In the Troubled Circumstances of Life

 Luke 2:1-20

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My first church here in Canada was a small church but we had enough youth to have the challenge of a youth group.  One year they decided they wanted to come up with a drama of what if Jesus were born today somewhere in the Greater Toronto Area.  It was an interesting presentation that culminated with them gathered around the piano singing The Beatles tune, Let It Be.  What they came up with was Jesus being born to a young, unwed teenage couple at the Finch subway station.  They were disappointed that there was not a station at Jane and Finch.  They thought they would have been able to highlight better the circumstances of prejudice that surrounded Jesus’ birth.  You see, Mary and Joseph were from Nazareth and Nazareth was considered to be an undesirable little town in Northern Israel. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” they used to say.  The youth also had this child’s parents resting Jesus in a homeless man’s shopping cart.  Not the cleanest of places for a newborn, I’m sure.  Jesus himself was wrapped in rags and laid in a feeding trough…not quite the image we have of “swaddling clothes” and a “manger”.  

Looking at the Bible’s account of the circumstances of Jesus’ birth and trying to understand them in the way first century people would have is an eye-opening experience.  We’ve accumulated a lot of Christmas pageant nostalgia that prevents us from seeing his birth clearly.  It was as eye-opening in their time as it would be if Jesus had really been born in a subway station at Jane and Finch today.  Let me give you a few examples.

Little baby Jesus had several visitors the night of his birth, shepherds and Magi.  Shepherds in his day were near the bottom of the food chain along with drunks and lepers.  The Magi were indeed kings and scientists.  Interestingly, their science was astrology, that’s horoscopes and stuff.  They were following a heavenly sign they had discerned to mean the birth of a great king in the land of Judea.  Scientists today say it was probably a supernova they saw, but we people with enquiring minds who want to know, well, we know it was a UFO leading them to Judea, right?  

God’s announcing his coming to shepherds and astrologers was a bold slap in the face of the Judean king and the religious leaders back then.  They were the ones who should have known what this heavenly sign in their own backyard meant.  But they didn’t.  They were blinded by power and privilege.  The birth of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ caught them by surprise and threatened their privileged positions.  When Herod the King otherwise known as Herod the Great famous for killing his own sons because they were a political threat to him; when he found out, he wanted Jesus dead and actually killed all the male children in the area of Bethlehem under the age of two.  Incidentally, in the youth’s drama they have Jesus’ birth announced to some homeless people who go to welcome him which should remind us that we church-going, upper-middle class white folk just might not have a monopoly on who God speaks to and reveals himself to. 

Then there’s the question of the paternity of Jesus.  Mary was pregnant.  Joseph knew the baby wasn’t his.  His choices were to believe an angel or break the engagement as quietly as he could.  He didn’t want to go through with the marriage.  Nazareth was a small, very religiously conservative town.  Everyone would have likely been thinking that Joseph had dishonoured himself by having relations with his fiancé before being married.  And we have to think about Mary’s predicament.  According to Old Testament law, Mary’s life would have been ruined had Joseph not decided to continue with the engagement and adopt the child as his own.  It is quite possible she would have been stoned to death had Joseph not gone ahead and married her.  That Joseph adopted or claimed Jesus as his own by being the one to name him is important.  That’s what links Jesus to King David and Messianic bloodline.  

            The story of Jesus birth really is an eye-opener.  Our Lord was born out of wedlock, to say it politely, to a couple who were a young teen-age girl and a man likely in his thirties.  They came from Nazareth of all places to a stable in Bethlehem outside of an inn because, for whatever reason, no one in the inn had compassion enough to forfeit their room to a birthing mother.  Jesus was born in a stable.  How scandalous can all this be?  God choose to unite himself to humanity in not only a humble birth but a troubling birth.  It was indeed under very humiliating circumstances.  So also, the scandal surrounding Jesus’ birth was not unlike the scandal surrounding his death.  It leads us to believe that if we want to know where to find God at work in the world maybe we should start looking in the most troubling of circumstances.

While we’re on the topic, maybe we should stop and ask where is it that we should look if we want to find God?  If the profoundest meaning of Christmas is that God is with us and deeply bonded to us, then where is he?  The answer would be not in the nostalgia of religion but in the troubling details of real life; in the brokenness, in the shamefulness of the everyday lives of everyday people like us.  Jesus was not born in the glamour of the temple in Jerusalem and praised by the good, upright, wholesome, and devout “robe-wearers” of his day.  He was born to an unmarried couple; a teenage girl and a slightly older gent who both said “yes” to a call to endure shame and scorn for God’s sake and for human healing.  

So, where should we look for this Jesus present in our lives.  Well, getting together with family and friends is a good place to look, even better if you welcome into your celebrations those who have not the luxury of family and friends, and even better if you all gather to worship and to pray and even better if you try to heal the rifts that exist your families with confession and forgiveness.  But, I think there is an even better place to look for Jesus.  That is to look inside ourselves and go to that person called “me” who hides from others, hoping that nobody ever finds out who “me” really is…we all have a “me” that we try to compensate for… a “me” who’s been victim as well as victimizer, a “me” who is powerless as well as powerful in this world, a “me” who grieves because life is unfair…go there this Christmas…that’s your dirty, dark, dank stable in the basement of the inn.  It is there that Jesus will be born in you and you shall be born from above.  In an inexplicable moment of grace your heavenly Father will pick you up and say “My Beloved.”  That, my Beloved, is the miracle of Christmas.  Amen.

Joseph's Dilemma

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Matthew 1:18-25

In my previous church in Caledon, ON we had a spell of having Fundraiser concerts.  We were fortunate enough to have one among us who had “connections” and so we were able to host some pretty big names in Canadian folk and traditional music.  Being the minister I found myself in the (for lack of a better word) awkward situation of having to introduce famous artists and groups like Tanglefoot, The Brian Pickell Band, Pierre Schreier, Garnet Rogers, and a few others.  I never knew quite what to say and for the most part the artists themselves didn't care.  Yet, as the one doing the introducing, I needed to make it sound like I knew a little something about them and liked their stuff.  I had to praise the artists and commend them to the audience.  Failure to do so would have offended artist and audience alike.  

Well, looking at the Gospel of Matthew and how he introduces Jesus the Jewish Messiah and Lord and Saviour of all Creation I have to say that I'm left scratching my head because it seems he means to offend.  He begins with Jesus' genealogical pedigree and simply says, “A record of the lineage of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.”  Then it is name after name after name.  Strangely, in the midst of the names Matthew mentions four relationships: Judah and Tamar, Boaz and Ruth, David and Bathsheba otherwise known as the wife of Uriah, and then Joseph and Mary.  If you know the Old Testament, then you know that by mentioning those particular relationships Matthew is quite obviously saying that Jesus' family link to David and to Abraham is morally tainted and not upright according to the Law.  There’s prostitution, some “uncovering of the feet”, and adultery there.  Jesus was born into a whole lineage of “Sin” and, moreover, a lineage into which he had to be adopted.

Moving on from the begets, Matthew is the only Gospelist to portray Joseph's dilemma.  Joseph had to deal with the fact that his bride-to-be had suddenly become pregnant with a child that was not his.  While pondering what to do, he had a dream in which a messenger of the Lord tells him that this child was conceived by the Holy Spirit and would save his people from their sins.  Moreover, there's that prophecy in Isaiah about a virgin conceiving and let's not fail to notice that this baby is Emmanuel – “God-with-us”.  Should Joseph believe this crazy dream and be gracious to Mary?  Or, should he do what the religious/moral authorities of his day would have him do and that would be to break off the engagement, divorce her?  This would have grave consequences for Mary.  

