Healing Grace

"For the grace of God has appeared with salvation for all people" Titus 2:11

One of the most exciting things going on in the world of medicine is stem cell transplants.  Stem cells are preformative blood cells taken from bone marrow or from whole blood.  They are given to people who have blood cancers such as Leukemia after they have had extensive chemo treatments that have destroyed their immune system.  The stem cells start to grow and replace the patient’s immune system with mature, healthy cells that can fight off the remaining cancer cells.  The procedure is remarkably successful in effecting a cure of certain cancers.  It has also shown promise in treating Type 1 diabetes.  One cancer patient has been declared cured of HIV/AIDS as well as being cancer free after a stem cell transplant from a person who was HIV resistant.  There are also three other cases in which a stem cell transplant apparently cured HIV/Aids in cancer patients but they have to give it a couple of years to make sure.

The concept of stem cell transplantation is simple.  Insert healthy yet unformed cells into a diseased environment that has been striped of its own compromised ability to fight the disease.  As the transplanted cells grow they will fill the host with healthy cells that can effectively fight and eliminate the disease.  I think this is a good analogy for talking about what God is doing in his Creation through the Incarnation of God the Son as the man Jesus.  Please humour for a moment as I explain and please keep in mind that all analogies have their limitations.

God created humanity in his own image.  God is Trinity; the loving communion of the “Persons” of God the Father, Son, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Three relational beings who give themselves to each other so utterly in self-giving, unconditional mutual love that they are in essence One.  We must define “person” as “relation being” rather than the Modern Western definition where a person is a self-actualizing, autonomous, rational individual.  We exist as persons in networks of relationship apart from which we have no identity.  God created humanity to be, to reflect the image of loving communion within God’s good and blessed Creation. 

Humanity is originally blessed to exist in relationship with everything in a way that is founded in utter self-giving and unconditional mutual love.  Yet, we need not look too far to ascertain something has gone terribly wrong.  Instead of being in loving relationship with the rest of humanity and indeed the whole Creation we humans act autonomously and use others and the Creation for our own self-actualization in ways that seem perfectly rational but which we will one day step back from and wonder “What was I thinking?”  The end result is that we are like a virus or, dare I say a cancer in God’s good and blessed Creation.  We live by predation.  We pollute.  In the pursuit of our “inalienable rights” of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and a good steak we actually cause poverty, hunger, and the spread of disease.  We tend to hurt those we love the most.

We suffer from a cancerous disease called Sin and the end result is that the image of God in us is mutated.  We try to be God instead of reflecting the image of the loving and other serving communion of the Trinity.  Being diseased, we die and all of Creation is subject to this futility. 

Because God loves the world and us each in it, God doesn’t abandon us to our diseased state of mind and existence.  God sees us in our powerless state and has effected a cure, a judgement that cures, that heals, restores, and will create anew.  As we have an “image” problem, God the Son became human as this infant Jesus to effect the likeness of a stem cell transplant that will grow into a new humanity, indeed a raised from the dead humanity, in whom the image of God is restored.  God put his very self into diseased humanity and indeed into physical matter to effect a cure of Sin that will eventually annihilate Death. 

This stem cell transplant-like cure takes place in each of us as God has sent the Holy Spirit into each of us to heal us and transform us into the likeness of Christ.  The Holy Spirit works to cause us to want to be healed and in turn to love unselfishly and unconditionally each other, our neighbours near and far, and the Creation and thus foreshadowing the coming New Creation in which this disease called Sin is cured.  

By the Incarnation of God as Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit not only are we individuals healed, we as humanity in toto are being healed.  This is where the church, Christian fellowship, is important.  Christian community embodies this world’s hope.  Christian congregations are communities/relational networks in whom the image of God is becoming more apparent as we struggle to live together in a Christ-like fashion. The command to “love your neighbour as yourself” isn’t simply some higher moral command to obey or else.  It is what humanity cured looks like and since that is what is at work in us in Christ must we go and do likewise.

Well, saying that sin is a disease over which we are powerless does not let us off the hook.  We are still accountable for ourselves and responsible to live according to the cure.  Just as in AA Alcoholics come to realize that simply quitting drinking doesn’t really do anything.  What heals is working the 12 Step Program and letting God be God so that God can do what God does...heal.

