The Delusion of Greed

Luke 12:13-21, Colossians 3:1-11

          There is nothing like a good estate dispute to show a family’s true colors.  I think you all know what I’m talking about.  It is a strong family that is not destroyed by the greed bogey that arises whenever a will is read.  Certainly, we can understand Jesus’ apparent reluctance to get involved in this man’s case and then more or less calling the man greedy with the parable he told.  But…unfortunately for you folks you are going to have to settle in and listen while I tell you that this passage isn’t about a petty will dispute, but rather it is a passage that can and will cut right to the core of our beliefs about wealth and why we accumulate it.   

          The first thing I need to point out about this passage is that the man wasn’t coming to Jesus to get him involved in a petty will dispute.  He came asking Jesus to get his brother to be fair to him according to Kingdom of God values rather than what the law said was fair.  We all know about how people can use the law to their own advantage even when it is in conflict with any standard of morality.  This becomes particularly evident at tax time.  There are tax laws that benefit the wealthy simply because they are wealthy while people who really need a break are taxed at a disadvantage. 

          This man came to Jesus to ask him to make a judgment.  In that day people came to Rabbi’s and wise men to ask them to make judgments in disputes.  But, in this case I can’t help but believe that this man was one of Jesus’ followers and he was asking Jesus to enact his Kingdom of God rights for him.  One of the first things that Jesus had to say about himself in Luke’s Gospel was "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour."  He was coming to Jesus the Messiah and asking him to do what Jesus the Messiah had said he had come to do.

          The “year of the Lord’s favour” is otherwise known as the year of Jubilee.  In ancient Israel every forty-nine years the land was supposed to be redistributed equally among the people according to the original family allotments decreed in the Book of Exodus.  Jubilee was the only way this man could get possession of land that in all moral fairness was his but this man’s brother was withholding this man’s share from him and using the Law to his own benefit to do it.  Dt. 21:15-17 states that the firstborn son to man who has two wives can get a double portion of the inheritance.  In a family with only two sons this double portion would be the whole thing.  So, this man needed a year of Jubilee to get his inheritance.

          In response to the man’s request Jesus sets out to show him that life is not found in wealth of possessions but in being rich towards God.  Jesus asks the man, “Who appointed me judge or arbitrator over you?”  Well, if Jesus is the Messiah, then the obvious answer to that question is, “God did”.  That being the case we must ask ourselves; “Would God want his Messiah to arbitrate an estate dispute tainted by greed or would God want his Messiah to make a judgment about human greed and how we look at wealth and possessions?

          In the parable that follows Jesus demonstrates that when wealth and possessions are one’s life’s pursuit rather than knowing God and seeking to do his will, we are without a doubt putting ourselves in the place of God.  This man in his desire to have his share of the family inheritance, though he had right to it, was in fact sinning the sin of playing God.  This becomes obvious when you notice his request of Jesus was not a request, but a command.  He said, “Teacher, tell my brother.”  “Command my brother.”  This man was telling, not asking.  So, Jesus, the Teacher, helps him to see the error of his ways with a parable about a rich fool who considered himself to be a god unto himself.

          The first place the rich fool’s false godhood shows up is his relationship to the land.  He had a great land perhaps maybe even a kingdom and that particular year the land brought forth a really good crop.  Though the land is the producer, the rich fool calls them his own.  This sounds very much like us and our belief that we are entitled to the private ownership of land and that what my land produces belongs to me and I can do what I want with my land.  When we take this attitude of ownership over the means of our sustenance and well-being, we put ourselves in the place of God. 

          We as Christians must take to heart that all that we have is not our own, but rather is entrusted to us by God.  We who say we trust and are faithful to God the Father Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth and to Jesus Christ his Son must be very wary of how we buy into this culture of greed.  We are simply servants entrusted with a great estate, God’s estate.  When by God’s grace that estate produces generously, we cannot consider the surplus to be our own and tuck it away somewhere so that if we don’t use it we can pass it on to whomever we choose. 

          Consider the rich fool.  For him to be “rich toward God” he should have shared the surplus with the people of the land.  Yet, this rich fool never considers that maybe God had a use for that surplus somewhere on “God’s estate”.  There are at least two instances where Jesus tells a rich man to go sell what he has and give it to the poor and then fall in line and follow him.  But, the rich man is unable to do it due to his love of wealth and the false securities it provides him.