And so, Matthew begins his Gospel with a troubling if not offensive introduction.  If we are thinking people, and I assume we are, we will want to ask why.  Why does Matthew introduce Jesus with scandal rather than by praising Jesus and commending him to us as our Lord and Saviour?  Well, venturing a guess, it may be that Matthew wants us at the very outset to catch a glimpse of the steadfast love and faithfulness of God towards us and how God chooses to be gracious towards us rather than condemning.  Matthew does this by making us to consider Joseph's dilemma in deciding what to do with Mary and the child.  

Joseph graciously stays with Mary and the he honourably adopts Jesus as his own.  It’s probably not at the front of our minds, but Joseph had to adopt Jesus for Jesus to be the Messiah of the line of David.  So it is with us and God’s adoption of us into the family of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Born from above through the gift of the Holy Spirit indwelling us God has adopted us as siblings of Jesus and thus we share in that relationship that God the Father has with God the Son in the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit bonds us to Jesus so that we share in Jesus' own relationship with God the Father.  Joseph's steadfast love and faithfulness towards Mary and the child within her beams brightly of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness for Israel and the children of the Holy Spirit to be born through her...that's Jesus…and…you and me.  

I find it quite staggering that God the Father in and through the presence and powerful and utterly gracious work of the Holy Spirit loves us as much as he does Jesus, his own Son and is as steadfastly faithful to us as he is towards Jesus.  Even when we are in the midst of impossible situations, when it seems all hell is breaking loose around us, God is indeed with us and faithfully working for our good making us to be more and more like Jesus by making us to know who Jesus is in his very self as the one who gives himself selflessly in all love and humility for us.  God is working in us especially through our most difficult times to heal and deliver us now in the present from the effects that our sin and the sin of others have on us.  As we draw close to Jesus in prayer, devotion, and service, we find that he removes the deepest of our character flaws.  He frees us from fear and self-pity, and pride, and our constant striving to be our own god.  He truly saves us from our sins by adopting us as his own and from the inside out making us to be like him in such a way as to give us his own blood and DNA, so to speak, by the gift of the Holy Spirit.  

Now to ponder Matthew's introduction and Joseph's dilemma a bit further we have to note with an exclamation point how Matthew wants to show us right from the beginning that the reality of God coming and being with us as one of us is going to be something that does not meet our expectations and something difficult to handle especially for those who think they have mastered morality and religion and who indeed think they have mastered God.  Grace is the element in this story that is so unexpected, so unpredictable, and so hard to handle.  If we were reading or rather hearing Matthew’s gospel back when he wrote it, we would expect Joseph to publicly denounce Mary and that the village would react with such bitter anger towards her “sinful ways” that they took her outside the city and stoned her to death.  That’s what we would expect.  But instead, grace calls us to take another look at the situation. God calls us to be gracious towards people in situations that trouble us for what we assume to be religious and moral reasons.

Joseph's dilemma was whether or not to be gracious and it reminds us that we must be careful how we judge people and their troubling situations.  We never know when we might be passing judgement upon those through whom God is working or will work.  We are called to be gracious in all situations.  Grace leads people to Jesus.  God’s kindness leads us to repentance it says in Romans 2:4. God shows his kindness to people when we choose to be gracious towards others.  The baby Jesus, God’s means to save all of humanity, became Messiah as the direct result of Joseph being faithful to God and gracious to Mary rather than condemning her on a false pretence of faithfulness.  When we let our hearts be moved with compassion and show grace it lends to salvation, to people discovering that they have been adopted into the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It lends to the presence of God working visibly and effectively in people’s lives to save.  Amen.

The Life-Giving God

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Isaiah 35:1-10

From the Sea of Galilee down to the Gulf of Aqabah, which is a finger of the Red Sea, there runs a valley cut by the Jordan River at the top and then by the Dead Sea at the Bottom.  The Dead Sea ends there because of a slight maybe fifteen-foot rise in elevation.  From the Dead Sea to the Red Sea there is nothing but a dessert wasteland, which the Bible calls the Arabah, or “dry land” as it’s called in our translation.  The Arabah according to the Book of Genesis was once fertile land, but the Lord destroyed it when destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. 

To either side of this valley are high plateaus which the Bible calls Midbar or here, “the wilderness”.  These are simply uninhabitable lands which are covered mostly with very sparse, dry grass and tumble weed.  The Midbar itself is carved up deeply by dry river beds. The largest of these are comparable to the Grand Canyon.  These dry rivers flow from the Midbar down into the Arabah.  When the rainy season comes, walls of water pour down these river beds as if it were God himself coming in vengeance to destroy and wash away the land.  I can only imagine how fearful the sound of that running water must be as it comes down the valley carving out destruction.  If we heard it, I think we too would think that God was indeed coming and he just might be a bit angry.  

I remember when I lived down in Marlinton, WV, which is a town that gets some major flooding, how you could the sound of the roaring water all over town when the Greenbrier and Knapp’s Creek were rising to flood levels.  You’d think the train from Gloryland was roaring into the station.  It’s powerfully scary.  You know a lot of devastation could come from it if the waters get too high and will they?  

But in the Midbar and the Arabah, miraculously, after the rain the area around these river beds comes to life with green grasses and purple and pink flowers.  It is as if all of creation is filled with joy and the glory and majesty of God the giver of life is shining forth from it.  The Midbar and the Arabah become glad Isaiah did say.

Isaiah tells us of a glorious end for the Arabah.  When the Lord returns to Zion by means of a highway through the Arabah, it shall become as green as Lebanon, as majestic as Mt. Carmel and as fertile as the plain of Sharon.  All these places are in northern Israel and they are the best agricultural land in the Middle East or as many like to call it today, West Asia.  Water will be so abundant in these desert wastelands that burning sand will become a pool of water. The land will be so full of life-giving water that there will be marshes full of reeds and rushes instead of dead dry grass and tumbleweed.  Isaiah says this will be a miraculous time for humans as well for, in like manner, blind eyes will be opened, deaf ears will hear, the lame shall leap like deer, and the speechless tongue will sing for joy for the Spirit of the Lord will fill the earth.  

Jesus spoke of this day also but with reference to his own work.  If you remember from the Gospels, there is a story of when John the Baptist was in prison and feeling more than a bit discouraged if not maybe disillusioned.  He sent some of his own disciples to inquire of Jesus as to whether he really was the Messiah or should they wait for another.  I think John did this in an attempt to prod Jesus into action as far as setting up the Kingdom of God in real-time.  “If you are who you are, Cousin Jesus, then get on with it ‘cause prison really sucks, Man.”  Jesus answered, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.  And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (Matt. 11:4-6).  The age of Jesus, his time on earth was actually the age of the fulfillment of time as the prophets saw, the age when the Arabah would be as green as Lebanon, that age was present wherever Jesus was and will be present again when he returns.

