Welcoming the Implanted Word: Part Deux

Text: James 1:17-27

Being a Southerner I grew up rather insular in my ideas of hospitality.  We Southerners with our fried chicken, homemade biscuits, and various kinds of cooked greens like to think we invented hospitality.  It is likely that our ideas about hospitality are rooted in the biblical idea of not turning away strangers for you might be entertaining angels unawares (Heb. 13:2).   But…since growing up and having seen a bit of the world, I've come to see that hospitality exists everywhere and every culture has its own way of showing it.  So, I can’t get too conceited about my Southern roots.

Hindu people have some interesting beliefs about hospitality and the ways they show it.  They're main teaching about hospitality is what they call Athithi devo bhava which means "the guest is God".  Treat your guests as if they were God come to visit, which means reverently.  The way they show hospitality involves five formalities that are rooted in the way they worship their gods.  First, there is fragrance.  While receiving guests the rooms of your house must have a pleasant smell because odour is the first thing a person will notice and it sets the stage for the visit.  A pleasant fragrance will put a guest in good humours.  Down South we use fresh coffee and bacon to serve this purpose.  Second, there must light.  You set a lamp between yourself and your guest when at a table so that facial expressions and body language can be clearly seen.  Down South, this is when we turn the light on in the gun cabinet.  The third formality, there must be fresh fruit and sweets made of milk; hence all the sweet shops in Hindi neighbourhoods.  The fourth formality involves rice, which for Hindu’s is a symbol of unity.  They make a red dot on the guest’s forehead and then stick rice grains to it.  In Hindu Indian families this is the highest form of welcome.  Finally, you must give flowers to your guests when they leave so that sweet memories may linger for several days. 

Welcoming guests as if they were gods.  I think this is a very profound way of going about life and regarding other people.  This teaching is very similar to what Jesus meant when he said, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one the least of these who are my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.”  We of the Christian faith should always pay attention to how we welcome others, to how we open our lives and show hospitality to others for it really isn’t a stretch to say that by doing so we are showing hospitality to Jesus himself particularly when we are hospitable to “the least of these.”  

Yet, if I might be a bit analytical here, I think we all know this.  We were raised to know that showing hospitality is a good thing especially if it’s helping others in their need.  So, I don’t want to stand here this morning and give just one more sermon on altruism in the name of Jesus.  I want to prod us beyond that and get us thinking about how we actually show hospitality to God himself, how we welcome the presence of God into our lives. 

Verse 21 here says “…welcome with meekness the implanted word which has the power to save your souls”.  James wants us to know something profoundly transformative about ourselves.  God the Father of his own will and desire has made us to be born anew by means of the New Creation producing Word of Truth that he spoke and continues to speak in, through, and as Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit.  The Father by his own choice (not ours) has spoken a new word of creation into us like the first one he spoke that brought creation itself into being.

James goes on to say here that God the Father spoke this Word of Jesus in such a way as to implant it into us.  God the Father has implanted his utterly life-transforming union of God the Son and human being and flesh, which is Jesus, into us through the gift of the Holy Spirit to us.  This implanted word by the power of the Holy Spirit, the same power by which God the Father raised Jesus from the dead is at work in us changing us, healing us, making us to be more and more like Jesus.  This word has brought us to want to know the love of God in Jesus Christ.  It has brought us to want him in our lives.  It has brought us to faith in him.  It has brought us to want to turn from sin and hurtful ways to the ways of compassion.  It has brought us to want to be and do want God wants us to be and do.  We wouldn’t have these God-ward desires if this Word were not implanted in us but God’s gracious gift.  It is the good and perfect gift that comes down from above from the Father of lights.  It is the good gift and perfect gift of God’s very self to us.  Therefore, we must receive it.  Welcome it.  Show it hospitality.

James here is saying that the Christian walk is founded upon on welcoming this implanted Word of God into our lives as we would a guest.  But there’s one thing we need to be clear on.  This implanted Word to which we must show hospitality is not in us by our own invitation, but because of the Father’s will, the Father’s desire for us.  So, we must welcome the Word even though it is in us as a guest uninvited. 

