I Believe in the Holy Spirit

Acts 2:1-21; 1 Kings 8:1-13

Click for Worship Service Video

I have a couple of Holy Spirit stories that I like to pull out on Pentecost.  One comes from the days just before I started university and was discerning the call to the ministry.  At the time I was going to a small Presbyterian church out in the country.  The minister there was into End Times stuff and for a twenty-year-old looking for certainty in life, the End Timers with their contrived biblical roadmap to the soon to come end seemed to have a keen bit of certainty to offer.

I was also beginning to date a girl who went to a Nazarene church that met in an elementary school cafeteria. I invited her to go to church with me one Sunday and she came and “tolerated” our traditional, uptight, rational Presbyterian service and our preacher who just knew the world was soon to end.  Afterwards she said, “You need to come to our church.  We’re spiritually alive.”  

Well, I didn’t quite know what to do with that but I figured I owed her one and so I went.  I didn’t know what to expect and to be honest her terminology of “spiritually alive” scared me.  Were prophets going to start uttering in tongues and expose all my sins?  Amazingly, as soon as I stepped in the door of the cafeteria, I felt a “sweet, sweet Spirit” in the place that I hadn’t felt before – the presence of the Lord.  They passionately sang praise songs and raised their hands.  The minister was a good teacher.  At prayer time he asked for requests and gave time for people to share what they were going through.  There was so much emotion being felt and released in that service; everything from joy to grief. 

That day, I left my little Presbyterian church behind (but obviously not Presbyterianism) and started attending that Nazarene church Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night.  People started to think that I was going overboard.  Probably.  But, it was just that I was enthusiastic about the things of the Lord rather than what other people my age were interested in; which was hanging out, drinking, and whatever else came with that.  I was finding healing for the anger and unforgiveness I had grudged up within me over my parents divorce when I was a child.  I was finding purpose and a reason to live when before I was floundering.  I discovered that God had always been with me, and a new awareness that he is present, with me, always, came to me.

In the Apostles’ Creed we confess, “I believe in the Holy Spirit’ and that’s what we’re getting at here: God is always present with us and in us carrying out the healing, liberating, and transforming work in each of us that Jesus came and did once and for all.  Oddly, even though I was raised in and around the church I never heard much about the Holy Spirit until I started going to that Nazarene church where it was evident that God isn’t just this white-bearded old man enthroned somewhere way far off judging my morality whom I won’t meet until I’m dead.  God the Holy Spirit is present here with us now opening up our relationship with God.  

It may be that we all haven’t typically heard much about the presence and work of Holy Spirit over the years.  We’d feel much safer to talk about a one off miracle or being “Touched by an Angel” than something as “scary” as God being always with us, and personal, relational, communicative.  It seems safer to just be good people with private beliefs and keep God at a distance.  But, you know, if you read the Bible from cover-to-cover one thing that you notice in the storyline is that Bible is a testimony of how God is present in his creation with his people; with all people. 

Starting at the beginning with Creation, if you look at Genesis 1 from the context of ancient writings instead of trying to make it a Modern scientific account of how God created things, you find that it is a hymn telling how God made creation to be his temple in which he can come and repose and enjoy us; and that God made humanity to be the priesthood that looks after it.  In Genesis 2 and 3 God daily visits Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  Even after he expels Adam and Eve from the garden, God stays in relationship with them and their family though unseen.  Throughout the days of the Patriarchs, God keeps the relationship going promising them a land and to make them a great nation.

When the Israelites wound up in slavery in Egypt he heard their cries and delivered them from Pharaoh.  As they wandered in the wilderness he went before them as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  He had them build a tent or Tabernacle for him to reside in whenever they paused from wandering.  

When they went into the Promised Land, God continued to let his presence reside in the Tabernacle in a place called Shiloh as he continued to establish them as a nation on the land he promised them.  Once they became a kingdom, Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem and God came to dwell in it in the form of a thick cloud, the glory of the Lord, that was so heavy the priests couldn’t stand and minister.  The Temple was the place on earth where heaven and earth were open to each other.  When Solomon dedicated the Temple his prayer repeated numerous times the request that when people came to the Temple to pray God would hear in heaven and act on earth.

