandfather on this one.  The proof of the hope of our faith is not rusting up on the side of some water tower in Ohio. But, you never know.  Maybe if a face of Jesus had appeared in the brickwork of a building or two down in Ferguson, Missouri this past week legitimate cries for justice and equality before the law may not have turned so violent so easily.  Maybe if a face of Jesus had appeared somewhere when the initial altercation occurred between Michael Brown and Officer Wilson maybe it would not have ended in a needless death. 

Today, in the wake of all that I know this morning there are some people down there, faithful people, good Christian people sitting in church hearing the same passages of Scripture read that we just read and its really speaking to them because it gives word to what’s deep down in them.  “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence.”  Actually, in the Hebrew language the word we translate as “presence” is face. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your face, as when fir kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil, to make your name known to your enemies, so that the nations might tremble at your face.”  Isaiah goes on to say and I paraphrase, “You did it before when we didn’t expect it, when we didn’t deserve it.  You freed us from slavery in Egypt, and brought us to Mt. Sinai, ‘you came down, that mountain quaked at your face’.  No ear has heard.  No eye has seen any God besides you who acts for those who wait for him.”  I think there are many people down in the Southern U.S. this morning remembering how God delivered them from slavery and led them through the fight for civil rights, but this morning they are praying and shouting, “Jesus, show your face.  We are you people.  You made us who we are.  Where are you Jesus?  Come down and show your face.  Put things right here.”  I know down there this morning there’s a whole lot of people wanting Jesus to show up and do something.  Yet, Jesus for whatever reason keeps his distance and so the cry of lament legitimately goes up to God.  What a profound sense of God’s absence they must feel.

This passage from Isaiah is a lament and a special one.  Old Testament scholar Claus Westermann in his commentary of Isaiah says that this passage from Isaiah is “the most profound psalm of communal lamentation in the Bible”[1].  There’s something about laments we need to take to heart.  Their very presence in the Bible let’s us know that it’s okay for us to be angry at God when he seems to be pulling a George Jones.  We bought the ticket, stood in line, found our seat, but he ain’t showing.  It’s okay to be angry with God when he seems to be a no show. Job in the midst of his trials cries out “if only I could see God face to face.  If I could find where he lived, I’d give him the what for.” (Of course, that’s my paraphrase of the first few verses of Job 23.)  There are probably as many if not more psalms of lament in the Bible than there are psalms of praise.  Folks, it’s okay to be angry with God.  If we’re not allowed to get angry with God, then we really don’t have a relationship with him.  I would even as far as to say that he must be bring us to a place of a profound sense of God’s absence before we find ourselves profoundly aware of his presence.  I think that’s the message at the heart of this passage.  God makes us feel his absence and somehow in the wake of that he makes his presence known.

Have you ever looked looked at the state of your own life and felt the profound absence of God?  Have you ever found yourself powerless over the course of your life and in need of God’s help and yet it seems he’s nowhere to be found.  Have you ever been on your knees crying out, “Jesus, where are you?  Come!  Tear open the heavens and come down.  Jesus, show me your face.  You’ve done it before.  I’ve read my Bible It’s full of stories of your steadfast love and faithfulness, of how you did miraculous things for those who wait for you.  You did it for them.  Why don’t you do it for me?  I know it is you who has made me who I am so where are you?  Jesus, show your face!”  If you have ever felt that profound sense of God’s absence and spoken your lament, then you know what this first Sunday in Advent is about; this gut-churning waiting for God to act in the midst of the painful profoundness of his absence.  It is not Christmas that we hope and wait for.  Christmas has happened and so we stand on it in faith.  God has once and for all gotten involved in his Creation to deliver it by becoming Jesus the Christ.  Christmas has come.  It’s the completion of Christmas that we await.  It’s his coming again to put things right that we await.  The strong feelings underlying lament are mysteriously the seedbed of hope and faith through which he eventually makes his presence known.  It’s okay to be angry with God and it’s okay to let him no it.  Lament is part of how faith and hope work.  Amen.

