High on a Mountain

Matthew 17:1-9

It was Sunday December 5, 1999.  I had received a phone call from my brother at about 4:30 that morning to tell me that my father died.  The 5^th was a Sunday morning and I had responsibilities in my church down in Marlinton, West Virginia.  I could have made some calls and excused myself, but I just wanted to be in church with my church family.  The service went well.  Yet, I had to leave immediately after the service to lead worship at a small chapel where I also had responsibilities.  To get to Mary’s Chapel I had to drive up Elk Mountain.  That’s twenty-five minutes of mountain road to get there on time.  

Well, it was a warmish December morning.  It was foggy down in Marlinton, which was way down in the Greenbrier River Valley.  But then, about two-thirds of the way up, I found myself suddenly above the clouds.  So, I pulled over at an almost providentially well-placed wayside just to take a minute and look around.  The leafless trees were wet and glimmering in the sunshine.  The clouds were aglow with a glory all their own.  I stood about ten feet above them and it was if I was looking down on a sea of clouds on which I could step out and walk.  It was beautiful, just absolutely beautiful, quiet, peaceful. It was good.

I got the sensation that God had created this moment just for me on that morning.  Dad was finally free of his suffering and at rest and my heavenly Father just loved me enough to let me know that.  Not that I didn’t know that already.  Everything was going to be okay.  There was nothing to fear.  I sat there a moment and thanked God but I had to go, a mountain top experience.

I think of that experience whenever I come across the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration though it pales in comparison to the mountaintop experience that Peter, James, and John had with Jesus.  Jesus took them high up the mountain and there they saw King Jesus in his glory joined by Moses, the bringer of the Law, and Elijah the Prophet who themselves had had very powerful mountain top experiences.  Moses received the Law up on Mt. Sinai which described the way of life that would distinguish the people of God.  Elijah also had found himself up on Mt. Sinai in a cave while running for his life and it was there he heard the still, small voice of the Lord telling him he wasn't alone in his faithfulness. 

Struck with awe Peter blurts out how good it is to be there standing in the light of the glory of God and suddenly (there's always a suddenly) a bright cloud overshadowed them; like the cloud that consumed Mt. Sinai when Moses went up it and the cloud of the glory of the LORD from which God whispered to Elijah; i.e., the Holy Spirit.  Then God the Father spoke, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.  Listen to him!”

Realizing that they were in the presence of God and that Jesus, their friend and teacher, is God’s Son, Peter, James, and John fell face down on the ground, absolutely scared to death.  They knew that they had no right to be there.  They were not worthy to be in the presence of God.  A common superstitious kind of fear back then was that you would die on the spot if you ever come into contact with God.

But, Jesus then said to them not, “Get up and don’t be afraid,” but rather, “Be raised and don’t be afraid!”  The Greek word there for the act of rising is in the passive voice.  It was done to them.  They were made to get up and why every translator misses this, I have now idea.  The commentators don’t, but the translators do.  It is Jesus who is raising his disciples not the disciples themselves simply rising up on their own. 

The Transfiguration of Jesus speaks also of our resurrection from the dead.  By Jesus’ command and in the same power of person-establishing, creation-renewing love by which God raised him from the dead, i.e., the Holy Spirit, God the Father because of Jesus, the Son’s, giving of his life and his ongoing intercession for us and our union with him in and through the Holy Spirit will in the same way raise us from the dead by the same power of person-establishing, creation renewing love of the Holy Spirit.  By Jesus own command and because of his death and resurrection for us, we who are in him have nothing to fear in the presence of God the Father.  We have nothing to fear.  We’ve only to bask in the goodness of the glory of the Holy Trinity – the love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  We have nothing to fear in the presence of God. 

So, back to our own mountaintop experiences, reflecting back on the experience that I shared with you, that was a moment when, I believe, God spoke to me.  He comforted me, his beloved child.  As Christians, we will have moments like that and they are good.  Yet, let’s not major on the minors.  There is something greater here that we must take in: we as Jesus' disciples in union with him, the Risen and Ascended One; we, because of the free gift of the Holy Spirit living in us; we, are living in the Transfiguration at this very moment and always.  

What Jesus is now – resurrected and glorified – he is now also making us to share in because his life is in us and our life is in him.  He is making us to rise up and be like him.  He has poured his Spirit upon us, into us, and it is good.  The Father has spoken the Word of life into us and by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit we are being transfigured to reflect Jesus Christ more and more through our own lives and our life together as a church in his name.  God is at work in us each and our Christian fellowship and all Christian fellowships changing us to be more and more in the image of Christ Jesus.

