Without Love I Am Nothing

1 Corinthians 13:1-11

One of the hottest topics going in physics these days is how to define nothing.  The reason is that most theoretical physicists say that our universe came into existence out of nothing, but how do you define “nothing”.  Some will say there was a time when everything including time was not.  There was nothing and somehow out of that nothing all our something came into being.  On the other hand, there are those who take the stance that nothing is still something.  Their argument seems to hinge on what we know about gravity, which is very little.  Gravity is a force, an energy field that is everywhere present.  Gravity does not form and grow when mass forms and becomes bigger.  Rather, mass forms and grows because of gravity.  As best as I can understand it, these folks say that underlying our universe of spacetime is something like a chainmail of little loops or quantum loops of gravity and that this chainmail has always been.  We cannot conceive of it ever having not been.  Therefore, there is no such thing as nothing.

Well, that seems to be a lot of talk about nothing and definitely a chicken-or the-egg kind of debate.  But, if we look at this conversation about nothing from a philosophical/religious perspective, it seems that neither side is saying anything new.  One side sounds a lot like Western/Christian ideas of Creation ex nihilo, creation out of nothing, and the other like Eastern ideas of the eternal all in which everything is connected and has always existed.  On the Christian side, the more Christianish you get with your ideas of how things came into being the more things seem to have a purpose that needs to be developed.  The more Eastern you get, the more things lack a purpose and just are.  You know, the goal or non-goal of Buddhism is to empty one’s self of self and become nothing and if you progress far enough along this route you will reach the center of the perfect state of nothingness, known as nirvana (Des Moines, the capitol of Iowa).  Practising meditation and compassion will help you along this route.

One crucial difference between Christian faith and Buddhism is that we Christians say we are not “nothing” and should not seek to be nothing.  We are something and we should strive to be what we were created to be.  God created us, humanity, in his image and with a purpose that the Westminster Catechism so wonderfully states as glorifying God and fully enjoying him forever.  Each of us is uniquely and wonderfully made and beloved by God and gifted towards that endeavour.  We are not nothing nor should we strive to be nothing.  Our problem and one that we must strive to rid ourselves of is not self but rather a self that is bent in on itself, self that seeks only itself.

Looking here at 1 Corinthians, I don’t know how philosophical Paul was trying to be, but he was certainly being poetic when he said if he had all those spiritual gifts for ministry but not love, he is nothing.  Love is how we express the something that God has created us to be, it is how we glorify and enjoy God.  Love requires we set aside the self that is bent back in on its self and humbly serve on another.

Paul said what he said because in Corinth they had a little problem, a leadership dispute that was affecting their unity in Christ.  A little background, Paul spent about a year and a half in Corinth planting what developed into several house churches.  When he left, he left no one in charge.  I suspect he was hoping that they would prayerfully discern by the working and leading of the Holy Spirit who Jesus was calling to be their leaders.  Instead, several groups and personalities began to compete for control.  There were the rich patrons who owned the houses in which they met.  There were the philosophical types who thought the churches should be run more like philosopher clubs.  There were the namedroppers who said “I follow Paul” or “I follow Cephas” or “I follow Jesus” and since they were the “most sincere disciples” of the “great teachers” they should be the leaders. There was also what appears to be a group consisting primarily of women who spoke in tongues and prophesied a lot and who gave words of knowledge.  These likely thought that since they were so “spiritual” they should be in charge of the churches.  Unfortunately these women looked just like the priestesses in the pagan temples. 

This leadership conflict in the congregations severely affected their unity in Christ.  They were failing to love one another, to be community where the love of Christ shown as the distinctive character of their relationships as congregations.  Instead there was infighting in which congregants took each other to court before pagan judges. There was sexual immorality.  One man had taken his stepmother to be his wife.  When they celebrated the Lord’s Supper, it turned into a party for the rich while the poor had to stand back and watch.  And those spiritual women looking like pagan priestesses simply had these Christian churches looking like just another organization, trade guild, or religion like any other instead of a community which embodied the Kingdom of God/New Creation community that reflects the character of the One True God, and existed as a foretaste of what things will be like when Jesus returns and sets the world to right.