          The next thing this rich man does is speak to his soul and direct it to be happy as if his soul were his own.  What’s the “soul”?  The “soul” in the Bible is not this immortal blip of energy that departs us when we die.  That’s Greek paganism.  The “soul” is the entirety of our existence as relational persons created by God to be in relationship with him, with others, and the Creation.  At death the soul ceases to exist unless God in his free choice by grace chooses to keep it alive until the resurrection.  

          In the Bible, an immortal soul living forever in heaven is not our end.  Resurrection into a new creation is.  Our existence as persons, our soul, is a gift from God.  We do not tell ourselves how to be fulfilled.  We do not kickback on a delusion off self-determinism, that devil of “I did it my way” that plaques our culture, we do not kickback on this delusion and tell ourselves at the level of our very existence, “relax, eat, drink, and be merry.  I myself have made it so that you have nothing to worry about.” 

          Like that rich fool, we could die tonight and be called before the God who gave us life and commanded to give account for how we have lived it.  We do not go before God and say, “I was your faithful servant.  I did it my way.  Look at my wealth.”  That is ludicrous.  The right answer to give would be, “I did it your way.  I was as good a steward of your estate as I could be.  Look at how I shared and distributed your wealth to those who needed it.”  Yet, only Jesus can give that answer and he gives it on our behalf and it is he who shares his inheritance with us “lucky bums” as Karl Barth said.

          Our culture is so screwed up in its ingrained, indeed inbred, belief that being faithful to God means being good, working hard, and growing wealthy.  In fact, we are twisted enough to believe that if we are good and hard working enough in our own endeavers, God will bless us with wealth.  Our souls, our lives are not our own.  We belong to God to serve him and not ourselves.

          The Apostle Paul tells in Colossians.  If we belong to Christ Jesus, if we are indwelt by the Spirit of God, then we are to set our hearts and minds on things above where Christ Jesus’ reign is in effect; the reign of compassion, of justice, of kindness, of faithfulness, of humility, of patience, of self control; a reign that is discovered in the community of faith, in prayer and Bible reading and study, and in obedience and faithfulness.  We who are made alive in Christ are dead to this world and its ever-pervading greed.  Beware of greed.  It has very subtle cunning, deceiving, and powerful ways.  It’s an addiction.  Our existence is not found in possessions but in the life-giving Holy Spirit of God.  Our calling is not to be good, successful people who grow wealthy.  Our work is to put to death all our forms of idolatry, especially greed which is the desire to posses and call things, even other people, my own. 
           Put on the new self, the “new you” that God himself is renewing by the working of the Holy Spirit in and among us to be more in the image of Christ Jesus.  The Holy Spirit leads us into a relationship with Jesus.  By getting to know Jesus and sharing in his love for the Father and the Father’s love for him and us the Holy Spirit changes us.  We grow in the image of Christ as we love and serve one another, as we worship and pray alone and with one another, as we read and study the Bible alone and with one another.  Without these works of faith we do not know whom we are trying to be faithful to nor how we are to be faithful.  We simply persist in the delusion trying to act like God.  Be set on things above.  It is there we will find life.  We have died and our life is hidden with Christ in God.  Go find it.  Amen.

The Transforming Power in Prayer

Luke 11:1-13

Have you ever driven yourself crazy asking "what is the God’s will for me?"  What does God want me to do with the life he gave me?  Did you walk away a bit disillusioned with no clear distinct answer?  Or at some point, as is the case with most ministers, did you settle into the notion that you are definitely called to a specific task that's going to take considerable preparation and therefore set out on that journey?  Or did you just figure you would do what you want, be a good person, a good citizen of a Christian nation, and do good and not trouble yourself with the will of a God who's not involved in our lives until we're standing before him on judgement day?

God’s will—what is it?  That is a big question and I would just as soon answer it with I haven’t got a clue.  There have been times when I thought I knew what the Trinity’s will for me was.  I was where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to be doing, things were going good and then out of left field comes a zinger that changes everything. 

I find that the topic of God’s will gets highly speculative when we deal with it as some sort of specific step-by-step plan that God has for our lives that if we figure it out and follow it we will have a most wonderful life.  I am a bit suspicious of that way of looking at the Trinity's will mostly because it sounds more like ancient pagan notions of fate rather than anything biblical. 

If we take the Bible in its entirety we find that God does have a grand scheme plan for history that includes my life that ultimately ends with our becoming like Christ Jesus, united to him by his incarnation and by the fellowship of the Holy Spirit we share in his relationship with the Father.  The specific step-by-steps of that plan are not for us to know though we can and do get hunches of it from time to time. 

