The Wisdom of Old Folk

 Luke 2:21-40

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I have learned much in my friendships with the elderly.  I once knew a woman named Katherine in a retirement community in Richmond, VA in which I interned during seminary.  She was 104 years old and quite well known throughout the United Methodist Church community in south-central Virginia for the clay figurines that she crafted there in the residential hobby room.  Katherine's most notable creation was a little froggy orchestra.  I learned from her that if life takes something away from you, your purpose so to speak, you be creative, move on, and find something else.  Katherine had never done anything with clay until she left her home and everything behind and moved into the Hermitage Home at age 96.  Within eight years people were coming from all over south-central Virginia to view and purchase her art.  There was just something special about her little creations.  They spoke a silent message of hope, the gentle reminder that no matter what, be creative.

My grandmother, Grandma Cox, was in her seventies when she moved into a retirement community.  At her home in Raphine, VA she lived a fairly isolated life making quilts and other sewing crafts.  In the retirement community she became well known for her quilted and knitted things and beanbag monkeys.  She also made the most of the opportunities available there at Sunnyside and even became a reigning shuffleboard champion. It takes a lot of courage to make the changes that she had to make. Yet, like Katherine she made them and kept living and stayed creative and that's that.  That’s what you got to do and how you do it.  

Another thing I have learned from my elder friends is that somewhere between the years of 80 and 85 we are suddenly gifted with the authority to say whatever we want to whomever we want no matter how off the wall it might sound and it will be called wise and people will heed it.  Again, I fall back on my Grandma Cox. She absolutely did not like the shredded beef salad that they served just a little too often in the cafeteria...and you have to understand that Grandma was an excellent cook herself and had even worked in a school cafeteria for a good bit of her life and so she understood institutional food.  One evening for dinner there at Sunnyside they served her the typical ice cream scoop of shredded beef salad on lettuce.  Grandma looked at it and said, “This looks like something the dog threw up in the yard and I'm not going to eat it.”  Well, the servers immediately gave her something else to eat and after that the beef salad appeared with less frequency.  Grandma’s earthy but wise observation brought about a much-desired change for all the residents. 

So, there you have it.  Just a couple of things I've learned from the elderly.  One, strive to keep living and be creative as much as we are able.  And two, at some point past the age of 80 we will suddenly be granted the gift of being able to say whatever we want to whomever we want and it will be dubbed wisdom and people will listen; so speak up.  It's with those lessons in mind that we turn to Simeon and Anna. 

Simeon was a very devout man whom the Holy Spirit had told that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah.  Simeon was moved by the Holy Spirit one day to go to the temple and there he found Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus. I can imagine him taking Jesus with wrinkly, boney, shaking hands and with a raspy, joyful voice saying, basically, “Yes! Lord, now let me die in peace for I have indeed seen your salvation.” Simeon had lived a very long life and since he had lived his life faithfully he did indeed know why the Lord had kept him alive so long.  God had made him a promise and told him he would not die until he saw it fulfilled. There in his arms lay his answered promise - a tiny, weak, vulnerable baby.  Simeon knows he can now die in peace.  The Lord was keeping his promise and was indeed bringing about the deliverance of Israel and of all peoples from every form of oppression.  He looked at Jesus and knew the prayer God put him on earth to pray was answered and he could now die knowing God is faithful.  Simeon is also well past the age of 80 and so he speaks bluntly to Mary concerning Jesus: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” I’m sure Mary was a bit befuddled and then up comes this old woman.

Anna the Prophetess was 84 years old. She had probably married at the age of 14 or fifteen and was widowed after seven years.  She then went to live in the temple courtyards (probably as a beggar), never leaving, and worshipped by praying and fasting night and day.  Her life's purpose also was waiting for God's Messiah. At the same moment that Simeon knows his life's purpose had been fulfilled, Anna comes and begins to tell those who had gathered in the temple to pray for God to send the Messiah that he had indeed come. 

Well, to make a long sermon short, I think the obvious wisdom that Simeon and Anna have for us is that we will not know the Lord's purpose for us apart from knowing the Lord's Christ, apart from knowing Jesus.  I've been around more than a few retirement communities and I've been asked more than a few times by people who have outlived most of their family and friends, "Why is the Lord keeping me here? Haven't I served my purpose yet?”  They usually say that because they truly are reeling in the loss that life brings when due to the frailties of old age a transition must be made from the independence of one’s own home to “the home”.  The only nutshell answer there can be to those questions is “You’ve lost much and I can see why you feel your life is pointless.  I’d feel that way to.  But you’re still alive.  So, live.  Keep praying.  Indeed, pray more for everybody and everything and love and serve your neighbours while you wait.  I suspect you will come to realize that’s why you’re still here.  Our Lord has great plans for the healing and deliverance of the people he’s put in your life.  So, pray for that and wait for it."  

Many congregations today find themselves in the situation of needing to make a transition to something else due to the physical and spiritual reality of its members growing old.  It is safe to say that just over 60% of the churches in North America have fewer than 50 people in worship on a Sunday.  Old age and dwindling in size have made anxiety in the face of the future and corporate low self-esteem a constant debilitating factor in the predominant church of North America which is the small church of which we are four.  Small is normal.  

Like elderly people do, many of these small and aging congregations are asking “Why are we still here?  What could possibly be our purpose?”  These small churches are still very much alive (just as you folk are) and so must live (just as you must).  Those questions are rooted in the (for lack of a better word) despair of having dwindled the last couple of decades from being the “big, program church” that bubbled onto the scene just after WWII.  In the 20 years after WWII the church in North America experienced unprecedented growth due to the rise of the “Suburb”.  But, bubbles pop and so the bubble of the “big, program church” started to noticeably pop in the ‘80’s.

But, you know, there is nothing in the Bible that says a church of Jesus Christ must have the “big, program church” bag of tricks to be the real deal – a building, full-time paid clergy, Sunday School, and other programs of ministry.  The churches of the New Testament met in homes, were led by gifted and well-tutored disciples, ate together a lot, and their only program for ministry was proclaiming that in his love, God has saved his Creation in through and as Jesus Christ who was soon to return and so they lived accordingly inviting others to be his disciples.  

We need to take to heart the wisdom of my friend Katherine and my Grandma Cox – continue living, be creative, and speak up.  When being a church can no longer be done the way we’re accustomed to, well, let’s just find something new to do with the abilities that we still have and be creative about it even if it is just to pray fervently.  The church of twenty years from now is going to be dramatically different from the church of twenty years ago because North American culture has changed so dramatically.  I expect that the church twenty years from now will look more like the New Testament churches be based in homes rather than buildings; centered around potluck meals, Bible Study; and prayer; led by trained lay people, full-time clergy will be fewer and far between and shared by a number of congregations; and, Jesus Christ will be a neighbourhood household reality. 

But for today, the average age of the members of our congregations is now approaching the age of Simeon and Anna, which means we are collectively able and gifted with the authority to say whatever we want to whomever we want and they will listen and call it wise.  So, like Simeon let us proclaim God’s salvation of the world through the reconciling love of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and let us do so because our eyes have indeed beheld him.  May we, like Anna, a crazy old widow, shout it out.  We have something to say!  Amen.

 

Healing By Infusion

 Luke 1:26-38

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Christmas Eve, we gather to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Christ-child, God the Son become human.  It’s a fairly nostalgic moment that we share – a time to appreciate beauty in song and seasonal aesthetics, a time of warmth in reunion with family friends, a time of giving and a realization that we need to do more for those in need, a time to receive.  We come to worship in an effort to let God know we haven’t forgotten the reason for the season – somehow this Baby Jesus changes us; saves us; saves everything; changes everything.

To say why God has done what God has done for us in, through, and as Jesus is fairly easy.  God is love.  God loves.  God loves his good creation.  God loves us.  God loves each of us.  Yet, something has gone terribly wrong in God’s good creation, in us, in each of us.  There is good and there is evil.  There is futility and there is death.  The root of it is a disease called sin.  We all have it.  Sin isn’t like COVID where some get it and its contagious so ye saints avoid them sinners.  We all have this disease called sin and we are dying because of it. 