Here in chapter 13, the Love Chapter, the most read passage of any kind at weddings, Paul isn’t giving marriage advice.  He’s telling these churches what the heart of being the church is – love.  The Greeks had four words we translate as love.  One is the love of family.  Another is the love between friends and another is romantic love.  The word for love Paul uses here is for sacrificially and unconditionally looking to the needs of others as if they were your own.  In the church’s Paul planted this love was evident in a kind of fellowship that was not known in any other social grouping in the ancient world.  Women were leaders. Slaves worshipped with the families who owned them.  Rich and poor regarded one another as equals.  They suffered together, celebrated together, prayed together, worshipped together.  Christian community was something new.

As this community in Christ was new and had vastly different values than other kinds of communities back then, Christians often found themselves in conflict with their surrounding communities.  The result was that fellowship in this new Communion in Christ filled with the living presence of the Holy Spirit became the primary relationship network for those who came and believed.  Each one of them all got a new identity as a beloved child of God and a family resemblance that became evident in love.  In this Christian fellowship every one of them no matter who they were could say, “I am something. The Spirit of God is in me.  I am a child of God the Father, a sister or brother to Jesus Christ the Son of God who is Lord of all Creation.  And we are all family, a new humanity that loves.  Without this love, I am nothing.”

This love embodied in Christian community is the heart of the church.  This love by which we are something rather than nothing is not a matter of private religion where good people just come to hear good talks on how to be a good person and then go on trying to live a good life.  It requires that we gather together and listen to each other as we share our lives, our struggles, joys and pains.  It requires that we learn hospitality and respect for everyone and not put up boundaries to people who we think are not like us.  It requires that we do together that most shameful of all activities - prayer  -even if it means we must pray out loud for one another.  It requires that we make our Christian fellowship the primary fellowship of our lives.  It requires that we study the Bible together and struggle with it together and do our best to live according to it. 

Being a community that embodies love in the image of God is why this congregation is here.  This love makes us each “something”.  We can have every kind of ministry under the sun that we think churches ought to do but if we don’t have this love we have nothing…gain nothing…are nothing.  Love, for in Christ you truly are “something.”  Amen.

The Mantle of Jesus' Ministry

2 Kings 2:1-15; Luke 4:14-30

Passing the mantle of ministry.  Our reading from 2 Kings tells the story of how the prophet Elijah passed his prophetic ministry on to his understudy Elisha symbolized by his mantle or cloak.  It is a touching story of Elisha’s loyalty to Elijah.  Elijah knows he’s going to be taken away and apparently doesn’t want to go through a painful goodbye.  So, he tries to slip away but Elisha won’t let him.  “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you,” Elisha repeats. 

Then, when it’s time for Elijah to be taken up he asks if there is anything he can do for Elisha and Elisha says, “I want a double portion of your spirit.”  The Hebrew word for spirit is also the word for breath.  So, I am inclined here to say that Elisha is asking for a double portion of Elijah’s breath, meaning the Spirit of the LORD breath of the prophet by which he (or she) speaks the Word of the LORD.  Elisha is realizing his own inadequacy to take over for the great Elijah.  He’s probably thinking, “I’m not half the man of God Elijah is so I need a double portion of the breath that the Lord has filled him with so I can speak his words.”

Well, after Elisha watches Elijah taken up in a whirlwind to the fiery chariot he finds Elijah’s mantle on the ground.  He takes it up and starts to walk.  He comes to the Jordon and yells out, “Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah,” and  then strikes the water with the mantle.  The river parts just as it had with Elijah and the school of prophets declare, “The breathe of Elijah rests on Elisha.” 

Well, if you go back into 1 Kings and read the miracles that Elijah did, you see that Elisha goes forth and does a lot of the same.  Elijah’s breath of the LORD ministry symbolized by the mantle was indeed passed on to Elisha.  The LORD, the God of Elijah continued to speak through and minister through Elisha just as he had spoken and ministered through Elijah. 

This story is where we get the phrases “passing the mantle” and “taking up the mantle”.  Sometimes, we hear in the news how a sports team gets a new coach.  If that new coach was an assistant of a well loved and successful, the sport casters will say, “Coach Smith has passed the mantle on to Coach Taylor” in the hopes that the same track record and all will continue.  Or, if the new coach had nothing to do with the old coach, but continues on the success of the team they say “Coach Taylor has taken up the mantle of Coach Smith.”