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[1] Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40-66, (David M. G. Stalker, trans.; OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 392.

On Earth as It Is in Heaven

Text: John 18:33-37; Daniel 7:9-14; Revelation 1:4-8

Let me try your memories a bit. Where have you heard this before, “Great is the mystery of faith!  Christ has died!  Christ is risen!  Christ will come again!”  It comes from the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving that we pray when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  The prayer is an affirmation, an amen, to what Jesus did on the night of his arrest.  It says: Christ has died in victory over sin and death so that we are forgiven.  Christ is risen, vindicated to new creation life and Lordship over the whole Creation.  As Lord, Christ Jesus will come again in judgment, a judgement or verdict that all things will be made new.  In him we place our utter trust and can therefore hope.

Here is another confession you might find familiar.  “For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”  That is from the Nicene Creed, the most common of all Christian creeds and confessions.  It fills in a little more what we mean by “Great is the mystery of faith!  Christ has died!  Christ is risen!  Christ will come again!”

This affirmation and creedal confession of faith both have in common that they point us to Jesus personally and bodily returning from Heaven to earth one day. Yet, Jesus’ return is a difficult topic to broach.  When we do, it seems that there a some extremes that show up.  On the one hand, there is the Christian fundamentalist talk of the Rapture, a fabricated event when Jesus will return and all true believers will be whisked off with him while those who are left behind will have to suffer living on a Godless earth where all Hell is breaking loose.  On the other hand, there is the view of Christian Liberalism that says, “Jesus is not returning at all.  His return as well as his resurrection and ascension are impossible according to science and reason.  Therefore, it is up to us to bring his kingdom to earth through spirituality and following his teachings.”  Or, the Spiritualists who say “all that matters is spirit.  Therefore, let’s get as spiritual as we can and just feel love.”  Then, in the midst cowers Mainline Christianity thinking that since the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, has bound our Western minds with the assumption that religion is really a matter of private beliefs and since we find this topic confusing and uncomfortable, let’s just not talk about it and just privately believe in God or at least the idea of God and be good so that we can go to Heaven when we die.  This view unfortunately robs us of real hope upon which we should act. 

So, to do justice to what the Bible really says about Jesus return (and it says he really is going to return) we must lay aside those extremes and our impotent Mainliner middle ground.  Without contest, one element of the Gospel that Jesus is Lord that the Christian Church should be proclaiming today as it did in the First Century is that he is coming to judge the world and the judgement he will render will be the act of putting it to right through the full establishment of his kingdom.  Therefore, Jesus is coming to judge the world with righteousness (according to God’s steadfast love and faithfulness) and to rule it with justice, fairness, and equity.  To speak metaphorically, that which is high will be brought low and that which is low will be lifted up.  This message is meant to stir the world’s hope and not for fear-mongering.

Psalm 96:10-13 tells us to “Say among the nations, ‘The LORD reigns.’ The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.  Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the LORD, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth.  He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his truth.”  People rejoice.  Be glad.  Join Creation’s celebration.  It might sound funny but…sing with the trees!

Daniel wrote: “I saw one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.  He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”   That son of man was Jesus resurrected and ascended.  Paul wrote in Philippians, “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  This is Jesus we are talking about.  He is the one to whom all power and authority has been given.  Jesus is the LORD…Jesus who healed the sick, cleansed the leper, raised the dead, forgave the sinner, and turned the judgements of the judgemental back upon themselves.  Jesus is coming to put the world to rights. 

If this is true about Jesus, then what John writes at Revelation 1:5-6 is true about us. “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father-- to him be glory and power for ever and ever!  Amen.”  Because he loves us he has set us free from our sins and made us to be a kingdom and priests.  His kingdom is coming now in and through yet not exclusively us, his church, his disciples.  His kingdom is coming now on earth as it is in Heaven in answer to the Lord’s Prayer.