Over the next couple of centuries as Israel continually turned away from God to worship other gods, God sent prophets to call them back.  He finally had to kick them off the Land as he did to Adam and Eve in the Garden.  He let the Babylonians conquer them and take them into exile in Babylon.  When that happened the prophet Ezekiel had a vision in which he saw the glory of the Lord, that heavy cloud, leave the Temple and head east to Babylon where God would be with his people.  

After the exile there is no account of the Presence of the Lord returning to the rebuilt Temple.  He’s still looking out for them, but the Temple wasn’t what it used to be.  But then comes Jesus, God the Son become a man, and at his baptism by John the Baptist in the River Jordan where the Israelites first entered the Land, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus and he becomes the new Temple where the Living Presence of God among his people dwells.  

After Jesus was put to death, and was raised, and then ascended, on Pentecost the Holy Spirit then descended upon Jesus’s followers and the people of God, the disciples of Jesus become the new Temple full of the Glory of the Lord.  The Book of Acts records the early spread of the church and we see that wherever Christians gathered, there the presence of the Lord dwelt on earth.  Paul even goes on to say that each individual disciple is a temple of God.  God was filling the whole earth with people filled with his presence.

Finally the Bible ends with in the last two chapters of the Book of Revelation, we see heaven and Earth made new and God coming from heaven to dwell permanently on Earth. We, the followers of Jesus today are part of that ongoing story of the Book of Acts until those last two chapters of the Revelation come about.  Each of us is a temple of God where he lives.  When we are gathered together he comes and dwells with us and his presence can be felt.  Just as God promised Israel a Land so today he promises to be present with us.

The presence of the Holy Spirit should not surprise or scare us.  If you are not so sure about the presence of the Lord stuff, just pray and ask God to show you.  Jesus said:  “So I say to you: Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.  For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.  Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish?  Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Lk. 11:9-13)  If you seek him, you will find him.  The presence of the Lord changes everything and in a very good way.  Amen.

Be a Surprise

1 Peter 4:1-14

Click Here for Service Video

I have to admit something that I’m not proud of: whenever I see somebody who is not a senior citizen or who does not have some obvious health issues wearing a medical grade PPE mask, I think some not nice things about them.  It was especially bad when this COVID-19 problem first began and those directly involved in hands on medical care really needed a ready supply of PPE, but were shorthanded due to the hoarding done by people not directly involved in patient care who thought that somehow wearing a medical grade PPE mask would magically protect them from the virus.  The word my gut kept using for these folks was ‘selfish’ and there were a few other adjectives that I’ll keep to myself.  Me with my hospital chaplain training on how to visit people with infectious diseases, I know that unless you’re an expert on how to wear and remove PPE, wearing masks and gloves will do little to protect you from getting a virus.  In fact, you are just wasting a perfectly good piece of medical equipment that could rather be used to protect the lives of those involved in the front lines of this pandemic.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  A mask is appropriate if worn to keep your own germs to yourself and for that reason, we should all have a ready supply of reusable homemade masks during this time and wear one in places like grocery stores where we will unavoidably get too close to other people.  But, the medical grade PPE are for healthcare professionals, not us.  And, yes, I wear a homemade, reusable mask when I’m shopping with the realization that wearing it won’t keep me from getting other people’s germs.  It will help me keep my bugs to myself, if I got any.  If we all did that, the world would be safer right now.  And let me add, wearing a homemade, reusable mask is in the very least a visible sign of compassion towards those around us when we are in public.  

Well, enough of the Randy Rant.  I bring this mask thing up because I don’t think I am alone in feeling what I feel when I see non-healthcare people wearing medical-grade PPE, especially in how I felt early on about them.  I will own up and say the problem is all mine.  My feelings are my feelings and I know I’m being arrogant and judgemental about it.  I am human and we as humans have some interesting reactions to people whom we perceive as stepping outside what’s good for the herd.  But there is more than just herd mentality at play.  