Our disease is not a naive either/or problem where we simply know the difference between what is good and what is evil and at times do good and at times do evil.  When we speak of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Book of Genesis from which Adam and Eve eat, it is not the Tree of the Knowledge of Good or Evil, but rather Good and Evil.  Good and Evil are juxtaposed but mixed.  So often we do Good and it winds being Evil or have to do what we know is Evil to bring about Good, war being an example.  

Good and Evil are confused and entwined within us.  We cannot just do one without doing the other because we are both at the same time.  Let me give you a good example from the world of physics to explain this to you but by the time I’m finished you will think me evil.  It makes me think of the state of quantum superposition where something can exist in two or more states at the same time.  For example, light (photons) is at the same time both a particle and a wave and it depends on how you observe it as to which state you will find it in.  This is complicated I know.  To try to explain this a physicist by the name of Erwin Schrödinger came up with a fictitious experiment involving a cat.  

If you put a cat in a steel box with a poisonous gas distribution mechanism in which the triggering device relies on the nuclear decay of an atom (an atom dissolving into nothing) in which the probability/possibility of it decaying and triggering the release of the gas is 50% (either the atom will decay or not), from the point of the observer the cat in the box is in a state of being both dead and/or alive.  You don’t know which until you open the box.  When it comes to Good and Evil, it isn’t that we have the capacity/possibility/probability of doing either Good or Evil and we wont know which we are until we are observed in action.  We exist in a state of being both Good and Evil and when we observe each other in action everything we do, even right done to how we interpret our observations of each other’s actions, is both Good and Evil to varying degrees on a spectrum.  This illustration is my case in in point.  It’s a really Good explanation for a quantum physicist, but virtually impossible for everybody else to understand and I am Evil to have inflicted it upon you and I wish I could see the confusion on your faces right now so that I could have the satisfaction of knowing I ruined your Christmas – wah hah hah hahaah.

We are sick with a disease that is killing us, killing the whole Creation.  We are as good as dead; dead though we live, doing things that lead to death.  We really are in the box in the state of being both dead and alive.  The only cure for our disease is for God to infuse us with God’s very self and so we talk about God becoming human.  God the Son became human as the man Jesus of Nazareth.  God took upon himself our sin diseased state of existence and as one of us he lived a life in communion with God and us in which he did no evil.  This infusion began the healing.  Jesus death once and for all removes the disease of sin from humanity like a tea bag drawing the infection from an infected wound.  Jesus’ resurrection set in motion the rubrics of a new humanity, a new creation in which Sin and Death will be no more.  In the fullness of time, whenever that will be, whenever God decides to open the box, we will either simply be changed if we’re still around or resurrected from the dead to live anew in a bodily existence that neither sins nor dies but is rather filled with the living, glorious presence of God right down to every subatomic particle from which we are made.  Until then, God has poured his Spirit upon those whom has called to follow Jesus as proof of what is to come.

The Son of God became human and in so doing God has set in motion the healing of his Creation, of humanity, and of us each. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, an important leader in the church back in the 300’s wrote: “The unassumed is the unhealed”.  God took upon his very self our very selves and it heals us.  St. Athanasius of Alexandria who lived at the same time said, “He became what we are that we might become what he is” meaning a new humanity, human beings filled with the very life of God.  In Christ, for now, we exist at the same time as dead but healed and alive.  

This all sounds like metaphysics until you realize that it is love we are talking about.  Not that warm, fuzzy, nostalgic, feel-good stuff; but rather the kind of love in which we put ourselves aside and moved with compassion we act for justice, for economic equity, for human rights.  We are the ones who are supposed to look like we’ve been cured of the disease of sin.  The COVID vaccination process has begun, but the thing with a vaccination is that it really doesn’t change the person who has been vaccinated in any noticeable way. You can just carry on with whatever kind of life you want to live and you won’t get COVID.  God’s infusing humanity with himself in Christ Jesus and applying this to us by coming as the Holy Spirit to dwell in us the followers of Jesus changes who we are and compels us to live according to way of humanity cured.  People who live in such a way as to awaken hope in others, as to bring about peace to our communities, as to give others a reason to leap in grateful joy – to live the way of unconditional, trusting, vulnerable love.  Amen.   

Pregnant with Impossibility

Luke 1:26-38

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Probably the two most impactful words a woman and a man will ever hear are, “You’re Pregnant!”  The reactions to these words range from ecstatic joy to absolute dread.  Once confronted with these words inevitably we will find ourselves overwhelmed with the weight of imagining all the responsibilities that come along with raising a child.  And soon, once the initial shock wears off, we begin to dream.  We begin to wonder who the child will look like, be like; what to name the child.  Will the child grow up to be somebody important?  Inevitably we begin to question ourselves.  Will we be good parents?  Will the child know how much we love it?    

With all these questions we become fixated on the future, obsessed with a dreadful kind of hope, and preoccupied with our ability to nurture what we love…and here, this morning thinking about Mary and God and all that I’m thinking maybe it was for reasons such as these that God chose to enter the world by the way of an infant born to Mary and Joseph.  Maybe these future oriented feelings and preoccupations are how we are to be “postured” within ourselves with respect to God.  Maybe God wants us fixated on what he’s going to do in the future.  Maybe when it comes to our relationship with God he wants us to have this kind of dreadful, obsessive hope.  Maybe God wants us taking seriously our responsibility to nurture the future here in the present.  The best way to take care of the future world is to take care of this one right now as a pregnant woman cares for herself to care for the baby within her.

Anyway, enough of my rambling.  This is the Mary Sunday in Advent.  This is Mary’s day to shine.  So let’s ponder Mary for a moment.  I think it reasonable to imagine Mary had all those parent-type questions too, but things had to be more than a little different for her.  She got some of her maternal questions answered…by an angel.  That had to be freaky.  From the mouth of an angel she heard those scary, overwhelming words, “You’re going to be pregnant”.  There’s some Twilight Zone in that.  

Maybe we can say that Mary was lucky to have a few of her parental questions answered.  She knew it was going to be a boy.  She didn’t have to worry about what to name him.  The angel said his name would be Jesus.  She did not have to worry about who her son would become.  He would be the Son of the Most High whatever that would be.  Mary got to know what her son would be when he grew up…a king.  But not just any king; “The King”, the expected One, the Messiah. 

Mary’s son, Jesus, was going to be the king who would turn the world upside-down with God’s Kingdom.  As Mary sings in her song, through her son God was going to bring the powerful down from their thrones and lift up the lowly.  Through her son God would fill the hungry and turn the rich away empty.  Her son would be the fulfillment of a promise made long ago to Abraham, that his seed, his offspring, would be a blessing to all nations. 

We cannot be sure Mary wanted to hear all that.  It is overwhelming enough just to wonder who and what your child will become.  I can’t imagine actually knowing what my children will grow up and be.  I really don’t want to know.  But, that is just what the angel told Mary and to put it oddly, Mary had to endure knowing that for all her life.

            Mary’s first response to all this Good News being dumped on her was to deny even the possibility that she could be pregnant.  She asked, “How can this be since I am a virgin?”  Certain necessary things had to happen before she could become pregnant and none of that had as of yet.  The angel’s response to this seemed even more impossible.  The Holy Spirit of God would cause this pregnancy.  Her child would literally be the Son of God.  Imagine how that’s going to be whispered around town.  Mary is suddenly somehow pregnant and she’s saying God’s the father.  No wonder she went off to live with Cousin Elizabeth for a while.

            Speaking of Elizabeth, the angel allowed Mary a sign to know that God inspired pregnancy was indeed going to happen.  She just had to go on down to her cousin Elizabeth’s house and she would see her proof.  Elizabeth, the barren one, Elizabeth, the one too old to give birth, was pregnant too.  God was in a baby mood.

            So there stood Mary, pregnant with impossibility, filled with a dreadful hope.  How would she raise this child, the Holy One, the Son of God?  I think it was probably too much for Mary to comprehend.  How could she realize that in her womb God would be undertaking a new creation?  And not just the creation of a new life, in her womb God was creating new life for all humanity.  How could she know?  Mary knew that in her womb she would carry a king, but did she realize that he would be God’s appointed one, the unique agent of God’s rule, and how that would pan out throughout history?  Through her son God himself would rule.  Her son would set in place the Kingdom of God in which there would be justice for all.  His rule would/will eventually overturn all the powers that oppress humans, even the powers of sin and death.  How could Mary realize that?