So, what are we going to do about it?  Bishop N.T. Wright in his book Surprised by Hope asks, “What would happen if we took seriously our stated belief that Jesus Christ is already the Lord of the world and that at his name, one day, every knee would bow?”  I would add that as we proclaim the Lordship of Jesus according to Scripture, even now knees are bowing.  So, what would happen?  You know, we the church as his kingdom and priests really do have the responsibility in the first place of worship and secondly, of announcing Jesus’ reign and his return and thirdly, holding the powers that be accountable to the standards of justice and peace presented in the Bible.  We cannot use what Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world,” as an excuse to sidestep our responsibility to hold our governments accountable to what God has established them to do. 

As a priesthood of all believers we serve by worshipping him not only in a Sunday morning service but with the sacrifice of our whole lives as Paul says in Romans 12:1-2, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-- this is your spiritual {Or reasonable} act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-- his good, pleasing and perfect will.”  Since Jesus is Lord of the world and we are his evident kingdom we cannot sit back or throw our hands in the air at the enormity of evil in this world that our governments and other powers like multinational corporations are propagating or turning a blind eye to.  We must play the prophet.  We must demand climate control because this is God’s good Creation and humanity is its steward, the priest who gives voice to creation’s praise.  Destroying the Creation is not what God created us to do.  Moreover, Christians must continue to hold global governments accountable for the corruption that leads to poverty.  And the list goes on.

Let me end with a story.  The Duff’s Presbyterian Church in Puslinch, ON is right next door to the Nestle plant that is arguably destroying the water table over there by drawing free water from the ground and selling it to us in little plastic bottles.  The Duff’s Session after hearing of the difficulty of finding clean water that First Nation reserves in Northern Ontario are having wrote to the manager of the plant and basically said “you have so much water and these people have so little; can you help?”  Oddly, the plant manager fully sympathized with the need and she got Nestle to help by shipping free water up to several communities.  Christians held a multinational accountable at the local level and the kingdom of God broke in.  Friends, our Lord is coming and when he comes stuff like that is going to happen.  The world will be put to right.  Amen.

The Hope of Salvation

Text: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

I think that most people find that asking me about the afterlife is something that should be avoided.  I usually switch into “correct-the-wrong-belief” mode and go on about how the Bible does not teach that after death our immortal soul blips off into eternity to a place called Heaven for the faithful or Hell for the wicked all depending on whether a person was morally good or bad or was smart enough to decide at some point during this life to claim Jesus as their personal Lord and Saviour.  The Bible does not teach that we have an immortal soul.  That is Greek Paganism that found its way into Christian belief fairly early on.  As far as Heaven is concerned, the Bible also does not teach that Heaven is an enormous golden city with gem set walls and pearly gates floating around somewhere on clouds and we all have a room in it.  Those metaphors, a mix from the Revelation 21 and 22 and the Gospel of John 14 pertain to the church not Heaven.  Heaven is simply another dimension of Creation where God abides.  And, as far as what we will do in Heaven; well, the Bible doesn’t saying anything about riding clouds and learning to play the harp.

Also, the Bible does not teach that we'll be watching our loved ones here on earth from above and maybe even at some point give them a sign (an uncanny coincidental thing) that lets them know that we're still around.  We do not become angles.  We do not become spirit energy and become part of the All.  And, of course it is certainly not okay to tell our children that Grandma is now one of the stars twinkling in the night sky.  I can see it now.  In a few generations interstellar travel will be going on and someone will go into another solar system and remark, “It smells like stale cigarettes and whiskey here.  Hey, that star's my grandma. Hi Granny.”  

All humour aside the Bible is quite clear about what happens after life.  We die.   That being the case, what happens after that still needs a bit of truly solid study.  So much of what the Bible has to say about what happens after death and Heaven and Hell depends on what we make of metaphors and apocalyptic imagery.  We must be careful not to be too literal with imagery that was never meant to be taken literally but rather simply to refer to the nature of something else.   The image Jesus predominantly used for what we call Hell was Gehenna, the place where garbage was destroyed outside of Jerusalem.  The image has more to do with our utterly wasting our lives than with whether or not someplace called Hell is literally a fiery place of eternal torment.  We must be careful how we read and use metaphor.

