Is This Love?

1 Peter 1:13-23

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You remember a few years ago when civil war broke out in Syria a huge refugee crisis erupted.  Here in the Owen Sound area, many small groups began organizing to sponsor refugee families to come start a new life.  The people in these groups made sacrifices of time and finances to help these folks come here to start a new life, the old life having been destroyed by war.

When the New Comers got here they had to learn how to navigate a new culture, which meant learning English, Canadian currency and banking, Canadian laws, Western Judeo-Christian values.  They all seem to be doing quite well.  They are very grateful to their sponsors, grateful for the shot at new life they’ve been given and they show their gratitude by working hard to succeed and trying to contribute to the community.  They are also very keen to share bits of their culture – coffee, food, gifts, crafts.  They know that every eye is upon them, that there are prejudiced people who don’t want them here, yet they have chosen the high road and sought to give back to the community.  They are living lives proper to the grace they have been shown knowing that sacrifices were made so that they might have a new life albeit as resident aliens in a foreign land.

In our reading from 1 Peter, Peter makes the analogy that Christian life is like living as resident aliens in a foreign land.  His main point is that we must live our new lives with a sense of reverent fear or proper awe towards the One who has given us a new birth and the way we do that is to show genuine mutual love to one another, loving one another deeply from the heart and without ceasing.  

I’m going to unpack this passage for you and it is very rich in imagery and each of those images need their dimes worth of time in the parking meter, but where we’ll come out is that we are human beings who were once slaves to worthless living but who have been given a new birth.  We were redeemed out of that life and born into a new family – the family of God – at the price of the life of the Messiah Jesus.  Therefore, we live accordingly in genuine mutual love.

The first image we need to work with is that of new birth.  We are born anew.  In the Roman world this meant that you were newly begotten by a god.  It’s the language of conversion kicked up a notch.  It didn’t mean you just switched a religion.  Begotten meant that you had been newly sired with the seed of a god.  

This is your chance to snicker uncomfortably.  The funniest funeral I have ever attended was for a man who literally wrote the book on artificial insemination in pigs.  Several of his friends from that field of work said a few words and the innuendo abounded and everybody laughed robustly.  So also, siring is not a topic we generally discuss from the pulpit especially about our relationship to God but that is the language being used here.  If you feel uncomfortable, snicker.

We are born anew, sired anew of the imperishable seed of the God whom we call “Father” and are now part of a family line, a progeny, that is all together a new, and imperishable humanity.  The seed by which God has sired us is the Holy Spirit.  God the Father has sired us anew with the seed of the Holy Spirit and has made us to be his own progeny, brothers and sisters of and in Jesus Christ.  

Now, for God to sire us anew, God had to speak a new word of creation.  Verse 23 reads: “You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable through the life-giving and enduring word of God.”  When God speaks a word things are put to right and something new comes about.  In this case, the word he spoke was the one that raised Jesus from the dead and by this word all Creation will be made anew and the New Creation will endure forever.   We share the hope of also being raised from death and therefore we live now in faithfulness to God.

For us to share with Christ Jesus in the progeny of God and in Resurrection at the New Creation coming and in new life now, Jesus had to become as we are as sinful humans and share in the futility of death.  There are a couple of things on this topic that some early theologians in the church said quite well and quite simply.  St. Irenaeus of Lyons in the 2^nd Century said, “He became what we are so that we might become what he is” which simply means God the Son he became human so that we can become children of God and he meant that quite literally.  By God the Son becoming human as Jesus of Nazareth, God impregnated creation with his very self and one of the outcomes of that is that in Christ we become children of God filled with his life, healed with his life, and are being changed by his life in us.   