A pandemic has stepped into our lives like an unexpected and unwelcome next-door neighbour that we’re stuck with.  It’s like a drug dealer buying the house next door and we have no choice but to live with him.  He and his clientele have turned our lives upside down because the neighbourhood is no longer safe.  We’re scared in our own homes and we’re angry and we have to do something with that anger, but it’s too dangerous to confront that drug-dealer neighbour.  So, we deal with the anger by stigmatizing the guy up the street whose place looks like a rat’s nest.  Likewise, in this pandemic since we cannot directly confront the virus to take our anger on it, we identify another target to be grumpy about.  For me, that target is people who shouldn’t be wearing medical-grade PPE masks.  To me, these folks are the identified target of my fear of and anger at the pandemic.  To me, these illegitimate mask-wearers represent the mega-change we have had to make due to this unwelcome virus.

Now, I’m speaking tongue in cheek here, but imagine this scenario: what if we suddenly started to persecute people for wearing a homemade, reusable mask in the midst of this pandemic simply because they are visible symbol that everything’s gone wrong in the world.  They’re not doing anything wrong.  They’re doing something right.  They are doing the Good.  But, you know, their goody-goodiness just gets under our skin because, in a way, they are colluding with the enemy of civilization as we know it.  Again, I’m speaking tongue in cheek.  Imagine if we began to outright malign and abuse people for wearing their homemade, reusable mask.

Well, that’s the way people in the churches that Peter wrote to were being treated by their surrounding communities for following Jesus.  Because of their allegiance to Jesus they did not worship the gods, which meant that they didn’t participate in the drunken orgies that idol worship feasts turned into.  They didn’t participate in civic festivals because that involved worshipping the Emperor and that made them appear treasonous.  Also, to early Christians status didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, slave or free, male or female, Jew or Gentile, soldier or senator, regardless of your position in life you were an equal member in the family of God in Christ and dearly loved by your sisters and brothers in Christ.  

As time went on and Christian communities; i.e., small house churches, started popping up around the Roman Empire, people were threatened by their presence because the Christian way of life destabilized everything about the Greco-Roman way of life that was centered on idolatry and status.  Christians were peaceful, joyful, hopeful, unconditionally loving, and morally upright and most people found that threatening.  And so, Christians were unwelcome and unexpected guests in their towns and cities. 

The presence of Christians was a shock, a surprise, to their surrounding communities.  Peter writes in 4:4 “they are surprised that you no longer join them in the same excesses of dissipation and so they malign you.”  That word “surprised” in Greek is the word they used for when somebody shows up at your door unexpectedly to be your guest and you have no choice but to welcome them in and you’re realizing that their presence in your house is going to be a great inconvenience to you.  In the Roman world, people, especially the civic authorities readily understood that having Christians around would destabilize their society much like this pandemic has done ours.  When whole economies are built on supporting idol worship and re-enforcing the boundaries of social status – as our society is – people who don’t play that way and in turn offer a very appealing alternative way of life are a threat.  They’re dangerous.  The word for it is subversive.  The early church was culturally subversive.

I’ll paraphrase Peter’s pastoral word to these persecuted disciples of Jesus.  He says, “Don’t be surprised (like they are surprised at you) that this is happening to you.  This is not something strange.  This is what the world did to Jesus and so they will do it to you.  You are, in fact, sharing in the suffering of Christ. This suffering, your suffering for him and his suffering for you, will lead to the ultimate defeat of all that’s wrong in God’s good creation. It is not without purpose.  The Spirit of God rests on you. So, rejoice!  Be glad!  Shout for joy!  When his glory is revealed you too will be greatly honoured.”

Peter then goes on to encourage them to continue living faithfully.  First, he says be sensible and discipline yourselves with prayer.  Life was very scary for them and so Peter encouraged them to keep the fear in check with the discipline of prayer.  Prayer keeps us focused on God, his presence with us, and that things are in his hands.  

Peter then says that above all they should maintain constant unconditional love for one another.  This unconditional love in the community of the faithful was the greatest tool of cultural subversion the early church had.  He says be hospitable to one another and don’t complain about what you have to give up for one another. Minister to one another with the talents that God has equipped you with because you are the stewards of God’s manifold grace.  If God moves you to proclaim your hope to the surrounding community be bold knowing that you are speaking the very words of God.