            Well, we cannot say whether Mary was aware of the full weight of her responsibility.  What parent is?  But we do know that Mary responded in faith.  She bravely accepted her call with the words, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; Let it be with me according to your word.”  Mary accepted her call and she became the mother of new life and the one through whom God’s rule would come into the world.  When the response is faith, the impossibilities of God become possible.

            So here we sit on the fourth Sunday of Advent.  By tradition we retell the story of Mary the Mother of Jesus and honor her faith.  But this is also a day upon which we ponder our similarities with Mary.  Like Mary, we too are God’s favored ones.  For some unknown reason God has chosen us to be recipients of his great love through adoption as his children.  Moreover, the Holy Spirit is also with us, overshadowing us, in us.  God’s presence is in our midst acting through us.  God is with us always acting for us in our best interest.  In fact, we are the proof of God’s amazing love for his creation and especially for those who love him.  These are perplexing thoughts, and as Mary pondered them so should we.

            Another similarity we have is that we, God’s favoured ones gathered together, we like Mary are pregnant with the reality that the impossible is possible.  The Spirit of God has come upon us; the power of God overshadows us.  Within us is the Son of God.  Within us is God’s rule.  Within us is the agency by which God overturns the proud and the powerful and lifts up the humble and poor.  Do we realize this?  Do we realize that we are pregnant with God’s spirit, that through us God is bringing new life and his kingdom into this world?  We have a great responsibility, a great calling, to let God’s new life come forth from us.  How shall we respond?  

            Shall we respond with denial saying, “How can this be? Not us.  We’re not worthy.  We’re tired.  We’re too old.  We don’t have the time. Isn’t there somebody else?”  But you know how it is.  We just like making excuses and that just doesn’t fly.  Surely, we can have only one response, Faith…Faith to believe the impossible possible.  Faith to believe we have a calling, a calling to God’s great purpose in history.  Faith to love this new child that we are pregnant with in our old age.  It may seem impossible, but God is and will bring forth new life and his kingdom through us.  With God nothing is impossible.  All we have to do is listen to this voice of compassion that God has placed in us, kicking us in the gut from the inside out and join in as God makes things unfold.  So, this the Sunday before Christmas Day let us each say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.”

Rebuild the Ancient Ruins...with Joy

 Isaiah 61:1-11

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Back when I was in seminary, I went on a study tour of the Middle East.  It was an invaluable trip.  One thing that you notice when you go there is that there are ancient ruins everywhere, reminders of civilizations that have come and gone.  The first ruins that my group visited were in Syria, the ancient city of Palmyra.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Palmyra is a city of nothing but ruins – the ancient temple of Bel, Roman-style columns sticking up, Greek and Roman style tombs, and Roman amphitheatre, massive stone blocks strewn hither and yon.  There’s even a crusader castle on top of a high hill overlooking the city.  Even though there was hardly an intact building with a roof on it, the ancient city was still inhabited by some very, very poor people who sold trinkets, gum, and re-bottled water and myriads of children who would let you take their picture for a dinar.  

In 2015 ISIS captured Palmyra and ISIS had a reputation for destroying antiquities especially if they were reflective of the religions of the people who lived there before the time of Islam.  I, like thousands of others who had visited, the ruins said a prayer not only for the safety of the ruins but also for the people who lived there.  Those people were quite vulnerable.  Fortunately, Syrian forces recaptured Palmyra once and for all in March of 2017 and I was joyed by their discovery that the ruins were not badly damaged excepting the Temple of Bel which ISIS had leveled.  ISIS also planted landmines throughout the ruins so that there is no telling when Palmyra will be able to safely receive visitors, not to mention residents.  I wonder what happened to the people who lived there.  

If you take a tour to other places in the Middle East you will see that rebuilding ancient ruins is just the way they do things.  Take Jerusalem for example.  Jerusalem is built upon the ruins of a previous Jerusalem that was built upon the ruins of previous Jerusalem that was built upon the ruins of another previous Jerusalem and so on.  Archaeologists have found that you have to dig down about ten metres to get to the Jerusalem where Jesus walked the streets and about twice that to get to the time of King David.  Building upon ruins upon ruins upon ruins upon ruins…a way of life.

Rebuilding ancient ruins is a topic of our reading in Isaiah today and the city involved is Jerusalem.  To give you a little history; the LORD is here speaking as an Isaiahnic prophet to a remnant of his people who said “yes” to his invitation for them to return from their exile in Babylon to the land of Judah, to Jerusalem, to rebuild it, because their time in exile had ended.  The Persians had conquered Babylon and the Persian king Cyrus had decreed they could go home.  Nearly a century earlier God had cast his people off of the Land he had given to their ancestors where they had been a great nation.  They had been worshipping other gods and this idolatry led them into being a people whose way of life did not shine forth the love, righteousness, justice, and peace of the God who had brought them out of slavery in Egypt to be his distinct people.  Instead, the wealthy abused the poor and gave no concern to the care of widows and the orphans, the most vulnerable in their day.  In fact, they used the poor as a way to get wealthier.  Read the Book of Amos.  Their legal system, instead of a just and fair legal system, was a cesspool of corruption and bribery.  Worst of all, their kings and leading citizens went as far as to sacrifice their own children to the foreign god Molech in order to grow powerful and rich. 

So, God sent the Babylonian army and for over a year they put Jerusalem under siege starving everyone indiscriminately.  When the Babylonians finally broke through the city wall, they levelled the city, razed the Temple, and led away anybody who considered themselves important on a long march to exile in Babylon.  The politicians, the priests, the patrons, the wealthy families – the ones who previously had everything – lost everything and literally had to walk away from it all.  The poor – those who previously had nothing – got what was left and lived among the ruins only to be subsumed by squatters from surrounding lands who moved in like rats to a vacant building.

That was the history behind our passage.  Let’s have a look at the passage itself now.  The prophet is speaking to a remnant of Israelites who had come back from Babylon and resettled Jerusalem and the surrounding area but under difficult circumstances and so they were a disillusioned lot.  They were expecting to rebuild everything to its former glory but they just didn’t have the financial and people resources to do that.  And, there were the people who had moved into Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside to squat on the land after the Babylonians took the Jews into exile; they didn’t take too kindly to a couple thousand religiously fervent “Babylonian” Jews showing up and saying this place belongs to us because God gave it to our ancestors. (The rubrics of the Israeli/Palestinian problem go back a long way.)  The return to Jerusalem did not go according to the hopes of the faithful remnant returning from Babylon.  

The prophet comes to bring this tired, disillusioned lot good news and joy.  “The Spirit of the LORD is upon me” he says so that he could proclaim the good news to God’s faithful remnant that God is still with them and that his purposes for them will in time come to fruition.  He reminds them who they are and what God has done for them.  In Babylon, they had been oppressed, held captive, even imprisoned and God freed them and brought them back to their homeland.  They will rebuild the ancient ruins for it is what God wants to happen.  They are a nation of priests who will reflect the glory of the LORD to the nations and the day will come when the nations will bring their wealth to them and call them blessed in realization that the one true God is among them.  But…the process of how it all happens will not be an overnight kind of thing.  It will be like how plants grow; a natural, timely spouting and growing of righteousness and worship.  It will not happen quickly.

In the meantime, this remnant of tired, disillusioned people will need to be mindful of their own righteousness and be joyful.  They will need to avoid going the way of the nations and try to gain a false sense of security by means of pursuing power and wealth.  God loves justice and hates it when people rob and cheat and lie to get wealth and power.  They must draw close to the LORD and walk in his ways.  

I think what the prophet is really trying to say here is that before the ancient ruins of Jerusalem can be rebuilt, the ancient ruin of the people themselves needs to be rebuilt.  They are an ancient ruin that needs to be rebuilt.  To do that they need to walk in the ways of the LORD and rejoice.  Rejoice means be joy-filled, be joy-filled about what the LORD had done and will do for them.  They are the ancient ruin and they need to be rebuilt with joy.