Another early theologian Gregory of Nazianzus in the 4^th Century said, “The unassumed is the unhealed.”  God the Son became fully human as we are with all our spots and blemishes so that by the life-giving power of his divine nature humanity, indeed the entirety creation, will be healed.  By becoming sinful humanity, he has healed us, indeed the entirety of Creation, of sin.  By dying our death, Jesus healed us, indeed the entirety of Creation, of death.  This goes way beyond any simple legal transaction where we gleefully sing, “Jesus died for me.  He paid my penalty and now I’m forgiven and free”.  It’s way more.  That’s just an external transaction.  What God did as Jesus was to get internal.  He got inside us in the power of the Holy Spirit to change our very being.

This leads us to one more image to unpack:  Jesus indeed paid the price of giving his own life for us.  Verse 18 reads: “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ.”  Redeeming is what you did to free a slave.  It gives freedom, worth, and dignity back to someone who has become worthless or has made themselves worthless.  In this case the condition of worthlessness was so extreme and the slave owner so vile that Jesus had to say take my life (which is of greater value) in place of all of theirs.  

To close, the God who freed us, restored our worth and dignity, and gave us new birth as his own progeny at the price of the life of his Firstborn Son is, as Peter says, the One who impartially judges the worth of every deed.  We call the God of gods “Father” as Jesus taught us to – “Our Father, who art in heaven hallowed (holy) is your name.”  If we are going to call upon God our Father then we must in everything we do show God the proper love and respect he is due.  

Verses 14 -16 read: “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’”  Over the centuries the church has gotten puritanical and judgemental over this teaching and lost its central point.  The central point is love.  God is holy not because he doesn’t do bad, naughty, dirty things, but because he is love.  To be holy as God is holy is to live according to the unconditional sacrificial love he showed us as Jesus and the way he gave his life for us.

Therefore, in everything we do we must be mindful of the question, is this love.  This pandemic is giving us who are the progeny of God the opportunity to show the love of God.  In love, we practice social distancing in order to protect our elderly and vulnerable, in order to keep our healthcare system from becoming overwhelmed so that if somebody has a normal health crisis like a heart attack they can be treated.  Yes, the economy is and will take a hit and that means that we, the progeny of God, in love need to be generous.  Fortunately, here in Canada our Federal and Provincial governments are doing their best to look after the basic income needs of everybody rather than saying let’s get the economy going again as soon as possible because the wealth of wealthy people is all that matters.  

Faith is our participating in the sphere of reality where the promises of God are coming about.  We do this through showing love, living our lives in proper awe of the one who in love gave us a new birth into a hope-filled life.  There are big-haired, big church pastors down in the States who say “We have faith that God won’t let the virus get us so let’s meet for church”.  That’s not faith.  That’s delusion, ego-mania, greed, and just plain evil.  When Satan was tempting Jesus, he challenged Jesus to put God to the test by throwing himself off the highest part of the Temple because Scripture promises that angels would catch him.  Putting God to the test is exactly what those ministers are doing.  True faith is what love does.  Amen.

What Is Faith?

1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-29

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One of my all-time favourite movies is The Princess Bride.  There’s a character in it named Vizzini who overused the word “inconceivable”.  He used it so much that another one of the characters, Inigo Montoya (himself known for saying, “Hello.  My name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die.”) had to make the accusation, “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”  Sometimes we can use a word and use a word and use a word so much that in time we forget what the word actually means and instead it means what we want it to mean.  For Vizzini, well, he thought of himself as a very brilliant strategist who could best anyone in a game of wits.  If he made a plan and something happened that wasn’t in the plan, then it was inconceivable; meaning if he did not think of it, then it was inconceivable.   

We Christians also have a word that we use a lot about which we could and should receive the same accusation.  We use it so much that it has taken on a meaning to us that is different that what the Biblical writers would have it to mean.  The word is faith.  We use the word faith so much that maybe we have to accept the fact that we don’t now what it actually means or should I say what it meant to the writers of the Bible.

We tend to think of faith as believing certain things or putting our trust in something.  We believe there is a God.  Christians have beliefs about God that differ from the beliefs that people of other “faiths” have.  We trust that God loves us and will provide for us.  When bad things happen we have faith or believe that God has his reasons and we trust he’ll work good from it.  Here at Easter we profess that we believe God raised Jesus from the dead is a historical fact and that that event is crucial to our faith.