Yet, let us not hang it all on God’s shoulders.  He has also called us to obedience.  The Father commands us to listen to his Son, to Jesus, and therefore to live according to what Jesus has said.  The Christian life is more than just occasional moments of love and assurance from the Trinity.  It is certainly more than just being good and doing our part out of a well-formed sense of duty. 

The Christian life is found in following; following Jesus, abiding by his teachings, immersing ourselves in prayer, studying and embodying the Scriptures, and laying down ourselves for those around us in unselfish love that they may see the love of God.  We can have mountain top experiences, but Christian life, the new life in Christ, is found coming down the mountain with Jesus and following in the cross-formed way of life of dying to the “me, myself, and I” instinct that we follow blindly and living by his teachings enabled by the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Different in a Good Way

Leviticus 19:1,2, 9-18; Matthew 5:38-48

 “Holy” and “perfect” are probably the two worst words anyone could ever use to describe God’s expectations of us.  “You shall be holy, because I the LORD your God am Holy.”  “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  These are two verses that even to say them you need the perfect mix of the voices of James Earl Jones, Charlton Heston, Morgan Freeman, and maybe George Burns.  I cannot imagine anything more detrimental to spiritual well-being than complicating our relationship to God and one another with expectations of “holiness” and “perfection”.  “Holy” and “perfect” just ain’t going to happen and so often our attempts to be such just lead us down a path of prideful prudishness and harmful judgementalism.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “holy”? The first thing that pops into my mind is the vision of heavenly worship captured in the hymn “Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty.”  God the Trinity in all his awesomeness sits enthroned in Heaven surrounded by angels and saints adoring him.  It is an exclusive scene of total otherness to anything known on Earth.  I also think of holy places.  We like to call church buildings and especially church sanctuaries “holy” believing that God is somehow here and nowhere else.  As a result what we have done is put “God in a box”, this box, and instead of “casting down our golden crowns” before him we surround him with plastic flowers and memorial plaques and get grumpy at children when they run and play in here.  I also think of holiness as sinless virtuousness.  Holy people are like Mother Theresa whom none of us will ever be like. Yet, for some reason we think a robe and a collar makes a person closer to God than normal people can be.  There are also holy things. Communion is a holy meal and that means it must be handled special and not too often.  Only super-human Mother Teresa-like ordained ministers should serve it and it can only be received by people who understand that it must be eaten with a look of serious, sour/dour penitence, never joyfully or with emotion.  Yet, if all these common religious sentiments about what holy means are indeed what “holy” means, then we stand guilty of practicing the same superstition and magical thinking that pervaded the Medieval Church and the Reformation was for naught.

That’s the world holy.  What about perfect?  Well, nobody’s perfect and perfectionists are miserable people who berate themselves for never be good enough or a quick to point out the imperfections of others.  Pursuing perfection is a recipe disaster. 

Our ideas of “holy” and “perfect” simply make them bad words to use, but we don’t have any others that really work.  This means we can’t just take them at face value here and rather have to do some Bible work.  That’s what you pay me for and so here we go.

Looking at what the biblical idea of holy is, saying God is holy essentially means God is awesome, utterly good and all that but especially when it comes to steadfast love and faithfulness.  Out of a love we cannot comprehend God is utterly faithful.  As Creator, God stands above and outside the creation and therefore is not mired down in our broken world corrupted by sin and death and so God is free and able to act in his creation according to his steadfast love and faithfulness.  So, God’s holiness means that God in his incomprehensible steadfast love and utter faithfulness involves himself in his creation for reconciling it to himself and for salvation. 

When the Bible speaks of us being holy or of “earthly” places and things being holy this means simply set aside for use by God. So, if God’s holiness is that he is involved in this world for reconciliation and salvation, then persons, places, and things that are holy are holy because they are involved in what God is doing to reconcile his creation to himself and save it from sin and death.

Looking at what perfect means, well, perfect is the worst word to translate the Greek there.  The Greek there (telos and teleos) means to be complete in the sense of fulfilling one’s purpose.  A hammer is perfect when it is used to hammer things.  Bread is perfect when eaten.  We humans being created in the image of God are perfect when we are living in the image of God.  But, wait a minute.  What does God look like?

God’s image is the Trinity.  God is the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit giving themselves to each other so completely (perfectly) in sacrificial, unconditional love that they are One.  God is perfect in that he does as he is.  In utter faithfulness to his creation, whom he utterly loves, God gives himself sacrificially and loves us unconditionally in order to reconcile us to himself and save us from sin and death.  The culmination of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness is Jesus who perfectly reveals what God looks like. 

