Happiness Begins with Discipleship

Matthew 4:12-5:12

There is an Appalachian Old Time tune called “Sourwood Mountain.”  The lyrics as I know them paint a picture of a man stating what he thinks will make him happy.

“All I want in this creation, hi-dee-ho-dee-diddle all day.

Is a pretty little wife and a big plantation, hi-dee-ho-dee-diddle all day.

Chickens are crowing on Sourwood Mountain, hi-dee-ho-dee-diddle all day.

So many pretty gals you can’t a-count ‘em, hi-dee-ho-dee-diddle all day.

All I want to make me happy, hi-dee-ho-dee-diddle all day.

Is two little youngun’s a-calling me Pappy, hi-dee-ho-dee-diddle all day.

I love my wife and I love my babies, hi-dee-ho-dee-diddle all day.

I love my biscuits a-sopping in gravy, hi-dee-ho-dee-diddle all day.”

The song definitely highlights that men are not all that hard to please…a wife, kids, big plantation, and…biscuits and gravy.  

But seriously, we all live with certain ideals about what it takes to make us happy.  For many of us, a suitable mate, a family, meaningful work, and material comfort are on that list…and especially biscuits and gravy.  There are others of us who can be happy without a mate and without family, who can find meaning in any kind of work, and are content with living quite simply.  Happiness is in the eye of the beholder. 

The point I wish to draw out is that we all have these ideals and indeed, we will strive for them.  Most assuredly, we will spend our lives in pursuit of them.  Some of us will attain them.  Others of us will waste our lives in bitterness at not achieving the ideals we believe will make us happy.  To be even more blunt, some of us will do everything we can to keep ourselves from being happy. 

The problem that we have with our ideals of happiness and our pursuit of them is that they too often do not include the pursuit of what God wants for us.  Sometimes we make God fit our equation by saying God has blessed my efforts to make myself happy without having for a day considered what God might actually want for us.  God created us to be happy.  Therefore we will pursue it, one could say, as a matter of instinct.  But, the challenge we face is whether to pursue the happiness God has for us or to pursue our own ideals of happiness.

The Beatitudes are eight pronouncements by Jesus concerning what he says is the blessed or happy life, the life upon which God’s favour rests.  His list is surprising.  He says nothing of living quite comfortably in a nation that is a Modern liberal democratic state with education, health care, safety, and wealth in abundance.  Being lucky enough to be born and live here rather than in Afghanistan or Sudan or the Congo is not what Jesus calls blessed.  Reading the Beatitudes at Presidential inaugurations is hugely inappropriate if you are using them as the emblem of what it is to be a hard working American.  It is another matter if you are reading them prophetically to remind the American President that everything he stands for is not what Jesus calls the blessed life.  

Consider who Jesus is.  He is God the Son become human, the Lord of the Cosmos, and the one through whom and for whom all things were created and by whom everything is sustained and held together perhaps we should take him a bit more seriously than we do on this matter of happiness.  If living humbly and gratefully in union with him by being joined to him by the Holy Spirit to be beloved children of God the Father is why this universe was created with us in it, maybe he knows a little bit about what will make us happy in this messed up world.  Maybe, happiness begins with actually being Jesus’ disciples.

To set the context for the Beatitudes, in Matthew’s Gospel they are Jesus’ first words of instruction to his disciples while crowds of the disenfranchised people who lived in the regions of Zebulon and Naphtali were swarming to him.  Those two tribal regions in Israel had gone generation after generation of being conquered and run by the rich and powerful kings and emporers of other nations because they are the agricultural breadbasket and fish supply for Israel.  So, Jesus sees this huge crowd coming to him and realizing things are going to be quite busy from there on out, he calls his disciples together to give them the “Coles Notes” of discipleship.  The core values of what it is to be one of his followers, one of his disciples. 