In fact, it is present wherever Jesus is present today.  The age of fulfillment exists with us right now, today.  It is here as we gather for worship.  As we are gathered here as the Body of Christ in God’s presence through the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and around us, the Age of Fulfillment is here present with us in part as well as something we expectantly wait for in the future when God heals all of Creation of Sin, Evil, and Death.  When we gather for worship the age of the fulfillment of time is with us.  Jesus is with us.  Eyes blinded in human brokenness open to see God, to sense God’s presence and feel his love and the impact of his love on us.  For some that’s overwhelmingly encouraging and strengthening and for others, it’s (for lack of a better word) convicting.  Deaf ears are unstopped to hear the Word of God.  Lame souls leap for joy like dear.  People find strength to face their trials knowing God is with them.  There is a peace that comes that enables us to entrust our wills and our lives to the care of God.  Tongues which before could not praise God, now sing for joy.  In worship the Spirit of God can and will break forth in our hearts like waters breaking forth in the Midbar, the wilderness, and like streams gushing in the Arabah, the desert.

Isaiah also speaks of a highway called the Way of the Holy which shall be for God’s people to travel on.  There shall be no lion or ravenous beast on this highway.  By means of this highway the redeemed of the Lord shall go to Zion, the mountain of the Lord singing with everlasting joy.  When they get there, they shall obtain joy and gladness, and furthermore sorrow and sighing shall flee away.  My friends this highway is here.  Set before us to travel on.  It is the way of following Jesus, and of worship, and of prayer.  The Way begins here in our worship service and it remains with us when we wake in the morning and praise God for another day and when we go to bed and thank God for the blessing of this day.

God is the Life-giving God.  People may ask what God is like.  Isaiah’s answer here, and ours, is that God is Life-giving.  Our God is the God who gives life to the dead world of the desert.  Our culture has a default idea of what God is like.  It’s that God is like Santa Clause.  God’s a bearded old man who is a judge with a list of who is naughty and nice.  He gets the naughty and rewards the nice.   A lot of people have quit believing in God altogether because of that misunderstanding of what God is like.  Isaiah gives us a really beautiful image here of God as being life-giving.  God gives hope.  God powerfully acts to heal and restore.  We have to wait for God to act and that is brutally hard, but when God finally does it is as beautiful as a dessert in bloom.  

So, it is with us.  The Life-giving God who causes the desert to bloom also causes us to bloom by the watering of the Holy Spirit.  As we come to our Life-giving God in worship, bringing the dry wasteland of our lives before him, the life-giving God meets us with the floodwaters of His Presence and we bloom.  We see more clearly, hear more clearly, and are strengthened.  We bloom.  The life-giving God makes us glad.  So, as the prophet told the people long ago, “Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God.  He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompence.  He will come and save you.”  Come to the Life-giving God and bloom.  Amen.

            

Full of the Knowledge of God

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Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13

“The Earth shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”  “The Earth shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”  That is a very rich metaphor.  Though I had read this passage at least once every Christmas season for who knows how many years and on many other occasions, the first time I never really heard it, noticed it was there, was well over fifteen years ago while listening to a New Testament scholar named N.T. Wright talk about our future hope as Christians, a future where everything is filled with the knowledge of God. I have pondered this very profound metaphor ever since.    

N.T Wright is very keen to point out that the future reality that the Bible points us forward to is not our disembodied souls going to heaven when we die and staying there.  Yes, we will spend a little time after death without our bodies with Christ in a place Jesus called Paradise.  But, that is not our ultimate goal.  Rather, what we are headed for is Resurrection to live in Creation made new.  This wonderfully awesome and beautiful Creation that God created, blessed, and called very good will be healed and freed of Sin and Death and Evil and as Isaiah says…wait for it…wait for it…, it will be full of the knowledge or better yet the knowing of who God is and what God’s nature is like, full of the unveiled presence and glory of God just as the waters cover the sea.  The goal of our existence is as Wright says, “God is going to do for the whole Creation what he did for Jesus on Easter morning.”  Resurrection into a New Creation, this is our hope in Christ.  This is what God is up to and pointing forward to that is what we the church are about.

Isaiah’s prophesy here, like all of the biblical prophesies which look forward to the Day of Creation’s deliverance and restoration is symbol rich, metaphor rich.  We need to “crack the code” on the meaning of the symbols and yet be careful to not get too specific or literal with them by trying to peg them down to specific dates and so forth.  They are meant to provoke “hopeful imagination”, to make us want to see God’s promise fulfilled, to make us “abound in hope”.

The first metaphor or symbol in Isaiah’s prophecy here is that a shoot shall come up out of the stump of the lineage of ancient Israel’s King David, a ruler full of the Holy Spirit, a righteous ruler who will judge fairly on behalf of the weak and oppressed.  This metaphor is a pretty obvious one to nail down.  This ruler is Jesus.  He is the Jewish Messiah who has brought and will bring the Kingdom or Reign of God to earth.  

The next metaphor/symbol that Isaiah gives us is of a world that is free of predation, free of those who kill and devour.  The nature of relationship in creation will change from predation to Peace/Shalom.  The nature of relationship in creation as we know it now due to sin is predatory.  The strong devour the weak.  Poverty, war, climate change are all the result of the powerful devouring the weak.  With this image of a world without predation Isaiah means to cause us to hopefully imagine that the world that Jesus is bringing about will be free of all forms of predation.  There will be peace, harmony, Shalom.

Looking at this third image, that of the earth being full of the knowledge of God as waters covering the sea.  Well, the symbol of the “sea” in the world of apocalyptic/prophetic imagery often means humanity, the chaotic sea of humanity.  Water is the symbol of the source of life.  As God is the source of life, I think this image is telling us that the personal, life-giving presence of God is going to be visible among the relationships of humanity.  The image of God which was marred by sin will be restored by God resting his presence upon and in us.

So then, what Isaiah wants us to imagine is the coming of the Messiah, full of the Holy Spirit to put things right in God’s creation and the noticeable difference will be that predation will not be at the heart of relationship anymore, but rather in its place will be the personal presence of God.  The image of the Trinity – the loving communion of God the Father Son and Holy Spirit – will radiate forth from humanity in our relationships with each other and in our relationship with the Creation as a whole.

Leaping forward in time a few centuries from Isaiah to Paul, this hope-filled image of the image of God restored in humanity undergirds Paul’s understanding of what the church is.  To Paul, the Holy Spirit-filled Messiah has come.  Jesus is that shoot rising from the stump of Jesse.  Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of God.  His death and resurrection is God’s judgement against humanity that kills wickedness.  With the breath of his lips, the Holy Spirit, God puts wickedness to death and recreates humanity in his image.  The Christ-like, Holy Spirit filled fellowship of Christians, us, is the first fruits of this new predation-free humanity.  As far as Paul, the former zealous Pharisee who hated Gentiles, was concerned, the fact that Gentiles and Jews were together in harmony, like-minded in their devotion to Jesus as Lord, worshipping God the Father with one voice is evidence that the day Isaiah held forth has begun.  The knowledge of God has begun to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.

The New Creation, predation-free, Spirit of God-filled humanity that Isaiah put out there for us to “hopefully imagine” is now embodied in Christian fellowship.  The Holy Spirit filled life of Christ in which predation is disappearing and the loving communion of God is becoming evident shines forth in Christian community. Christian community, Holy Spirit filled congregations in whom the self-giving, self-sacrificing love of Jesus Christ is embodied is living proof that God is faithful, that God gives strength to endure, and that God will deliver his Creation from the futility that pervades it. 

I hope you are catching a glimpse with your “hopeful imagination” of what exactly is going on in our midst as a congregation.  What Isaiah prophesied with spoken word as a promise, we embody as a visible, felt reality in our fellowship also as the promise of what God will ultimately bring about in Christ.   The love of God abides in us and is making us to be the type of people who go and comfort others.  The presence of the Lord is with us.  Christian acts of support are more than just good deeds.  They are living signs of the New Creation coming.  Our acts of support are the earth becoming full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.  Imagine that.  The love shown by each of you is the earth becoming full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.  Amen.