Throughout this passage the prophet refers to himself.  Yet, it is not a stretch to say that he is speaking of himself as representative of the whole people.  What he says about himself is true for the people as well.  The Spirit of the LORD is upon him.  So, it is with the people.  The Spirit of the LORD is with them, dwelling in and among them.  He wears the joyful wedding garments of salvation and so it is with them.  He says, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my whole being shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, and covered me with the robe of righteousness.”  That’s true for the people as well.  They were in a foreign land oppressed, held captive, and some were even imprisoned and now they are free and in their ancestral land to be the people on earth through whom the LORD shines forth his glory.  That is the garment of salvation.  They, too, wear the robe of righteousness for the Spirit of the LORD is upon them.  Therefore, they should rejoice, be joyful and praise God with their whole being.  Yes, life back in Jerusalem is not as they had hoped.  Jerusalem still lay in ruins and they do have to spend all their time protecting themselves from the folks who have been living there, but God had done so much for them just to get them home and so they should feel the joy and let the slow growth as God rebuilds them happen because it will.

Well enough of the past.  How about us today?  Last year and this I have been serving as the Moderator of the Presbytery of Grey Bruce Maitland.  This position has certain ceremonial tasks associated with it.  One of them is pronouncing a congregation closed.  So far, I have pronounced closed two churches in our Presbytery and there is the possibility of a third.  These two congregations have joined the fellowship of the ancient ruins of Christianity in North America – small church buildings all over the place looking to be repurposed or, as in a lot of cases, just torn down for the land is apparently worth more than that old building in which God touched the lives of so many people.  The “Church” as most of us remember it is today an ancient ruin and we are like a faithful remnant holding to the hope of rebuilding it but we lack the resources of finances and people.  

I’m the minister of four small churches and I can say that the demon of disillusionment is not far from our doorsteps.  But, inside our doors it can be said that the Spirit of the LORD is upon us.  In our midst good news can be heard and found.  Jesus the Christ risen from the dead is alive in our midst.  We each wear the garment of salvation.  The LORD God who built and rebuilt ancient Israel has stepped into each of our lives and proven himself faithful in steadfast love.  We each wear the robe of righteousness – the Spirit of the LORD is upon us and shines through in the way that we live our lives.  Though we are part of those remnant inhabitants living among the ancient ruins of North American Christianity we have joy.  We have peace.  We have hope.  We have love.  Though we may be growing old, there is in our midst the New Life of the New Day coming, a foretaste of Creation and human community healed.  

Friends we have something to smile about.  We have reason to have joy.  Even though the masks we wear for COVID protection cover it, it is important that we smile.  Something I’ve been doing the last couple of months is I’ve been making the effort to smile, to just have a smile on my face even when nobody can see me.  I practice smiling.  A smile changes things, even the chemical make-up of our brain.  It brings forth chemicals of joy and changes how we feel.  God has given us all a reason to smile, so smile.  In these days when contagion has us down, a smile is contagious and whispers joy.  Smile.  Amen.

Be Found at Peace

 2 Peter 3:8-15

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Something I haven’t done for a couple of years now, is get away on my own to some sort of continuing education seminar for a few days.  Leave the family behind.  Leave the churches behind. Leave my routine behind.  Go forth and maybe learn something new, maybe.  Meet some new people and see people from previous events.  Wear a name tag.  Introduce myself to stares that blatantly say “I’m glad I’m not him”.  The food is usually beyond excellent, but you have to struggle to make small talk at meals…and there’re always those people that I have to exercise extreme patience with because they think they know the solution to all the church’s problems and absolutely will not shut up long enough to listen to me, the one person who actually does.  

If you can’t tell, I just love continuing education events and so it is no surprise that when the week is done and that Friday morning final worship is over, I am a man on a mission.  I just want to get home to be with my wife and my kids and my dog.  Sleep in my own bed.  No strangers in my bathroom.  I waste no time getting home.  I make haste to get home.  My whole life is devoted to getting home.  I’m compelled almost to the point of anxiety to get home.  I drive faster than I should.  Some people will take advantage of those lost few moments of being away from home and the routines and will stop here and there along the way to see this and that.  Not me.  I make haste and waste no effort to get home.

Peter here writes “Strive to be found at peace”.  That word translated there as “strive” in New Testament Greek is the word I would use to describe how I am about getting home after being away.  It is the ardent, zealous desire to make haste to arrive at that which you are foremost devoted to.  It’s pouring your whole heart and soul into a particular purpose.

Peter is saying for us to ardently devote our every effort to being found at peace by Jesus when he returns.  He also adds being spotless and blameless to that, but I consider that to be a part of what it is to be at peace.  Having your conscience clean of moral indiscretion is a component of peace.  Spotless and blameless was also a term used for sacrificial lambs, which was an image that turns up with reference to those about to be martyred.  And it maybe that spotless and blameless means are you ready to meet your Lord should you be martyred; are you at peace.  But, I digress.  The emphasis of the verse is on whole-heartedly striving to be found at peace by Jesus when he comes again.  

This verse begs a question of us which I will revisit momentarily, but I want to introduce it now so that we’re prepared for it.  The question: What am I, what are we singularly focused on, impassioned by, that we devote our total beings to?  What do I/ we strive for with everything we got?  Let that perk.

Let’s take a look at that word for being found.  This is like your mother always telling you to wear clean underwear in case you wind up in an accident and have to go the hospital, you don’t want the doctor to find you in several days of filth.  That would reflect poorly not only on you but more so on her.  Or, it’s like somebody dropping by your house unexpectedly, would you be able to invite them in or would you rather them not see the disarray as to not make a judgement call about your character.  People do judge the character others on the cleanliness of their house.  I do.  It’s like being in a game of poker and somebody calls your hand and you have to reveal your cards.  Do you have a strong hand or are you just bluffing?  What will your cards reveal? So “to be found” is to be laid bare like on judgement day in such a way as to reveal who you really are.  

There’s a question that arises here that is more or less the same question that popped up a minute ago: If I/we were to be laid bare at the very core of who we are, could/would peace be found there?  If we suddenly had to reveal our hands in this game of life, would the cards say “at peace”?  If someone showed up unexpectedly at your house, would they find your home be at peace?  Strive to be found at peace.

So peace, what is peace?  People often define peace as the absence of conflict.  Yet, people can live lives free of open conflict with others and still not be at peace.  That leads others to define peace from an inward perspective; inner peace, contentment, self-acceptance, being free from shame and guilt, a clean conscience.  Well, peace with others and peace with self are certainly components of what Peter means by peace here.  We could also add a sense of being at peace with God. Yet, peace as we find it in the Bible is still even more that those three elements combined.  It is an interesting animal that is profoundly community oriented and arises the outflow from God’s presence in a group of believers. 

In John’s Gospel on Easter evening Jesus risen from the dead suddenly appears to the disciples behind locked doors.  He said, “Peace be with you.”  Then he breathed the Holy Spirit upon them and gave them the instruction to forgive each other.  Peace and forgiveness are linked.  Yet, the Biblical understanding of forgiveness isn’t this transactional thing that we have made it out to be in our culture where somebody wrongs another, feels remorse, and then apologizes and then the offended one accepts the apology and they try to go on as if it didn’t happen.  Biblical forgiveness is to bear with those in your community who act on their brokenness, bear with them and continue to lead them to Jesus to be healed even if they have no desire to apologize.  In the Gospel of John peace is not the transaction of forgiveness.  It is found in bearing with one another in the love of God for the benefit and healing of each.  It is, if fact, that the presence of God is in our midst healing us each of our brokenness and our striving for this healing with each other.  Peace cannot be done alone.  For peace, we need the presence of God and we need each other.

In the Old Testament Prophets and in the other three Gospels peace is the distinguishing mark of the type of community that arises when God’s salvation comes to earth.  “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is a prayer for peace.  We can have a taste of that peace now by striving to live according to the way human community will be when God’s Kingdom finally does come.  Peace now is life lived with the presence of God in our midst.  It is everyone having a thriving devotional life.  Peace now is people living together free of covetousness and greed and lust and power seeking.  Peace now is community where everybody has the abundance of enough and we share.  Peace now is people living together in a way that gives praise and thanksgiving to God and resounds with “Amen.”  Peace now is people being together relating to one another in such a way that the glory of God shines forth which means eliminating poverty, classism, racism, and all the ism’s which are a blemish on community.  When Peter invites us to “Strive to be found at peace”, working towards this kind of peaceful community is what he means. 