What is most important for us is that we simply be God’s people.  We be the children of God who reflect his image in the creation.  The Trinity's will is more about who we are and how we live than about specifics that have to happen.  We are Jesus’ disciples, beloved children of the Father just as he is, and it is the Trinity's will that we increasingly grow up into him.

Let me say a little more about this, the Trinity does have a specific plan for history.  It is that the Good News of Salvation in Christ is to go out into all the world until the Father calls things to an end with Jesus' return, and then the resurrection of the dead, the final judgement, and God’s establishing his kingdom where we serve and worship God freed of sin, death, and evil.

Within that plan the Trinity calls us to specific tasks.  Sometimes we seem to have no doubt as to this calling.  Other times, we’re cluelessly in the right place at the right time.  It can even be we’re doing everything we can to work against God and the call, but God still works it into his will for us. The called ones are who we are.  We bear the task of proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus Christ and living under his commandment to love one another so that we in our life together are living proof of what is to come.  Our individual tasks in this calling are varied yet there is one calling, one invitation, common to us all and it is that we all know salvation in Jesus Christ, that we all come to know and share in the steadfast love and faithfulness of God the Father as Jesus the Son himself does in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. 

Salvation is an actuality in our lives now due to Jesus' presence in our lives changing us, healing us, transforming us through the work of the Holy Spirit from the sin and death of our broken humanity to be more and more like him.  Salvation is that in Jesus Christ God did, is, and will reconcile the world to himself and has made it possible for us to have an intimate and being-changing relationship with God the Father through Jesus the Son in the Holy Spirit.  The Trinity’s will for us each and us together is that we all be saved, that we all be in this transforming relationship with him.  So, salvation essentially is that the Trinity in through, and as Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit has brought us into himself, into this new form of human being the Bible calls “in Christ” and “in him” God is transforming us to become the image of Christ in living union with him. 

Therefore, I conclude, that ultimately the Trinity’s will is that we all become like Christ Jesus, which is that we be humans who are indwelt by God partaking of his nature.  It is our task, our calling, to let that happen.  The Trinity’s will is that we become like Jesus Christ. 

St. Athanasius of Alexandria one of the key theologians behind the Nicene Creed said, “He became what we are so that he might make us what he is.”  St. Irenaeus of Lyons the dominant theologian of the 3^rd Century in his work “Against Heresies” wrote: “our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”  John Calvin writes; “This is the wondrous exchange made by his boundless goodness. Having become with us the Son of Man, he has made us with himself sons of God.”

  Having set that stage I must go on to say that when we are talking about the Trinity’s will and how it applies to our lives we are really talking about a struggle of wills—the Trinity’s will with our own.  To be like Jesus is to have two wills—the will of the Trinity and a human will.  Jesus kept his fallen human will  fully in line with the will of the Father and that is our goal.  There is one problem though, our wills are corrupted, bent by sin to be self-oriented rather than God-oriented.

 This problem is complicated by the harsh reality that there is nothing that we can do to change our wills outside of praying.  Indeed, Jesus himself prayed ceaselessly.  Prayer is the one thing necessary that we do in the pursuit of knowing and living the Trinity's will for us.  In prayer is where our human spirit and will unite with the Holy Spirit so that the Trinity’s will for us to become the image of Christ can be done here on earth as it is in heaven.  God’s will for each of us is that we be united with Christ so that we can become like Christ and prayer is the primary setting for where this happens.  It is when we are in prayer, sitting at Jesus’ feet in the presence of the Holy Spirit, that God’s kingdom begins to come “to me”. 

Now, if prayer is the place where the Trinity works most powerfully in us, then the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray is of utmost importance.  The purpose of the Lord’s Prayer as best as I can determine it is to make us like Christ.  Praying the Lord’s Prayer continually from the heart opens us up so that the transforming power of God in the Holy Spirit can work mightily in us---mightily!  Praying the Lord’s Prayer will help us to know God as Jesus does, as loving Father.  Being in that relationship is where we are saved. 

Praying this Prayer will open us up to God’s kingdom coming into us now and God’s will being worked in and through us.  To ask for our daily bread is to increase our faith in God’s provision for our needs and make us less reliant on material things and our own sufficiency.  To ask God to forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors forces us to accept our own sinfulness as well as to bear the cross of being forgiving.  Praying for God not to lead us into times of trial where we are tempted to deny Christ and rather deliver us from the evil one makes us aware that God does not tempt us to sin and when we feel temptation we know to resist it and God will deliver us from Satan.