Well, in the last ten or so years in the realm of New Testament studies there has been a number of people doing historical and language work on what the word we translate as “faith” means.  If you wondering, the noun form is pistis and the verb is pisteuo.  These scholars have taken the time to do the very tedious work of finding every known occurrence of it we have from the first couple of centuries of the church in both the writings of the church and from general culture.  They found that the word wasn’t used very much to mean belief and trust the way we use it. 

These scholars found that the word applied to how one behaved in a relationship and that our words loyalty or allegiance are better words to use to describe what faith is in the Bible.  Faith primarily means being faithful rather than just believing and trusting.  Faith is what soldiers do when they serve their countries and follow the chain of command.  Faith is what civil servants do when they serve the country and its citizens.  And my favourite, faith is how the relationship works between thugs and their crime boss.  

Faith isn’t just believing or trusting in the existence of things we can’t see.  Faith is participation in a relationship to which we are committed whether it be with God or with spouse or with parents or friends or an employer.  Faith isn’t like our simply saying I believe I have a job.  Faith is that I have a job and therefore I will be loyal in my obligation to my employer.  Faith isn’t simply believing I have a wife.  Faith is that I have a wife and I will be loyal to her.

Well, when you look at the New Testament and ask what did its writers mean by faith, you find that faith isn’t just believing stuff or trusting.  The best way I can sum it up is to say that faith is our participation in the sphere of reality in which God is making his promises come about.  Faith is our participation in the sphere of reality where God has called a people to himself through whom he is and will work out his purposes for his creation.  

We like to think that faith is how we get saved (Believe this about Jesus and go to heaven).  Faith is not how we get saved.  Faith is our participation in the salvation that God has brought about in, through, and as Jesus Christ in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit; the salvation that God Big Banged into real history by raising Jesus from the dead.  Faith is our participation now in the New Creation that God sparked into being by and as the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead; the New Creation that he will bring to its fruition when Jesus returns and this Old Creation will be changed to be “full of the knowing of God as the waters cover the sea” (Is. 11:9).  

It says here in 1 Peter 1:3, “God in his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Crist from the dead.”  Faith is our living now that new life that is marked by a living hope – not a wishful thinking hope - because God himself has stepped into our lives and marked us with the presence of his very self, the Holy Spirit, so that we now want to live for him as followers of Jesus Christ.  Faith is that we find ourselves having an inexplicable allegiance to Jesus and desire to live for him and live like him.

To use an offhanded example here, a few months ago a virus common to bats somewhere in Asia mutated and jumped species to an exotic rodent that was captured and brought to a wet market in Wuhan, China.  There, the virus did it again.  It mutated and jumped species but this time into humans.  A global pandemic has ensued.  It is a deceptively contagious respiratory virus.  You can have it and not know you have it and you are contagious days before you start showing symptoms. Its effects can be very mild to very severe.  To some it is lethal, particularly the elderly and those weakened by other medical conditions. Regardless, pretty much everyone on planet earth has had to make dramatic lifestyle changes to live accordingly.  The corona virus has created a new reality in which we must live differently to prevent its lethal spread.  Something very small and seemingly insignificant happened and has changed reality for everyone and things will be different now and we have to live accordingly.

I know that’s a bad example, but using that image of something small changing everything; roughly two thousand years ago God the Son jumped species, so to speak, and became human, the man Jesus of Nazareth.  God did this in a backwater region of the Roman Empire known for its tendency to revolt. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, he took our two primary diseases of Sin and Death to himself and died setting in motion their eventual death and our cure.  God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit raised this Jesus from the dead and thus started something new, a New Creation; and, one could say a Global Pandemic of new life, hope-filled life, has ensued.  Creation is now changed.  Humanity is now changed. People have changed the way they do life because of this new birth into a new life.  This new life is contagious.  Not everybody gets it, but hopefully, at the end, everyone will.  Those who got it display symptoms from mild to severe, but at the very least they find they have the sense that they are beloved children of God and that things are different.  They have a hope and a joy.  That sense of being loved by God develops into a love for others that changes the way people relate to one another.  This pandemic of the love of God is the cure for God’s good Creation particularly for broken, hurting humanity.