Have you ever had to show hospitality to an uninvited guest?  Imagine walking into your kitchen and there is someone sitting there and he says he’s going to be your guest for the rest of your life.  Try as you may you cannot get rid of him.  Then he starts to tell you the truth about yourself.  He knows you better than anyone.  Then he starts telling you how to live your life expecting that you will take his advice.  That would take a heck of a lot of trust on your part.  Yet, this is how the grace of God works in us.  God speaks and implants the Word into us.  We cannot get it through any other way.

Well, if I may push the limits here a little more; the rest of what James has to say here about being doers of the word rather than just hearers of it has been so entrapped in the Reformation’s over-preoccupation with the tension between works and faith that we don’t readily hear what James is saying, I think.  James’ hearer/doer image is simply his way of saying how we show hospitality to the Word God has implanted into us. 

He’s trying to say that it is not enough to welcome a truth-speaking guest into your life and all you do is give him lip and ear service.  It is rude to be simply a “hearer”.  The word for “hearer” James uses is for someone who sits in a place of public teaching like the synagogue or Sunday worship listening to what is said, taking in the ideas, but doing nothing with what they’ve heard.  To be simply a “hearer” is rude.  It’s treating the living Word as if it were another religious idea to be taken or left according to one’s own idea of what it is to be “spiritual”. 

The fact that in Christ Jesus by the engrafting of the Holy Spirit we each are a beloved child of God is not simply another religious idea that we can take or leave according to our own ideas of what it is to be “spiritual”.  We are in fact born anew, born from above children of God and we share a bound of being with Jesus himself because we share the Holy Spirit with him and this is the Father’s good and perfect gift.  According to Scripture this is the reality of our being not some religious idea.

The Christian walk is a living, communicative relationship with and in the Trinity.  Experientially speaking, this relationship is founded upon God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit getting it through our thick ears and brutally deceived minds that we are his beloved children with and in Jesus the Son.  Our work when we hear that Word is simply to live accordingly realizing it ain’t that simple. 

Speaking personally, so much of the Christian walk for me is reminding myself and settling myself in that very Word, the implanted Word that I am a beloved child of God and it changes the way I am.  It changes the way I regard myself and the way I regard others.  It makes hospitality to God, to myself, and to other people possible.  Living in the implanted Word of Truth that we are God’s beloved children keeps us from deceiving ourselves and getting stained by the world.  Showing hospitality to God, receiving, welcoming the Word of Truth means doing the work of daily, hourly, and even moment to moment reminding ourselves that we are God’s beloved children.  It is difficult and quite similar to having to be hospitable to an uninvited guest. 

Nevertheless, let us be doers of the Word and not just hearers.  Let us not look at ourselves in a mirror and see that we are beloved children of God only to walk away from the mirror and forget what we look like, for indeed God is making us to look more and more like Jesus.  Welcome this Word.  Amen.

The River of the Water of Life

Text: Revelation 21:1-22:7

Whenever you preach from the Book of Revelation you have to do so with a bit of fear and trembling.  Not so much because of what it says, but because what you wind up saying will likely have you sounding like a nutbar.  Seriously, if you ever take a look at the history of interpretation of this letter even folks the likes of John Calvin and Martin Luther fell off the deep end.  So permit me to take my plunge.

One thing you don’t do with the Book of Revelation is approach it as a road map to the endtimes and start looking for this little detail to happen and that little detail and from there make your prediction as to when the end will come. The Book of Revelation is a revelation, a making known, of the big picture of what God is doing in history right now in the wake of Jesus and it speaks more in generalities than particulars.

The passages that we read this morning and the images of the New Jerusalem coming to the new earth from the new heaven and the River of the Water of Lifethat flows forth from the throne of God and the Lamb, these are not so much literal things we can expect to see on some future day as they are rather images describing what is going on in God’s Creation in the wake of what God has done through and as Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Through the work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit the first things (the first heaven and the first earth) have gone and the new has come.  The new these images portray is what God is doing in us, the church, the body and bride of Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit.