To pull this over to the church, I think we like to look at changes of ministers this way as well.  If an associate minister steps into the place of a lead minister and continues on doing the same stuff the former lead did and the church continues on just like it always has, then its Rev. Bob has passed the mantle on to Rev. Earl.  Or, if Rev. Earl is new to the scene yet comes and continues all the stuff that Rev. Bob was doing, we say that Rev. Earl has taken up the mantle of Rev. Bob.  The mantle symbolizes the relationship that Rev. Bob had with the congregation and the ministries they did together.

Unfortunately, what is so often the case after a well-loved, long-term minister has moved on is that Rev. Earl comes on to the scene with a new mantle, the mantle of what Jesus has called him to be and do in that congregation.  Yet, when Rev. Earl tries to part the Jordon to move forward into a new day of the new ministry of what Jesus is calling them to be and do, the people don’t follow because Rev. Earl isn’t wearing the mantle of Rev. Bob’s ministry and never could wear it because it belongs to Rev. Bob.  Then, Rev. Earl, wearing the mantle of the ministry of the call of Jesus Christ, like his Lord gets scapegoated and attacked until he leaves town.  Then, the congregation continues to search for someone who will wear the beloved mantle of Rev. Bob but it’s not really the mantle of the Rev. Bob that they are waving around.  It is really the idol known as “the good ole days.”

Let me tell you about the mantle of the ministry of Jesus Christ because that’s the mantle that every church is called to take up and wear.  In Luke’s Gospel, the way he tells the story of Jesus, there are two chapters of Jesus getting born stories: Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan, and Jesus being led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness were Satan tempts him.  After these events, there is a very brief note that goes, “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country.  He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.”

Well Jesus comes to his hometown of Nazareth and it looks like he is going to do all those wonderful things there that got him such a good report in the rest of Galilee.  But what does Jesus do?  He divests himself of the “mantle of Jesus, the teacher praised by everyone” – the Rev. Bob mantle – and instead proclaims that he is going to do works akin to Elijah and Elisha and it would be things that the people of Israel aren’t going to like too much because they don’t fit the bill of the Rev. Bob mantle that they are expecting. 

Like Elijah and Elisha Jesus wears the Breath-of-the-Lord Mantle.  Just as in Hebrew the word for Spirit can mean breath so it is Greek too.  Jesus quotes Isaiah and says, “The Breath of the LORD is upon me, and here’s my evidence and purpose.  He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release of the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”  If Jesus does these things and they happen, well then, he’s the One – the Suffering Servant that Isaiah foretold who would come to deliver his people only to be rejected and killed by them, stricken for their sins and bruised for their iniquities. 

What it looks like here is that the mantle of Jesus’ ministry isn’t just good words that make everybody feel good that awakens a feeling of nostalgia in them for the good ole days.  It is real mission that is good news to the poor and not necessarily good for those fairly well off folks there in Nazareth.  Political prisoners are going to be set free.  How many Jews, such as John the Baptist had been imprisoned by powerful Jews who were trying to guard their influence in Israel.  Nazareth had its share of religious and political authorities trying to keep their power.  Miracles were going to happen by which even the blind will see.  Those who had become disillusioned in Israel will get their faith back.  The oppressed will go free.  There were many Jews in Israel put into slavery by other Jews who unscrupulously took their lands and homes because they had the power to do so either by Roman grant or that’s just the way they rolled.  The year of the Lord’s favour that Jesus’ references here is something known as the year of Jubilee.  Every fiftieth year all lands in Israel were to be returned to the ancestral holdings, Israelite slaves set free, and wealth and the means to wealth redistributed equally and justly among the people.  If you were well off in Nazareth, then this was likely bad news to you.  Donald Trump would not have liked what Jesus came to do.

For us, Jesus has passed the mantle of his mission and ministry on to us.  It is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the Day of Pentecost that continues to today.  His breath is in us.  The Spirit of the LORD is upon us.  The Breath of God is upon us.  He has anointed us to be and bring good news to the poor, the captive, the blind the oppressed.  The Holy Spirit creates small communities all over the world that are locally in mission going about the work of helping people understand they are loved and reconciled to God, communities in which there is real Breath of God healing power that transforms people from the brokenness of sin to wellness in Christ. 