So, let us keep in mind that Christmas isn’t about a bunch of nostalgia and gift giving that is supposed to make us feel wonderful.  Though getting together with others to eat and give gifts isn’t a bad thing.  But unfortunately, our excessive Christmas celebrating usually just stresses us out and makes us more aware of the people who are no longer here and has the propensity to bring out the worst in strained family dynamics.  Christmas isn’t about the holiday.  It is the staggering reality that God is healing his Creation.  Ponder this.  Take it to heart and act accordingly.  Amen.

A Community of Treason

Romans 1:1-7

Do you have one of “those houses” in your neighbourhood that everybody wonders what’s going on in there but nobody dares to ask?  People are coming and going all the time, but for what?  Are they drug dealers?  What if that house is a terrorist cell, a community of treason that’s going to overthrow the world as we know it?  Well, I want you to use your imagination for a moment and try to get a glimpse of what it may have been like to live in a 1^st Century Roman town about this size of this one and you had some Christians in your neighbourhood.

You live just a couple villas down from one of the most successful small business leaders in town.  In the past year people from all walks of life have started going into his home particularly on Sunday for a feast; the wives of other businessmen, widows, other peoples slaves, people you knew to be freed slaves, strangers from out of town, and occasionally what looked like Jews.  You have even seen beggars and prostitutes going in and out of his house!

You ask around and you find out that these people have become followers of a Jewish sect who worship one of those Jewish messiah’s known as Jesus of Nazareth.  The story is that he was a great teacher and healer, a prophet.  Yet, he was betrayed by the Jewish authorities and was crucified before he could even raise a rebellion.  They claim he resurrected from the dead and ascended into the heavenlies to sit at the right hand of the God of the Jews and reigns the universe from there.  They also say his Spirit comes to be with them and lives in them and has and will raise them from the dead too.  There is also a rumour that they believe they are eating his body and drinking his blood when they feast. 

You are curious about these neighbours, but you know to stay away.  The way they talk about Jesus is treasonous and you have no intent of winding up on a cross for taking part in a Jewish revolt against Caesar and the Roman Empire.  They call Jesus Lord and Saviour as if he were Caesar.  Caesar has given the world Pax Romana.  Never has the world known peace and security as it does now because Caesar’s army is everywhere.  Only a fool would believe Roman rule is not a blessing from the gods.  But, these Christians seem to embody peace and practice justice and charity without having to crucify people.

The Christians say that Jesus, like Apollo, was the Son of God become human and this was proven they say when he raised from the dead.  So they say Jesus is Son of God with power, a power that is greater than Caesar’s because he has been bodily raised from the dead.  You believe Caesar is the Son of Jupiter and that when he dies he will become a god too.  But they say Jesus was seen by hundreds of people after he resurrected and not just by the high priest of Jupiter who says he saw Caesar’s soul rise in glory from his body.

The Christians say Jesus is coming back to establish his kingdom.  When he comes all the dead will be raised and the world will be made new and all the unjust powers will be unseated.  They say the whole world will be filled with the glory of their God and healed of evil and the futility of death.  They also say that they all are children of God too, just like Jesus, and are going to receive a wondrous inheritance when he returns.

Something else about these Christians is that they don’t worship the gods anymore and they don’t go to the feasts.  They are weird that way and catch a lot of grief because of it.  It has cost many of them their jobs.  Occasionally, we hear of them getting arrested because they won’t call Caesar Lord. 

You don’t know what to make of all this, but you just know these particular neighbours are the most compassionate and peaceable people in town and would give a meal and the shirt off their back to any who needed it.  They are enviable for this.  Something even more odd about them is that the men treat women and slaves as their equals.  Houses like these are springing up all over town; and, all over the Empire.  You wonder what kind of a rebellion this is.

Christian households were communities of treason back in the 1^st Century.  Jesus is Lord and Caesar was not.  They tried to live according to the non-violent and just Kingdom they believed Jesus was soon to bring.  They had the power of love as opposed to the love of power that undergirded the Empire (N.T. Wright).  They didn’t just believe the Gospel that Jesus is Lord and his kingdom is at hand.  They were becoming it, living proof of it (Michael Gorman).  Church was house-based.  You opened you’re home to all walks of life and everybody was equal.  Hospitality was key.  A Christian house-church was a mission base.  Of course, your neighbours wondered what was going on.

Last week I shared the quote of the day that the Mainline churches like ours are no longer Mainline, but rather we are Sideline.  Well, on the sideline is a good place to be.  It gives a chance to regroup and decide what’s important.  We don’t have a “church” image to keep up.  We don’t have to do those things, those programs we believe that people believe churches are supposed to do.  We just need to be the people of God.  So we can experiment, try knew things, such as actually loving our neighbours.  If one idea doesn’t, try something else. 