Before I get any more confusing let me just start working the text.  Chapter 21 starts with John saying that something utterly new has come about and it encompasses all of Creation.   He sees a new heaven and a new earth.  Then he sees the New Jerusalem coming down from the new heaven to the new earth and note that it is not the other way around.  The New Jerusalem is not ascending into heaven to escape earth.  It comes from heaven to earth.  “Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  The end of, the fulfillment of Christian faith is not a mystical, spiritual disembodied escape to heaven.  It is embodied new life on earth that shines with the life of God.

 Something else to note here is that the city is adorned as a bride.  Quick thinking as we are John wants us to get that the New Jerusalem is the Bride of Christ, the Church…us.  But, let’s be careful not to think of the New Jerusalem in terms of the institution we’ve come to know as the Church with its buildings and its clergy and its doctrines and its enmeshment with Western culture and political power.  None of that, the New Jerusalem, the Church, is the people, the faithful followers of Jesus Christ indwelt by the Holy Spirit who works in us transforming us to be more and more in the image of Christ Jesus so that we can shine like him in the world. 

The New Jerusalem is the people of God in relationship, in relationship with God and with one another in Christ.  The New Jerusalem is in fact a new humanity made up of those who are adopted by God the Father to be his own people, to be his own children in Christ with whom God is now always present and comforting them.  Because of God’s presence with and in his people death and its ill effects for these are no more.  We know the comfort of God.

Verse five of chapter 21 is very important in the Book of Revelation.  It is the only time God the Father speaks.  At times throughout the Book there are great voices that come from the throne, but here John makes a point of saying that the One seated on the Throne speaking.  Therefore, what he says here is utterly important.  He says “Behold, I am making all things new.  Write it down for these words are trustworthy and true.”  When your life is all messed up and seems like a bunch of B-S and you’re finding it hard to B-lieve, remember God is indeed present with you and is truly making all things new. 

God goes on to say this new reality is a done deal.  All things in creation begin and end with him and what he’s doing now since Jesus is freely giving the Water of Life to the thirsty and making them his children.  When Paul says in 2 Corinthians “Anyone who is in Christ is new creation”, this is what he means.  God is freely giving his Spirit to people to strengthen and comfort them and quench their thirst with the Water of Life of Jesus Christ. 

God also says that there is a second death for those who refuse his presence and comfort.  There are those who use this as a fear tactic to get people to join the institution and toe the line and all that.  That’s wrong in my opinion.  I think this is more a description of what it is to choose lost-ness over the love, strength, and presence of the Living God and we all do that and it burns.  Topic for another day.

For the rest of chapter 21 an angel comes and shows John the New Jerusalem and there are a couple of things to note here.  It is clothed in the glory and radiance of God.  This means that the presence and beautiful obviousness of God just radiates from his people.  The light of the love of God just shines from us.  But, we need be careful not to put it under a basket. 

Here’s something else.  There is no temple in the New Jerusalem, no building, no cinderblock box for keeping God under wraps.  The city is huge and the gates are never shut.  Everyone, everyone is welcome in the New Jerusalem. The glorious things of the world will be brought into it.  Kings will come into it to learn the ways of the reign of God.  Nothing defiled can be brought into it.  Liars with a shameless attitude won’t come into it.  Only those who find life in the Lamb are there.  This means that humility and honesty are key virtues in the New Jerusalem.  When I’ve been in the midst of true life-giving Christian fellowship humility and honesty were the markers of the people who brought healing to me.

This brings us to chapter 22 and the River of Living Water.  This is the healing/reconciling mission/ministry of Jesus Christ that we embody.  It shines like crystal in us in our relationships with each other and with others outside our fellowship and in our involvement in our families, and neighbourhoods and communities; through us God is working to heal this broken world. 

Similarly, verse 5 says we reign, but it does not say over what entailing that the church has nothing to lord over the world, to try to control its politics and moral standards.  Rather, we share in Jesus reign, the reign of self-sacrificing love.  We feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoner.  We give.  We don’t look just after our own needs.  Since God has filled us with the Water of Life we pour ourselves into the lives of others with humility and honesty.