True Power

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Luke 23:33-43

So, behold King Jesus. Crucified.  Hanging between two thieves as if he were a criminal.  A sign was over his head that read, “The King of the Jews”.  The Romans put it there to insult the Jewish people implying that a person they judged to be a blasphemer was actually their king, and also to remind them that this is what happens to all those who would challenge the authority of Rome; not that Jesus had done that.  The only authorities he had challenged were the religious leaders of his own people.  The Romans themselves had judged him innocent of any crime but crucified him anyway to avoid trouble among the Jews.  During the trials before both the Temple authorities and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, Jesus stayed mostly silent saying nothing in his defense.  They say in a relationship if you ever have to defend the quality of person that you are which should be obvious, then it’s not love.  All the charges against him were false.  He was innocent.  God’s people should have recognized that, but they didn’t.  They didn’t love him enough to see him for who he really is.

Jesus’ acts were obvious, done right out in the open.  They were wonderful acts of power that only God could do.  He healed people not just of colds and flus and fevers.  He restored sight to the blind, even those who had been born blind.  He restored mobility to paralytics.  He restored hearing to the deaf, voice to the mute.  He healed lepers and didn’t have any fear of touching them and so regarding them as people.  On several occasions he even raised the dead.  

Jesus had power over evil.  He cast out demons; even out of this one man who had more than 1,000 of them in him.  That’s as many as there were soldiers in a Roman legion.  That’s power over evil that only God has.  Interestingly, the demons knew he was the Son of God and shouted it out when he confronted them.  The religious authorities who should have recognized him, were not so forthcoming.  Instead, when Jesus held them accountable for their false teachings and spiritual abuse and for their abuse of power, they plotted to kill him.  

Jesus did a few other obvious God-things.  Twice he fed crowds of over 10,000 people with just a few loaves of bread and a few fish.  In the presence of his disciples, he literally walked on water and calmed a storm on the Sea of Galilee that was threatening to kill them.  Truly, only God can do that.

As a teacher, well, his teachings were a bit subversive with respect to the world and every kind of power in it.  He proclaimed the Gospel: “The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Turn around and get on board with this good thing that God is doing.”  As Jesus went about, he did the above-mentioned acts of power that made the presence of the Kingdom obvious.  He called people to follow him as students of him and his way of life, not as arms-bearing revolutionaries.  He taught nothing that was against the teachings of Moses and the Prophets.  Unconditional, self-denying love topped his list.  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind and love your neighbour as you love yourself.”  He taught his followers to be compassionate, merciful, non-judging, generous, hospitable, faithful morally upright, and…forgiving.  He taught his disciples that the greatest of them would be the one who serves them all and modelled this by washing their dirty, stinky, well-fungused feet before their last meal together.  He taught that “life” (true life, abundant life) is found in laying down one’s life for others, and in denying oneself, taking up one’s cross (there’s that pesky cross and they all knew what it meant), and following him in his way of hope, healing, and love.  

With respect to how his Kingdom would spread by means of those who followed him, Jesus told his followers not to bear a sword but to wish peace upon every house they entered.  He told them they would be persecuted because of him.  He told them that after he died, he himself would be with them always…always.  Moreover, God his Father would empower them by sending the Holy Spirit to dwell in them.  The Holy Spirit would tell them what to say and enable them to do the things that he did.  He told them to go into all the world and teach and invite people to take up his way.  He definitely told them to avoid wealth. (Sorry.  I know that’s not easy to hear.)  

With respect to the kingdoms of the world, never did Jesus call his followers to take up arms and overthrow governments or become the government.  Instead, he simply predicted that he would be killed by the powers that be, but that he would raise from the dead and go back to his Father.  And then after “awhile”, he would return and he would himself establish his throne.  They could expect the same treatment themselves for as the world hated him, so it would hate them.  Yet still, his followers must remain faithful, loyal to him and steadfast in living according to his way.  Until he returns, their, our, greatest form of power is prayer.  When he comes will he find faith, will he find his disciples faithfully praying and living his way.

Jesus was innocent.  He had done only good.  He truly was the King of the Jews, indeed the Lord of All Creation.  But he died on the cross.  The words spoken by him and by bystanders while he died are telling.  Among his last words were, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.”  Who does that?  Who pleads for the forgiveness of those wrongfully murdering them?  On the other hand, the people, common people and powerful people, soldier and thief alike mocked him saying, “He saved others.  Let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, the Chosen One…If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.”  

That Jesus didn’t act to save himself should raise some eyebrows.  By the mighty hand of God, by the power of God – the God who created, ordered, and sustains everything – Jesus had healed people, cast out demons, raised the dead, fed thousands, calmed a sea.  It could have been, “Jesus of Nazareth.  Come on down.  The Price is right.”  He would have obviously had the power to save himself…but he didn’t.  Jesus isn’t that kind of king.  The nature of his power isn’t like that.  In this world where political power is most often exhibited as SYA (save your own bottom) or CYA (cover your own bottom), Jesus would have fit right in if he had saved himself.  

Instead, Jesus chose the way of faithful obedience rather than self-assertion as Paul writes in the great Christ Hymn in Philippians: “Who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.  Therefore, God exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name given to Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

Basically, though Jesus was God he didn’t exploit that and come here and act like a god; the way we act like we are gods to ourselves.  He emptied himself, denied himself, humbled himself and did what was right in God’s eyes.  That’s what true power looks like.  True power is self-denying, unconditional, sacrificial love…not saving oneself, not looking out for only yourself and those like you, not seeking one’s own interests at the expense of others. 

Paul also writes about this love in 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter that we hear at just about every wedding: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.”

Paul prefaces the Christ hymn of Philippians in a way that pertains to us.  He says: “be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.  Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who…though he was…”.  

Let the same mind be in you, in us that was in Christ Jesus.  We have the same mind or mindedness of loving humility that Jesus has.  It came with the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and we discover and foster it in prayer and as we go about the difficult task of humbling ourselves to selflessly love the people God has placed in our lives extending out to everybody.

We live in a crazy, self-interested world.  You know, what starts wars?  Not religion, but rather it’s self-interested people who start wars.  Self-interest, selfishness destroys community, relationships, families, marriages, friendships.  In this self-interested world people are crying out for God to come fix it, but it seems like God isn’t showing up.  There will come a day God puts things to right, but, for now, where is God when this world needs him so much?  

It’s Christ the King Sunday.  The day we talk about how he reigns in this crazy world.  Honestly, on any given day these days it’s a hard topic to sell.  That there is no God would seem the more obvious.  But, you know, the problem is that we are looking for God to act in power, but we forget what true power is.  God is acting.  God truly is.  God’s reign is in effect wherever we find people are prayerfully and humbly acting in and according to the mind of Christ – humbly acting according to self-denying, unconditional, sacrificial love in whatever form that takes.  There in those acts the reign and power of God is manifest.  Whenever there is healing, reconciliation, restoration of relationships there is the reign of God.  Whenever we look past our own selves and try to understand where others are at and seek their good, there is the reign of God.  In this selfish world, acts of the true power, acts of love can and will look and feel like dying on a cross…but…let us not forget that death is not the final word in God’s Good Creation.  God’s final word is Jesus and his resurrection which will raise all of God’s Creation to new life.  Let us empty ourselves and love at all cost, for that is the path past death to resurrection and new life.  Choose the path less traveled. Amen.