But, I’m partial to believing that if we truly want to talk about God-with-us, then we need to consider a church that will be house-based and truly family-like.  A few months ago I shared an image of church in the neighbourhood that was based on my grandparent’s front porch.  I have another image to share, my best friends home. 

The Landis’ house was one of those that there were always a lot of cars out front and people coming and going.  It was a hub for Mom Landis’ extended family, for her own adult children, and many other friends of the family.  There was always food if you were hungry and a bottomless pot of coffee.  She went to church; sometimes more regular than others.  There were times that she opened her home to have the church people over for Bible Study or a meeting.  I recall that there was always a Bible laying around somewhere usually in the kitchen, quite often open; and the picture of the old man praying over his bread.  Her solution to life’s problems was “come on and go to church.”  Worked.  That’s why I stand before you today.  Mom Landis was never pushy about her faith, but there are many people who can say that the example she has lived was key to their own Christian faith. 

It is nearing Christmas and we talk about Emmanuel, God with us. The open-home way that Mom Landis has lived as a Christian is the most profound way we can talk about God being with us.  At her house the Kingdom of God has come near.  The Lord Jesus has sat at her table and I don’t think there is anyone who has sat at that table who can deny that.  The power of the love of God in Christ flows like a river there.  The way she opens her home is very much like the way they did church in the 1^st Century.  Maybe it’s the model for the Sideline church of the 21^st Century.  Ponder that.  Amen.

Hungry for Personal Transformation

Matthew 11:2-11, Isaiah 35:1-10

So there sat John the Baptist in prison.  The Empire struck back, one could say.  King Herod’s wife, Herodias also the wife of Herod’s brother, did not like this prophet of God meddling in her morality.  So she got Herod to arrest him.  He was not under a death sentence, but the likelihood of his getting out was nil unless the Messiah should get things rolling, which meant, Cousin Jesus, if he is the Messiah, needed to get on with it. 

But, I think that to John, Jesus was a bit of an enigma.  He didn’t live up to the Messianic expectations of the day.  Faithful Jews were expecting an overthrow of their Roman occupiers and a clean up of their corrupted royals and temple authorities.  But Jesus of Nazareth, he wasn’t exactly the likes of his Hebrew namesake Joshua who led the people across the Jordan River to a conquest of Canaan’s Land.  Sure, crowds were flocking to Jesus, but he was more of a circus sideshow than a “Messiah” – a Deliverer.  He healed people, had some great debates with the religious authorities, cast out demons, pronounced forgiveness of sins...and he kept company with all the wrong people (whores, revenuers, and fishermen).  To the powers that be he was more a sought after source of entertainment than the harbinger of the Kingdom of God.  Though the size of the crowds could be concerning.

So, John sent some of his disciples to put the question to Jesus, “Are you the One, the Messiah who is coming, or should we wait for another?”  Jesus told them to go back and tell John exactly what they were hearing and seeing.  Then, and just to make sure they got it right, Jesus gave them a list of things that he was doing that the prophets of old and particularly the Prophet Isaiah foretold that the Messiah would do.  Yet not only the Messiah’s doings, but things God himself would do when he himself came to deliver his people; acts that were a reversal of the universal maladies caused by sin, a healing of more than just Israelite national and religious problems.  These were the healings of the very signs that something had gone deadly wrong in God’s good creation.

What did these disciples of John hear?  I imagine they were hearing the sound of people praising God with great joy, a sound so loud that it seemed to be the voice of all creation resounding in victory at the arrival of its Saviour; rejoicing that the glory of God had returned to the Land of Israel.  It was like the wanton wasteland of the dry wilderness of humanity becoming lush, breaking forth and blossoming like the dry riverbeds in the Palestinian wilderness coming into blossom in spring just after the end-of-winter flooding.  (I’ve seen that and it’s beautiful.)  If you have ever heard Middle Eastern people when worship comes on them, you know what I mean.  It is emotional, loud, and powerfully joyful. 

So, if that’s what John’s disciples heard, what did they see?  What could have caused all that loud praising?  Jesus doing what God said he himself would do when he himself came to deliver not only his people but also and more so all of creation from oppression by sin and death.  Weak hands were strengthening.  Shaking knees were steadying.  Jesus was opening the eyes of the blind and unstopping the ears of the deaf.  He was making the lame to leap like dear and loosing the tongues of the mute so they could praise.  He was cleansing the lepers and even raising the dead.  Jesus was sending out his own disciples ahead of him who did these things also as if to make a highway in the desert so that God’s people could come to him.  Joy and gladness was overtaking those people.  Sorrow and sighing was fleeing.  John’s disciples were seeing and hearing Isaiah 35 manifesting all around Jesus everywhere he went.  What better news could there be for the poor in the land than these signs of “Immanuel” – God is with us!?