Faith isn’t just that we believe God raised Jesus from the dead as a historical fact or something.  Faith is that we are participating in that reality, the real course of historical events, that have ensued since Jesus lived, died, and was raised.  Faith is allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ and loyal participation in his kingdom reign being manifest now in us as we live as hope-filled people who are prayerful, compassionate, and gracious. Amen.

Seeing with Resurrection Eyes

Acts 10:34-48

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To talk about the resurrection we have to begin with talking about Creation and our place in it and how good it is.  Psalm 8 is a good place to start.  The psalmist writes of how wondrous the universe is.  What the Chandra and Hubble telescopes show us certainly agrees.  He also talks about us humans, how in this universe of wonder, God has chosen to love us each and how in his creation God has made us just lower than gods and given us dominion over everything.  We’re important.  We’re here to be able to say how glorious God is.

O Lord, our Lord, throughout the earth how glorious is your name,

and glorious too where unseen heavens your majesty proclaim.

On infant lips, in children’s song a strong defence you raise

to counter enemy and threat, and foil the rebel’s ways.

When I look up and see the skies which your own fingers made,

and wonder at the moon and stars, each perfectly displayed;

then must I ask, “Why do you care?  Why love humanity?

And why keep every mortal name fixed in your memory?”

Yet such as us you made and meant just less than gods to be;

with honour and with glory, Lord, you crowned humanity.

And then dominion you bestowed for all made by your hand,

all sheep and cattle, birds and fish that move through sea or land.

O Lord, our Lord, throughout the earth how glorious is your name.

(Psalm 8, Paraphrase, John Bell)

In talking about the resurrection, we start with Creation and how good it is and with us and God’s love for us and his purpose for us and then move on to ask, “How can God let death - stinky, rotten, decaying death - be the final word in his very good creation;?”   Well, the answer is, “He doesn’t.”  Resurrection and New Creation is God’s final word on the matter.

 If we were faithful Jews back in the day of Jesus and knew the Old Testament like the back of our hands and even had a good bit of it memorized, we would know by heart many passages where the LORD had spoken and hinted that he would raise the dead, destroy death, and make all things new, and new in such a way that the whole creation is filled with the knowing, knowledge of, or knowability of God like the waters cover the seas.  For a faithful Jew back then resurrection was a certainty because the LORD God had promised it.  Just as God had really intervened in history to deliver them from slavery in Egypt, so would God really intervene for his creation and powerfully deliver it from its futile enslavement to death.

What they didn’t expect was that God himself would come as a human being and as a human being die and be raised.  They weren’t expecting that so when Jesus showed up doing things that only God himself could do (forgiving sins, raising the dead, healing people, and casting out demons) they called him a blasphemer and had him crucified at the hands of the Romans who were very good at that sort of thing.  But God raised him.  

God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit raised Jesus the Son from the dead and, as Peter says here in Acts, there were witnesses.  Paul in First Corinthians 15 says there were over five hundred witnesses besides the disciples.  As a historical fact, the resurrection of Jesus is better attested than even the death of Socrates.  It happened.  God really raised Jesus from the dead, raised him bodily.  He wasn’t a ghost or a spectre-ish mass hallucination caused by grief.  Try finding proof that ghosts are real and that such a thing as mass grief leading to a mass common hallucination actually exists.  Those things are what stand the burden of proof.  Jesus’s resurrection is well attested.

Another proof of Jesus resurrection is that the Holy Spirit continues to come and baptize people with resurrection life, new life, life in the Spirit wherever Jesus is proclaimed.  What happened in Cornelius’ house continues to happen all over the world.  The impact of this baptism in the Holy Spirit is as powerful as having died and then been raised and given a new life.  