For the faithful disciple of Jesus the Bible is rather explicit as to what happens to them after death.  They will be disembodied persons (not immortal souls) in a holding pattern with Jesus in a place called Paradise until the Father says it's time for the last trumpet to blow and Jesus returns to earth to establish the Kingdom of God fully.  I don't recall the Bible making any mention of what happens to the wicked while the just are in Paradise.  Then when Jesus returns everybody will be bodily resurrected and we will all be judged on how we have used this life that God has given us to live to his glory.  As all people have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we all in the end deserve eternal death.  But, God's people, all who are in Christ by union with him in the Holy Spirit, will be saved from this eternal death and receive the inheritance of eternal life in the Kingdom of God here on earth, an earth that is renewed and full of the knowing of God as the waters cover the sea.  As for what will happen to the rest, traditionally the Church has said that they will suffer in a fiery place called Hell for all eternity or instead of fire they will simply suffer eternal separation from God for all eternity except this time knowing God fully.  On the other end of the spectrum, some have made the case for Universalism, that Jesus death atoned for all people and thus all will be welcome into the Kingdom.  

I quite often catch grief for saying that the Bible is not as clear as we would like about Hell and who goes there.  Convincing scriptural arguments can be made for eternal separation from God, eternal torment, utter destruction, and universal salvation.  Due to my ordination vows I can only preach and teach what my denomination confesses.  As far as what The Presbyterian Church in Canada confesses, our latest confession of faith, Living Faith, in paragraph 10.3 states: “We shall all stand under the final judgement of God, as we receive the divine verdict on our lives.  Worthy of hell, eternal separation from God, our hope is for heaven, eternal life with God through the grace bestowed on us in Christ. To say "no" to Christ is to refuse life and to embrace death.  The destiny of all people is in the hands of God whose mercy and justice we trust”.

Well, enough on this.  I realize that there are still a lot of questions left open here but that’s what Bible Studies are for.  The point to make is that when we Christians talk about the hope of salvation, we are talking about that day when Jesus returns and we stand resurrected before Christ Jesus to be judged by him and though deserving death we receive grace and mercy on account of God the Father’s love shown to us and poured upon us through Christ Jesus the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.  On that day we will find ourselves delivered, saved having been redeemed or ransomed from death by Jesus’ giving the price of his life for us and made to be without question the adopted children of the Father who with Jesus the Son of God receive the inheritance of eternal life in the Kingdom of God.

When we Christians talk about hope, particularly the hope of salvation, it is not so much something we expect God to do right now with respect to us each and to our daily lives.  That falls within the domain of faith.  Hope, on the other hand, pertains to the Trinity’s large scale setting to rights of his creation and us in it.  Our hope is a real hope not simply a wish.  Just as the Holy Spirit is with us now as the deposit on our coming inheritance in the Kingdom coming, so shall we receive that inheritance.  Living Faith says this well:

“God has prepared for us things beyond our imagining.  Our hope is for a renewed world and for fullness of life in the age to come.  As Jesus taught us, we pray: "Thy kingdom come."  Life in the age to come is pictured in the Bible in different ways: an eternal kingdom, a new heaven and earth, a marriage feast, an unending day, the father's house, and the joy of God's presence.  God will triumph over all opposition and everything that disrupts creation...Eternal life is resurrection life.  As God raised Christ, so shall we be raised into a condition fit for life with God.  Eternal life begins in this life: whoever believes in the Son of God already has eternal life.  In Baptism by faith we die and rise with Christ and so are one with the risen Lord.  In death we commit our future confidently to God.  Life had its beginning in God.  In God it will come to completion and its meaning be fully revealed.  All creation will find fulfillment in God. Christ will come again.  Only God knows when and how our Lord will return.  Now we see in part.  Then we shall see face to face.”