A disciple is a student, a student who seeks to study the way of life and teachings of a particular teacher in order to make it his or her own way of life.  The first thing to know about Jesus' way of life and being his disciple is that it concerns righteousness, which means living in a right relationship with God, one another, and God’s creation.  Jesus’ righteousness, his way of being rightly related begins with faith, utter dependence on and obedience to his Father.  For his disciples to learn this way of life, indeed to ultimately partake of Jesus’ life, we have to begin with leaving our lives behind, our goals, our dreams, our ideals of happiness to share in Jesus’ mission of bringing near the kingdom of God which flows from sharing in Jesus’ life of faith in and obedience to the Father.  To be a disciple goes beyond a simple matter of personal, private beliefs.  It is to leave one’s life behind to follow Jesus and discover the blessing of participating in Jesus’ very life and ministry of bringing in the kingdom today empowered in the Holy Spirit. 

Back to the beatitudes, they all begin with “blessed are.”  Blessed means happy, but not this “me” oriented sort of happiness that our ideals of happiness entail.  Happiness is sharing in Jesus’ relationship with his Father by means of the Holy Spirit.  The first twelve disciples were not simply working out their own little, individual faith journeys.  They were leaving everything behind to follow Jesus and participate in his faith journey as he worked out what it meant to be the Christ.  Their personal faith was shaped by depending on Jesus' faith in God the Father.  

When Jesus called them somewhere deep within them they heard the voice of Jesus say, “I am your life.  Follow me.  In me is salvation, the cure for this diseased world.”  Salvation is that he has given us access to God the Father to share in their relationship as God’s children just like him through the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  This is a new reality, indeed, new creation.  Following Jesus filled with and led by his Spirit is a taste and assurance of the New Creation coming when Jesus returns.

 These eight pronouncements of happiness come, as I said, as Jesus’ first teachings to his disciples.  Take note that they concern happiness.  If we have said yes to Jesus’ invitation to be his disciples, we should take great comfort in knowing that the first thing he wants us to know is that in him we will find the happiness for which we are created.  Yet, it won’t be a life free from suffering or struggling for these blessings concern being poor in Spirit, mourning, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, being merciful, being pure in heart, and to become peace makers…and we will be persecuted because of him.  These are all things that just don’t jive with the ways of this world and its definitions of happiness.  But the life Jesus gives to us in himself by the Holy Spirit, the life of his Kingdom coming, is a life of living within the very blessedness of God’s own happiness, his delight, his joy in his beloved children.  So, come.  Let us trust our lives to Jesus and be his disciples and may we together explore the blessedness, the happiness, that is only in Jesus.  Amen.

A Call to Discipleship

Matthew 4:12-23

Back in my university days I participated in something called a Discipleship Group.  We were a group of five students that the campus pastor threw together because we were all going through something whether it was grief because of a death, a break-up, or parents divorcing.  We didn’t choose each other.  We came from all walks of life, but we agreed we would meet together on a weekly basis, have a short devotional, share how things were going, and pray for each other.  The presence of the Holy Spirit was richly in our midst.  To varying degrees we all got emotionally better.  The troubled circumstances of our lives worked out for the good.  We grew in faith, in trust.  After this group experience none of us could doubt the existence of God or that God was personally involved in our lives.

During our months of meeting together we all sensed that we were being strengthened by the Holy Spirit to face our difficulties.  He was among us and dwelling in us giving us rest from our burdens and transforming us to be people who can live free of those burdens.  We all came to know the steadfastly loving and faithful nature of God more fully.  Through experience we came to know God wasn’t some far off Creator/Judge but rather was deeply interested in our lives and personally involved with us for our good with a love that would not let us go.

Six strangers who were awkward on all accounts and who would not have been friends otherwise began to trust and love one another to the extent of being able to share our lives, the pains and the joys, pray for each other, and grow in Chris together.  That’s remarkable.  We met.  We shared.  We listened.  We prayed.  Jesus was there.  He saved us from our brokenness and healed us.

When I think of what discipleship is I am biased by my experience in that Discipleship Group.  I also participated in others like it that were less therapeutic and more Bible study oriented.  Jesus calls us to a group of believers to grow together in him.  What it is to be his disciple is formed in fellowship such as that. When I think of what it means to proclaim “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” that Discipleship Group experience is my foundation.  The Kingdom of Heaven covers the earth through the Christian fellowship I found in those Discipleship groups.