Jesus told John’s disciples to go report what they hear and see and also sent them back with a little kick in the pants for John.  Tell John, “blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”  If I had to paraphrase that, it would be, “John, I am who I am and I will do as I am.  I am God and you are not.  I may not be doing what you think ‘God’ ought to do.  But I am ‘God with you’.  Keep being faithful, John.” 

When I try to imagine what it was like back then I find myself quite challenged.  The “Church” today is transitioning into something different than what it has been.  We used to be a, if not the, foundational institution.  Now we are not necessary to the public good anymore at least not in the eyes of the public.  We’re not the Mainline church anymore.  We are the Sideline church.[1]  In this time of transition I, like John the Baptist, would like to know what Jesus is up to.  I feel like I’m blind to seeing what Jesus is doing.  I feel deaf to his voice and powerless to leap.  Churches are dying; I want to see them raised to new life. Where is Jesus in all this?  Where’s the Holy Spirit?  What’s God up to?  God is with us.  This is all part of his plan.  But what is he up to?  Where are we going?

The position the church finds itself in now in our culture is very much like what it was in the first century?  So we must ask, why did the early church spread so far and wide and not get snuffed out?  Well, they were Resurrection people.  They unquestionably knew that the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ had in the power of the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead.  They knew this because God the Father had poured that same Holy Spirit upon (into) them and bonded them to Jesus and changed them, raised them to new life – an actual new humanity which they called “in Christ”.  They faithfully lived as New Creation in the midst of the Old empowered by the Holy Spirit.  Their way of life was marked by the way of the cross.  Their fellowship was (and this is attested to by non-Christian 1^st and 2^nd Century historians) distinguished as being filled with compassion, peaceful, and just.

The Apostle Paul summed it up when he said, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by (in) the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:19-20).  What the people in the crowds experienced as physically restored sight, hearing, and abilities, the early Christians experienced as new life “in Christ” and they worshipped and they did this in the midst of a culture that was contrary to them and that often persecuted them.

Paul also said in Philippians, “My goal is to know him (Jesus) and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death” (Phil. 3:10).  He didn’t say, “I just want to be a good person, and have my private beliefs, and hope for heaven when I die if anything.”  He desired personal transformation that was in accordance with a cross-based way of faithfulness.  This hunger for personal transformation in Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit is where we need to be right now in this transforming transition.  
          “Jesus, teach me who you are?”  That needs to be our first prayer in the morning.  To hunger for knowing who Jesus is the beginning of seeing, of hearing, of leaping, of becoming clean, and indeed being raised from the dead.  Jesus, teach me/teach us, who you are.  Amen.

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[1] This is a borrowed phrase from I know not where.

Full of the Knowledge of God

Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13

“The Earth shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”  “The Earth shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”  That is a very rich metaphor.  Though I had read this passage at least once every Christmas season for who knows how many years and on many other occasions, the first time I never really heard it, noticed it was there, was well over decade ago while listening to a New Testament scholar named N.T. Wright talk about our future hope as Christians, a future where everything is filled with the knowledge of God. I have pondered this very profound metaphor ever since. 

N.T Wright is very keen to point out that the future reality that the Bible points us forward to is not our disembodied souls going to heaven when we die.  Yes, we will spend a little time after death possibly without our bodies with Christ in a place Jesus called Paradise.  But, that is not our ultimate goal.  Rather, what we are headed for is Resurrection to live in Creation made new.  This wonderfully awesome and beautiful Creation that God created, blessed, and called very good will be healed and freed of Sin and Death and Evil and as Isaiah says…wait for it…wait for it…, it will be full of the knowledge or better yet the knowing of who God is and what God’s nature is like, full of the unveiled presence and glory of God just as the waters cover the sea.  The goal of our existence is as Wright says, “God is going to do for the whole Creation what he did for Jesus on Easter morning.”  Resurrection into a New Creation, this is our hope in Christ.  This is what God is up to and pointing forward to that is what we the church are about.