So, the hope of salvation for us is our hope of living resurrection life here on earth under the condition of God’s will being finally now on earth as it has been always in Heaven with ourselves and all of creation having found finally our completion and our meaning in the Trinity. 

  Let me spend a moment here with 1 Thessalonians 5:8 and then I’ll wrap up.  Paul says, “…put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.”  As I have said in weeks before, the Thessalonian believers had probably faced death in the coliseum battling wild animals and gladiators as punishment for appearing to be treasonous for claiming that Jesus is Lord rather than Caesar.  They would have faced the battle with no protective gear.  Here Paul tells them that their breastplate is their faith and their love and for a helmet they have the hope of salvation.  In the Hebrew way of thinking, faith and/or rather faithfulness and love are matters of the heart where the will and desire and drive are located and so faith and love are our breastplate as we stand defenceless in this life.  As the hope of salvation is our helmet, we can also say that hope is a matter of the mind or mindedness or our orientation in life.  Similarly, repentance is a matter of the mind.  In Greek the word for repentance means to change the mind to become “with minded” with God.  To put on the helmet of the hope of salvation is to wrap one’s mind around God’s ultimate acting in his creation to triumph over all that distorts and destroys it and how our lives now fit into God’s ultimate triumph.  It is to be minded towards, oriented towards, pointing towards God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven.  Instead of being minded of the things of man in this world, it is to be minded on the things of God in this world and how he is and will ultimately put it to right.

That said, we as Christians step into this battle of life, God’s battle for the renewal of his creation, defenceless.  Where the world fights with some pretty mean weapons, as we ourselves have done, we must now stand as Jesus did, in the power of the Holy Spirit in the apparent weakness of only faith/faithfulness and love with our minds set on being in this world as signs that point to the reality of the day when God will triumph.  As individuals we must prayerfully strive for justice, peace, fairness, and equality in our immediate lives – in our homes, in our work places, among our neighbours.  As communities of faith we must do so at the larger scale of neighbourhoods, cities, and regions and so on.  And let us not forget the Creation itself, the environment, this planet which groans in labour pains awaiting that day as well as our prayerfully working for it now.  We, you and I, us together are signposts of the hope of salvation in this world.  May we orient our minds around this and live our lives accordingly.  Amen.

We're about Hope

Text: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

            My first real regular pastoring work was during last two years of seminary as a volunteer chaplain at the Masonic Home of Virginia in Richmond, VA.  This was a retirement community for Masons.  As part of their programming they offered a Sunday evening chapel service at which I lead worship and preached.  This service was good for them because many of the residents were not able to go off premise to attend a church and for many it was their church. 

Well, when I first started there, and I hate to say it, it was a depressing sight.  There were only about 35 people on the average attending from a home with just over one hundred able to attend.  There was a very screechy choir of 5 or 6 led by Mr. Helsabeck who was loud, monotone, and all but stone deaf.   It was always way too warm in the chapel and I was guaranteed there would be some snoring.  That’s the more humorous side of it.  More somberly, they were exiles of life.  Old age had taken their independence, their homes, their ability to care for themselves.  Old age’s good friend Death had taken many of their life-long friends and their spouses and many had even outlived their children.  They were just there all but forgotten waiting their turn to die. 

I was very much at a loss as to what I could preach to those folks.  I felt like there was nothing new I could say to them.  I bet there wasn’t a sermon out there that they hadn’t already heard.  And the biggest challenge of all, I had just turned 30 and nearly all of them were over 80.  What did I know about growing old?  What could I say that would be meaningful to these exiles of life without being offensive? 

Well, the first Sunday I preached there was on Easter Sunday and that set the stage for what the theme of nearly all my sermons there would be, resurrection.  Every opportunity I got I preached the hope of our faith.  Whenever I could I highlighted that they had something to look forward to, that all the loss, pain, discomfort and grief that they were living with was not the sum total of human existence.  I acknowledged the reality that sometimes death was something to look forward to, a gift to end suffering and what awaited them beyond was the fullness of life in Christ and a restoration of human life free of sin and death. 