 

By Your Endurance

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Luke 21:5-19

For most of my life I have been an endurance athlete.  Inspired by my older brother, I started running when I was thirteen.  I ran cross-country in high school and continued distance running through university.  After university, I added cycling as a second bad habit.  Where I was living in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia offered some of the best road biking terrain in the world and I ate it up.  In my 30’ and early 40’s I started running half and whole marathons.  Quite frankly, I love to run. Unfortunately, these days now in my late 50’s I can’t do much of it without my joints taking a beating.  But regardless and no matter how much it hurts, when it’s Fall, I will take a few runs.  I have to and I can’t quite explain why, but I’ll try.

Endurance athletes – not just runners but also cyclists, rowers, lake swimmers, skaters, walkers – all share somethings in common.  Speaking as a runner, there is something soothing about the repetitive sound of your feet hitting the pavement.  It is a rhythm much like a heartbeat.  Listening to that sound for a half hour to an hour or more can make the world go away.  Anytime you can make the world go away is renewing.  Depending on how long your out there, time spent running can help you sort out your doodoo and figure some stuff out.  It gives you time to think.  When I run, I pray.  I talk to God.  It’s spiritual for me.  If it’s a dirt road in the country that I’m on, I can hear the trees and fields sing their praise.  There are also the health benefits of putting your body through repetitive motions making the cardio vascular system work.  The body, particularly the heart, begins to work more efficiently.  Your heart actually gets bigger.  This makes you way healthier.  When your body exerts itself for extended periods of time the brain starts to manufacture chemicals called endorphins that counteract the stress chemicals that the body produces as well as make you feel well.  There have been several studies done to show daily participation in an endurance activity is as effective or more effective than taking anti-depressants for mood disorders.  I could go on about the benefits of endurance sports, but I’ll sum it by saying endurance exercise (even if it’s just walking for a half hour or more) makes you healthier physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually.  

I whole-heartedly believe that a core component to being human is learning how to endure.  Adding a regimen of endurance exercise to your life is beneficial in that endurance activities teach us how to endure.  It’s not instant gratification.  If we live our lives as we do today, centered on instant gratification and feel-good solutions we just feed the addictive, narcissistic tendencies that plague us humans in our brokenness.  

Learning endurance is how we functionally and healthily deal with the suffering that comes with life.  Any true runner will tell you that running isn’t about the thrill you get for finishing that race, or running that fast mile, or being able to run faster every time you run.  It’s about the sound of your feet hitting the pavement one foot in front of the other, listening to how your body feels, listening to your thoughts, listening to the Creation, listening to God.  If you try to run for the thrill of faster, faster, faster, you will get injured and you won’t know the joy of it and will soon quit.  

Such is life, if you’re living just to feel good and calling that happy, you’re not really living.  Life is hard.  Suffering is a bitter reality for us.  Trying to escape it, deny it, medicate it so as to not go through it, particularly when it’s our relationships that are suffering, will cause more pain than doing the hard work of patiently enduring which comes with some pain as well.  We live in a broken world full of broken people.  It’s a world of relationship.  No one is an island unto themselves.  If we simply seek our own happiness and not work together at it with those closest to us, we will wreak havoc and cause those closest to us to suffer for us and even because of us.  It takes the skills of endurance to suffer for and with one another to find healing in the midst of brokenness.  It is going through the same things day after day listening – listening to ourselves, to each other, to the Creation, to God.  That’s where we find faith, hope, and love…indeed a deeper sense of happiness than the me-oriented happiness that is vogue today.  You know, ask any alcoholic in recovery, they will tell you that if you’re the only one at the party who’s happy while everyone else is hurting or scratching their heads in disbelief, well, you just might be the reason no one else is happy and having a good time.  

Jesus tells us here that it is by our endurance that we will gain our souls.  He is clearly speaking about our enduring through trials of faith that come upon us because of our association with him.  Loyalty to Jesus exhibited in trying to live a life that is according to the standards of what is right in God’s eyes will bring upon us situations in which we will have to endure.  Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “But y’all, brothers and sisters, do not grow weary of doing what is right” (2 Thes. 3:13) and by right we mean right in the eyes of God not in the eyes of people. This is not a simple task. It is not easy to do what is right in the eyes of God.  Because of this world’s enmity to Jesus even what seems right in this world will too often be at odds with the love of God.  We will struggle with ourselves, with those closest to us, with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and of course, with the society, culture, and community in which we live. Therefore, we will find ourselves always having to patiently endure the at-odds-ness that arises because we live according to Jesus’s demands on our lives. 

How do we patiently endure in this world?  Due to the craziness that surrounds us – wars, inflation, pandemics, environmental crises, politicians carrying on like professional wrestlers, celebrity worship, social media’s and the media’s lack of truth, gun violence, people raging, epidemic drug abuse, the loss of a moral compass, everybody just doing what makes themselves happy, rampant selfishness, hopelessness – a lot of people are asking is this the end.  Frankly, we are definitely at the end of Christianity’s influence in Western culture.  Thusly, there are many sacred, core elements of our culture that are ending which does make us feel like the world is ending – who defines Truth, what is right, what is wrong, what is family, what is marriage, are their powers higher than myself which demand my allegiance; these are all things up for grabs right now and we will find ourselves at-odds, if we point to Jesus and the way of self-denying, sacrificial, unconditional love as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  How do we endure in this deconstructed nearly Godless world we live in?

Well, looking at the lessons I’ve learned from endurance running, I’ve got a few ideas.  First, just as the rhythm and sound of one foot hitting the pavement after another, we need to keep going on with life one step at a time building the repetition of spiritual ritual into our lives by regularly throughout the day creating space and time to be with God and with friends of faith.  Taking time to stop and pray.  Have a special place in the house or the yard or the neighbourhood which is where you go with the attitude of “God I am open to you here.  This is our space and time.”  Build a rhythm of going to that place as often as you can.  Also, have friends who will send you a reminder several times a day that they are praying for you and likewise.  Develop a rhythm of prayer as you go about life one step at a time one day at a time.

Second, Just being out there on a long run or long walk gives you plenty of time to sort through you doodoo and ponder your life, take time throughout the day to pray and ponder life, your life.  Lift up your soul, bear your soul to God knowing that he is listening to you and cry, shout, scream.  Life is hard.  We need to know that the God who revealed himself to us as Jesus loves us and is faithful to us, His beloved ones.  Take your broken, hurting self to God who is Jesus and you will soon discover you are not alone and this Presence with you, the Holy Spirit, loves you more than you can grasp. 

Last, listen.  Listen to yourself.  What’s your internal 8-track cassette continually playing in your mind?  What are you always feeling?  How’s your health?  Listen to the people around.  What’s up with them?  Are they trying to tell you something and you’re just not hearing it?  Non-verbal’s can tell you a lot.  Listen to the Creation.  Listen to the birds, the wind in the trees, the sound of the colours.  Listen to the wisdom and beauty of an old rock or a tree.  Listen for God and listen to God.  God does speak to us.  That’s another sermon in itself.  Don’t think God is far of and doesn’t care.  God is beside you and in you and God does care and will speak.  Read your Bible and read it expecting God to speak to you and the stuff you’ve been bearing your soul to him about.

Find a daily prayer rhythm as you take life one step at a time.  Bear your soul to God.  Listen.  And do it with friends.  That’s enduring in this difficult life and as Jesus said, “By your endurance you will gain your soul”.  That’s the true life he has to offer.  Amen.