Many people have had a brush with death that is reorienting, a real priority changer.  But when the Holy Spirit comes upon people it is an utter reorientation of one’s life around Jesus Christ and living for him and his kingdom.  It isn’t a matter of simply trying to find time to fit church into your life.  When Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit puts his hand you, you start weeding out those things that keep you from living for him and his Kingdom.  

This utter reorientation around Jesus and his kingdom awakens us to see the world, see life through resurrection eyes.  It’s seeing the world through real hope, real hope that God does love us and does act.  It’s knowing that if God loves me and has really acted upon me to heal me, to give me new life, then God will do the same for others and its my purpose now to take the message of new life in Jesus Christ to others for he will move upon them and in them just as he has done with me.  

The God who created this universe in all its wonder, wonder which can only point those who see it back to the one who created, is our God and he truly does love each one of us enough to fix our names in his memory and that’s our guarantee that he will raise us from death just as he has raised Jesus.  And, since he has raised us now to new life in Christ Jesus through the life-giving work of the Holy Spirit, what else do we have, indeed can we have, to live for.  

You know, if we look at this Coronavirus moment in our lives and see it with resurrection eyes we can see a moment of resurrection hope in it.  After Italy first went into lockdown, pictures of Venice came out showing the water in the canals clear.  Now, even dolphins are swimming in them.  I saw pictures just the other day from a small city in India showing the Himalayas off in the distance 200 miles away.  The air quality there had been so bad that they hadn’t seen those massive peaks for over 35 years and here they were clear as day.  The International Space Station is showing us how huge swaths of the planet that used to look brown from space because of air pollution are now clear.  We can’t call Toronto Foggy Hog Town anymore.  That looks like hope.

Looking at the big picture, the Corona virus threatens death not only to vulnerable individuals but also to a whole lifestyle that materialistic, consumeristic, warring, impoverishing, the rich get richer, and meanwhile we’re locked down in our homes that are probably beginning to smell like tombs; but, outside, the Creation is renewing.  To me, through the eyes of resurrection, that looks like hope coming alive.  It looks like a sign from God, a word from the God who raises the dead calling us to hope in him, to come to him and live.  Amen.

Why Do We Call This Friday "Good"

John 18-19

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In Jewish households, when they celebrate the Passover Seder, the youngest person able is given the very special responsibility of asking the Four Questions.  Those questions and the answers given explain why they share that meal on that particular night in the particular way that they do.  The first question is: “How is this night different from all other nights?”  The short answer is that on this night the LORD God delivered us from slavery in Egypt.  Well, if we on the Christian side of the fence had a similar tradition of questions concerning Good Friday, the first question to ask would be: “Why do we call this Friday Good?”  

So, why do we call this Friday good when it seems so bad?  We crucified Jesus.  It seems a bit morbid to take something so grotesquely wrong and call it good…but we do.  The answer to that question is multifaceted.  It’s like putting on one of those magnifying eyepieces that jewellers wear and looking at a diamond from the face of each of its cuts or facets to appreciate the beauty of how light shines into its heart from the different angles. Using that metaphor, the church over the centuries has taken the diamond of the meaning of Good Friday and has spun it around to see the different facets and at times has said this facet is the best cut from which to appreciate the beauty of the meaning of Jesus’s death. 

The last few centuries the facet of penal substitution has been the cut that has gotten the most attention.   Penal is a legal system term referring to the punishment of an offender.  This facet emphasizes that we are sinners who have offended everything there is with respect God and his hopes and expectations and requirements of us that he spelled out in the Law, primarily the Ten Commandments.  Death, therefore, is the punishment we deserve and receive for our sin.  The Substitution factors in as Jesus, God the Son become human, stood in for us.  He took upon himself the sin of humanity, bore the judgement of “guilty” that God the Father has rendered against us, and died the penalty and punishment of death that we deserve.  So that, with the penalty paid once and for all, God the Father in turn forgives us our sin and promises eternal life to those who will follow Jesus.