I also took every opportunity to remind them that on this side of things we have a foretaste of what is to come - Christ Jesus’ living presence with us through the Holy Spirit.  We have the friendship and companionship of God the Holy Spirit who renews and reinvigorates our lives daily and even moment to moment.  The more we pray, the more we get that.  They still had life to live, new life to live, a new life in which we are called to live out our hope. 

I visted there regularly and from what I saw of their life together in that close community they were making a highly commendable effort at living out the hope.  They visited each other in illness and supported each other when yet more bad news came to one of them.  They looked out for one another in small daily tasks like helping each other with meals.  They prayed with and for each other and studied Scripture together.  Played games together.  They understood if so and so was a little grumpy today.  They knew how to live together in a way that loudly said to anyone that would notice that they had hope, that they had life, the true Life, living in them.  I took every opportunity that I could to commend them on how they loved one another because I was truly impressed.  In fact, I was blessed to be in their midst.  That little 30 something chapel congregation of exiles from life showed me what being the church was all about at the heart of the matter…living out your hope in love. 

Something began to happen there at the Masonic Home.  It seemed every month attendance was growing.  In the two years that I was there I watched the attendance go from an average of thirty-five to over 80.  Some of these folks were even the codgidy old men that you would think would never darken the doors of a church.  It even continued to grow after I left so it wasn’t a “cult of personality” thing.  The choir grew to over 20 members including several men.  There were also folks there who were just natural pastors.  They did a lot of visiting and seeing that needs were being met.  New residents that came to the community promptly received an invitation to come to the chapel service and the Wednesday night Bible study which one of them led.  They even petitioned the administration to provide extra staff on Sunday nights to help get the wheelchair bound folks to the chapel.  In fact, the administration was so impressed with what was going on in the chapel and the impact it was having on the residents that they remodeled the chapel, put in a new sound system, and made a lot of space for wheelchairs.   This all just happened naturally.  It wasn’t like they set out to start a church there.  It just happened naturally.

Something was going on there.  Those exiles of life where doing naturally and par excellence what I’ve seen most churches with several hundred members beat their heads against the wall trying to have.  Well, what was happening was that these folks had found reason to hope and they were living accordingly.  They had plenty of reasons to grieve and get bitter, plenty of reasons to focus on how miserable life can be, plenty of reasons to just sit and wait and long for death.  Many of them were doing exactly that and that’s exactly where the living presence of Jesus Christ and the good news of Resurrection met them and gave them reason to hope and to live…to live in and for Christ Jesus.  The something that was going on in that retirement community was a someone.  It was Jesus, Jesus building his church and proving through them that he had not forgotten his people or left them for dead.  And so, they were living out their hope.

In our passage from 1 Thessalonians, Paul is answering a question.  The Thessalonian congregation was wondering if they were living their hope in vain, believing in vain, living faithfully in vain.  Some of them had died and some of those had even died fighting beasts in the coliseum for public entertainment, and Jesus hadn’t shown up yet like he and the Apostles said he would.  Had they believed in vain?

Paul’s answer to them though wrapped in a bit of apocalyptic code was resurrection. The dead will be raised first and will be the first to join with Jesus when he returns…and he will return.  The Gospel Paul preached was pretty straight forward and centered on the resurrection: Just as God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead so will the Trinity raise all of us from death…If there is no resurrection of the dead (and there is), we are the biggest fools of all to be pitied the most.  Jesus is alive and the Holy Spirit is with us so let’s get on with living accordilngly as the people God has called forth to do so.  Paul wants them to know about the resurrection so that they do not grieve like those who have no hope, that they don’t live their lives like those who have no hope.

We also can take a bit of Paul’s Gospel to heart here in this day when churches are dwindling and dying off.  People are spiritual but don’t want anything to do with religion.  In North America, of all the faiths represented Christianity is the one most readily maligned.  Yet, we who’ve been around awhile know that we don’t have an empty religion or a pie in the sky faith.  God’s very presence is with us to comfort us, heal us, and to lead us forward in life.  There are and there will be times when it seems God has left the house.  But still we know our God is really involved in our lives for our good. 