So, humanity made in God’s image should look like steadfast, sacrificial, and unconditional love and faithfulness in our relationships with one another and the creation.  This leads us to say that in the Bible being holy and being perfect are pretty much the same thing: God sets us apart to be those through whom he does his work of reconciling and saving in this fallen creation.  What we have in our readings from Leviticus and Matthew is what this looks like.

Leviticus tells us not to be greedy pigs squeezing every last dime out of our means of income for ourselves.  Rather, we leave some of the harvest for the poor and the alien to glean.  God looks like sharing.  We pay those who work for us fairly and on time.  God looks like economic justice.  We don’t lie or steal or slander.  God is honest.  We don’t take advantage of or treat the disable wickedly rather we include and accommodate.  God looks like accessibility.  We look after our kin and we don’t take vengeance or bear grudges.  God looks like loving family.  We don’t judge in favour of the rich and powerful because they are rich and powerful.  God looks like equality before the law.

In Matthew Jesus tells us not to retaliate against those whom harm, steal, sue, or take advantage of us but rather do strange things like going the extra mile.  We are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.  Blessed are the peacemakers for the will be called children of God.  God looks like reconciliation.

God has set us apart and called us to be different in this world, different in the Good way.  If I had to translate be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” it would be “Get ‘er done, therefore, like your heavenly Father get’s ‘er done.”  Be just, fair, honest, and faithful peacemakers and the world will see what God looks like.  That’s what being holy and perfect is all about.  Amen.

Righteousness That Exceeds Religiousness

Matthew 5:17-37

There is an ancient proverb that reads, “You think because you understand ‘one’, you must understand ‘two’, because one and one make two.  But you must also understand ‘and’.”  That’s pretty deep.  I came across it earlier this week in a book I’ve been reading; The New Parish: How Neighborhood Churches Are Transforming Mission, Discipleship, and Community by Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens, and Dwight J. Friesen.  We think we know what two is because we know what one is.  Two is just two ones.  Right?  There’s more to it than that.  In order to understand what two is you have to understand how the ones are joined.  You have to understand “and” – how it is that two “one’s” become the entity “two”.  That’s just profound.

In that book the authors use this teaching as a starting place for how Christians tend to go about being church in North America.  We like to think the church is here to help individual Christians grow in their faith.  Just as we look at two simply being two one’s or three being three one’s or even 5,000 being simply 5,000 one’s, we see the church as simply a bunch of individuals getting together to do church things. 

What tends to happen in our churches is that the “one’s”, the individuals, wind up shopping around for a church in which they feel most at home.  They want a church where there are more “one’s” just like them.  The result is that the “many” consists of “one’s” that are very much a like.  North American churches tend to be consumeristic and homogenous.  We shop around for a church that meets our needs and the people are very similar to us in race, ethnicity, values, and beliefs. 

This uniformity amongst ourselves means that we don’t have to work very hard at understanding what “and” is.  Yet, as the body of Christ, the “and” is what we are about. How it is that individuals come together and be Christ-like community, how we go about being the body of Christ, is what we are about. 

The Bible tells us that the literal human body of Jesus Christ is about the reconciliation and healing of broken people, of even enemies.  In that body, the human flesh of Jesus, God was at work reconciling the world to himself.  Atonement (At-one-ment between God and humanity) the big word we pull out of our hats on Good Friday in an attempt to explain why Jesus had to die, didn’t just happen the minute Jesus died death for us and in our place.  Atonement, humanity’s reconciliation to God, began the moment God the Son became Jesus the human embryo in the womb of Mary.  At that moment, at Jesus’ conception, God and sinful humanity were essentially and organically reconciled.  The two became one; two natures in one person, fully God and fully man. 

Carrying on, in that body Jesus then went on to live the righteous human life that we cannot live.  He lived it for us and in our place.  Just as his death was for us and in our place, so he lived the righteous life for us and in our place.  This means is his death on the cross wasn’t the sole means of our salvation.  Our salvation is the by-product of who he is in his very self – God the Son become human – and how he lived.

Our salvation - our participation in Jesus, God the Son become human, and in his eternal relationship with God the Father by means of God the Holy Spirit indwelling us – is in no way established or grounded on how good or bad or righteous or unrighteous we are.  It is founded on the righteous life that Jesus lived and continues to live for us, a righteousness that we participate in because we are “unioned”, bonded, “Krazy glue-ed” to him by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

If Jesus human body and how he lived in it and died in it and was raised with that same body made incorruptible and immortal was all about reconciliation (all about “and”), then we the church, the body of Christ, our fellowship in him is about living out this reconciliation.  It is all about the “and”.