Looking at the way things are today, COVID has shown up at humanity’s door and has laid us bare and revealed that humanity is not at peace.  It’s first wave showed us that we have a lifestyle problem, a value of life problem, that shows up in the way we care for our elderly.  It hits harder among the poor and the non-white revealing our classism and racism.  Amidst government restrictions substance abuse has raged and marriages are dissolving.  These profoundly show us that we don’t know how to be with ourselves and each other in constructive ways when we are stripped of those places and things that we use to avoid each other.  Household finances are tanking and small businesses are going under.  Meanwhile, the billionaires are growing exponentially wealthier.  That’s a blatant sign that something is terribly wrong.  Yet, without these restrictions more people will needlessly die as the result of COVID and our healthcare system will be so overwhelmed with COVID that other health matters cannot be properly managed.  A spirit of contentiousness over things like wearing a mask and just put your party life on hold for a few months have arisen that just simply reveals that we are spoiled brats.  These restrictions are not dictator governments taking away personal liberties.  They are how we protect the vulnerable in our communities from a virus that is more lethal than the flu. 

COVID has revealed to us that we lack peace.  Peace is living together in the presence of God according to the love of God so that our community, our neighbourhoods, and families foreshadow the way community will be when Jesus comes.  This peace simply eludes us. Why?  Well, we humans are obviously striving for something other than peace.

Returning to the question: What am I, what are we singularly focused on, impassioned by, so that we devote our total beings to pursuing it?  What do I/ we strive for with everything we got?  Is it peace?  If it is not peace, then what?  Wealth?  Family?  Reputation?  Winning?  Or just simply and honestly nothing?  Are we just apathetic, striving for nothing?  Strive to be found at peace.  Amen.

 

 

Strength to the End

Mark 13:24-37; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9

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One evening during the summer of 1986 I was having dinner with my grandparents.  We were sitting at the kitchen table eating supper and watching the evening news.  A very interesting news story came up. People were coming from all over the place to some little town in Ohio to see what appeared to be the face of Jesus rusting up on the side of a town water tank.  I looked over at Granddaddy and it appeared that he had become rather interested in this story and was becoming visibly angry for he had stopped eating. All of a sudden he blurted out, “What in the world! The Bible says Jesus is coming back on clouds of glory, not on the side of some water tank. Ain’t that right boy?” and I said, “Yeah.” Then he just shook his head for a minute or two while the story finished and then went back to eating.

Granddaddy’s response begs a very important question: “Why were so many people, and good Christians at that, searching for hope on the side of a water tank?”  For Granddaddy, the Bible said quite specifically that Jesus would be coming back on clouds of glory and that was good enough for him.  He didn’t need the proof of Jesus coming back on a water tank.  Yet, these water tank Jesus folks, they apparently needed some proof.  It wasn’t that they needed proof that Jesus was coming back.  They rather wanted something, a miracle, to assure them that the God they believed in was real.  Person after person that the newscaster interviewed at this water tank phenomenon said just that, “This proves that God is real.  This proves that Jesus Christ is alive.”  

So, why were they coming to the water tank for validation of their faith?  Well, this was going on in the midst of the economic crisis that bedeviled the “80’s.  There was also living daily with the Cold War fear of nuclear holocaust.  The first hints of the cultural decline of Christianity were becoming visible.  The AIDS epidemic was afoot with some actually believing it to be a plague sent by God.  In the midst of all that social turmoil people just wanted proof that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost hadn’t taken the last train for coast.  

To many people, the times seemed so “Apocalyptic” (if I might misuse the term), like the world was going to end soon, and they wanted to know if God was with them.  That’s back when I first accepted the call to follow Christ (not just believe) and I remember very clearly how Endtimes-focused a good bit of American Christianity was.  You didn’t need to look too hard for a class on the Book of Revelation.  And it wasn’t just the church that this apocalyptic fervor touched.  The artist formerly known as Prince was singing “Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1999” and that song was all about an impending end of the world.  In the mid-80’s there was a strong sense of expectation of something apocalyptic in the air and those water tower Jesus people were just wanting some assurance.

Well, what’s all this got to do with Mark’s gospel and Jesus coming back?  This is the first Sunday in Advent. It’s traditionally called the Prophet’s Sunday and, on this day, we remember how the prophets of the Old Testament were filled with the expectation of a day when God would come as the Saviour/Messiah to set things right and establish his kingdom forever.  Their hopes and expectations were partly fulfilled with the coming of Jesus. They also hoped for a day when God would pour out his Spirit on all peoples and this has been happening in part since the day of Pentecost when God poured his Spirit upon the church.  They also looked forward to the Day, the Day of the Lord, when God would finally put all things to rights.  We still look forward to that same day, the day when Jesus will return and all things will be created anew.  This “looking forward” is what distinguishes the Judeo-Christian faith from all other religions.  

In our text today Jesus proclaims to us the message of the prophets to expect a day when he will return in glory. It is often the case that some find it difficult to accept that Jesus will return. After all, it’s been nearly two thousand years now and he hasn’t shown up. I could very easily accept this view point on the basis that it fits reality, but I cannot. To say that Jesus is not coming back robs our faith of its hope, a hope born in the expectation of a day when God will finally put an end to sin and an end to death. I have seen too often the difference that hope can make in a person’s life (particularly those who are near the end of life) just to dismiss the world which the prophets, the earliest Christians, and Jesus himself hoed for and imagined. 

In expectation of that day, Jesus commands us to keep awake, to not be found sleeping. It’s never a good thing to fall asleep at a time when you’re supposed to be awake.  You miss important stuff like things that are going to be on the exam or that you’re driving off the road.  Jesus commands us to stay awake meaning to keep hoping in God, to keep expecting God to act not just at the end of time but more so now, in our daily lives right now.  

We hear a lot people making semi-funny jokes about how bad 2020 is.  Humour is a good way to deal with 2020.  Yes, the times are bad now.  You would think it was the 80’s all over.  We’ve got a pandemic that’s requiring us to adapt with major changes to our lifestyles.  It’s got the global economy on the brink of a shambles.  There’s the instability of the American political situation.  There seems to be no such thing as straight up news anymore.  Even the weather report seems to be a biased opinion piece, but I guess that’s always been the case with the weather.  Everybody just seems to believe what they want to believe.  Sometimes I scroll through Facebook and see some of the stuff that people I went from elementary to High School with post; particularly the political stuff.  I can’t believe we went through the same schools and had the same teachers and see things so differently.  There’s still the threat of nuclear attack but more so from a terrorist group than from another nation.  There’s societal distrust of the institutions of authority but blind allegiance given to authoritarian figures.  Then, there’s the impending Climate crisis.  That one really worries me.  

Jesus said, “But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers will be shaken.”  That’s a style of writing called “Apocalyptic” and he’s just saying that that all the institutions and beliefs and what not that hold a society together get shaken to where nothing makes sense.  It’s like clearing an Etch-a-Sketch so you can start over.  We are in such a time as that now.  Now more than ever hope and a people who live according to hope are necessary.

Jesus says, “Keep awake.”  God will come to us in this time of upheaval, and its best we not be sleeping lest we miss it.  I don’t want to sound like one of those Bible-thumping, late-night, AM radio preachers and scare people.  No.  Quite the opposite, I want to give hope.  People are already really scared and just don’t understand what the hell is going on.  We need hope.  I started out talking about people flocking to a small town in Ohio back in the ‘80’s to see what looked like the face of Jesus rusting up on water tank.  People need to see the face of Jesus right now.  It is my prayer that he shines through our faces, our lives and isn’t just rusting away on us.  We need to keep awake.  Attend to your devotional life.  Keep in contact with people especially those shut-in.  Encourage people to work together to solve our common problems particularly the problems faced by those who are struggling. All the finger pointing and labelling people as enemies does absolutely nothing towards healing divisions.  Encourage people.  

Encourage people.  In the passage I read from 1 Corinthians Paul remarks on how God had given them so much grace meaning that God had been so evidently at work in their midst.  That being the case Paul says, “He (God) will also strengthen you to the end.”  I have been through periods in my life when everything has been upside down.  This verse has meant the world to me.  Tough, tumultuous periods come but will in time come to an end and, truly, God does strengthen us to get us through them.  In these times when everything is being turned upside down and inside out be encouragers.  I’ve run a few marathons in my life and there is nothing like another participant coming alongside you at mile 19, mile 20, when everything is its most disillusioning, hurting just as much as you are and they simply say to you, “We got this.”  Then, the next 6-7 miles go by and where the strength came to finish from?  Who knows? It just did.  Friends we got this and God will strengthen us to the end.  Encourage people.  Give hope.  Amen.