The Trinity calls each of us to be continuously in prayer.  Paul says “Pray without ceasing.”  Yet, a constant state of prayer is not something that we can achieve on our own.  It is a gift from the Trinity that feels like a constant awareness of God’s presence in our lives.  Praying the Lord’s Prayer constantly throughout the day when our minds would otherwise be occupied by worry and what not is particularly rewarding.  In time we find ourselves changing, transforming in our goals and desires for life.  We find ourselves hungering and thirsting more for the presence of the Lord in our lives.  We find ourselves “wanting to want to love God” as St. Teresa of Avila once said.  The discipline of prayer actually changes the way the brain chemically works.  It forges new neural pathways.  If you know anything about the brain chemistry of addiction, prayer is the only way around the “stinking thinking” that feeds addiction.  
When Jesus’ disciple’s asked him to teach them how to pray as John the Baptist taught his disciples they were wanting just this—a disciplined way of praying that would draw them closer to the Father and change them.  So, Jesus taught them this prayer.  Therefore, my friends, pray it.  Pray it ceaselessly and from the heart and you will find yourselves changed.  Amen.

A Famine of Hearing the Words of the Lord

Amos 8

I remember the Ethiopian famine of 1983-85.  I had just graduated from high school.  The Christian Children’s Fund was routinely running TV commercials and placing ads in magazines of little Ethiopian children with hollow, begging eyes and bloated bellies sitting in the dirt covered in flies holding an empty bowl.  Those ad’s bothered me but not because they were real pictures of real famine.  It was that they played on our emotions by exploiting the suffering of real human beings.  There was also the suspicion that the CCF was not getting the money where it needed to go because they were spending a whole lot on advertisement.  Getting aide for Ethiopia was a difficult sell because of the common belief that their government officials were hoarding the grain to sell it and get wealthy from it. 

Well, Bob Geldof to the rescue.  You rock and roll fans may remember Bob Geldof organizing the Band Aid project and recording “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”  and also the Live Aid concerts.  In total some 900,000 Ethiopians died in that famine, mostly children, but it is no secret that the money raised by Geldof’s projects saved the lives of 6,000,000.  The famine was that bad.

No one ever mentioned why this famine was happening.  Everyone just assumed the myth that famines are caused by droughts or blight in poor countries where there are too many people for the land to produce enough food.  Henry Kissinger once said that it is nature’s control on population. 

I, the typical teenager with the bright ideas, thought the reason was obvious.  “You can’t grow food in a desert.  Move the people!”  I did not know that Ethiopia was undergoing a civil war where US-backed rebels were trying to overthrow the Soviet-backed government.  The civil war was destroying agriculture in Ethiopia which had until then been having record crops.  In 1982-83 there was as drought, but astonishingly there was still food production in the region throughout the whole event.  There was food being grown in Ethiopia that could have prevented the starvation.

So, if there was food available, why were people, children starving to death?  Well…it was because the people couldn’t afford to buy the food because they had lost their jobs and been displaced because Ethiopia was a pawn nation of the Cold War.  Even though food was around there was still a shortage of it.  So, the people who grew it were demanding higher prices for it.  That’s Economics 101, the Law of Supply and Demand.  When supply is scarce and there is high demand, the price goes up.  But...when the supply of Xbox’s or Elmo dolls is short around Christmas time retailers don’t start price gouging.  That’s bad business, right?  So why is it that when food is the commodity in short supply that the prices sky-rocket?  They’re doing it right now.  We are right now in the midst of a global grain crisis?  Famines in poorer nations will start occurring in the next few years if the price-gauging of food grains is not stopped.  But, hey, that’s free market economics. 

Back to Ethiopia, another reason for the famine was that the Ethiopian government was refusing to let food aid into areas that supported the rebels.  Starving your enemy is nothing new.  You might remember that Stalin let the people of Ukraine starve in 1932-33 because the farmers were refusing to turn their family farms over to the government to become collectives. 

Refusal to follow the economic policies of the rich and powerful is another reason people starve.  Food shortages today are greatest in developing countries that do not want to base their economies on the global free market system.  Did you know that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund place stipulations on the loans they make to developing nations that cause these nations to turn their home grown food into a commodity to be sold on the global market so that it can be guaranteed they can pay off the loan.  Since the home grown food is being sent elsewhere, food to eat has to be imported.  This causes food prices to skyrocket in those nations and it won’t be long before the people of these nations will not be able to afford food and famine will set in even though those nations are food producers. 