Mission is the key word here.  The theologian Emil Brunner once wrote, “The Church exists by mission, just as fire exists by burning.  Where there is no mission there is no Church…”.  The Church exists by mission…where there is no mission, there is no church.  That is a very scary thing to have to say to congregations that are struggling for their very existence and nearly all their efforts are going into just surviving.  We need to put aside the mantle of the good ole days and our idea that church is only church if it is like the good ole days, and get down to real mission and ministry.  What are the real needs of the people around us?  There are economic problems, there are substance abuse problems, there are broken family problems.  There are loneliness problems, health problems.  And you know what, all of us have been there or somewhere similar and…the LORD has been with us and faithful to us.  We have some news that is really good news.  We’ve a story to tell the nations and it’s the story of how Jesus has loved, been faithful to and changed even me.  The message that we have is not clean yourself up so Jesus will accept you and make things go better for you.  Our message is “Jesus has come to our town, come just as you are and meet him.  He will change you and never leave you.”  Amen.

The Good Wine

John 2:1-11

"The Good Wine"

Every Friday evening at sundown faithful Jewish families share a meal together to welcome the Sabbath, a day of rest which lasts until sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.  At some point during the meal they will lift a cup of wine and say the Kiddush, a prayer: “Blessed art thou, O Lord our G-d, creator of the fruit of the vine.  Blessed art thou, O Lord our G-d, king of the universe, who chose us from every people, and exalted us among every tongue, and sanctified us by commandments and favours us with the holy Sabbath, and lovingly and graciously bestowed upon us your holy Sabbath. We praise you, O G-d, who sanctifies Shabbat.”

Similarly, on the night that they share their annual Passover meal, the Jews drink four cups of wine (very small cups).  Before they drink a cup they say again: “Blessed art thou, O Lord our G-d, creator of the fruit of the vine.”  After the fourth cup they say: “Blessed art thou, O Lord our G-d, king of the universe, for the vine and for the fruit of the vine, for the yield of the field, and for the land, pleasant, goodly and broad which thou favoured and gave as an inheritance to our fathers, to eat of its fruit and be sated with its goodness.”

It would be rather short sighted of us not to notice the high regard that Jews have for wine.  On the Sabbath, the wine represents the goodness; I would say the apex, of goodness in God’s creation.  With the joy provided by the wine, they welcome their participation in God’s Sabbath rest.  In the sharing of wine on Passover they commemorate the joy of God’s delivering them from Egypt and blessing them with the abundance of Canaan.  The most notable point, though, in these prayers is that God is the Creator of the fruit of the vine.  God is the source of the wine.   

To put all this together maybe we should ask what Jesus was trying to reveal about himself with turning water into wine.  Obviously, there’s more to it than him being some kind of a very talented alchemist at Hogwarts Academy.  This sign was a self-revelation by Jesus that he is the source of the wine, which is the emblem of the abundant life.  He is the one who gives Sabbath rest.  He is the one who delivers us from our enslavements.  He is the one who blesses with the abundance of life.  More over, in this act he’s making a very strong claim about his relationship to God, the Creator of the universe.  Later, in the Gospel of John Jesus says: “The Father and I are one (10:30)...even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father (10:38).”  This mutually indwelling relationship that Jesus has with the Father in the Holy Spirit, this love that they share and are, is the unity of God.  He is in the Father and the Father is in him…and the water of life is turned into wine of abundant life.

An interesting point to make is that only a few people—Jesus, his mother, his disciples, and the stewards who filled the jugs with water and then drew out the wine, knew what Jesus had done.  This sign was surgically directed so that Jesus might divulge his identity to his disciples and John says his disciples believed in him.  So we might ask what exactly they believed for Jesus says at John 3:15 "whoever believes will in Him have eternal life."  Jesus clearly demonstrated in this sign of turning water into wine that he is the one who gives life of the eternal nature, abundant life that comes from eternity and will keep us throughout eternity.