That little church at the Masonic Home proved this to me at the beginning of ministry and it taught me a few lessons about how to live by faith and hope.  First, don’t be afraid to live because Jesus Christ who is our life is alive.  The course of life does give us plenty of opportunity to grieve and is sometimes even unreasonably cruel and what’s more, yes, God allows it to get that way.  But the Trinity does not leave us alone in life.  Our Comforter, and Heavenly Advocate is with us in the worst and the best of everything. I have found the most dependable comfort in life is just praying and remembering that I am God’s beloved child and hope and encouragement well forth.  That Truth is unshakable for me.

Everything I just said about how God the Trinity is with us as individuals is true for churches.  That chapel service had just maintained as a matter of residential programming for years and then all of a sudden things just began to happen.  The Triune God of grace who had always been there began to make himself known.  That’s the way God is.  We can’t control God.  We can’t make God happen.  Our part is to draw close and wait in the hope and the certainty that God will act when God’s time is right.

Finally, the greatest evidence that God’s people have hope is that they take time to love and care for each other.  As a church, as Christians, hope is what we’re about.  The course of life can tear us up, make us bitter, and debilitate us.  The hope of new and renewed life in Christ that we have been given enlivens us, changes us, and compels us to live accordingly.  When we share the love that Christ has given us, we help him to awaken hope even in the most hopeless of people and situations.  So, don’t be afraid to live out your hope, draw close to God and wait, love and support one another as the Trinity loves you, and in God’s own time the Trinity will prove he’s God in wonderful ways.  I’ve seen it, experienced it.  Take my word.  Amen.

God's Word and It's Works Are Truth

Text: 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13

Sometimes some pretty uncanny things happen to us that seem to go beyond mere coincidence and so we start looking for meaning or a message in them.  Here’s one for you.  The government census of 1863 has the very first called minister of my last church Claude Presbyterian Church, the Reverend David Couts, living in a log cabin on Heartlake Road with the Smith family.  The farm stayed the Smith Farm until the early 1970’s when John and Helen Mason bought it.  140 years later in 2003, I moved to Canada to be the minister of this congregation and oddly enough my first place of resident was in an extension built onto the house of that very same farm; hmmm.  So, this uncanny coincidence often made me ponder that if the first minister apparently held residence on that farm, was the Trinity trying to tell me that I would be the last minister since I also held residence on same said farm?  Time has still yet to tell in that matter, time and patient endurance.

Since the 1970’s that congregation, whose building has served as a heritage landmark in Caledon, ON on Highway 10, has struggled on faithfully.  It was part of a three-point charge that shared a minister.  The other two congregations folded and this congregation has quite faithfully born the torch of keeping a Christian witness of the Presbyterian persuasion in Western rural Caledon.  Part of its struggle has been against a greater cultural change towards a lack of interest in anything that resembles institutionalized religion.  Though 80% of the North American population claim they believe in the Christian God, less than 20% of those actively see the need to be involved in a local church.  Also, the demographic immediately surrounding that church changed from a farming community into a retirement destination for the very wealthy and a haven for the well-off commuter.  In its 168 years, Claude Presbyterian Church has transitioned from being a, if not the, social hub for local Scottish and some Irish immigrant farmers into being a small worshipping community of less than 25 people who are mostly not from around there.  

Around the year 2000 with attendance around 50 the congregation decided to call a fulltime minister as opposed to just surviving on pulpit supply.  The hope was that having a fulltime minister would somehow result in numerical growth.  Conflict arose at the arrival of the first minister.  Many people left.  Change doesn’t come easy.  I came in 2003.  We did all kinds of things: youth group, concerts, art shows, outreach, carolling, praying, Bible Study, and etcetera ad naseum and we grew.  Yet, we suffered from the gain-some-lose-some-lose-some-gain-some ailment plaguing so many churches today due to external factors on those who attend church.  Then we mostly just lost.  These are difficult days for the North American church, days for perseverance.