This is what Jesus was getting at when he told his disciples “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  The Scribes and Pharisees based righteousness (right relationship with God and one another) on keeping the commandments of the Law.  Noble task as that was, Jesus in our text today shows the impossibility of it. 

The Law says do not murder.  But Jesus says it isn’t enough simply not to murder.  If we feel angry and do harm or even just want to harm another we might as well have killed them.  If I call another a fool or a moron, which I readily do to the drivers in front of me every time I get in the car, I deserve to be sent (not to Hell, that’s not what the text says) to Gehenna, the fiery garbage pit on the outskirts of Jerusalem for being a waste of a human life.  Moreover, how many of us come to church knowing that there are people we have hurt and yet we have done nothing to fix the relationship?  We need another source of righteousness!

The Law says do not commit adultery.  But what about lust?  Every one of us here, especially the men, have right eyes and right hands that we do not deserve.  We need to do a little more than swear oaths that make what we say sound true.  We just need to tell the truth in all circumstances.  Anybody here do that all the time?  We need a source of righteousness that doesn’t hinge on our own efforts to keep faithful observance of the commandments.

I could go on with more of the Sermon on the Mount here, but I think we get the point.  If our righteousness hinges on our own efforts, then we have no hope of living anything other than a lie before God, our neighbours, and ourselves.  So what do we do?  We must throw ourselves back on Jesus and the atonement that he is in his very person and the righteous life that he lived, the very life that he has included us in by the gift of the Holy Spirit poured into us.  This righteousness, his righteous, is a righteousness that exceeds religiousness.

I want you to really hear me on this; really, really, really, really, really hear me on this:  There is nothing we can do to make ourselves righteous meaning rightly related to God and to others and the land.  Nothing.  Humanity is fatally flawed, indeed fatally flawed in this respect.  This is why there is death in God’s good Creation.  But, Jesus has done it all for us and in our place.  By his death he dealt death and our fallen existence its fatal blow and by his resurrection God has started a new creation that he has graciously included us in by the gift of his Spirit.  When Jesus returns all will be made new.  Until then we must live as his disciples being empowered and transformed to show forth his righteousness.

There is a new reality in town, a new kingdom to live in.  Yes, it appears the Old Thug is still around bullying in the neighbourhood.  But, we’ve been made alive in Christ by the gift of his Spirit and as his body it is time for us to get out there and let him make his Kingdom be known through us.

  A Scribe once asked Jesus what the greatest of the commandments was and he answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all you mind and your neighbour as yourself” (Lk. 10:27).  This actively loving God, neighbour and self is the realm where Jesus makes his reign visible and felt.  Actively loving God, neighbour, and self is where we get down to the work of understanding what “and” is all about.  We are Jesus’ body, his disciples who are internalizing and shining forth his way of life because he has infused his new resurrected life in us by the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Let us live in his righteousness and strive to show the world what “and” is all about.  Amen.

  

Discipleship Lite

Matthew 5:1-20

During World War II women entered the workforce in droves in order to work factory jobs for the war effort that men could not work due to having to go fight.  This changed North American life dramatically...particularly for the beer industry.  In order for the beer industry to survive it had to convince women that they should go out after work and have a beer just like the men did.  Women, feeling newly liberated to be working outside the home, were happy to comply but they didn’t like the taste of beer nor the beer bellies.  This necessitated that the breweries develop a lighter coloured, less bitter, less yeasty, less filling, less alcoholic product.  As a result, pretty much all dark, full-bodied, real beers disappeared from the North American market.

This lessening trend picked up again in the early 80’s when in 1982 Budweiser introduced Bud Light to the market.  This is the same year Coca-Cola introduced Diet Coke.  Bud Light was monstrously successful due to the fact that when people drink light beer they tend to drink more of it.  If you are a calorie conscious, figure watching North American prone to binge drinking, three light beers for the same calories as two regular beers makes sense.  You’re a little more inebriated and so what if you’ve made more trips to the bathroom and spent more money, no worries because you’re drinking something you believe to be less fattening…and you’re more inebriated.  Such is the stinking thinking of the “lite beer” “craze”.  If you’re going to have a beer, have “a” beer, a “real” beer and enjoy it in all its complexities.

The “Lite” concept, which spells “light” L-i-t-e because it is a 20% lighter way of spelling “light”, pervades the marketplace as an advertising gimmick. It is a marketing scheme that tries to get consumers to believe that the lite version has less calories or some other undesirable substance than the normal product and is therefore a healthier choice.  Outside of the world of food, “lite” generally means a version of a product that is less expensive because it is comparatively less powerful, profound, or advanced than its parent product, but it will still deliver you everything you need in less complicated fashion.  I have found in the world of computer software that whenever I have gone “lite” thinking that I was getting only what I needed, I’ve had to go ahead and upgrade because the Lite version still couldn’t do what I needed. 