Well, Peter gives very good advice for disciples who are suffering persecution.  In our culture, this doesn’t necessarily apply.  In our case, Christian faith helped establish the values of our culture.  It wasn’t too long ago that church attendance was widely practiced and was part of the definition of what it is to be a good person.  But our culture has moved away from its Christian roots and oddly the church has moved away from its Christian roots to look more like the surrounding culture.  The scholars say that secular culture has subverted Christian culture.  In fact, for the majority of people who still call themselves Christian, there is little difference between us and the average Joe and Jane other than we claim to have private beliefs.  For the most part, we have lost our ability to be culturally subversive.  

But now, in these days of the dwindling and dying off of the institution called “the Church” in our culture, we have the opportunity to be disciples of Jesus without all the cultural entanglement that we had before.  But, we need to take our commitment to Jesus beyond simple private beliefs to a lived public acclamation that Jesus is Lord made evident through our way of life.  

Peter’s advice, though given to the church-persecuted, is every bit applicable for us whom I will call the church-renewing.  We must discipline ourselves to pray.  Be hospitable to one another.  This means more home-based fellowship among us to enrich the friendship that we already enjoy.  As God has gifted us all with ministry-gifts, we need to sort those out and utilize them in our church life.  And finally, above everything else, we must maintain constant unconditional love for one another, for our neighbours, and for our communities. Love is an active verb.  From our love for one another a strong sense of mission will then arise and we will begin to look different than the culture around us in a Good kind of way and we will have our subversiveness back and once again be a surprise.  Amen.  

Bless Your Enemies

1 Peter 3:8-22

Click Here for Service Video

I’ve got a ministry friend down in West Virginia who was of a bit of a mentor to me.  He had some good advice on what to do when people mistreat you.  He says that when you see them or start to ruminate about them, pray that the Lord will bless them.  My friend gives this advice in the context of talking about a certain professor he had in seminary who just seemed to have it in for him.  I also had a couple of classes with this same professor during university and he did have a reputation for having his favourites—favourite people to pick on, that is.  For some reason no one will ever know, this professor, I’ll call him Sherman, chose my friend as the target of his belittling one year in his History of Christian Education class.  Yes, it was a Christian school.  It happens there too.  

Well, my friend could have returned insult for insult or complained to the school administration or just dropped out, but he figured those routes would only make things worse.  Being a person of faith, he turned to the Lord in prayer asking how to handle the problem and it suddenly occurred to him that he should pray for the Lord to bless Sherman.  So, whenever he saw Sherman he would start to silently pray over and over, “Lord, bless Sherman.”  Whenever Sherman would take his jabs at him in class or through remarks on assignments, he would simply silently pray over and over, “Lord, bless Sherman.”  Whenever he found himself ruminating on the matter and thinking ill of Sherman, even then he would silently start praying over and over, “Lord, bless Sherman.”

God answered my friend’s prayer for Sherman in an interesting way.  He has no idea if God somehow ambiguously blessed Sherman.  What happened was that in time my friend’s attitude towards him began to change.  He began to feel compassion and brotherly love for Sherman.  It’s hard to hate someone when you ask the Lord to bless him.  My friend began to feel a sense of humility rather than righteous indignation.  When victimized, we will often put ourselves in a moral highchair thinking we are better than our victimizer.  But nobody is any better than anybody else, Mother Teresa aside.  In the end, eventually and surprisingly, in time Sherman ceased picking on my friend.  

You may have heard it said, “Prayer changes things, especially the person praying.”  So often that is how God answers our prayers especially when we pray God to change another person.  In close relationships the change that God brings about in us due to our praying for someone else will so often be the catalyst for change to occur in that other person.

Well, I like my friend’s prayer for his “tormentor”, “Lord bless…” I think it hits right at the core of the mission to which God has called his people.  God blesses us by calling us to be his own people and bringing us into a relationship with himself so that we get to know him and his presence in our lives and know he is looking out for us and in turn he makes us to be blessing to others.  We are blessed to be a blessing.