 

  

The Credibility Problem

Ephesians 1:15-23

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This is Christ the King Sunday.  The day we step up and boldly profess that Jesus rules this Universe.  I like the title the Eastern Orthodox tradition gives to Jesus with respect to this role – Pantokrator (krator means ruler, panto means all).  There’s a movie in that, I’m sure.  If Schwarzenegger can be The Terminator who comes back from the future to prevent a very dark world filled with war between humans and the intelligent machines they created; so, Jesus can be The Pantokrator - the Incarnation of God the Son; the One who was, is, and will be; the One who died and was raised and lives; he who is at all times presently working in the power of the Holy Spirit to bring about the glorious future of God’s perfecting of his Creation so that sin, death, and evil are no more; the One who will finally come to raise the dead and make it all so.  That would make a great movie, I think, but we would need longer than an hour on Sunday morning to show it.  It has the potential of be as long as history itself.

It’s Christ the King Sunday.  Jesus reigns.  Amen?  Well, I guess we should say how he reigns because the obviousness of that fact isn’t that (how shall we say it?) obvious.  People do ask, “Well, if Jesus reigns, why is the world so messed up?  Why doesn’t he just go ahead and fix it?”  That’s a tough one and we can only commiserate with the asker, because we people of faith suffer in this world too and it sure would be nice if God would just go ahead put it to rights.  We just can’t answer that “why not yet?” question.  God has to answer that himself.  

  Looking again at the question of how Jesus reigns, a part of the answer to that question, which we can speak to, would be that for now, Jesus manifests his reign in this world most obviously through his people, his body, his brothers and sisters on earth bound to him by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, we who know ourselves to be the beloved children of God just as Jesus is the Beloved Son of God the Father.  I’ll be careful not to get too theological here.  Let’s just say it this way: We sing “Jesus loves me, this I know.”  Yes, indeed he does.  Yet, if we want to be truly Biblical, it is more correct to sing “God the Father has adopted me and loves me just as much as he does his Only Begotten Son Jesus and I know this because the Holy Spirit has made a home in me.”  We should rather be singing that, but I’ve yet to find a catchy melody and the lyrics need tweaking.  Knowing yourself to be God’s beloved child is a good portion of the means of how Jesus reigns in this world, because, believe me, knowing that changes everything.  

Anyway, back to the topic – Jesus makes his reign visible through his Body, the Church.  Well, that’s a bit of a bitter pill for most people to swallow.  When we start talking about the Church exhibiting the Reign of Jesus, we run into some credibility issues.  In particular, throughout most of its two millennia the Church has tried to reign on Earth instead of Christ Jesus.  Popes have sat in the place of emperors.  Christian kingdoms have warred against Christian kingdoms.  Christian nations have gone to war against other Christian nations.  Christians have warred against people of other faiths.  In Modern times, in Democracies Christians have tried to govern by enforcing Christian moral values, by getting people elected who will further pseudo-Christian moral values and social agendas even to the extent of jumping into bed with Donald Trump and saying he is the one ordained by God to restore America to greatness in exchange for the hopes of the appointment of a couple of Conservative Supreme Court justices.  

The Church truly has a credibility issue when saying Jesus manifests his reign through the Church.  The institution of the Church throughout the ages has had a problem with power lust and greed to the extent of often becoming an oppressive force in the world.  Where the Church has reigned, it has not looked nor acted like Jesus.  We have instead grossly abused power.  Well, let’s talk about power.

Looking at our Ephesians passage, power, the power that belongs to Jesus, is a key topic.  It is such a key topic that Paul uses about every synonym for power that exists in the Greek language.  In translation, we see the words power, rule, authority, dominion, might, greatness, strength all within the span of a couple of verses.  The topic of power is important here, but the power that Paul refers to is not an earthly form of power.  It’s a power that belongs exclusively to God and it is above all earthly powers.  God the Father has placed all earthly powers under Jesus foot so it says.  It is so sadly ironic that the Church has historically chosen to exercise and abuse those lesser earthly powers in order to make itself great when all along we have had God’s power at our disposal and could have done great things.

Well, what kind of power are we talking about then?  Paul says it is the power that God used to raise Jesus from the dead – Resurrection power.  There is no power on earth to which we can compare this power.  We know no energy or force that can raise the dead.  But, God’s power can be known.  Paul indicates that the more we come to know Jesus and his way of life, the more we will know this resurrection power for it will be working in us to change us to be like Jesus as he is alive from the dead.  Through knowing Jesus by the presence and work of the Holy Spirit we get a taste of Jesus’ resurrection life right now.  

But, there’s a catch.  Jesus taught that we must die to ourselves to know this life, this power.  This dying to self runs contrary to the self-seeking we are accustomed too and do by nature.  God has called us to live the Jesus Way, the Way of the Cross, the way of dying to all that the world calls success by means of living according to the teachings of Jesus.  The blessing we get in life is to know Christ Jesus and the power of his resurrection, not success and material comfort.  The way of the Christian is not simply to believe in God and be a good person and God will bless what you do with success and comfort.  It is to follow Jesus at great personal cost and reap the blessing of knowing him and coming to know ourselves as beloved by God.

Paul notes this way of life among the Ephesians.  Paul tells the Ephesians that he has heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and of their love toward all the saints.  Wouldn’t it be nice that the only thing people hear about us is about our faithful following of and trust in Jesus Christ shown in our overwhelming love for others?  You know, what people hear about you is your legacy, the reputation you leave behind.  One way to think about our legacy is think about what people would write as an epithet on our tombstone. Wouldn’t it be nice if the epithet on our tombstone read: “Worked hard all his life, but never got rich because Jesus taught him to share it with others.”  We’ve heard the phrase, “Never met a stranger” about those people who can just talk to anybody.  Well, how about, “She never met a stranger she didn’t help”?  Would our tombstones reflect faithfulness to Christ in any kind of way or would it just be dates that say nothing?

Paul then goes to say that hearing of their faithfulness and love, he prays for them.  Paul prays that God would give the Ephesians (and us) a Spirit of wisdom and revelation as we come to know him.  Wisdom isn’t the ability to whip out catchy phrases about life that find their way onto coffee mugs.  Wisdom concerns the way we live our lives.  In Paul’s teaching, wisdom is living according to the Way of the Cross; and, when we live according to the Way of the Cross revelation happens meaning what God is up to in the world becomes evident.  Paul indicates that this wisdom and revelation will become ours the more we get to know Jesus, which means building that relationship with him.  

Paul also prays for the enlightening of the eyes of our hearts.  That is a rich phrase.  It means to see life, the world, others through sight that is forged in devotion to Christ.  It means always looking about for the opportunity of living according to our devotion to Christ Jesus.  We know of people whose motivation in life is “What’s in it for me?”  Our motivation should rather be asking “How can I serve the Lord who reigns in love in this situation?”  To do that it is necessary we fell devotion to Jesus.  That’s what faith is.  Faith isn’t just believing stuff.  Faith is felt devotion, loyal friendship with Jesus, which we express in the way we live our lives. 

Paul prays this prayer for us so that we may come to know the hope – know the hope – to which we have been called.  Hope!  Who do you know that doesn’t need hope?  The way of life in Christ makes evident the hope of salvation.  By it we help God powerfully bring healing to his diseased creation.  People living the Way of the Cross, putting self aside to act in unconditional love, is the path to the healing of nations.

Paul prays this prayer for us so that we may come to know and share in the abundant overflowing wealth of the inheritance that belongs to Jesus…the wealth he means isn’t money or material wealth.  It is the wealth of knowing ourselves to be God’s beloved children; the wealth of knowing we will live the resurrection life in a creation that God has healed and made new because we taste of it now because the presence of the Holy Spirit moves in us.  We feel the presence of God with us. 

Finally, Paul prays this prayer for us so that we may come to know the immeasurable greatness of God’s exercising his universe creating/life-changing/resurrection power on our behalf.  I don’t know if you have had moments where the only way to explain them is to say God stepped in and fixed what was unfixable, healed what was unhealable, loved me when I thought myself unlovable, stopped me when I was out of control.  I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

That universe creating, life changing, new creation making, resurrection power is how Jesus reigns until he comes again.  It is not of this world.  It comes from God’s very self and we find it by living according to faith, hope, and love.  That’s how Jesus reigns now.  Oh, for a world where Christians quit trying to control nations by earthly powers of coercion and rather devoted ourselves to Jesus, seeking to know him above all else.  The credibility problem would be solved.  Amen.  