The eternal life Jesus speaks of here is not the “go to heaven when I die” that we in a “default go to” think it means.  In John’s Gospel Jesus is quite clear about what he means when he says eternal life and it is not our default go to.  At chapter 17 verse three John quotes Jesus saying, "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent."  Jesus has eternal life to give to us, life made abundant through knowing God the Father through him, Jesus the Son.  This real relationship with God in Jesus present with us through the work of the Holy Spirit is the water of just plain wonderful life turned into the Good Wine of eternal life.

Now there’s something else we need to look at here – the jars.  Archaeology tells us that these jars, which were really quite big, were there for the purpose of ritual washing, for symbolic hand washing and the symbolic washing of eating utensils.  Around the first century the Jews were a people obsessed with ritual bathing, with making or keeping oneself clean before God.  Archaeological digs from the period show that all over the place outside and even inside of houses were little bathing pools for dipping into as a ritual for keeping oneself ritually clean, clean before God.  This was a major component of what John the Baptist was up to.  He was trying to make the Jews ready for the coming of the Messiah by baptizing them in the Jordan River, cleansing them.  People were flocking to him out in the desert because they knew they needed to be cleaned of sin and ready, but they didn’t believe that the ritual baths and the jars of dipping water had the power to do what the religious authorities claimed.  We can only guess why they were so obsessed with purity.  Most likely they felt cut off from God because of Roman oppression, a corrupted priesthood, constant wars, and the “Greek-ness” of their culture. These were a people who felt their only hope was to make themselves right with God the only way they knew how…wash it off and stay clean.  These water jars were there at this house in Cana because the people who lived there were faithful Jews who believed the Messiah was coming and they needed to get clean and stay clean before God to be ready. 

But, something we might miss here is that the jars were empty that day and set off to the side like a remnant of a religious craze that had lost its zeal, like a family Bible tucked away in a corner somewhere.  The jars were empty for Jesus tells the servants to fill them with water.  This likely means that the family that lived there no longer believed in this washing stuff.  I can imagine what these servants are thinking.  They don’t know the need for wine so they’re probably thinking, “This young upstart of a rabbi has come here and is going to tell everybody they need to get clean or God will get them for their partying ways…oy, but he’s Cousin Mary’s son.  Let’s just do what he says.”  The next thing they know they’re serving wine, and really good wine at that.

The relationship between Christianity and Western Culture today looks a lot like this wedding feast.  There are Christian symbols tucked in corners all over the place reminding the culture of the day when the religious authority of the Church held sway.  Since about the 400’s the Church because it had influence with kings because kings thought the power of religion was useful for keeping a kingdom inline, since the 400’s the Church like the religious authorities of Jesus’ day has been good at keeping people obsessed with morality and purity before God and being good citizens so you can go to heaven when you die because it gave the Church power.  This power is the power of defining boundaries: Who’s in? Who’s out?  Who’s good?  Who’s bad?  Who’s naughty?  Who’s nice?  Who believes right?  Who’s a heretic?  All this that we might keep our privileged place of power with kings, the place that historians call Christendom.  We largely ignored and nearly forgot Jesus and his power to give the Good Wine of eternal life, the Good Wine of sharing in his relationship with God the Father in the Holy Spirit and got drunk on the cheap wine of religious authority.  How many wars were fought over that?

Today we are seeing a lot of empty jars of a religious hay day gone by.  We call them vacant churches.  We need the Good Wine of the living relationship with God in Christ made possible by the Holy Spirit present with us.  We don’t need to get ourselves morally right and pure to partake of this relationship.  Jesus is our purity.  The Holy Spirit living in us makes us pure.  Prayer, Bible Study, worship, practising charity, loving and fellowshipping with one another are the cups in which we drink this Good Wine.  Just drink the Good Wine and you will find this living relationship with God and you will wonderfully change.  Amen.

Preferential Treatment

Isaiah 43:1-7

A few weeks ago I went on a fieldtrip with my son’s class. Being a parent helper, William’s teacher assigned me five kids to keep.  William was one of them.  I find it difficult to have one of my own kids in a group like that.  It’s like I have to act like William is not my own.  We had a craft to do.  I couldn’t just help William and exclude the others.  I couldn’t just make sure his craft was done with excellence and leave the other kids to figure it out for themselves and produce something ugly.  I had to forgo my urge to show William preferential treatment and regard him as just one of the kids.  I think this is the way we like to think of God, that he doesn’t show preferential treatment to anybody or any groups of people, that he loves everybody each the same.  But, looking at this passage in Isaiah, God is telling us different, that he does give preferential treatment to those who are his.  Bear with me here as I flesh this out.