This mission started right back with Abraham.  God called Abraham and blessed him and his descendants after him making them his own peculiar people.  He promised them a land and to make them a great nation; promises which he kept.  He did this so that through the family of Abraham God might bless the nations around them.  So also, that mission became the purpose of ancient Israel and the Law of Moses and still applies to the Jewish people today.  And then, through Christ, we who are not descendants of Abraham, not Jewish, have also been called into that same mission.  God has blessed us in order to make us to be a blessing to those around us; and I will add to that, regardless of how they treat us.  In this world, closeness to God inexplicably attracts mistreatment.

Looking at our Scripture reading today Peter reminds us of our calling to be a blessing as he quotes from Psalm 34 in an effort to give advice on what to do when people abuse us.  Peter says we do not repay evil for evil or insult for insult, but rather we repay wrongdoing towards us with a blessing.  We don’t use our words to incite evil or spread deceit.  We turn away from evil and instead do the good.  We seek peace and pursue it.  

Peter is here saying that our character, our very nature, our way of being in this world as followers of Jesus is just so utterly different than the way the world typically operates.  In verse 8 Peter really quite beautifully spells out the nature of persons God is at work in us making us to be…and he only uses five words in Greek to do it (we have to add a couple in English – like-mindedness or unity of spirit, sympathy, brotherly love, compassion or tender-heartedness, and humility.

Beginning with the first, at the top of his list is like-mindedness.  Some translations say “united in Spirit.”  Unity among us is important, but what is it?  It’s found in a common attitude to each other.  Paul tells us in Philippians 2:5 “Let the same mind or mindedness be in you that was in Christ Jesus.  The Holy Spirit in us prompts us to be minded, purposed according to the love that Jesus embodied.   Peter here gives us few more practical words to describe what the mind of Christ is like.  We are like-minded in Christ, we share his mind when we act with sympathy, brotherly love, compassion, and humility.  Let’s look at those.

Unity in spirit, like-mindedness, requires a mind set on “sympathy” for others.  To have sympathy is to share in the feelings and experiences of others, to suffer with others, to feel joy with them.  In Christian community when one of us hurts, we should all in a sense feel it too.  We don’t step back and say “not my problem.”  Sympathy is the way Jesus is; the way God is.  God feels our sufferings.  So, since that is the way God is, we are to be that way too.  We share in one another’s struggles as if we ourselves are going through them in the hope that no one feels alone.

Now add brotherly love to sympathy.  This kind of love is to regard others as if to be their best friend.  That requires that we make it so that other people, even strangers, are able to trust us to be for them and to have their best interest in mind just as we would for a best friend.  This means that every person who stands before us at any moment we must have the disposition towards them of “in this moment I am your best friend”.  In the world, people are thinking “What’s in it for me” and “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine.”  In Christ, we are about brotherly love.

Now, add compassion or being tenderhearted to brotherly love and sympathy.  Compassion takes sympathy to the next level, that of actually trying to alleviate the suffering of another.  We can never be 100% sympathetic to another and that gives us a degree of objectivity towards another person’s situation.  Sympathy gives us an understanding sense of what another feels.  Compassion gives us the ability to truly be their best friend in the moment and help them move forward.  Sometimes listening is all it takes.  Other times, it becomes necessary to exercise unconditional, sacrificial love expecting nothing in return (which often means becoming financially and otherwise committed).  

 Sympathy, brotherly love, and tenderhearted compassion require something deeper from us: humility.  Humility - the ability to set aside my own agenda and my own sense of my own self-importance in order to put you before me. Humility – the realization that we all trying to stand before God on broken legs.  Humility – that is me having to live with the realization of how truly pitiful I am, me in all my glory, me in all my righteous indignation, me in all my looking down my nose at another person saying to myself “I’m glad I’m not like that” when, in fact, I am.  Humility is the attitude required to actually be able to serve another in love.  

Sympathy, brotherly love, and compassion are all rooted in humility and when we as individuals and we as a congregation share in them we have the unity in spirit that makes us able to be a blessing to others.  But, if you haven’t noticed, this isn’t the way the world works.  We have global leaders, community leaders, and even church leaders, neighbours, and family members who readily bully, spread deceit, repay insult for insult.  We, the people of God, are not to jump into the sandbox and play like that nor are we to support those who do.  We shun the evil and do the good.  We seek peace and pursuit it.