Penal Substitution was good news back in the 1500’s when the Catholic church was selling indulgences as a means of getting to Heaven after you die. Back then, people lived with a very immediate fear of dying in yet another church sponsored war or in yet another plaque which seemed to breakout with regularity.  In the midst of all that fear the Sixteenth Century version of televangelism arose.  Rome sent out teams of actors to do some very imaginative street dramas that portrayed what happened to people when they went to Hell.  After the play a bishop or cardinal would preach that if they bought an Indulgence for themselves or a loved one they could get out of Hell and go to Purgatory and then, if they lived a saintly life and went on a few pilgrimages, they might even go to Heaven.  An Indulgence was simply a piece of paper, a certificate, saying a person had bought a bit of forgiveness.  Many of Europe’s most famous cathedrals were built using this method of fundraising.  

To counter this abuse, Protestants and Reformers preached the Good News that Jesus died for our sins and sprung the gates of Hell and your certificate is the very fact that you believe.  Penal Substitution put a gracious end to the spiritual abuse of Indulgences.  But, over time the overuse and twisting of this facet in the understanding of Jesus’s death by the Protestant and Reformed branches of the faith, which form the backbone of what we label as Evangelicalism today, has robbed this facet of its original grace and made it to become a powerful tool of spiritual abuse akin to the selling of indulgences…’nough said. 

Penal Substitution is only one facet of a multifaceted diamond as I’ve said.  There are several other facets to be viewed. One of the earliest understandings of Jesus’s death and which likely dominates in the letters of Paul is what we call Christus Victor, Christ the Victor.  By his death and resurrection Jesus defeated all the powers of darkness that are destroying God’s good creation and holding us as slaves to sin and death and so, now, with the powers defeated, Jesus sits rightfully enthroned as Lord over all creation.  He now is spreading his reign of love here on earth by the gift of the Holy Spirit who creates true human community in his image until he comes to bring his eternal Kingdom in its fullness and ultimately do away with the powers.  In the Christus Victor facet the forgiveness of our sins is a secondary consequence to the victory Jesus has won over the powers; sin and death being among them.  

The Christus Victor message was Good News to a church persecuted.  When you’re being persecuted and put to death by corrupt political powers because of your faith in Jesus as Lord, knowing that he is the ultimate Victor over those powers and feeling the assurance of the presence of the Holy Spirit gave you strength to endure.  This facet still emboldens the church persecuted in many parts of the world today.

Another facet of the diamond of the death of Jesus that was around in the early church was the medical metaphor of our being healed of the disease of sin which culminates in death.  This facet understands that Sin is a disease of the mind.  It’s not simply that we do bad, immoral, unethical things.  It’s that there is something gone awry in our minds so that we perceive God, ourselves, and the world wrongly and in turn do horrible things.  

Its like alcoholism.  If you try to cure an alcoholic by calling them bad for drinking the way they do, you will only empower the feelings of shame and isolation that drive and feed the mental disease of addiction.  An alcoholic is powerless over alcohol in the same way that every human is powerless over sin.  

Well, as Jesus, God himself became human and like a poultice draws infection from a wound, he drew humanity’s disease of Sin to himself and put it to death by his death; and thus became the beginning of a healed creation evidenced in his resurrection and now being spread through the presence and powerful working of the Holy Spirit among those whom he has raised to new life as the proof that he will ultimately heal the whole creation when he returns.

In this facet, the medicinal facet, the forgiveness of sins isn’t simply a legal declaration.  Forgiveness of sins is something the followers of Jesus live out in their community through unconditional love.  In Hebrew and Greek the predominate words we translate as forgive mean to pick up and carry, to bear.  It’s not this “I’m sorry/I forgive transactional thing.”  

Remember the story of the four men who tore through the roof of the house where Jesus was preaching so that they could lower their paralyzed friend on the mat of his shame, so to speak, down to Jesus so that Jesus could heal him.  The Gospels say that when Jesus saw their faithfulness, not the faith of the man on the mat but rather of the four friends, he then said to the man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”  The forgiveness of the man’s sins was that these four men together were carrying their broken friend to Jesus that he could be healed; and that’s exactly what happened.  Jesus made him able to take up his mat and go home.  