In this passage from Isaiah God broadly points out that he has given preferential treatment to his people and he gives his reason, “Because” he says “you are precious in my eyes, and honoured, and I love you.”  Wow.  I think we need to take those words to heart.  Precious in God’s eye.  Honoured by God.  Loved by God.  When was the last time you took scripture words like that personal, took them to heart for yourself, rather than just read over them as Bible words spoken to a people a long time ago in a land far, far away.  Well, you are each precious in God’s eyes and honoured, and he does love you.

Let me tell you about that word love…literally.  Here comes your Hebrew lesson.  Sorry.  There are a couple of words in Hebrew for love.  One is “chesed” which means “loving-kindness” or “steadfast love”.  When we think of God showing non-preferential love to everybody because it is his nature and disposition, “chesed” is what we are working with.  But “chesed” is not the word here.  God is not saying I love you with the idea of universal loving-kindness.

The Hebrew word for love God uses here is “ahav”, which is a very affectionate, tender, preferential, non-abstract kind of love.  It’s the kind of love that couples have, the kind of love that parents show to their own children and not so much to somebody else’s.  It’s the love we reserve for our best friends.  “Ahav” involves the bonds of family, close friends, and romance.  It is a very preferential treatment kind of love.  So, God is saying here that he has a very preferential kind of affectionate love for his people, for those he calls his own, for us, for each of us, for you.  Each of you is his beloved child and he loves you.

Well, let’s have a look at what this preferential treatment is.  God starts by describing what he did for ancient Israel, the people of God into whom we are grafted in Christ.  In verse one God says, “I created you, Jacob.  I brought you into existence.”  Jacob was the father of the twelve tribes of Israel.  Jacob has his life due to God.  Then God says, “I formed you, Israel.”  Or better, yet “I forged you, Israel”.  The name changes here.  We have to remember that Jacob got the name Israel after wrestling with God at Bethel, with the Angel of the Lord as the story goes.  Jacob was the name of the man who was the father of twelve sons, but his name became Israel after the fiery test of wrestling with God.

Moving into verse two we have a reference a reference to creating.  God brought everything into creation from out of the waters (Gen. 1:1-2) and he brought Israel into being at the Exodus when they crossed the Red Sea.  This is like when the “chaotic waters” of our lives churn up for no apparent reason and though it seems like we might get overwhelmed and swept away by the flood we do not because the LORD God of all Creation is with us.  

One bit of preferential treatment we get from God is he is with us.  God the Holy Spirit is with us.  He will neither leave us nor forsake.  So also, since God is with us, he will not let us get overwhelmed in those times when life is topsy-turvy.  The floods will come.  The rivers will rise, but God won’t let us get swept away.  God’s presence is the firm rock we stand on.  God makes us to really know he is with us and that all things are in his hands.  That’s some preferential treatment.

The second part of verse two is a reference to forming or, better yet, to forging.  Fire is the fire of refining or forging metal, the tumultuous fiery ordeals of life in which God burns the dross off his people and forms or forges us to be more and more like him.  The people of Israel after they made it into the Promised Land and settled were constantly turning away from God to the idols of the people of the Land and they would become disgraceful.  So, to remedy this and bring them back God would let their enemies burn their cities down and carry them away into captivity so that they would learn to trust, to “ahav”, and serve him only.  This was a refining process, a forging process in which God, like forging metal, formed Israel to be his people in the world, people that gave image to his loving-kind nature. 

Needless to say, we also get carried away with “idols” – consumerism, materialism, that list could go on – and so God refines us as well and forges us to look more authentically like him.  At times God lets the consequences of our actions to love ourselves rather than God and neighbour run their course and we know we are in a living Hell of our own demise, but we don’t get burned up.  We come out of the flame closer to God and more faith-filled than we were before, more Christ-like than we were before.  That’s so preferential treatment.