 

God of the Living

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Haggai 1:15b-2:9; Luke 20:27-38

In our Luke passage we find Jesus in a spat with the Sadducees over a matter pertaining to what happens to us after we die.  The Sadducees did not believe in resurrection and were trying to use the Law of Moses to show Jesus that he was being scripturally inaccurate.  To prove their point, they confronted Jesus with a ridiculous scenario: A man dies leaving behind a wife and no children.  According to the Law of Moses his brother must marry her.  Oddly, the brothers keep dying.  You would think that after a while the next brother in line would have been afraid to marry her.  Well, all seven brothers die and then the woman dies.  So, the Sadducees ask Jesus a ridiculous question: whose wife she will be after the resurrection?  Jesus answered saying that there won’t be marriage in the resurrection.  He then goes on to say that there will be a resurrection because Moses refers to God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  He does not refer to God as the one who was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob which would imply that they are dead and gone.  The way Moses has worded things indicates that they are still alive.  Touchez.  Koodos.  Well done lad.  Debate won by means of emphazing the tense of the verb “to be”.  

The problem that the Sadducees had with resurrection was multi-faceted.  They believed that when you died, you died.  This life was the only shot you got. There was no spirit that lived on.  Only God is immortal and the closest we can come to immortality is to have lots of male descendants through whom the family name would live on.  They saw a huge problem inherent in believing in an afterlife in that a person could spend all their time getting and keeping themselves ready for the next life while ignoring the needs of this life.  The Pharisees were guilty of this mistake.  They were Legalists and spent their time trying to appear righteous and getting converts to their way of believing all the while ignoring the Bible’s demands for justice and equity…not that the Sadducees did any better in that department.  

Many Christians today make the same mistake by saying that all that matters is trusting in Jesus so you can go to heaven and doing everything you can to get as many people converted so they can go with you.  They get so caught up in being right about being a Christian, going to church, and their good values and learning about how the Bible says that everything and everybody around them – the world – are wrong and God is going to destroy it all.  They get so caught up in all that and don’t seem to care what happens to the environment because of our lifestyles or that sixty children died from poverty during the two minutes they impatiently sat in the Tim Horton’s drive thru waiting for a coffee that wasn’t the product of fair trade.  Well, I shouldn’t say that it doesn’t matter to them.  It’s just too big a problem for them to think about and it seems there’s nothing anybody can really do about it anyway.  So, they just go on with their “Christian” way of life believing that this evil world is soon to end and they and their Christian friends are going to heaven if they just keep trusting Jesus.

The fact that this world will come to an end and that there will be resurrection and new creation does not get us off the hook for how we live our lives now.  Our lifestyles have consequences.  It is the way that we live our lives that creates the conditions of poverty in this world and which destroy the environment.  We get so caught up in trying to trust God with every little detail of our lives that we don’t see beyond God-and-me to the larger problems that evil and our participation in it causes in God’s good creation.

Sometimes people do catch a glimpse of the bigger picture and go to the other extreme of believing activism and progress will make things better.  These folks put a lot of hope into the hands of politicians thinking that if you get the right people in the right form of government the world’s problems will disappear by means of progress.  In Jesus’ day there were revolutionaries who held this position or something similar to it.  They would raise up a Messiah and start a war.  This was what the Sadducees were afraid Jesus might be up to.  You see, they were the establishment.

Sadducee-ism was the branch of Israelite faith that most of the wealthy and the temple priests held to. Because of their wealth and position they had it pretty good and probably believed that they were doing things just the way God wanted them done and so God was blessing them.  All they had to do was to continue support the temple and the priests and God would in turn continue to bless them. 

I’ve presented you with three ways of doing the faith here.  The first is simply believing that this world is coming to an end so why bother to make anything better.  That’s Escapism.  The second is the belief that activism and progress will bring in the Kingdom of God.  That’s being a Progressive.  The third one is believing that God is on your side because you have wealth and power.  That’s being a Conservative. Jesus was none of these.  Jesus was a Resurrectionist, if I might invent a word.  Jesus wanted his followers to live faithfully in the present according to the hope of resurrection.  

This Resurrectionist way is more like the word of prophecy that God gave to Haggai to give to Joshua and Zerubbabel when they sought to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem upon returning from the Babylonian Exile.  God said, “Work, for I am with you.”  This word came to the small yet faithful remnant who returned to Judah at the end of the Babylonian exile.  When they got back they decided to build their own houses, lavishly I might add, to the neglect of the temple and as a result they did not find fulfillment.  They never seemed to have enough.  God eventually had to send drought to get their attention.  God told them to build the temple and even though it might not be what it was in its former days, it would still be that in that place, in that temple, God would grant peace.  The Hebrew word for peace is Shalom and it is more than simply the absence of enmity.  It means contentment, friendship, prosperity, and mental and emotional soundness.  

So now nearly 2,500 years later we the followers of Jesus are to follow the same word of prophecy.  We too are to involve ourselves in the work of building the temple, but by that I don’t mean church buildings or even the institution of the church.  1 Corinthians 3:16 asks: “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?”  We are the temple.  This fellowship in Christ is the temple. God’s Spirit dwells in us and is evident in our fellowship.  

One thing to know about the temple in the Bible, it was not simply a place where people came to sing hymns and hear a sermon.  It was the place where human brokenness was dealt with and healed.  It was the place where God and people were reconciled.  It was the place where there was Shalom.  Therefore, as those who are now made alive in Christ, who have the hope of resurrection, and as the Holy Spirit is in us, our first order of work is to be the temple.  Our Christian fellowship is to be a place where God and people, each of us, are reconciled, where our brokenness is dealt with and healed, where there is Shalom. 

Our first order of work is to let the gift of the peace of Christ become a reality in our midst.  We do this by confronting our brokenness; first the brokenness in our relationship with God by just coming to God in prayer and talking it out.  Then we deal with the brokenness in our lives by seeking to heal our broken and hurting relationships with humility, gentleness, remorse, and forgiveness.  Then, we deal with the brokenness in our midst by holding one another accountable to the teachings of Jesus.  Healing and reconciliation is the goal.  That’s living resurrection life now, living now as a reflection of the way life will be post-resurrection.  

Friends, we are the temple where God has chosen to dwell.  Let us not neglect that.  Let’s make it a beautiful temple.  Amen.

Investing God's Presence

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Luke 19:11-27

“Put that money to work.”  How many times have you heard that?  I remember a long, long time ago in the ‘80’s my dad encouraging me to invest in mutual funds and that “let your money work for you” language was thick in the propaganda.  Mutual funds were ways, safe ways for everyday people to start investing in the stock market with their savings.  But…you needed $5,000 to open one.  I wished I had been able to do that back then.  Today that $5,000 would be worth enough to put both my kids through university.  I was in university myself at the time and didn’t have that kind of cash on hand.  To this day I have yet to have cobbled together enough to start an investment portfolio that would do me any good.  I chose the route of charitable giving as opposed to saving the excess wealth we had to play with.  I guess that makes me a fool in the eyes of many. 

But anyway, we all know the idea of putting money to work.  Investing in the stock market puts cash in the hands of businesses and entitles investors to a share in the profit that a company makes.  That’s buying a share.  The crazy side of it is that a share can be traded for more than its actual value.  If Company A has an annual profit of 5% and Company B shows 15%, people will want to buy shares in Company B and will be willing to pay more for them because they believe they will make more from them.  So, there’s what you make or lose from the actual dividend of the stock share and then there’s what you can make or lose from the perceived worth of the share itself.  