You, like I, are probably saying “that’s stupid” and it is, but it is the reality of the world we live in and in the least it allows us to eat cheap bananas and drink coffee and tea.  To wrap this up, I’m trying to make the argument that famine is not what happens when there are too many people and not enough food.  Famine happens when people can no longer afford to buy food and what causes that?...the greed and powerlust of the rich and the powerful.

I’ve used the Ethiopian Famine of 1983-85 as an example because I think it is an event within our memory that illustrates quite well what was going on in the days of Amos.  The Ethiopia Famine is what it looks like when the needy are trampled and someone is trying to do away with the poor of the land.  It’s what it looks like when people have to pay for the sweepings of grain with the only pair of shoes they have and the only reason for it is the greed and powerlust of the rich and powerful.  To the rich and the powerful and those who were benefiting from their actions in Amos’ day the LORD said, “I will spare them no longer.”  “I will never forget anything that they have done.”  In addition to sending them into exile, he adds, “I will send a famine, not a famine of hunger or of thirst, but of hearing the words of God.”

What is it to hear the words of God?  Hearing in ancient Israel was not simply a matter of hearing sounds or hearing words.  It was hearing those words and taking them to heart and living according to them.  I cannot imagine what it would be like to pick up my Bible and read or to come to church on Sunday and listen to the Scripture readings – forget the sermon, just the Scripture readings – and not hear and understand what these words have to do with me.  Let me rephrase that a bit, I can’t imagine reading my Bible or hearing it read in church and not caring to understand what these words have to do with me.  Or even worse, understanding what they say but not caring to let them apply to me.  It’s like being above the law, but rather above the words of God.  I know these words have authority over me for my benefit.  To disregard them or to selectively choose what applies to me is like telling the LORD “Shut up!  My life is my own and I’ll live it according to what seems best for me.  So, here’s my twenty bucks in the plate just bless me with good fortune and I’ll be on my way.” 

Imagine living in a world where there is a famine of hearing the words of the LORD, when even those who claim to be God’s people won’t hear and take to heart and obey the words of the LORD they hear every Sunday.  That was Amos’ day, the day when God said “I’ll take my words away and let the chaos of the consequences of your idolatrous greed and powerlust rain down upon you.”

But, looking at our own day, I wonder if we live in such a time when there is a famine of hearing the words of the LORD, a time when the consequences of our materialism and consumerism are about to rain down upon us because we aren’t hearing, indeed can’t hear, our LORD screaming at us about our complicit participation in a very unjust global economic situation.  We willingly obey the Law of Supply and Demand but disregard God’s Law of Justice. 

Our Creator has built into the ordering of his creation that human beings are supposed to live according justice, kindness, compassion, sharing with one another all the while enjoying a peaceful relationship with God that spills into our relationships with one another.  If someone has too much it should be shared with those who have to little.  Why does the Christian church in the Western world not hear God’s demand upon us to act justly with our wealth and prosperity?  Why is it that ministers are afraid to and rarely preach sermons from the prophets that talk about justice?  Particularly now when it really does seem that the consequences of our idolatry of wealth and prosperity is about to come raining down upon us. 

Globally, we’ve exceeded the limits of this planets ability to sustain us and our lifestyle.  Globally, we are on the verge of a global food crisis.  Globally, clean fresh water is becoming a rarity.  Globally, natural disasters are increasing in number and severity.  Globally, we are warned of a pandemic flu.  Globally, the free market economy is one panic attack away from collapsing.  The global situation of today doesn’t look all that different from the microcosm of Israel in Amos’ day.  Indeed, we can look at every disastrous thing I just mentioned and say that human beings are responsible.  These are the consequences of our actions in the pursuit of wealth and prosperity.  

Yet, in the midst of all this “impending doom” is anybody really hearing the LORD’s demand for justice and equity in his creation and saying this means me, I’ve got to change; we’ve got to change?  Are we in the midst of a famine of hearing the words of the LORD?  Amen.

A Life Worthy

Colossians 1:1-14

It is no secret that Paul had a very narrowly focused understanding of what is going on in history.  For him it is that in, through, and as Jesus the Christ God has entered his Creation and defeated the powers of darkness primarily sin, death, and evil.  Now, as the result, the Kingdom of God is bursting forth all over the place as the Gospel of this Good News of what God has done is being proclaimed all over the world and Christian communities are forming.  Through the power, presence, and indwelling of the Holy Spirit this defeat and reign is being manifest in people.  The people in whom it is taking effect Paul calls redeemed.  That’s a slave block word meaning they have been bought out of slavery, freed, and given their true human dignity back as creatures bearing the image of God in loving community. 