So, this preferential treatment thus far looks like God makes us to know that he is with us and by the work of the Holy Spirit is forming us to be more authentically like Jesus, more Christ-like.  We are called by his name and he calls us by name.  He deals personally with us.  We have his “ahav”.  But, there’s one more thing.  God says he has redeemed us.  Old Testamentally speaking redeeming is deep.  It is to pay a price that restores rights, worth, and dignity to a person whose life is otherwise wasted or extremely vulnerable.  If you’re familiar with the Ruth story, she needed a redeemer to give her rights, worth, and dignity so Boaz married her.  Without Boaz she would have likely become a prostitute.  Speaking of Israel, God delivered them out of slavery in Egypt and the price of redemption, the ransom, was the lives of the firstborn of Egypt.  That’s a hard one for us to grasp, but still today Jews remember at Passover that the firstborn of Egypt had to die for them to become who they are. 

After saying “Because you are precious in my eyes, honoured, and I love you,” God says, “I give people for you, nations in exchange for your life.”  Here’s a hard fact of preferential treatment that has bedevilled Bible scholars and theologians for centuries.  It’s called “election”.  Why is that God has chosen some and not others.  Why is it God has revealed himself to such as I and not to some other?  Why does God apparently show his love to some, to me, and seem to withhold it from others?  How is that a wife or a husband can say, “ I know God loves me and is working in my life,” while someone as close as their spouse cannot say the same for themselves.  Or, one of my children knows the Lord.  The other doesn’t.  That’s painful business.  That’s election.

God says, “I give people for you.”  The concept of give can include the act of betrayal.  We see this in the most quoted verse of the New Testament, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”  He gave over his only Son, he betrayed his only Son to death for us.”  God so loved the world (that’s the “chesed” kind of universal loving-kindness) that he betrayed Jesus, his beloved Son, to death to be the life price for humanity.  Just like the price for Israel’s freedom was the lives of the first-born of Egypt, so Jesus’ giving of his life is the price that delivers us from death.  God’s preferential treatment for us comes with a cost and should not be taken lightly.

The preferential treatment God chooses to show us each is his glory and therefore we must in turn uphold his honour.  The fact that we know that God “ahav’s” us personally and is working in us to form us into the image of Christ is, for now, the proof of God’s universal loving-kindness for everyone that we can hope everyone one will one day come to know.  Therefore, we must strive to let everyone know this love of God by regarding everyone accordingly and we must do so at the cost of not being who and what we want to be, but rather being what God wants his beloved children to be.   God has called us by name, saved us, redeemed us, created us, formed us in his image for his glory, his honour.  Let us live as his beloved children and be well pleasing to him.  Amen.

Warning: Spoiler Alert

Ephesians 3:1-12

There’s just something about a good mystery novel.  They play into our pride I guess.  We like to think we can solve the mystery before the author ties everything together in the end to bring the truth to light.  A really good mystery writer will play you to the very end making you think you’ve got it all figured out only to kibosh your arrogance time and again until at the very last she finally reveals who dun it.  Mysteries, we love to try to figure them out, but we cannot escape the fact that we are at the mercy of the writer for the final who dun it. 

Since we love mysteries so much, it goes without saying that no one likes a spoiler.  That’s somebody who tells you how the mystery ends before you get to it.  Well, Paul here in Ephesians is a spoiler. His main concern with the letter is to be the spoiler of God’s great mystery novel, the mystery of what he’s up to in history.  In fact, Paul is such a good spoiler he able to say that God is the one who has actually spoiled his own plot.  Through Jesus Christ God has manifested the Truth that was hidden behind the world we live in…behind history, behind space and time.  In, through, and as Jesus Christ God has revealed how history comes to its completion and what it will be like.  Amazingly, with the plot spoiled we keep reading the book.

The spoiler is the revelation of God’s will, the manifold wisdom of God, indeed the mystery of Christ, now being revealed, as Paul says, to rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms by the reality of the church’s existence in this earthly realm.  The Church…us…we’re the spoil.  To us and through us God is spoiling his own mystery by the living grace that he is making evident in us and the church in all times and places by the presence and working of the Holy Spirit in us who compels us to live according to the New Creation that God has wrought in Jesus Christ and will bring to light in the end. 

That’s pretty deep.  Our Christian community, community that forms as we live according to the Holy Spirit’s compelling us to love God, love each other, and love our neighbour the way God has loved us - unconditionally, unselfishly, and sacrificially - reveals where history is going.  The Christian fellowship that we share is the plot spoiler of God’s great mystery of history and of his Creation.