We Belong to the Day

 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11

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Years ago, when I lived in West Virginia, I used to drive over to Virginia the Sunday before American Thanksgiving to meet my brother at my grandmother’s so that we could get up early the next morning and go hunting on opening day of Deer Season.  We would get up 3:30AM-ish to drive to his piece of mountain property near Vesuvius, VA.  Then, we would hike in and take our stands before sunrise to await any deer passing through.  Now, I need to admit that I lost my nerve to pull the trigger on anything a long time ago.  I went with him mostly just in case he shot something.  I could help him drag it out.  He was way overweight and not in the best of shape.  There’s nothing worse than getting your deer then suffering its revenge of giving you a heart attack dragging it out.

I enjoyed those mornings standing under a tree in the crisp cool air as the sun came up, watching and waiting.  The critters and birds all begin to wake up and rustle and wrestle about.  The light in the woods goes through its shades of blues and greens and purples and pinks.  Then, as the sun makes its way into the sky the darkness fades away to become only shadows of trees.  It begins to warm and everything glistens with the dew – a new day.  Once the sun was up we would hike out and cap the morning off by stopping at a little convenience store in Vesuvius, VA for a very salty country ham biscuit.

Please allow me to step back and be a bit theological and metaphorical about things and have a look at our reading from 1 Thessalonians.  Paul says we belong to the day.  A new day dawning, when you’re out in the woods like that a new day dawning can be an absolutely beautiful moment.  Metaphorically, theologically, we, Jesus people, belong to that beauty.  Day brings with it the hopes of a new day to live and enjoy and accomplish something.  We belong to that hope.  Day brings with it the end of the darkness of night and all the uncertainties, fears, and lack of safety.  Thieves do their thieving more readily at night under the cover of darkness.  People who wish to party and carry on tend do it at night.  It’s less shameful that way and it doesn’t interfere with the day’s work.  We belong to daylight’s security and sobriety.  We, the Jesus people, we belong to the day.

Paul talks about the day in the sense of the Day of the Lord.  The Day when God the Father will finally say, “Enough!” and send the Jesus the Son back from Heaven to Earth in the fullness of the power of the Holy Spirit to put things to rights.  That Day, like a thief in the night, will come with surprise; but not unexpectedly. Paul indicates that it will be like the labour pains pregnant women go through.  Those pains are beyond description and every pregnant woman knows they’re coming.  For those who live for the night, for the darkness, that Day will not be pleasant.  They will know what it is to be put to rights.  It’s like waking up the morning after a party and realizing the mess that needs to be cleaned up and remembering the ass you made of yourself or worse and realizing all you’re going to have to do to fix what you’ve done.

Paul uses the word Wrath.  It’s an interesting word in Greek.  It’s where we get our word orgy, but in Greek it isn’t a sex party.  It is a very passionate anger.  We have difficulty (or at least I think we should have difficulty) squaring up a loving God with a wrathful God.  There are End Timer’s out there who paint the picture of a wrathful God coming in very impassioned anger like Godzilla to Tokyo and destroying everything and sending all the wicked people to a fiery Hell to suffer forever and ever.  

Well, I’ve grown to have a lot of difficulty with that image of God’s wrath.  I am under the impression that what God does when he comes and is passionately angry at these humans he has created is to hold us accountable, not to act vengefully to destroy us, but to heal us.  The judgement of God will in the end be restorative, healing, rather than retributive (you get what you deserve).  The Bible is clear that at the Resurrection everybody will be raised and everybody will face judgement.  Everybody will stand in the presence of God fully able to feel the fullness of God’s love but along with feeling that love comes the piercing self-awareness of “Oh my God, look what I’ve done; look what I’ve been; look how I’ve wasted the life you’ve given me.”  That’s feeling naked and ashamed; wanting to hide but there’s nowhere to hide from the love of God.  To me, that’s how I make sense out of all the metaphorical language the Bible uses to talk about what we call Hell.  I say “what we call Hell” because the word Hell and the ideas we associate with it do not appear in the Bible in its original languages.  That’s a topic for another day.

In Christ, we who belong to him get a taste of judgement now, a taste of the love of God that exposes our brokenness and heals us.  The result of this judgement isn’t condemnation, rather it leads to our salvation. The Greek word we translate as salvation can be translated interchangeably with healing.  God’s judgement saves us by healing us of the disease we call sin.  We can jokingly say “God’s going to get you for that” but what we are really saying is that when God “gets us”, God heals us.  It doesn’t feel nice to go through it.  God’s saving judgement digs up a lot of shame and emotional pain and we have to eat some crow, but the resultant healing is the beauty of a new day.

In the end, when the Day of the Lord comes and the night of the way things presently are comes to its expected and hoped for end, God will save and heal his whole creation from the effects of our disease we call sin.  Until then, since we belong to the day, we have the responsibility to live now accordingly.  Paul gives some guidance.  He says, “Let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.”  Let’s look at these briefly.

By saying “Let us be sober” Paul isn’t necessarily referring to abstaining from alcohol and other substances; though avoiding substance abuse is always a good idea.  He means it figuratively, meaning to keep watchful and aware of the coming of morning, watching for what God is up to.  To be sensible and not fanatical.  It’s remaining prayerful and studious of the Scriptures and doing that not only on our own but together, with one another.

Next Paul makes reference to putting on protective gear, a breastplate and a helmet.  Some of the Thessalonian believers had probably faced death in the coliseum by battling wild animals and gladiators as punishment for appearing to be treasonous for claiming that Jesus is Lord rather than Caesar.  They would have faced that battle without protective gear.  So here Paul tells them that their breastplate is their faith and love and their helmet is the hope of salvation.  In the Hebrew way of thinking, faith and/or rather faithfulness and love are matters of the heart, the part of us where the will and desire and drive are located.  Faith/faithfulness and love are fitting to be our breastplate to protect our hearts as we stand defenceless in this life not seeking our own gain or power for ourselves but rather seeking Christ Jesus’s benefit and his kingdom reign for all.  

As the hope of salvation is our helmet which sits on our heads, we can also say that hope is a matter of the mind or mindedness or our orientation in life.  To put on the helmet of the hope of salvation is to wrap one’s mind around God’s ultimate acting in his creation to triumph over all that distorts and destroys it and how our lives now fit into God’s ultimate triumph.  It is to be minded towards, oriented towards, pointed towards God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven.  Instead of being minded on the things of the world, it is to be minded on the things of God in this world and how he is and will ultimately put it to right and strive to be a part of that.

That said, we as Christians step into this battle of life, God’s battle for the renewal of his creation, defenceless.  Where the world fights with some pretty mean weapons, as we ourselves have done, we must now stand as Jesus did, in the power of the Holy Spirit in the apparent weakness of only faith and love with our minds set on being signposts in this world that point to the reality of the Day when God will triumph.  As individuals we must prayerfully strive for justice, peace, fairness, and equality in our immediate lives – in our homes, in our work places, among our neighbours.  As communities of faith we must do so at the larger scale of neighbourhoods, cities, and regions and so on.  And let us not forget the Creation itself, the environment, this planet which groans in labour pains awaiting that Day.  We, you and I, us together are signposts of the coming of God’s salvation in this world.  Let’s wrap our minds around this and live our lives accordingly. 

Paul ends with saying, “Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up, as indeed you are doing.”  That’s how I will end this morning as well.  All of you in all four of my churches do a beautiful job of encouraging and supporting one another.  In my humble opinion, it is obvious that you belong to the day.  Amen.

 

Incline Your Heart

 Joshua 24:1-3,13-28

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This passage from Joshua makes me want to look back over the last couple of decades and ponder how God has moved me around brought me to where I am.  From time to time people ask me how it happened that I came to Canada.  I usually tell them, “Following the Banjo”.  Then after they say, “What”, I tell them a truncated version of my story, a story of how a good friend of mine in West Virginia held banjo and fiddle camps that he let me frequent.  There were other frequent offenders who came down from the Toronto area to learn from him.  I got to know one of them well enough to come up and visit Toronto.  W hen it was time to move on from the church in West Virginia, I made application both up here and in the States and Claude Presbyterian Church in Caledon, Ontario happened to be where the call came from.  I was happy to come for I had always had the sense that my call to the ministry would involve an international border crossing. So, on March 4^th, 2003 (no pun intended) followed by ten inches of snow, I finally arrived to live and work in Canada.  