We should also note Paul’s strong emphasis of prayer.  He indicates that this New Way, this New Act of Creation, this New Existence becomes evident, bears fruit, spontaneously as we pray for one another that we may know God and grow deeper in our love for each other.  We pray for one another as Paul says, “so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

“Walking in a manner worthy of the Lord” means living a lifestyle that is an expression of what God has done in delivering us from the powers of darkness.  God in, through, and as Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit has set us free of the darkness, transferred us into the light and so now we must live the dignified life of free people who bear God’s image shone in the way we love each other.  Praying for one another that we personally come to know God who has revealed himself in Christ and made himself available to us through the Holy Spirit…praying for one another, this is the heart of our lifestyle.

So, lifestyle...lifestyle is simply living in a manner which corresponds to particular values and beliefs.  There are components of our lifestyles that we choose and others that we are just born into.  Lifestyle can be changed.  If it couldn’t, then every commercial on TV and every billboard along the road wouldn’t be trying to sell us a lifestyle along with their product.  If you by this product you will have this lifestyle. There are myriads of lifestyles available to us.  There’s the lifestyle of the rich and famous, the adult lifestyle, the cottage lifestyle, the hockey/soccer lifestyle, the middleclass lifestyle, Western lifestyle, etc.   We all reflect in our way of living what our core values and basic beliefs are.

Now, if someone were to ask us what the Christian lifestyle was, what would we say?  This is an important question for the simple fact that for most of the history of the Western church the Christian lifestyle really hasn’t been all that different from that of our surrounding culture.  There have been such groups as the Amish and the Puritans who tried to live differently.  But, for the most part, the people in the pews have had the same lifestyles as the people who are not sitting in them.  Our lifestyle pursuits are largely the same.

So, what is the Christian lifestyle?  Well, Paul gives us a starting point here in somewhat lofty terms that need unpacking.  Basically, the Christian lifestyle is living in a manner worthy of the Lord or which corresponds to Jesus’ way of life; living in a way that is driven by the desire to please him rather than the pursuit of the values that define our myriad of lifestyles.

Lifestyles are driven by desires.  As human beings enslaved to the “powers of darkness”, as Paul would call them, our desires are for the ways of the world. In our culture our desires are for money, sex, power, consumerism, materialism, celebrity, freedom, self-determination, family, individualism, education, health, and the list goes on.  In fact, we say God has blessed us if we are not lacking in these areas or not hindered in our pursuits of them.  When we are lacking or hindered in these pursuits we worry.  We fear.  We lie, steal, cheat, murder, abuse.  We feel shame and hide from one another and from God.  “We love the right things wrongly and the wrong things rightly” someone once said.  But, when we compare our desires for these values and the lifestyles that result from them to Jesus’ desires and his way of life we are forced to say either “Jesus is crazy” or we come to admit “I have a problem.”

The traditional theological word for this problem is “sin”.  I’m going to talk about sin here for a moment and I wish to invite you to consider sin from the perspective of it not simply being a behavioural problem.  But, rather that it is a spiritual disease of the mind that affects our thinking, our perspective, so that our desires are inordinately self-destructive.  Sin is a disease just as addiction is a disease.  Just as an alcoholic is powerless over alcohol, so every one of us is powerless to do anything about our sin on our own to free ourselves from its ill effects.  An alcoholic cannot just sober up anymore than a clinically depressed person can just snap out of it.  So it is with the disease of sin.

Only God who loves us can free us from the disease of sin.  It begins with God’s confronting us with the truth of our disease.  In Jesus we see who we should be – beloved children of God bearing God’s image of loving communion in this world and whose primary desire is to know God and bear God’s image.  Yet, Jesus death on the cross reveals to us that we are hopelessly alienated from God in our sin diseased state in which our deepest desire is to serve our own inordinate desires.  But, by his death and resurrection God has wrought humanity anew and by the gift of the Holy Spirit coming to dwell in us God redirects our desires towards himself and makes this New Creation evident.

Teresa of Avila was a Cistercian nun back in the 1700’s.  She wrote quite a bit on our relationship to God.  One of the things she is most famous for saying is “I don’t love God.  I don’t want to love God.  I want to want to love God.”  People struggling with addictions know the truth and depth of her reflections on our relationship to God.  Addicts don’t want sobriety.  Every fibre of an addict’s being just desires to feel the effects of a particular substance.  It is like feeling God.  It is only when in some mysterious way God touches them with an inkling of his love that they begin to find themselves wanting to want sobriety.  Usually, this inkling of unconditional love comes through the love and acceptance and prayers of others in an “Anonymous” group such as Alcoholics Anonymous.