That River of the Water of Life that flows from the Throne of God and the Lamb flows through each of our churches and through each of us.  But, you know sometimes this happens (pull out block of ice).  We Presbyterians are affectionately known as the frozen chosen so I think ice is a fun example.  Ice is the solid form of water.  Sometimes ice can cool things down.  It can make water cool and refreshing.  My point here isn’t to say we Presbyterians are like ice cubes in the River of the Water of Life helping to make it all the more refreshing.  Sometimes we are and that’s a good thing.  The point is that ice is static.  It doesn’t flow.  When the church gets more concerned about itself as an institution rather than its mission in Christ it has frozen up.  Institutional churches get froze up in buildings, and clergy, and “the way things are down around here”.  We get concerned about robes and collars, musical instruments, and having things the way we like them just so we feel comfortable.  We get more concerned about judging what’s proper and acceptable to God rather than actually loving one another.  When we do this, and we at times have, we get frozen solid.  The River of the Water of Life ceases to flow through us.

That being said, in these days and times when most of the people in our surrounding communities are negatively disposed to anything “institutional” and especially the church in its institutional forms, we the people of God, we the New Jerusalem need to especially attune ourselves to the River of he Water of Life flowing through us.  We need to dive in and go with the flow of the Spirit away from our buildings and our comfortable ways of doing things and into each other’s homes and gather around each other’s tables and get to know one another better.  We need to gather together and read and study the Bible together and pray together.  We need to pay attention to being authentically Jesus-like in all our relationships.  Jesus bears our burdens and so that means we are free to bear the burdens of others and walk along beside them in their weaknesses just like Jesus does with us.
            The River of the Water of Life is flowing through us.  The glory and light of God does shine through us.  But present circumstances dictate that we set aside our institutional ways and let the River carry us out into the world.  Each one of us is a leaf on the Tree of Life and God has made us his own not just for our own sakes but so that we can be for the healing of others.  Dive in River.  Go with the flow.  Amen.

A New Humanity

Text: Ephesians 2:1-22

Inspirational one-liner’s, the Internet is full of them.  I would like to share with you some of my findings.  “I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way.  So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.” “All power corrupts.  Absolute power is pretty neat though.”  “Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.”  “Jesus loves you.  It’s everybody else who thinks you’re a jerk.” “If God is watching us, the least we can do is be entertaining.”  Though humorous there’s actually a lot of profundity packed away in those uplifting tidbits.  I could spend an hour alone on the first one about prayer and I’m actually not being sarcastic.  Really.

Well, if I haven’t done it already I’m going to commit a great offence.  I am going to reduce the Apostle Paul to a couple of inspirational one-liners.  I will then spend likely longer than I should on explaining them.

So, if I were to be so bold as to reduce Paul’s teaching to a couple of his own one-liners I would begin with 2 Corinthians 5:13: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, (boom) NEW CREATION.  The old has passed away (dead, gone); look, the new has now emerged.”  A one-liner explanation for that verse would be Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Well, I doubt your going to find either of those one-liners on the net.  Ideas like new creation and being crucified with Christ so that he now lives in and through us just aren’t all that inspirational in a culture melded by a paradigm that goes like “I want to be and do what makes me feel good and happy.”  Being NEW CREATION in Christ means that living a life that is driven by being and doing what makes me feel good and happy got crucified with Jesus and now I have to yield to letting him live in and through me and that’s something that’s going to reorient me, indeed compel me to lay aside my life and take up a cross and follow him.  That’s a task that will have us struggling against ourselves as we try to live according to his way of loving others unconditionally and indeed sacrificially.  Well, sometimes it’s just best to let Paul explain himself.  So let’s pop on over to Ephesians 2 and with a little paraphrasing I will try to let Paul explain his two inspirational one-liners.

If you remember from the week before last I probed into the first ten verses of chapter two and contrasted two ways of living by contrasting two songs; Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” and the classic hymn “’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus”.  My using that comparison was an attempt to explain Paul’s proclamation that we were all under the influence of a false god, “the spirit of the times” we could say.  This powerful influencer caused us to pursue our pleasures and live “my way”.  Therefore, we were the walking dead to coin the name of a popular TV series.  BUT GOD in his great love has been gracious to us and saved us from death.  He has caused us to live again together with Christ Jesus.  He raised from the dead together with him and seated us together with him in the heavenly realm. 