Now that I have depressed you, please allow me to distract you with a philosophy lesson that may in the end prove helpful.  Here’s a quote; extra credit goes to whoever can guess what it is and who said it first: “Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we might conceive the object of our conception to have.  Then, our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”  That is the Pragmatic Maxim coined by either Charles S. Pierce or William Joyce, the founders of the Modern philosophical movement known as Pragmatism, a movement roughly as old as the building of my last church.  Pragmatism basically says “if it works, then it is Truth.”  But, according to the maxim you first have to know what “it” is.  Then, you have to “conceive” what “it” might be used for; the more practical, the better.  Then, you have to see if “it” can be used successfully for the purposes you have conceived; the more practical, the better.  If “it” works then it is Truth.  If you take a hammer and conceive that it’s most practical use is pounding in and prying up nails and then establish through practise that a hammer does indeed work very well for that purpose, then that use of a hammer is Truth.  On the other hand, if you conceived that the hammer could be useful for dipping water, then you’re a terrible pragmatist for it does not hold water to say that a hammer is good for dipping water.  It is not Truth that a hammer is good for dipping water.

Now that you have had your philosophy lesson, let me step out on a limb and say that Pragmatism has become the bane of the existence of the North American church.  Too often we have let that philosophy’s method supplant prayerful discernment as the means for congregations to make decisions on what the Trinity is patiently trying to shape us to be and calling us to do. 

Let’s go back to the Pragmatic Maxim and the saying, “if it works, then it’s Truth”.  Let’s let the “it” be a typical congregation.  Usually, when we conceive of what a normal church should do and be we base our conceptions on a business model in which viability is based on profitability.  In the business world, a business works if it makes money.  If it makes money, then its methods are Truth.  Profit in the church is not financial profit.  In the church, money is not really an issue until someone notices that its either running out or there ain’t any.  If we want to see a church get anxious and opt for pragmatic solutions, let the money get low.  In the church, we often deem that profit is people numbers.  So if you’ve got a lot of people, then what you are doing is Truth because it works.  By this maxim, all the attempts we made in my last church to be and do what we thought a church should be and do was not Truth.

Here’s where I step back and say wait a minute.  I may be a bit of a theologian, but it seems to me that Truth in the church should be based not on size in numbers.  It should be based on whether or not that congregation has received the word of God and that Word is at work among the believers causing them to mature as individuals to become more like Jesus Christ and among the congregation causing it to be more like the communion of love that the Trinity is.  God is Trinity, the loving communion of the persons of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  These Three give themselves to one another in sacrificial love so completely that they are One.  Truth in the church is the Trinity’s working the Word of Jesus Christ in the midst of a congregation of believers.  If the Trinity is at work, then the congregation has the Truth.

I’ll say more, Jesus said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6).  A few verses later he said that after he is gone to the Father, he will send his disciples a Helper, the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth brings us to Jesus who is the Truth and through him we come to know the Father’s steadfast love and faithfulness just as he knows it.  When the Holy Spirit is in our midst we find he compels us to be disciples of Jesus Christ who walk in the Light of his Way not according to the standards of the culture around us.  His way is the way of the Cross; of self-giving, sacrificial unconditional love.  Likewise, when Jesus is in the midst of a congregation people get set free of addictions and healed of emotional wounds.  We accept others for who they are and we forgive.  Where believers are more and more evidently walking in the way of the Cross and Jesus’ power to heal and to set free and his unconditional love abound, there is the Truth.  There the steadfast love and faithfulness of the Father is evident.

There are more years of struggling ahead for that congregation.  I do hope that I will not be its last minister.  Regardless of size, that congregation certainly grew in the Truth.  The Word of God was most definitely at work among its people.  It is to the Truth of the Trinity’s work among us that we must set our sights and efforts.  These days focusing on Pragmatics will only close our doors.  Amen.