Forgiveness is our Christian community bearing with us in all our faults bringing us to Jesus to be healed.  It takes a lot of love and patience to do that.  Forgiveness is not some easy, legal transaction.

Friends, there is healing and new life in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit for the sin diseased; and that’s everybody.  I think that this medicinal facet is the facet of the diamond of Jesus’ death that people need to hear today.  Everybody hurts.  Everybody is paralyzed in some way.  Everybody has their own mat of shame.  Jesus can heal and he does heal and he does it in the midst of fellowship in his name.  That’s friends getting together for the purpose of sharing themselves with one another and asking Jesus to take our burdens and heal us.  The astounding thing is that he actually does.  

The Gospel enacted for people today does not look like the institution of the church.  It looks like prayer-filled group therapy among small groups of friends and neighbours gathered around Jesus…and Jesus is there to heal.  I hope that as this COVID disease makes its way around the world that we humans in lockdown will take the time to take note of that greater disease that’s killing us all and hunger for its healing.  Jesus is the Cure.  The Holy Spirit is the Vaccine.  Amen.

Shouting Hosanna

Matthew 21:1-11

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Throughout the couple of decades of my ministry career Palm Sunday has always been a big day for the kid’s.  At some point during the service, the kids would parade around the sanctuary waving their palm branches and shaking tambourines and banging drums while the congregation sang, “Hosanna, loud hosanna, the little children sang; through pillared court and temple the joyful anthem rang.  To Jesus, who held them close folded to his breast, the children sang their praises, the simplest and the best.”  This was the Sunday children got to make a lot of noise in church!

My first church had a lot of kids.  We made a lot of noise.  My second church a small church with a small group of kids.  We had a lot of fun, but that group of kids grew up and teens when they come are too cool for palm waving.  My last few years…well, we’ve had to raise the age of childhood up to 70+ in order to have children.  We still pick up a handful of palm branches, just in case.  And, we all sing with a bit of the sorrow and the anger of lament in our voices as we miss the joyful noise of all those children banging and clanging in a well-attended service.  We ask God, “Why are there no children any more?  Will they ever come back?” and God gives no answer.

Then there’s this year – isolation.  This year we aren’t even meeting in our churches today.  We are sequestered in our houses as the corona virus is crossing the globe like an occupying army of aliens.  We have to keep our distance from people because we don’t know who might be harbouring the enemy.  We have to wash our hands a lot as if it were a religious ritual because purity will help fight this thing.

Oh dear, I’m sorry.  I might be adding to the little bit of depression we are all feeling now.  But, stick with me.  I’m just trying to set the stage for us to take the opportunity to rethink Palm Sunday a little bit.  You see, it may be that the way we’ve understood and celebrated the events behind this Sunday – King Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey to the praises of a crowd – might be a little to sugar-coated, a little too nostalgic a celebration than it originally was.  Let’s step back in time here for a moment.

The people in this crowd and the people in Jerusalem were also living under occupation.  The Roman Empire and its viral army permeated the land.  The people led sequestered lives.  You didn’t want to be out too late for the Romans might think you were an insurrectionist.  You didn’t know whom you could trust, so you kept your thoughts to yourself.  You kept yourself distant.  There were zealous religious types wanting you to wash your hands, wash your dishes, and forbidding you from interacting with certain types because purity was what they believed would get God to act faster to save his people while impurity would bring down his wrath.  It is to a people under a worse occupation than we are under now that Jesus came “humble, and riding on a donkey”.

The crowds shouted “Hosanna”, but hosanna does not mean what we think it means.  We have come to think that “Hosanna” is just another ancient word like “Hallelujah” that simply means “Praise God.”  But guess what?  It’s not.  It’s actually a term crying out for political deliverance.  It means “Save us now” or “Deliver us now”.  Sorry.  Ancient word lesson coming.