The long of the short is that you can put your money to work, if you got it.  It will make more for you.  And the more you have, the greater means you have to buy shares in companies that will provide even greater dividends.  Those who have more to invest almost always will make more than those who have less to invest.  Then there are those who are good at making a buck on the strategic buying and selling of stock shares.  They can start with a little and, keeping an eye on things, they buy low and sell high and make a lot off of the perceived worth of stocks regardless of the dividends.  So, put your money to work is the mantra these days.  Money will make you more money.  Outside of a catastrophe, it’s a given.  Don’t be afraid to invest.  Invested wealth grows.  That’s what they say.

Looking at our reading in Luke, this parable of investing seems to follow that line of thinking.  Ten servants were each given a mina to “put to work” for a rich dude who was going away to be made king.  We only hear how things went for three of them.  But, no matter.  The rich dude came back king and wants to know how his servants had done with the mina he had entrusted to them.  A mina would have been worth three months wages.  How well they did turned out to be the determinant of how much authority they would be given in the new king’s kingdom.  Prove yourself faithful with a little and you will receive a lot.

The first servant to give account was apparently good at investing.  His keen stewardship had caused that single mina to earn ten more.  So, the king granted him authority over ten cities as the reward for his trustworthiness.  The second was also good at investing but not as good as the first.  His one mina only earned five more.  So, the king granted him five cities to have authority over.  The principle was that the extent to which one was faithful with a little determined the amount of authority one would be granted in the kingdom.  

The third servant is a bit of a concern.  Because he was afraid of the rich dude, he buried the mina so that he wouldn’t risk losing it.  The rich dude now become king got very upset, called the servant wicked, and took his mina and gave it to the one who made the ten.  Some thought that was unfair but the king just wanted to invest in the people who were most able to provide him with a greater return on his wealth.  

The king finished the reckoning noting that to the one who has, more will be given.  In the case of this parable, the thing that one has isn’t simply the mina.  It is the faithfulness, the loyalty put into action, the desire to serve the king well.  The one who has that desire and acts on it will be rewarded accordingly.  The king then said, “the one who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away.”  The one who does not have the desire to faithfully serve the king will have everything taken from him.  This does not bode well for the next thing the king does is to have executed those who were against him being king. (Not a bright spot in this parable I know)  Faithfulness, loyalty to the king put into action, is what pays.  It’s what gives one the authority to reign in the kingdom.  

So, what of all this?  It’s a parable and so there’s some disguised meaning to things lurking about which we need to flesh out.  Jesus told this parable to his followers as he was nearing Jerusalem and he said it particularly to those who think he is going to bring in the Kingdom of God upon arrival there.  He’s was trying to tell them that was not going to happen and was planting the seeds that those who follow him will face a trial of faithfulness until he returns and then they will be rewarded.  The million-dollar question here is what the mina is.  What are his disciples going to be entrusted with until he returns.

What is the mina?  We only know two things about it: It’s valuable and everybody gets an equal share.  To spare us too much suspense, Jesus’ last words to his disciples in Luke’s Gospel were, “I am sending you what my Father promised.  As for you, stay in the city until you are empowered from on high.”  Jesus is referring to the Holy Spirit in a very Book of Acts kind of way (which Luke also wrote).  The Mina is the Holy Spirit which all disciples would receive and the Spirit will enable or empower all his disciples to serve faithfully until Jesus comes back to reign.  

So, let’s put two and two together.  We have all been given an equal share of the Holy Spirit to help us live the life of faith.  The Holy Spirit is the presence of God with and in us who gives us the desire to want to know God as God has revealed himself to us in, through, and as Jesus.  The Holy Spirit lets us know God is with us because he is God with us.  The Holy Spirits makes us to feel and understand that we are beloved children of God.  The Holy Spirit is who gives us the desire to want to know Jesus, to want to draw close to him, to want to lean on him in times of trial.  The Holy Spirit leads us to know that “the Lord is my Shepherd.” The Holy Spirit makes us want to love others as we have been loved – unconditionally, sacrificially, without reserve.  The Holy Spirit makes us able to forgive and to do the hard work of reconciliation.  The Holy Spirit prompts us to want to pray and to study the Scripture.  The Holy Spirit draws us to want to participate in Christian fellowship.  The Holy Spirit compels us to compassion for others.  Makes us hunger and thirst for a greater sense of the presence of God in our lives.  He makes us want God’s will to be done here on earth as it is in heaven.

We’ve all been given the mina of the Holy Spirit.  The challenge the parable presents us with is how do we invest the presence of God. How do we “do business” with the mina of the Holy Spirit and, if I might be so tacky, how do we put the Holy Spirit to work.  The Holy Spirit causes us to grow in love of God, self, and others.  Just as wealth, if invested, grows so also does the work of the Holy Spirit and our sense of God's Presence grow in us when we tend to it, causing us to bear the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  If we are afraid and bury the presence of God in our lives out of fear of doing something that might offend God or simply cause us to make some changes, we quench the Spirit and we will lose our spiritual passion and joy and sense of God with us.  But if we attend to the Holy Spirit, give time to sit with God, and follow the Spirit’s promptings we will develop a greater sense of God’s work and presence in our lives.

Investing the Presence of God begins with giving God some time, taking time for building the relationship with God.  This obviously involves taking time to sit in an awareness of God’s Presence.  Be still and know that God is God.  Put an empty chair in front of you.  That’s in essence what the lid of the Ark of the Covenant was in ancient Israel, a place for God to sit. I like three chairs one each for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  While sitting there with your empty chairs, read some scripture, especially the Psalms, this gives God opportunity to speak to you.  Sing a hymn.  Give thanks.  If you’re bearing a load, share it with God.  If you’re mad at God, hurting, whatever, let God have it.  Cry your eyes out.  There’s nothing wrong with asking God to step up and hurry up and do what he does – heal, restore, resurrect.  God won’t get us for being petulant in the midst of difficulties, but he will teach us patient endurance.  A couple weeks ago I spoke of praying continually, specifically the Lord’s Prayer.  That’s the only prayer we need.  Give this prayer a lot of space in your thought world throughout the day and in your sleepless nights.  If you feel moved with compassion, go with it.  If you feel compelled to pray for or to call somebody, well, it just might be a God thing to follow up on.

Investing the Presence of God begins with giving space and time to be in relationship with our Living God.  Like wealth will grow if invested, so our sense of God’s presence grows when we open up to it.  God is present with us each.  God will speak with us each.  God will touch our hearts letting us know we are his beloved.  God will give us peace in the midst of turmoil.  Just give the Presence of God space and time and you will grow in Christ.  Amen.

 

Just Come

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Luke 18:9-14

I’m sure many of you have horror stories of when you were a child and had a chest cold and sore throat and it was likely your grandmother who whipped up a mess of boiled potatoes mushed up with mustard and onions and a few other stinky goodies; an old family recipe.  She then smeared it all over your chest and throat and it smelled so bad that you didn’t want to breathe, but it worked.  I was lucky.  My mom just rubbed Mentholatum all over me.  

Since the onset of pharmaceutical solutions to colds, aches, and infections we don’t see too many people going the route of treating such things with a stinky poultice. A poultice is a form of treatment where you apply a cooked up paste of stinky goodies to an infected area to absorb the infection into itself and relieve the inflammation in the area.  There are all kinds of recipes for poultices and as many of them work as don’t.  Regardless, the idea is that they will draw out the infection in the affected area and relieve the pain of inflammation. 