Peter says that we will suffer for doing the good just as Jesus did.  That doesn’t change the fact that we are still to be a blessing rather than just looking to our own interests.  God has still called us to be a blessing, to be a people that embody hope and are ready to give account for why we would rather bless than curse.

Well, I don’t want to be accused of being long-winded.  I’ve only got so long before you mute me or fast-forward the video.  So, I’ll bring it back to my friend’s advice.  To actively engage this world as God’s blessing to it, we must constantly be praying that God bless even the worst players on the stage.  Having the humility not to be judgemental but rather to show sympathy, brotherly love, and compassion, pray God’s blessing upon others even those who hurt us.  In this way, be a blessing.  Amen.

Growing into Salvation

Acts 2:1-10

Click Here for Service Video

Many of you may remember the Nestle Boycott back in the late 70’s due to its unethical marketing of infant baby formula in poorer nations.  Nestle was promoting its baby formula with several blatant lies such as saying it is a healthier option to breastfeeding or that it would free up a mother for other things like working outside the home to make money.  They used advertisements that stigmatized breastfeeding as disempowering to women.  

Well as it turned out and still does baby formula is problematic in poor areas where clean water isn’t available and proper sanitation practices are difficult to observe.  Mixing powdered formula with tainted water was giving babies dysentery and worse.  Moreover, because it was more expensive than breast milk people were watering it down to make it go further resulting in babies being under nourished.  And to cap it all off, Nestle had the audacity to sell to poorer countries baby formula that was not as nutrient rich as what they were selling in richer countries so that white Westerners who used it had a better go with it giving the “home front” impression of “well it works for us so the problem must be them”. 

Babies do better physically and emotionally when breastfed for at least the first six months of life.  That’s indisputable scientific fact.  Breastfeeding passes immunities and other beneficial goodies from mother to child that infant formula simply cannot.  The bond between mother and child is so much strengthened by the physical, skin-to-skin contact breastfeeding involves, which incidentally, also produces stress reducing hormones.  Baby formulas are a godsend if there is some reason, like latching issues, that breastfeeding just can’t happen. Otherwise, real mother’s milk is the best food for a baby to grow on.

That in mind, Peter tells us here in our reading, “Like newborn infants long for the pure, spiritual milk so that by it you may grow into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”  A couple of weeks ago we spent some time learning about how we are born anew in Christ.  That God the Father had sired us anew with the Holy Spirit so that we are now his children, members of his family, brothers and sisters of and in Jesus the Son.  Now, Peter plays that image out a bit further in saying as newborn infants, we need to eat.  If we are going to grow up into salvation people who bear the image of Christ, then we need to eat real food not watered down cows milk or something like that.

Back in Roman times they had alternative foods for infants other than their mother’s milk.  They knew that human breast milk was best for the baby.  But the also had this Nestle thing going on too. If you were rich and didn’t want to be “inconvenienced” by motherhood, you procured a wet nurse slave which often meant the death of the slaves own child because yours came first.  So also, if you were not well off and a breastfeeding issue arose, you had the wet nurse option if another woman in your family was nursing at the time.  But most often, if you couldn’t feed your baby your own milk, you had to feed milk from a cow or a goat.  This meant that your baby would not have the immunities it should have and the chance of infant mortality was greater.  Though they didn’t understand germs, they did see the risks.  It was risky not to feed an infant human breast milk. 

So back to Peter and to the pure, spiritual milk; what is he referring to?  Well, right at the end of chapter one he refers to the love that is within Christian community, inviting us to love one another deeply from the heart.  We who have been given a new birth by the Holy Spirit and are the progeny of God the Father grow to salvation by participating in the loving community of Christian fellowship. The love we share is God’s face on earth.  

So, in 2:1 Peter tells us to put aside some things and these things are what I would call the watered down cows milk that we should avoid if we are to grow into salvation: salvation being mature, loving Christian community.  I can’t emphasize that enough. The things that we are to leave behind are all things that hurt community and they are unfortunately things or rather behaviours that broken and hurt people do to break and hurt others.  Peter mentions hostility, deceit, hypocrisy or putting on pretences, envy, and spreading lies about other people.  All these behaviours destroy trust and kill community.  They weaken friendships, give a false sense of power and security when all they really are is an instinctual cover for the insecurity we all feel when we don’t have that sense of God’s unwavering love for us.  Bringing these watered-down, unsanitized infant formula behaviours into Christian community kills it.  It turns a congregation into a club dominated by dominant personalities who are afraid of their own insecurities.