This desire to want to want to love God is usually awakened in us as we encounter Jesus followers who walk according to the Jesus Way of unconditional, sacrificial love.  Jesus people know the power of darkness because they know the power it had over them and are not afraid to call themselves sinners because coming to that admission is the first step of recovery.  Jesus people also know that they have been redeemed from slavery to the powers of darkness and have come to know that Jesus has given them their human dignity back because they feel loved by God.  

Walking in a way worthy of the Lord flows rather spontaneously out of knowing oneself to be redeemed by Jesus from the darkness, a redemption that is felt in a self-understanding of being beloved by God, a self-understanding sealed in us by the presence of the Holy Spirit with and in us.  Things happen in our lives that we know could only have been by the hand of God.  Sometimes a feeling of peace and burdens lifted washes over us.  However it happens, God makes his personal love and presence known to us and we begin to want to want to love God.  This is a change in our desires that marks the beginnings of our being cured of the disease of sin. This results on the one hand in our beginning to care for one another and our neighbours in a Christ-like manner.  Our relationships with others begin to change.  It also results in a desire to pray that we and others come to know God and his love for us more and more. This desire to pray is certain evidence that our desires are being changed.  Friends believe this truth and let yourselves live accordingly.  Amen.

The Word of Peace and Works of Healing

Luke 10:1-20

If you were to ask me to put my head in a noose professionally, I would probably do it by saying the church today needs a corrective as to what it is proclaiming as the Gospel.  We have truncated the Gospel that Jesus himself and the early church proclaimed. That Gospel was the proclamation that God has and is saving the entirety of his creation in, through, and as Jesus Christ who was God the Son become human, lived, died, and was raised and ascended to the Father as Lord of all creation.  The Trinity has poured their self and their power to reign upon us in and as the gift of the Holy Spirit, the presence and power who is the bond of love that holds Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in union. 

We have truncated this Good News of God’s Creation-healing gift of himself into a gospel that is concerned simply with me and my sin and my fears about death.  This truncated gospel follows the basic format that God loves you and sent his Son to die for you because your sin has cut you off from him and eternal life in heaven.  You just need to believe that God did that, confess you are a sinner, and invite Jesus into your heart and you won’t have to fear dying, and…maybe…you’ll get to have a born again experience.      

If you are a serious student of the Bible and actually read the thing you will notice that the Gospel that’s in the Bible, that Jesus himself and the early church proclaimed is quite different from this truncation that we are accustomed to hearing.  Luke here gives us a glimpse. The Gospel they proclaimed was that the Kingdom of God, the Reign of God, has come upon us in, through, with, and as Jesus Christ and is coming fully very soon.  Basically, as it is in heaven so shall it be on earth by the being and work Jesus.  The reality of this coming of the Reign of God was demonstrated with works of power as Luke says: a word of peace and works of healing, and even the expulsion of the demonic. 

The content of Jesus’ Gospel augmented a bit after his death, resurrection and ascension to include the proclamation that Jesus has defeated sin, death, and evil and that all things are being made new in Christ Jesus by the gift of the Holy Spirit to us and will be finally put to rights when Jesus returns and God makes all creation new, a new heaven and a new earth where God’s reign is not hindered by sin, death, and evil.  Add to this, we God has adopted us as his beloved children sharing in the relationship that Jesus has with the Father due to our union with Jesus in the Spirit.  The Kingdom, the Reign of God is everywhere that Jesus and his authority are present; Jesus and the loving communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit given to us in the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

To us today this means that the personal presence of Christ Jesus is here with us in our fellowship through the Holy Spirit so that we share in his relationship with God the Father as his brothers and sisters and co-inheritors of the Kingdom.  The King and the Kingdom are with us.  We have some really, really good news to offer that is very historically “real” and that goes beyond saying “you’ve got a problem called sin that you need to take care of so that you don’t die and go to hell and here’s the magic formula.” 