We also talked about grace being God’s bringing us into his presence, showering his favour upon us, and acting for our beneficence.  The evidence of this, reaching back to chapter one, is that God has given us the Holy Spirit, his very presence.  The Holy Spirit unites us to Jesus so that, as Paul would put it, we were crucified together with Christ Jesus and God has caused us to live again together with him, raising us up together with him, and seating us with him meaning he gave us a part in his ministry. 

Twice in the first part of chapter two Paul says “by grace you have been saved”.  To give you a quick and unfortunate grammar lesson, the verb there is actually a participle which is a verb functioning as a noun.  Though it sounds rough, a more accurate translation is “by grace y’all are the have been saved ones.”  We are the have been saved ones, saved from death by God’s acting in grace towards us. 

The second time Paul says “by grace y’all are the have been saved ones” he adds “through faith”.  He means not our own faith but rather God’s faithfulness - God’s faithfulness to us according to his plan, the plan Paul laid out in chapter one.  It has been God’s plan since from before he created anything to unite all things in heaven and on earth in Jesus with the result that he would adopt us as his own children through uniting us to Christ Jesus by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Now moving on to the second half of chapter two, if the first half of chapter two was driven by a huge BUT GOD (we were dead, BUT GOD has made us to live again in Christ Jesus), the second have is driven by a huge BUT NOW in which he focuses on the fact that God has created a new humanity in Christ Jesus.  This new humanity consists of both Jews and Gentiles who before were enemies but are now reconciled in Christ in that they both have access to God Father in the Holy Spirit through Jesus. 

This new humanity in Christ Jesus is a fundamentally new form of human existence.  Its newness is not new like getting a new car, which is nothing more than better bells and whistles put on an old idea.  We haven’t just been given a way of relating to God that’s based on believing in Jesus for salvation rather than trying to earn salvation by doing good works.  That’s just putting a new bell and whistle called faith into same old human being.  This new humanity is like a totally new form of transportation to replace automobiles altogether; like transporters on the Starship Enterprise.  This new humanity is new because God now dwells in humans forming new community, a community based in enemies no longer having enmity because God crucified enmity with Jesus and God himself now binds us together.  This new humanity is a humanity in which God has come to live.

Wrap your head around this one.  For centuries the church has been little more than the vehicle through which our culture has promoted and enforced morality, good behaviour.  This has been particularly true of the Mainline denominations for the last two hundred years.  We’ve been little more than one more form of human religion.  The fact that I’ve stood up here and said we are a fundamentally new form of human existence, humans in community indwelt by God, and it’s probably striking most of us as the weirdest thing we’ve heard in a long time should tell us something.  Nevertheless, we are new creation in Christ.  In us the old has passed away and new humanity is emerging.  Our mode of being is working for peace and reconciliation in all relationships.  In the midst of the relationships we have with one another in this congregation in particular, and really through us into all our relationships, new creation humanity in Christ, humanity indwelt by God’s very self is emerging.

It’s Anniversary Sunday.  This congregation has thus far had a 164-year run.  It was the first church in this community.  God’s been faithful.  You’ve been faithful.  You’ve loved and served not only each other but the broader community.  You’ve been through much together, thick and thin together in Christ.  You’ve been young together.  You’ve grown old together.  You’ve been faithful.  Yet, these are difficult days for churches of the Mainline variety.  Our culture is going through something called “discontinuous change”, change that is causing our culture to be fundamentally different.  Our call in the midst of this discontinuous change is not to try to find new ways to continue to be the same old institution.  Our call is to focus on simply being the new humanity that we fundamentally are in Jesus Christ in the powerful working of the Holy Spirit.  The world around us is yet again markedly driven by the powerful influence of the spirit of the times and honestly we all have played into that.  But God has graciously saved us from that death.  The world out there is hungry and thirsty for authentic community.  They hunger and thirst for community that truly embodies Jesus.  But now that’s what we are and that’s what we have to give to the community of Southampton and to the Saugeen First Nation.  So shall it be.  Amen?