Peter says that if we have tasted the good stuff, the love of God in Christ then we are to desire it and choose it.  He invites us to come to Christ Jesus the living stone who is the cornerstone of a living temple of which we are the living stones of which it is being built.  The early church didn’t have church buildings or temples like the other religions.  We only had our fellowship.  To come to church was to come to a gathering of Jesus followers wherever they happened to meet.

Peter also says we are the priesthood of “the temple” who offer up the true spiritual sacrifices that come with helping one another be disciples of Jesus and grow in him.  Christian community is built on discipleship, people committing to following Jesus together.  Small groups of people committed to one another to study Scripture together, to share our lives, our struggles and joys, and to pray together. 

Peter then goes on to point out that Christian community matures into a visible, holy nation among the nations.  The biggest mistake the Church ever made throughout history was to get involved with empires and nations so that a national body can today call itself a Christian State while in turn having absolutely nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus; especially his teachings that we are to love our neighbour and our enemy and the immigrant among us.  We ignore these essential teachings all the while coopting the reputation of God to seek the will of a power hungry few who just want to own everything.  Oops.  Sorry.  Got side-tracked.  

The “Jesus” nation exists as small gatherings of people who by earnestly following Jesus strive to do things like eliminate poverty in their immediate communities, care for the elderly in the immediate communities, help with childcare in their immediate communities.  The Jesus nation brings healing to the immediate communities in which they exist expecting nothing in return.  This is the way we proclaim the mighty acts of the one who called us out of darkness into his marvellous light.

I know I sound idealistic, but…this is the way the early church was for the first couple of centuries before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the early 400’s.  Over the centuries there were times when the church rose to the occasion and manifested this idealistic behaviour.  Believe it or not, it was during plagues and pandemics.  When these things broke out it always seemed that the official State church spent its time saying God was getting the people for sins; or, scapegoating immigrants or other ethnic groups as the cause.  Yet, there were also small groups of faithful followers of Jesus who didn’t play like that but rather shut up and fed the hungry, nursed the sick, buried the dead, cared for the widowed, raised the orphaned at great risk to their own health and sacrifice of their own resources. 

As I said, I know I’m sounding idealistic, but…this wouldn’t be the first time that longing for ideals has changed the world for the better.  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream that inspired and is still inspiring good change in the world.  We live at a time when the ideals of Jesus are what this world needs to counter the myths of privatization, consumerism, and materialism and so perhaps we, the followers of Jesus, should begin to long for, to deeply desire, the pure, spiritual milk of Christian community as we have indeed tasted that the Lord is good.  Perhaps this deep longing in reality looks like a deeper commitment to Jesus and to being his disciples together and from let the mighty acts of God arise from us as he moves us to greater acts of love towards one another and for those outside our fellowship.  Long for the pure, spiritual milk that will cause us to grow into the salvation that arises among God’s family loving one another deeply from the heart.  Amen.

Abundant Life

John 10:1-31

Click Here for Service Video

Jesus said, “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture...I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”  And later he says in vv. 27-28, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.  I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”  When we of the well-churched variety hear those words we like Pavlov's dog are conditioned to think it's about that pop-Christian gospel which says if you make the self-saving decision to believe the right things about Jesus, your immortal soul will go to spend eternity in Heaven when you die.  

Well, there’s a problem when we hear these passages that way – basically, we miss what Jesus is actually saying.  He is not talking here about what happens to us after we die. He is talking about our life in him right now.  Yes, Jesus says that whoever enters through, with, and by means of him will be saved, but saved doesn’t necessarily have to mean “going to heaven when you die.”