Hosanna is a Greekification of the Hebrew phrase, “Hoshiah Nah.”  “Hoshiah” comes from theHebrew verb Yashah which means “to save” or “to deliver”.  “Nah” means now.  “Hoshiah nah” – hosanna – means “Save us now.”  And wait…there’s more.  The Hebrew name we know as Joshua also comes from this word and it means “Deliverer” or “Saviour”.  You may or may not know that the name Jesus is actually the Greekification of the Hebrew name Joshua.  Jesus’s name means “Saviour” or Deliverer” and that is a political term.   A saviour, a deliverer is a leader one who comes and saves, who deliverers God’s people from the enemies who are oppressing them.  

When Jesus road into Jerusalem that day the crowd was singing out a very politically charged chant. “Save us now, Saviour Jesus, Son of David, who is coming on the authority of God bringing in salvation from the highest reaches of heaven.”  Salvation here doesn’t mean going heaven when you die, either.  It is the presence of the Kingdom of God on earth casting out the oppressive rulers.

Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and its foal.  Matthew quotes an Old Testament prophecy or rather misquotes it.  It’s actually not from Isaiah. It’s the prophet Zechariah and Matthew leaves out that he is coming victoriously and triumphantly as Zechariah says.  Matthew wants us to see that Jesus is coming humbly in a very un-Roman-like way.  Let me give you some more historical background.  

Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor, didn’t live in Jerusalem year round.  He only came to Jerusalem for the big Jewish festivals with a lot of soldiers in tow in order to give the impression of a strong Roman presence to discourage uprisings.  Jesus rode into Jerusalem about four days before the Passover festival and that would have been about the same time Pontius Pilate arrived.  Pilate would have come to town either riding a huge Roman warhorse or in a carriage surrounded by mounted soldiers.  Pilate’s crowd would have been hundreds of Roman soldiers.  

Compare that to Jesus riding into town on a donkey surrounded by a crowd of poor people, tax collectors, lepers, prostitutes, religious zealots chanting, “Save us now, Jesus, Son of David.  The Blessed One who comes in the Name of the Lord with saving power from on high.” (or something to that effect.)  No wonder Jerusalem was in turmoil.  They would have been expecting the Romans to slaughter this ragtag, larger than five persons gathering because what it was doing was a blatant insult to Caesar’s authority.

Uh oh.  I think I’ve lost my train of thought.  Let me see if I can get it back.  We’re kind of under occupation by a virus and the people back in Jesus day were under Roman occupation.  Hosanna means “Save us now.”  And, Jesus shows up in a very humble way to do that.  You know, I think I’ve just been spending too much time holed up in my attic office looking out my lofty window at the occasional passers-by walking their little dogs while wearing their daytime pyjamas which were actually last night’s night time pyjamas.  I just found out that COVID has invaded Mapleview, the little long-term care home a block up the street here that I’ve been going to at least once a month ever-since we moved to Owen Sound to fiddle and banjo a smile on there faces.  I wonder what the long-term effects of this social isolation will be on my kids. My stepfather went into hospice this week down in the States.  Due to COVID restrictions there’s no way any of us that live at a distance can get into to see him or be a support to my mother.  My stepsibs can’t even go in to see him.  Premiere Ford just released those “stark figures” for the projection of the spread of this virus through Ontario.  In the midst of all this, I’m screaming “Hosanna” “Save us now”.  And Jesus is here in our midst, but not in triumphant and victorious ways.  But rather, in small, humble, compassionate ways.  People call to see how we’re doing.  Several of you have invited us to come and bring the dog and have a walk in the open air on your farms.  The undergirding, pervading power of prayer is felt.  

I finished putting these thoughts together looking from my living room couch out through the kitchen window.  As I finished typing “prayer is felt”, I looked up and the sun was rising in my window.  The timing and the beauty of the moment made me think that we don’t know what the metaphorical Easter morning is going to be like when this “occupation” is over.  But today is a sunny day.  Let’s live it to the glory of the one who created that beautiful sunrise.  Amen.