Let me shift gears now and tell you about my experience with membership at the “Y”.  Not long after moving to Owen Sound we got a family membership at the YMCA.  The “Y’ offered valuable services for my family - workout facilities, instructors, swimming lessons, baby-sitting.  During the two years that I was a stay-at-home-Dad getting to the “y” on a daily basis kept me sane.  Alice and I would take off at about 9:30 AM.  After swiping our cards I would drop Alice at the childcare and go work out for an hour.  Then, I would pick her up and it was family fun time in the gym for another little bit.

Building relationships with other “Y” members was a difficult task.  Up in the workout room no one really talked to each other even though these were people you see every day.  Chatty people are annoying when you’re working out.  Guys shouldn’t talk to girls and vice versa because people will think you’re hitting on them.  Most people had earplugs in anyway.  In two years, I only got into one conversation in the bike room.  Family Fun time in the gym was nice in the winter because it was like going to the park but with some really sooped up tricycles.  But, I was a dad bringing a kid and nearly all the other parents were moms half my age.  Although I occasionally ran into neighbours and church people and we talked a bit, I really didn’t make any new friends at the “Y”.

Building relationships with the staff was a different story.  The paid people were very friendly and helpful. The women who looked after Alice while I spent an hour working out were outstanding.  Teresa, who was my kids’ first swimming instructor there, was just the greatest.  Even now a couple of years after the fact she still remembers their names when we run into her in town.  There was also a young guy named Trevor who taught swimming and Kung Fu and wants to go live on Mars.  They were great with my kids.

But anyway, as members we went several times a week to partake of the services which we thought were making us healthier and better people.  If we hadn’t paid for the membership, we wouldn’t have gone.  We even continued to pay the membership fees for about five months after we stopped being able to go because it was a worthwhile “donation”.  Please hear me on this.  I am not down-talking the “Y”.  It is a fantastic organization and facility for Owen Sound and surrounding communities.

I hope you see where I am going with this sermon.  My experience of discipleship was utterly life transforming.  My experience of membership was, well, no comparison.  I didn’t even lose weight in all the time I spent at the “Y” – my fault, not theirs.  I was paying for a service that was supposed to help me make me a better and healthier person.  I maintained.  It felt good to go to the “Y”.  I felt like I was making a good, healthy choice for my family and me.  It was nice to be greeted by someone who at least attempted to know my name.  My kids learned the rubrics of swimming and met some fine and caring adults and young people.  But, membership is not discipleship.

One of the greatest challenges for congregations who are trying to turn around from dwindling into closure is trying to shift the culture of the congregation from membership to discipleship.  For most of us, our understanding of and experience of church more readily resembles membership in a social organization rather than the utterly life transforming experience and understanding of discipleship.  But, frankly folks, if we want this congregation to live and to endure through this very difficult time of being the church in North America, we have to make this shift from simply being members of a Christian social institution called “Church” to being disciples of Jesus Christ who actively participate in the process of discipleship. 

I have a discipleship challenge I would like a few of you to try.  It involves meeting together with a group of three of four people and following the studies in this book, Discipleship Essentials: A Guide to Building Your Life in Christ by Greg Ogden.  He’s a Presbyterian minister.  It’s not group therapy.   It’s a study in Christian essentials.  It’s a commitment.  It requires time.  But you will grow in Christ and this congregation will change.  It will take a couple of years for the process to blossom.  If you feel drawn to this, come see me.  Amen.

  

They Came, They Saw, They Abided

John 1:19-42

In the ancient world one of the things you did to introduce someone of importance use of titles extravagantly.  John opens of his Gospel introducing Jesus with some quite significant titles - “Lord”, “Lamb of God”, “Son of God”, “Rabbi”, “Messiah”, and “Christ”.  The disciple Nathaniel just a few verses down the page confesses Jesus outright saying, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God, the King of Israel.” 

If you were a 1^st Century Jew these were significant titles.  They all refer to Jesus being the One the Jews were expecting God to send to deliver them from Roman oppression and finally establish the Kingdom of God on Earth once and for all.  At the opening of his Gospel John calls this One the Word of God become human; the very speaking of God become human; indeed, God himself become human.  If you were a Jew these titles said explicitly that your God himself has come to deliver you.