We, gathered right here right now, have a real community of faith in which Jesus himself is present.  Jesus is here; Jesus, the one whom God raised from the dead, the one who sits at the right hand of God and rules the cosmos.  Like those seventy disciples Jesus has granted to us the authority to extend his peace (the loving communion in God) to this town and surrounding community, authority to bring real healing to the difficult and indeed crippling situations of life, and even the authority to dispel evil.  By the gift of his Holy Spirit and by his own Word Jesus Christ has given this authority to us and the power to make evident the good news that his kingdom has come to this town.  People can listen and accept this Good News or reject it.  He has given us the authority to bless with a word of peace, to bring healing, even to cast out evil.

Having said all that I think there is a deeper question we need to ask of ourselves and maybe even of God: “Are we truly offering this community the Good News of the Kingdom of God with us now and coming fully at the end of time through Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit…or…is it some other gospel or maybe even no gospel at all?”  Before I left West Virginia at the last Presbytery meeting I attended, I listened as the chair of the budget and finance committee of the Presbytery announced that the money just wasn’t there to carry out the current operations of the Presbytery.  The provision that God promises along the way for his disciples to live on while they proclaim the Good News wasn’t coming in.  They needed to scale back.  That meant paid staff and the support of certain outreach ministries in the Presbytery were going to have to go.  The chair of the Budget and Finance Committee offered the blunt observation that evangelism or rather the lack there of was the true culprit.  With the exception of a few anomalous congregations the same observation holds true for the Presbyterian Church in Canada.  We are losing more than we are taking in, death being the primary reason.  It should certainly tell us something if those coming to Christ can’t keep up with those going to be with Christ. 

I would push the observation of my friend down in WV a bit further.  He is correct to say that Evangelism or the lack there of is the true culprit, but we have to ask why?  Why are we so reluctant about spreading the very real Good News of the Kingdom of God come and coming in Christ Jesus?  That’s the real question.  Maybe we’re afraid that God won’t keep his end of the bargain.  If that is the case then lack of faith is the true issue.  As faith is what arises when the faithfulness of God meets human fidelity, our ability to trust and be faithful, and the ultimate proof of God’s faithfulness to us is his presence with us.  Maybe it is that our churches suffer from not knowing that Jesus is really with us as he promised to be even unto the end of the age.  Creating faith is God’s work.  It is not something we can do on our own.  But we can certainly humble ourselves and let God out of the box and pray “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.”  We can ask God to let us know him more deeply.

We have a certain set eyeglasses through which we see the church and I think those eyeglasses keep us from having a vision of the Kingdom.  Its time we got a new prescription.  We have our idea, our idol of what church ought to be and we’re a bit reluctant to think and to look outside of that box and catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God as it is truly in our midst as the presence of Jesus Christ.  We look at the church through our eyeglasses and see Worship done according to this order, Sunday School, Youth Group, picnics, fellowship hour after worship, Bible Study, Session and Committee meetings, being there for each other, and occasionally doing something to help the poor.  But, look at the New Testament and it says the Kingdom is peace, real healing, the casting out of evil, and a fellowship built on serving one another in love.  I hope you’re beginning to see the contrast.  We have our way of doing things and call it church.  Jesus has his way of doing things and calls it the Kingdom of God.  We are very committed to what we call church, and we feel secure in that familiarity.  But shouldn’t we rather be committed to Jesus and his Kingdom and accept the vulnerability of being lambs among wolves and start living and proclaiming him and his kingdom?

Our task is to go forth and proclaim the Kingdom, the Reign of God in Jesus Christ, through Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ, the reign of God here on earth as it is in heaven; and to do this until he comes.  Jesus said to first ask the Lord of the Harvest to send forth harvesters and then those whom the Lord sends forth are to go.  As we have all been given the Holy Spirit and thus a share in Christ’s authority, we must all go.  But, we do not go forth saying, “Do you know you’re a sinner and you’re going to hell if you do not accept Christ?”  No!  We go forth with a word of peace.  We go forth saying, “The peace of Christ be with you.”  I do not know of anyone who does not need the peace that comes from knowing that in Christ it is on earth as it is in heaven, that God is putting things to rights.  The amazing thing is that when we give this blessing of peace it is not an empty blessing.  The Kingdom of Christ’s peace is present in it. 

Jesus next told his disciples to cure the sick that are there.  The New Testament word for cure doesn’t mean just healing a sick person.  It is restoring them to meaningful life.  We have been entrusted the power message of Jesus Christ that restores people to meaningful life.
          Blessed are our eyes for we see the Kingdom coming.  We have been given the amazing gift of Jesus’ own authority and power to speak the Word of peace and to do works of healing.  If that doesn’t blow your mind I don’t know what will.  But it is the truth.  Let us go forth in it.  Amen.