So, what is this mystery that God has kept hidden from the beginning?  According to Paul back in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 10, it has been God’s plan to gather up all things in heaven and earth in Christ (Eph. 1:10); to bring all things together, to bring all things to their created fulfillment under the Lordship of God the Son, Jesus Christ.  Simply put, it has been God’s purpose all along to unite his creation, all things in heaven and earth and indeed heaven and earth themselves in God’s own self with his Son as the head and the Holy Spirit as the uniting bond.  It was God the Father’s plan all along for God the Son to become human and in him by the presence and working of the Holy Spirit all things would share in God, in the loving communion of the Father Son and Holy Spirit.  Indeed, as the prophet Isaiah said,”the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea (11:9).”   

That is the “what” of the mystery, now comes the “how”. Through the Incarnation and Resurrection of God the Son as Jesus Christ God infused himself to creation and healed it.  Now, God is applying this infusion and healing to each of us and all creation by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on us and in us each.  The Holy Spirit’s presence in us creates a bond, an organic union between us and God and us and us.  The Holy Spirit’s presence in us and his work upon us is what we call redemption.

Redemption or “Redeemed” in NT Greek is slave trade language for buying slaves back from slavery and setting them free.  What that means for us is that we who once were slaves to sin and death now have freedom to live in the New Creation where heaven and earth are one, where all things are united to God in Christ, and where God is making himself known to all things.  Jesus Christ/God the Son, by his birth, life, death, and resurrection, has set us free to enter the end times New Creation now, indeed, to enter unimpeded into God’s presence and this freedom is really applied to us by the presence and working of the Holy Spirit in and among us enabling us to love as God has loved us.

As proof of the mystery Paul presents here in verse six that the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus”.  This was a huge deal for Paul.  You see, Paul was a devote Jew who believed that only the Jewish people, the descendants of Abraham, had access to God and this was at the Jerusalem Temple.  The Temple in Jerusalem was the only place in their beliefs where heaven and earth coincided and God could be approached.  For Paul to see with his own eyes that Gentiles were receiving the Holy Spirit, the presence of God who was supposed to be only at the Jerusalem Temple, the same Holy Spirit that he had received in his own personal encounter with Jesus resurrected on the road to Damascus, for Paul to see the Gentiles included by God himself into the people of God by the presence of God’s very self meant that the end time New Creation that God had promised through prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel had begun.  It began when God raised Jesus the Messiah from the dead. 

For Paul, the supreme plot spoiler appears to have been that Jew and Gentile are now brought together indeed bonded together under the one Lord Jesus Christ through union with him in the Holy Spirit and more so that the fellowship in this new humanity is the place on earth where God now dwells, the New Temple of God, the New Jerusalem.  The early Christians called this bit of New Creation in the midst of old humanity the Church.  In the Church those who had once been enemies were now worshipping and praying together and enjoying a communion in fellowship, a love that surpassed anything known before in history.  God has made the fellowship of the Church, instead of the Jerusalem Temple, the place on earth where his Holy Spirit will publicly dwell.

This is one ending to a mystery that I bet you never saw coming.  In each of you and in us together heaven and earth are united and we are in the presence of God because God the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth decided from the very beginning to unite his creation to himself by sending God the Son to become human and that union is being extended to us and all the creation by the presence and working of the Holy Spirit until the end when he makes all things to be New Creation.  The proof that this is the Truth is each of us.  Once we were strangers who probably never would have met or become friends.  But since God has called us each to the fellowship of this church we have become family in Christ, beloved children of the Father and brothers and sisters in Christ sharing the “DNA” of the Holy Spirit.  

So, when you look at the news and all the war, this refugee crisis, and all the troubles, concerns, and fears and you wonder where this world is going.  Well, have a look at your Christian fellowship.  That’s where it’s going.  In the midst of all this world’s brokenness there is Christian fellowship of which this congregation is a part.  The Christian love that is evident among you is the proof that there is reason to hope and God does care and is involved and will heal his creation.  So, go forth and be plot spoilers.  On the foundation of this hope go forth faithfully and live as New Creation in the midst of the old.  You are God’s evidence that there is reason to hope.  Amen.