If you were a non-Jew, and particularly a Roman, in these titles you would hear a rival challenge to the divine authority of the Roman Emperor.  The title Son of God was particularly interesting because Caesar himself claimed to the Son of Jupiter, the greatest of their god’s.  Other titles like Lord and Saviour were distinctively reserved for Caesar as well.  John opens his Gospel introducing Jesus as a rival to Caesar.

That said, one of things we should do if we want to read John’s Gospel in a way faithful to its original context is maybe we should be listening for ways in which John compares Jesus to iconic Roman emperors such as Julius Caesar.  Taking up this task, one of the most famous things Julius Caesar said and which everybody knew he said was, “Vini, vidi, vici.” “I came, I saw, I conquered.” 

This phrase was probably the most iconic pop-culture dude-phrase in Western history up until Frank Sinatra sang “I did it my way” and more recently Nike’s slogan, “Just do it.” I can imagine it being like a Monday Night Raw wresting mantra for what it is to be and to project yourself as all-powerful, invincible, and without rival.  “I came, I saw, I conquered” puts an end to challenge.  It’s like being in an interview and someone asks, “Tell me about your self” and you answer in your gruffest, most intimidating voice, “I conquer.”

If “I came, I saw, I conquered” was a well-known pop-culture phrase describing the epitome of what it is to be powerful in Jesus’ day, maybe we shouldn’t see it as too much of stretch to say that John was dropping a little pop-culture reference into his Gospel here at the very beginning to do a little compare and contrast at describing the way of Jesus’ disciples and what it is to be a true person.  John writes, “They came and they saw where he was staying and they abided with him for that day.”  They came, they saw, they abided.  What makes a person truly a person isn’t conquering others, but rather abiding with Jesus - being in a disciple’s relationship with Jesus the Rabbi, Son of God, King of Israel, Spirit of God Anointed One, Lord of the Cosmos. 

John leads us to notice instead of the word “conquer” we get the word “abide” or “remain”.  Jesus himself does not conquer.  He rather invites people into a relationship with him.  “Come and see,” he says and they came, they saw, they abided.  As a side note, John later in his own life uses the word “conquer” to describe the followers of Jesus.  In the Book of Revelation, a book very much about what it was to be a Christian in a Roman world, John often says that those who conquer are those who have been martyred for Jesus.  

But here, instead of conquer John uses the word abide, a word that he uses over forty times in his Gospel.  The word in Greek, meno, has a wide range of meaning from quite literally meaning staying in a place to the more metaphorical meaning of enduring through trials, standing your ground in faith.  It is a relationship word, a hospitality word about keeping space and time in the life of another and welcoming other’s into your own life meaning stay with me, abide with me, see how I live, know me. 

In John’s Gospel meno is a very theologically significant word.  The Holy Spirit descends and abides on Jesus and also upon and in us.  We abide in Jesus and he in us.  God the Father abides in Jesus and Jesus in him.  So, abiding in Jesus we are participants in the triune life of God, the relationship of God the Father and God the Son in and by means of God the Holy Spirit.  We are bonded to Jesus by the presence of the Holy Spirit with and in us so that we participate in his relationship with God the Father as beloved children just as Jesus is the Beloved Child of God.  Abiding in Christ we discover this utterly transforming personally re-creative relational knowledge about ourselves and one another.

John further describes abiding in Jesus as being where we grow and become like Jesus.  As the True Vine Jesus says, “Abide in me” that we may bear fruit.  If we keep his commandments we abide in his love.  The life-creating word of God, which is Jesus abiding in us, is “faith”.  Abiding in him in “faith”, in the Holy Spirit bonded relationship with Jesus and each other, this is discipleship.  Abiding in him we find prayers answered.  Those who do not abide in Jesus abide in darkness and even experience “the wrath of God.”  Abiding with and in Jesus is where we hear this word that God loves even me as his own beloved child. 