Isaiah’s prophesy here, like all of the biblical prophesies which look forward to the Day of Creation’s deliverance and restoration is symbol rich, metaphor rich.  We need to “crack the code” on the meaning of the symbols and yet be careful to not get too specific or literal with them, trying to peg them down to specific dates and so forth.  They are meant to provoke “hopeful imagination”, to make us want to see God’s promise fulfilled, to make us “abound in hope”.

The first metaphor or symbol in Isaiah’s prophecy here is that a shoot shall come up out of the stump of the Davidic lineage, a ruler full of the Holy Spirit, a righteous ruler who will judge fairly on behalf of the weak and oppressed.  This metaphor is a pretty obvious one to nail down.  This ruler is Jesus.  He is the Jewish Messiah who has brought and will bring the Kingdom or Reign of God to earth. 

The next metaphor/symbol that Isaiah gives us is of a world that is free of predation, free of those who kill and devour.  The nature of relationship in creation will change from predation to Peace/Shalom.  The nature of relationship in creation as we know it now due to sin is predatory.  The strong devour the weak.  Poverty, war, climate change are all the result of the powerful devouring the weak.  With this image of a world without predation Isaiah means to cause us to hopefully imagine that the world that Jesus is bringing about will be free of of all forms of predation.  There will be peace, harmony, Shalom.

Looking at this third image, that of the earth being full of the knowledge of God as waters covering the sea.  Well, the symbol of the “sea” in the world of apocalyptic/prophetic imagery often means humanity, the chaotic sea of humanity.  Water is the symbol of the source of life.  As God is the source of life, I think this image is telling us that the personal, life-giving presence of God is going to be visible among the relationships of humanity – the image of God which was marred by sin will be restored by God resting his presence upon and in us.

So then, what Isaiah wants us to imagine is the coming of the Messiah, full of the Holy Spirit to put things right in God’s creation and the noticeable difference will be that predation will not be at the heart of relationship anymore, but rather in its place will be the personal presence of God.  The image of the Trinity – the loving communion of God the Father Son and Holy Spirit – will radiate forth from humanity in our relationships with each other and with the Creation as a whole.

Leaping forward in time a few centuries from Isaiah to Paul, this hope-filled image of the image of God restored in humanity undergirds Paul’s understanding of what the church is.  To Paul, the Holy Spirit-filled Messiah has come.  Jesus is that shoot rising from the stump of Jesse.  Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of God.  His death and resurrection is God’s judgement against humanity that kills wickedness.  With the breath of his lips, the Holy Spirit, God puts wickedness to death and recreates humanity in his image.  The Christ-like, Holy Spirit filled fellowship of Christians is the first fruits of this new predation-free humanity.  As far as Paul, the former zealous Pharisee who hated Gentiles, was concerned the fact that Gentiles and Jews were together in harmony, like-minded in their devotion to Jesus as Lord, worshipping God the Father with one voice is evidence that the day Isaiah held forth has begun.  The knowledge of God has begun to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.

The New Creation, predation-free, Spirit of God-filled humanity that Isaiah put out there for us to “hopefully imagine” is embodied in Christian fellowship.  The Holy Spirit filled life of Christ in which predation is disappearing and the loving communion of God is becoming evident in Christian community. Christian community, Holy Spirit filled congregations in whom the self-giving, self-sacrificing love of Jesus Christ is embodied is living, tangible proof that God is faithful, that God gives strength to endure, and that God will deliver his Creation from the futility that pervades it.

I hope you are catching a glimpse with your “hopeful imagination” of what exactly is going on in our midst as a congregation.  What Isaiah prophesied with spoken word as promise, we embody as visible, felt reality in our fellowship also as promise of what God will ultimately bring about in Christ.  Here’s an example. The other day I went to visit Mac and Edith and Charles and Mary Lou were there.  They came to see Mac and Edith because the love of God abides in them and has made them to be the type of people who will go and comfort others.  The presence of the Lord was there with us.  Christian acts of support like that are more than just good deeds.  They are living signs of the New Creation coming.  Christian acts of support as was shown that day are the earth becoming full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.  Through the Christian love shown by each of you the earth is becoming full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.  Amen.

What Time Is It?