I have this guitar tuner app on my phone.  The “Lite” version only gave me the six individual notes of each guitar string.  It was useless for fiddles and banjos.  So, liking the convenience of a tuning app on my phone, I paid the twenty bucks to upgrade.  That’s how it “Lite” works.

The concept of “Lite” in the marketplace is little more than a deceptive advertising gimmick.  It misleads us into thinking that we are either making healthier choices when we really are not or that we are getting only what is necessary but in reality it isn’t what we really need to get the job done…and so we spend more money.  Now, hopefully I have enlightened you on “Lite”.

The concept of “Lite” isn’t simply a deceptive marketing gimmick . The ‘Lite” way of thinking has become pervasive enough in our culture that it even affects the world of the church.  Jesus told his disciples that they are the light of the world, but what the church as we know it has become is “Discipleship Lite”.  We have reduced the hard work of being disciples of Jesus, devoted followers of Jesus who teach others to be disciples of Jesus, to simple concepts like “Simply trusting every day, trusting through a stormy way,” or just being good moral people, good citizens with a Bible somewhere on display in our homes.  We believe in God because it gives us comfort and Christianity just happens to be our cultural default. 

“Discipleship Lite” has had a profoundly negative effect on the Church in Europe and North America.  It has proven unable to face the “stormy way” of religious pluralism.  Very few churches in North America actually do discipleship with the result that we are either dwindling off as is the Mainline or people are getting engulfed into mega-church movements that are unable to survive past the leaving of their charismatic, entrepreneurial founders.  What is missing from “Discipleship Lite” is discipleship all together. 

Discipleship is not simply about me having personal beliefs about God and Jesus that I keep private even when I gather with like-minded people at church whom I mostly enjoy their company.  Getting someone to join in on that is more or less what could be called conversion to a group.  Most of what we call evangelism has nothing to do with discipleship, but rather conversion to a group. 

Discipleship, on the other hand is a small group of people summonsed by Jesus through the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit to gather together to study him and his ways with the result that we internalize him and his ways and live accordingly and go forth and form other discipling groups.  Discipleship involves discipling others to maturity and those others going forth and discipling others in discipling groups.

Keith Phillips in his book The Making of a Disciple has a neat chart in it comparing “Evangelists” to “Disciplers”.  If I were an “Evangelist” and got one person a day to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, after 16 years I will have accrued 5,840 notches in the binding of my Bible who may or may not become involved in the life of a congregation.  If this year I take the time to disciple and train three or four people to form discipling groups and from that group only two of you go forth and form discipling groups and that carries on, after 16 years my efforts devoted to those initial four people will result in 65,536 disciples of Jesus. 

In Matthew’s Gospel the last thing Jesus tells his disciples before he ascended into Heaven was, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.  Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you.  And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  He says “go and make disciples” not go and make converts.  This simply means inviting 3 to four people you know well to come and study Jesus with you on a regular basis with the intent that after a period of time Jesus will call one or two of you to start another group on your own or together.

In the early church according to the Book of Acts Jerusalem was the first major center of the faith.  Persecution broke out and the church decentralized.  The second major center of the faith was in Antioch in what is now southern Turkey.  Antioch superseded Jerusalem in importance.  The church in Antioch was not started by any of the original disciples of Jesus even though most of them were still alive.  It was started by people like yourselves who discipled others.  The Mainline Church in North America today is like the Jerusalem church.  It has waned to the point of death.  The Jerusalem church was persecuted nearly to the point of death.  It sent forth disciples who discipled and the church is still alive today.  It is time we started discipling.

Timothy and I would like to get a discipling program started in the Cooperative if not in each church then among the churches.  We have a resource that will involve considerable commitment.  It has twenty-five lessons that cover the basics of the Christian faith but also serves to train and equip us to disciple others.  It is Discipleship Essentials: A Guide to Building Your Life in Christ by Greg Ogden who is also a Presbyterian minister.  If you feel nudged in this direction, please talk to me or Timothy.  We need to get this started.

To be blunt, the main reason the church in North America is waning is the lack of discipling.  The churches that are finding their way through this “stormy way” are doing by means of home-based discipleship ministries.  We here at St. Andrew’s need to add a new item to our list of Thriving Statements.  Can you guess what that is?  “St. Andrew’s is thriving when we are making disciples.”  Amen.