I say that’s a truncated version because I leave out most of the “God stuff”.  Here’s some of that.  I was in my mid-thirties and had recently been through the death of my father and a divorce and I needed a break from the ministry.  The folks in West Virginia were overwhelmingly supportive of me through all that.  But it was just too small of a bowl to be a public figure in while going through all that so I prayerfully decided to resign and move on.  The morning I mailed out the letter announcing my resignation to the congregation after leaving the post office I went home and sat in my recliner.  My head was literally buzzing in anxiety at what I had just done.  Suddenly, I heard the sound of running water and a voice said to me, “You will see what will come, Randy”.  I never had anything like that happen before or since.  

About a month later I was in Toronto visiting and had the opportunity to attend a Presbyterian worship service up here for the first time.  It just happened that the sermon was on Genesis 12 when God told Abraham “Go!  Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.”  Oddly (weirdly), on the back of the service bulletin was a story of an elderly man recently widowed packing up his belongings and leaving his home not sure of where he was going.  He found a place he liked , settled, and eventually remarried.  I am wary of putting too much weight upon something that seems coincidental but that had me thinking, hoping that up to Canada would be were God would bring me to start over.  

Well, back to hearing and seeing things, a few months later I was into the process of making applications and lining up interviews. While I was praying one morning, I suddenly saw a church building I had never seen before.  I wondered if vision of a church was what the voice meant by saying I would see what will come.  I had three interviews lined up in Ontario in the course of a week in October of 2002.  The first two interviews went well.  While I was heading for the billet for my interview with Claude, well, you should have seen the double-take I did when I drove up HWY 10 north of Brampton and there prominently stood Claude Presbyterian Church, the church I had seen that morning while praying.  At that point I had no doubt God was making me a promise and was keeping it.  I moved to Canada.  Like the man in the story on the back of the service bulletin, I, in time, met Dana and we married.  A couple of years later, a few months after William was born I was looking out the living room window at the cloud cover before a run and suddenly the LORD impressed upon me, “Look at where I’ve brought you.”  He had kept his promise.  Where I stand today is his doings not my own.  I just had to go along for the ride.  

God was very much with me at that time in my life.  Yet, time has gone on and we are up here in Grey Bruce and I’m serving a four church Cooperative apparently something I’m uniquely qualified to do.  So goes life here in my Promised Land and it’s good.  God has been faithful.  But, it’s different now. God’s not so readily needed by me and so I have to work a lot harder at the relationship with God now.  More about that in a minute. 

Looking at Joshua, in the verses preceding our passage this morning, which incidentally were his last words to the Israelite people before he died, Joshua said something I can relate to, “And now I am about to go the way of all the earth, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed of all the good things that the LORD your God promised concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one of them has failed.”  Then he goes on to recount all God had done for them from the promise of Abraham to where they stood that day in the Promised Land the promise fulfilled. 

Our God is a God who makes promises and keeps them.  I have certainly experienced this for myself.  I hope you have as well.

Having set that stage I have to move on to the troubling matter of human nature that this passage is really about.  So, there they stood the people of God’s own choosing, saving, and establishing.  They were originally nomads, then slaves, and now a nation living in cities they did not build eating the fruit of vineyards and olive trees that they did not plant.  At this point we would expect Joshua to launch into a litany of praise and thanksgiving for the steadfast love and faithfulness of the LORD.  Right?  He doesn’t.  Instead, he warns them about idolatry, about worshipping the gods of their Mesopotamian ancestors and the gods of Egypt where they were enslaved and the gods of the Amorites and the Canaanites in the land God had now given them.  He tells them to put those gods away and choose that day whom they will serve for as surely as the LORD had given them a land and made them to be a great nation, the LORD could just as easily take it all away.  

That’s an interesting twist.  Some commentators try to explain it by saying that the Book of Joshua was written during captivity in Babylon when idolatry and its ill-effects were the predominant reasons the prophets had given for God letting his temple in Jerusalem be destroyed and his people taken from the land.  But, I think there is still a more straight forward answer for Joshua’s twist: the people were still worshipping other gods.  After all this wonderful stuff the LORD God had done for them, they were still worshipping foreign gods, still worshipping foreign gods.  Their response to the mighty acts of the LORD was to secretly worship other gods in their homes.

Well, I wonder if Joshua’s speech and challenge is just a sad commentary on the Israelites of long ago or is it that he is saying that idolatry is endemic to human nature.  The answer to both those questions is yes.  Ancient Israel was rarely if ever free from idolatry and they stand representative of the people of God in all times and all places, us included.  We are still idolatrous.  Idolatry is endemic to human nature.  

We may not be like ancient times with idols in temples and all that.  But, just think about this; in Western Culture we are descended from Greek and Roman culture.  Though dressed a bit differently these days, the ancient Greek/Roman pantheon of gods still exist in our culture today.  Just look at the world of advertising, turn on the TV, read the paper and you will see them: Zeus, the god of power, is still around; Aries the god of war, Bacchus the god of party ‘til you barf, Eros and Aphrodite the god and goddess of beauty, love, and sex are still around; the election down in the States shows clearly that Emperor and Empire worship are still around.  Those gods are all still around…and well served.      

Idolatry everywhere pervades our lives.  I fully understand what Joshua meant when after the Israelites made a whole-hearted declaration to serve the LORD he said, “You cannot serve the LORD.”  Meaning they were unable to serve the LORD exclusively. So it is with us!  That is our predicament too.  Idolatry of money, sex, power, nation, religion, even family – truly every nook and cranny of our lives are tainted with devotion to something other than our God.  I confess it for myself.  This endemic idolatry is a problem even for the preacher.  What can we do?

Well, Joshua advised his people to put away those false gods and incline their hearts to the LORD – incline our hearts to the LORD.  Well, the heart has to do with devotion, desire, motive.  What we want and why we do what we do to get what we want.  We have to redirect what we want in our hearts from being our own idolatrous desires to being devotion to God.

Settling in the Promised Land the Israelites faced a problem that they didn’t have in the wilderness.  While they wandered in the wilderness they were gathered as one people and there were visible reminders that the LORD was with them – the whirlwind cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, the presence of Moses.  They were one people gathered around one God.  But in Promised Land, they were scattered and did not have those strong reminders of God’s presence with them.  All they had was a Levite priest and his family living among them whom they had to support, probably begrudgingly.  Therefore, many to most Israelites turned to the gods of the people of the Land they conquered.  They kept household gods, little Barbie and Ken size idols of the Canaanite gods, and worshipped them in secret while publicly claiming to be the people of the LORD.  Over time the secret worship would become public worship and that’s when they got in trouble with God.

We face a similar problem as we are scattered to our homes all over the place among a people that’s largely secular but de voted to the gods endemic to our culture.  How do we keep ourselves devoted to our LORD?  Incline our hearts to God.  Incline means to lean in, to lean in like your trying to hear somebody better.  When children come to speak to us we often lean down to their level to give them our full attention.  So, we must lean ourselves to God to hear him better.  Here’s a suggestion.

There was a monk who lived back in the 1600’s around Paris, France named Brother Lawrence.  He wrote a little book called “The Practice of the Presence of God” which you can get free on the net.  He lived in a monastery and followed a very worshipful routine of gathering in the sanctuary with his brethren several times a day to worship and pray.  Yet, he pondered the question of how he could remain aware of God’s presence when he was away from the sanctuary and doing his daily tasks.  They had difficulty seeing how God, whom they believed to dwell exclusively in sacred places, could be with them out in the world.  He concluded that he just had to train himself to be mindful that God was present with him in the same way that somebody else might be in the room with him and to train himself to be conversing with God as much as he could.  He found that the more he felt he was spending time with God outside the sanctuary, the more he grew to love God and to want what God wants.  

The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.  Give it a read.  Give his practice a try.  For myself, this practice has been an important part of my devotional life since I discovered it 30 years ago in university.  Amen.