Romans 13:11-14

In this passage I think Paul is using an image from the life of Roman soldiers to say what’s going on in the grand scale of history.  I invite you to imagine what reveille would have been like back then for a Roman soldier.  It is time to wake up.  The night has run its course.  It’s dawn and day is imminent.  It is time to get dressed for the day.  Take off the nightclothes, and like honourable soldiers put on your armour and go take your post on watch.  But, let’s not be so nostalgic and naively polite about this.  What soldiers did at night back then didn’t really involve nightclothes.  You just needed lots of food, lots of alcohol, and lots women for after when you finished bragging and fighting over who was the best in battle.  You would have a bunch of soldiers and their cohorts for the night (usually temple prostitutes) laying around on the floor in a temple feast room or back at the barracks and then, at just before dawn somebody comes to rouse the room full of you from your drunken stupor.  “Wake up!  Quit grumbling!  You gluttonous, drunken, over-sexed pigs, you know darn well what time it is!  Get up!  Put your armour on.  It’s time to get out and to be honourable.  You are soldiers of the imperial Guard and you represent the Emperor.”

Paul takes this image of Roman soldiers at reveille to describe humanity since Jesus was raised from the dead.  God is doing something new, something in the order of a new act of Creation that requires us to get up and get on with it, to get dressed for the day.  A new age in Creation history is upon us since the resurrection of Jesus.  Just as sure as night runs its course and darkness gives way to daylight, so God’s new day of salvation in Jesus Christ is upon us and it is time we dress for the day.  It is now dawn.  Let us begin to live in this New Day.

Paul here tells the Roman Christians that they know what time it is.  The word he uses for “know” entails they have experiential knowledge of the day of salvation to which he is referring.     Also, the word he uses here for “time” isn’t the one that means chronological time.  Actually, that word is chronos.  He uses another world for time, kairos, which means a decisive moment in history.  The set hour is upon us now for a moment in history bigger than the extinction of the dinosaurs, bigger than the fall of Rome, bigger than Columbus coming to America, bigger than the moon landing, bigger than the invention of the personal computer, bigger than the fall of the Berlin Wall, bigger than 9/11, even bigger than the global fear created by the last American election.  This set hour is upon us for when God puts an end to the sin and death.  Jesus bearing our sin in his flesh took sin to its death and so then God raising Jesus from the dead put the nails in the coffin for death itself.  In that moment New Creation began.  Salvation!!!  N.T. Wright says it quite well what will come, “God is going to do for the whole Creation what he did for Jesus on Easter morning.”  That is the hope of the Christian faith.

Paul says that it is now the hour for us to raise up from our sleep.  “Sleep” in the early church was a metaphor for death.  In 1 Thessalonians Paul refers to those in Christ who have died as having fallen asleep.  Raising from sleep is a metaphor for rising from death.  By the gift of the Holy Spirit at work in us making us to become more Christ-like as individuals and especially so as a Christian fellowship, we participate now in Jesus resurrection life and thus in the salvation that is coming. 

Christian community is a foretaste of the day of salvation coming.  Please don’t let yourself be lulled into thinking the Christian faith is just a matter of private beliefs, or how to be a good God-fearing person, or simply the means to get to heaven when you die; or into thinking that church is just something good, God fearing people do.  To know the love of God in Jesus Christ is nothing short of being raised from the dead.  The Church, this congregation, every congregation, every fellowship in Christ is a light-bearing participation now in the future that is coming.

So here we are now on the first Sunday in Advent reminding ourselves of the very real hope that we have in Christ Jesus and the coming salvation.  The shear presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst gives us the certainty about this future that makes us able to live the way of the cross that Jesus lived – lives of faithfulness, hope, and love.  We don’t just believe the Gospel.  We are becoming the Gospel – a fellowship that actively embodies Jesus and his resurrection and we demonstrate this in living cross-formed lives.

This is the first Sunday in Advent the day we remind ourselves of the very real hope we have in Jesus Christ of the Day of Salvation that he is bringing.  Isaiah looked forward to that day.  He saw a Day of Peace (next week’s theme), a day when we will beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks and study war no more.  To carry on with what I have been saying, we as a Christian fellowship need to be actively engaging ourselves in making this hope of peace known in every home of this community.  We are coming up to Christmas and yet the primary sound being heard coming from our churches is the sound of sleigh bells when it ought the sound of sledgehammers on anvils. 

Friends, we know what time it is, but seriously, we need to wake up.  It’s God who’s blowing reveille for us.  We are slumbering in the early morning stupor of a privatized, nostalgic semblance of the Christian faith.  We are good, God-fearing people, who care about each other and this church.  Well and good, but how is the community around us seeing in us or receiving from us any evidence that God is present and cares.  If this church closed, would Chatsworth notice we were gone?  The Hour is upon us.  It is time for us to get up and embody the hope we know deep down in our aching bones.  Amen.