So what is it then to “abide”?  Abiding is maintaining a relationship with Jesus and this is something we cannot simply mistake as merely our own personal relationship with him.  Abiding in Christ must include how we relate to others.  Jesus gives us a Great Commandment to live by in response to God revealing his great love for each of us in, through, and as Jesus in, by, and as the presence of the Holy Spirit: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbour as yourself.  Rick Rusaw and Brian Mavis give us a nice little four-word memory device to help us with this in their book The Neighboring Church: Getting Better at What Jesus Said Matters Most.  They say develop the habits of “Stay, Pray, Play, Say”.

“Stay” means to live a life open to God. Seeking his will above your own.  Most of us live our own lives as good people hoping God blesses what we do.  Rather, we should live seeking what God wants for us and the ministries he has gifted us each for.  This is something we discover in Christian fellowship and flowers when we devote ourselves to getting to know our neighbours and how we might serve them in Christ.  Get to know God.  Get to know each other.  Get to know our neighbours.

“Pray” goes without explanation.  Let us be praying people who live our lives knowing we are always in the presence of God and in conversation with him.  It’s hard to get in trouble that way.  Pray for each other and get to know your neighbours well enough to know what you can be praying for on their behalf.

“Play” means fellowship and hospitality are important.  This is more than simply Fellowship time at church with coffee and cookies.  Kick it up a notch like Latona does with the Corn Roast.  Kick it up a further notch by having each other over to your homes.  But don’t stop there.  Do fun stuff with our next-door neighbours and have them over to your house and going to their parties.

“Say” means be open to share your own life with each other and with your neighbours.  If Jesus gives you the opportunity to speak a word of encouragement or whatever on his behalf, just do it.  If he gives you the opportunity to share how he has worked in your life and been faithful to you, share it.  Let us not be mute when God deserves praise.

Stay, Pray, Play, Say.  Give it a try.  These are good habits for abiding in Jesus and growing in him and bearing fruit.  Amen.

God among the Populists

Matthew 3:1-17

One word that was used a lot in the last American Presidential election, as well as in the wake of “Brexit”, and which turns up a lot with reference to politics in the Canadian Midwest and Quebec is “Populism”.  Roughly, Populism is a vehicle for change where you’ve got a Charismatic person with a set of ideas that are very in tune with the general sentiment of the people.  It tends to arise when mainstream political institutions fail to deliver.  The Internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia defines Populism as “a political style of action that mobilizes a large alienated element of population against a government seen as controlled by an out-of-touch closed elite that acts on behalf of its own interests.”

“Populism” and “Populist” tend not to be nice words to be associated with.  People couple them with other terms such as “Fascist” and “ignorant masses”.  Though there is historical evidence for the argument that unscrupulous types can and do take advantage of the fact that the “masses” tend not to keep themselves educated on the world they live in and rather default to what comedian Stephen Colbert called “Truthiness”, the simple gut-feeling of what the truth is in disregard of the facts, Populism can be a good thing.  It can be a good thing especially when it comes to civil rights, farmer’s rights, peasant’s rights, worker’s rights, and so on.  A Populist movement in the cause of what is really true and right is a powerfully good thing.  That in mind, let’s talk about John the Baptist.

John the Baptist was leading a Populist religious movement out in the wilderness of Judea.  A large segment of the Jewish population felt alienated from the center of their faith and national life, the Temple in Jerusalem, because an out of touch closed elite priesthood was acting on behalf of its own interests rather than truly serving God.  The Temple in Jesus’ day was nothing more than “Big Business”.  The Priesthood was growing wealthy and powerful on charging Temple taxes and selling “unblemished” animals for sacrifice.  The means that God had provided for cleansing the people of sin was utterly corrupted.

There was also a prevailing populist sentiment that the God of Israel was not in the Temple.  The Prophet Ezekiel at the time of the Babylonian Exile had a vision of the Glory of God leaving the Temple and heading east to be with his people in Babylon.  But, after the return to the Land there is no account of the Glory of God returning to the Jerusalem Temple. 

On the other hand, the Romans were occupying the Land and oppressing the people in the distinctively randy and violent Roman fashion that undergirded what historians call Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome.  Images of Caesar and Roman imperial power abounded.  Caesar demanded his subjects call him Lord and Saviour, two titles the Jews reserved for God.  It appeared that the glory of Caesar had supplanted the Glory of God.