A better way to think of these passages that fits more with the context of this whole passage is that whoever enters through, with, and by means of Jesus will be kept safe.  Jesus is the gate by which the sheep come safely into the fold and safely go out to find pasture.  He is also the shepherd who keeps them safe, safe from thieves while they are in the fold and from the wolves while they are at pasture.  He is both the gate and the good shepherd of the flock.  Safe keeping in life for his followers, for us, is at the heart of what Jesus is getting at here.  You see, God’s people at that time were not being well kept and protected by those who were shepherding them and keeping the gate so to speak. 

Something we need to take into account here is that Jesus is saying all this Good Shepherd and Gate stuff in the context of a dispute with the religious authorities particularly the Pharisees.  The dispute was over who can be included in the people of God.  Jesus had healed a man on the Sabbath, a man who had been born blind.  The religious authorities back then believed that because this man was born blind he was utterly cursed, born punished by God for terrible, secret sins committed by his parents.  So, they wanted to know who had done this act of healing, this work, on the Sabbath.  They just couldn’t see, couldn’t perceive that God was present and at work in their midst.  Well, they had the man brought before them, put him through the 10^thdegree and in the end they drove him out of the synagogue making the verdict that only someone working by the power of the devil could have healed a man so cursed on the Sabbath.  They were totally wrong so Jesus calls them blind themselves because they could not see who he was or that the healing was an act of God.  They were thieves, wolves, the hired hand Jesus refers to and that man, a healed child of God, was not safe among them.

In response to the failings of the Pharisees, if I might understate it that way, Jesus begins to explain that he is the gate by which people can find the blessed life, the abundant life, that God promised to his people and that begs the question, “What is abundant life?”.  If we were to get our definition for it from the context of Jesus’ healing this blind man on the Sabbath, then life abundant has something to do with participating in God's own Sabbath rest, God’s reposing over his good Creation and saying “This is the way it’s supposed to be.”  Also, because this healing was of a man utterly cut off from community, we can say that abundant life has something to do with restoration to full human dignity and community.  And, from the way Jesus came to the defence of the man, we can say that abundant life has something to do with being kept safe from those who would destroy our faith and relationship with God in Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit.  Finally, as Jesus is the Gate, this abundant and eternal life is only available in, through, and as Jesus Christ.   So, abundant life, eternal life is healing, rest, restored dignity, true community, and safety and it’s all available in fellowship with Jesus.

If we want to take another passage into account, in John 17:3 Jesus blatantly defines eternal life saying, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Eternal life, life abundant is rooted in a relationship with God in Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit and it is available to us now.

When I think of what this abundant and eternal life looks like in real life, I think of the description of the common life that the early church shared as it’s described in Acts 2:42-47, which reads: “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.  All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.  Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

The abundant life is the common life of Christian community.  It is filled with worship, sharing meals, sharing our stuff so that none of us has need.  It's life gathered around the table to learn, eat, pray and to share in the Lord's Supper.  It is life filled with awe where God frequently does signs and wonders that point us towards the day when he puts all things to rights.  It is life filled with hospitality as the Lord brings more and more people to himself through the community of faith and we welcome them in his name.

Abundant and eternal life is the fellowship that grows when Christians get together and God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is in our midst.  Jesus is the gate to human community that is filled with the communion of God the Trinity.  Community filled with God's own fellowship is what Jesus in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit creates and safeguards among us forever.  Abundant community filled with the presence of God is what the Christian faith is all about. 

            So to wrap it up, this passage isn't about dying and going to heaven.  It is about the fellowship that God has placed here in our midst of our congregations.  I think this is something we have become acutely aware of the last couple of weeks here in social isolation both as we have stepped up to help and look out for one another but also as we find ourselves longing to see each other and worship and fellowship together.  As God is being-in-communion, (you know the loving communion of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Three-in-One/One-in-Three) so community in his image is what we as congregations are all about.   The way we love one another is the face of God to the world.  As small congregations, we are intensely relational in nature and this can be our boon or our bane.  Large congregations have to work real hard to have the sense of community that comes easy but so also we can be hard for new people to settle into.  Regardless, the abundant life, eternal life is in our midst at present, right now.  Oddly, I’m sneakily suspicious that this time that we are having to abstain from gathering together will only serve to strengthen our bond in Christ.  If that’s the case, then it may just awaken our surrounding communities to come looking for the abundant life that’s here in Christ. That’s my hope.  That’s my prayer.  Amen.