So John was out in the wilderness at the Jordon River where the Israelites first crossed into the Promised Land essentially calling the people back to start over.  He was a prophet, the greatest of all prophets, and like a prophet he had harsh words to say in confrontation of the corruption of Israel by the elitists – the priesthood, the Jewish monarchy and wealthy citizenry, the Romans and the Roman soldiers.  More importantly he beckoned the people, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.”  “Turn around from your wayward wandering and come back, back here to the wilderness to the Jordan because the Glory of God is going to re-enter the Land.  The Messiah is coming.  Come back to where it all began and be washed and be ready.” John was very adamant to claim that he was not the Messiah.

This was a “populist” message for a people who had lost faith in their civic religion, their leaders and add to that Roman oppression.  The sentiment was that it was the worst of times.  If there ever was a time the people of God needed a Deliverer to liberate them and restore their dignity as the people of God it was then.  The “populist” hope was that God was sending the Messiah, a Holy Spirit anointed king, any day then to deliver his people from Rome, clean up the Jerusalem Temple and the Priesthood, and bring true peace to the Land, Shalom as they called it.  

There was also a prevalent “Woe is me” sentiment.  The people knew they were not ready to be in the presence of the Glory of God and that the Temple was too corrupt to be a vehicle to cleanse them of their shame and guilt at knowingly not having lived godly lives.  How were they to stand before a their just and holy God.  This was particularly true of the tax collectors and the people called “sinners”.  They in particular flocked to John in the wilderness to be baptized in the Jordan, washed clean in the waters of a new beginning to be ready for the coming of the Messiah and the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Then one day Jesus showed up among the Populists.  John knew from before he was born that his cousin was the Messiah.  Like good Canadians they had their polite discussion on what is proper and John baptized Jesus.  When Jesus came up from under the water suddenly the heavens opened and the Spirit of God, the Glory of God in the form of a dove descended upon Jesus.  The voice of God the Father said, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” 

The Glory of God was returning to the Land and Jesus, the Son of God, was now the Temple.  In the River Jordon where the Israelites first entered the Land, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Glory of God was coming to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Where else would God be than among his estranged people?

We know how it goes from there.  After a brief battle of wits with Satan in the wilderness Jesus starts his ministry of healing, casting out demons, forgiving, teaching, confronting, feeding thousands on orts, and calming seas.  He would share table fellowship with anybody.  Jesus brought the Kingdom of God not in the form of a military revolt where he took throne in some grand palace.  Rather, he ushered it in through some really life changing kitchen parties. 

Jesus is the Temple.  The place in God’s creation where Heaven and Earth are open to one another and people are rightly related to God and one another.  Everywhere he went the Temple went and Temple things happened.  Around him, it was on Earth as it is in Heaven. 

Jesus’ reign, the Peace of Christ or Pax Christos, is manifested as unconditional and transformational faith, love, and hope lived out among a community of disciples.  His self-denying/will of God-obeying way led to the Jewish and Roman elites crucifying him.  But that wasn’t the end.  It was the means. God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit raised him bodily from the dead and set in motion a whole New Creation that we await with Jesus’ triumphal return to establish his locus of reign here on Earth as it is now from heaven. Though Jesus is not physically present he is still among his people and his Populist Movement, the Kingdom of God, the Reign of God continues.  He and the Father have poured the Holy Spirit out upon his disciples so that we now are the Temple and in us the Glory of God shines all over the world. 

We live in a day when people have lost faith in the institution of the church.  They think church-going Christians to be simply judgemental, moralistic elites.  Maybe we, his disciples today, need to once again go out and be among the people out there as Jesus did and is.  A church building is a good thing to have but not if it keeps us from being the Temple among the people. 

Jesus embodied the Temple most frequently in the places where people gathered to eat.  The thriving church of the 21^st Century will do discipleship around the kitchen table and wondrous things, on Earth as it is in Heaven things, will happen.  Now is a good time for us to discover that the Kingdom of God is near and maybe it needs to take the form of a Populist movement that meets around the kitchen table.  Maybe try this.  Get some of your church friends together.  Cook some food.  Read a Gospel passage and talk about.  Jesus will be there.  Easy Schmeasy.  Who’s in?  Amen.