There is a theological term for this process of drawing out infection and relieving inflammation.  The term is expiation.  If you must know, it comes from the Latin word expiatio.  Piatio means devout, pious, or simply clean.  Ex means “Out of”.  The dirtiness or disease is taken “out of” thus leaving the person clean. Theologically speaking, expiation refers to removing the disease of sin and its ill-effects from a person leaving the person clean or devout or pious.  

In the Old Testament some of the sacrifices they had were for the purpose of expiation, for drawing out the feelings of shame and guilt that people felt when they realized they had sinned against God and against others and they realized the hurt they caused and needed the relationship with God and others restored.  These sacrifices were for unintentional transgressing.  God gave no means of expiation for intentional transgressing.  You had to find some way to live with the shame and guilt of intentionally wronging another and making reparations.  The expiating poultice for intentional hurting comes with Jesus and his death and the work of the Holy Spirit.  I also won’t mention that the penalty in most cases for an intentional sin was usually death.

Just a little bit about how this sacrifice stuff worked.  Humanity is sick with a disease of the mind in that we are self-willed rather than God-willed to the extent that we will intentionally and unintentionally hurt others and ourselves especially the people we love and vulnerable people.  It is so twisted that even when we think we are doing good it can be bad and bad can be good.  The only way out of sin is death.  When you discover you’ve hurt another unintentionally or intentionally depending on the severity of the hurt it does not feel good and you may wish you were dead.  

To be free of the shame and guilt incurred with hurting God, others, and self, one must die either literally or “to self” in humility and following God’s way to relationship reparation.  Life must pass through death to be cleansed and freed of this disease called sin and its harmful effects of shame and guilt and a whole myriad of others bad feelings.  With sacrifices of expiation, people offered them not to appease an angry God.  That’s propitiation.  But rather so that the life of an animal to whom they had transferred their sin could pass through death for them and reunite a person with God. 

How does life pass through death?  Leviticus 17:11 and 14 tell us that the life of the animal is in the blood.  When the priest sacrificed an animal and took its blood for ritual use, that was in essence life that had passed through death.  The priests then did interesting things with the blood of the sacrificed animal to expiate the guilt and shame that an Israelite incurred.

In ancient Israel they had three sacrifices or offerings for expiation.  The first two were simply the sin offering and guilt offering that they did when they knew they had sinned and wanted forgiveness.  They had also to make reparations with those they had sinned against.  The sacrifice was to heal things with God by getting the bad stuff out.  For the sin offering they would take an animal to a priest.  They would lay their hand on it.  The priest would then slaughter it and take some of the blood and sprinkle it on the ground before the curtain outside the room where the Ark of the Covenant was kept and where God was supposed to be.  What was happening with the laying on of the hand was that they were symbolically transferring their sinful self’s mired in shame and guilt to the animal, who then was put to death in their place in order to put all that bad stuff to death.  The priest then took the blood and symbolically presented that person’s life that had passed through death and was thus clean to God and God forgave and fellowship with God was restored.  They did the same thing for the guilt offering but with that one the priest would also put some blood on the person’s earlobe.  Applying this blood, this life that had passed through death, to the person’s earlobe was meant to heal the ear so that the person could hear the commandments of God better and keep it.

The third sacrifice and the most important happened on Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement which was the national day of very solemn repentance.  On Yom Kippur the High Priest sacrificed three animals: a bull and two rams.  The High Priest slaughtered the bull as a sin offering on behalf of himself and the priests who represented the people to God and God to the people.  But in this case, he sprinkled the blood on the priests and then he actually took the blood further into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled it on the Ark itself.  They believed that the lid of the Ark was the throne of God here on earth and was called the mercy seat.  They also believed God was seated there unseen, shrouded in a cloud of smoke that was created by a big incense burn that represented the prayers of the people.  Thus, this sprinkling of blood from the same animal on both God and the priests actually united them in this life that had passed through death.  Then in representation of all the people, the High Priest took one of the rams, placed his hands on it and slaughtered it as a sin offering on behalf of the people.  He took this life that had passed through death and also sprinkled some of that blood on the Ark thus uniting the people with God in this life that had passed through death.  He then also sprinkled this blood all over the temple and its furniture to cleanse it of the stain of sin incurred by contact with humans.  All this sprinkling of blood symbolized the work of the Holy Spirit who unites us to God and cleanses us of guilt and shame and unions us to God and one another with life that has passed through death, the life of Jesus. 

The High Priest then took the second goat and whispered the sins of the people into its ear making the goat bear the sins of the people.  This goat, thus laden with the sins of the people, was then led out into the wilderness where it and the sins it bore would be destroyed by the beasties out in the wilderness.  This goat took away, bore away, carried away the sins of the people into death and there they perished forever along with the goat.  So also, Jesus, God the Son became human and in so doing took the Sin of humanity upon himself by becoming one of us and he removed Sin from us by his death on the cross.  When God raised him, he became the life of humanity that passed through death and who by the gift of the Holy Spirit to indwell us unites us to God himself.  Jesus is humanity’s expiation of sin, once and for all.  Jesus gives us this new humanity, this new human life by the gift of the Holy Spirit who lives in us each and bonds us together as a new humanity.  We need to come to him for the healing. 

I haven’t said anything about our passage yet so just allow me a couple of more minutes.  This Pharisee was a devout, Law-abiding man and indeed more than a bit pompous.  Because of his efforts to abide by the Law of Moses he feels he has the right to stand before God, toot his horn, and look down on “sinners”.  “Sinner” was a derogatory term, as offensive as some of the racial slurs that get thrown around today.  We find him looking with condemnation on this tax collector who is standing far off in the temple quite afflicted by the brutal fact that he had hurt a lot people in so many ways.  He is so full of shame and guilt that he wishes he was dead.  When somebody beats their own breast they are symbolically driving a knife into their heart.  

Tax collectors were Jews who collected taxes for the Romans and were considered to be traitors.  They always inflated the amount of tax owed so the could skim off the top to the detriment of many poor people.  They would also have poor Israelites beaten and imprisoned for not paying up.  They got very wealthy and were very hated.  They were indeed “sinners”.

The tax collector is standing far of, staring at the ground, beating his breast, and desperately praying, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  He is so full of shame and guilt over what he has intentionally done to God’s people to get rich.  He is sick to death with himself and he has got no way to get the shame and guilt out of his system because the expiation sacrifices were only for unintentional sins.  I don’t know if you’ve ever been sick of yourself for the shit you’ve done (sorry to use that word but it’s fitting) and felt the helplessness of there being no way to make right for what you’ve done. I’ve been there.  All you can do is hope God can heal things.  This broken man certainly was there.

The tax collector’s prayer is interesting.  In our translation it seems he’s begging for mercy, or forgiveness from a judge.  But, the word in Greek isn’t the word they would have used for mercy.  It is the word they used for a sacrifice of expiation.  Literally, he is prayerfully begging, “God, be the sacrifice of expiation for me, a sinner.”  And…that is what God himself did in, through, and as Jesus by his death and resurrection and has applied it to us with the gift of his very self.

If you have ever been or are mired in the shame and guilt of the shit you have done intentionally or unintentionally, there is healing for that.  Come as you are into the midst of the people of God where dwells God in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit and start crying, start letting it out.  God will come to you and bear it away.  God will let you know you are His beloved child, beloved and forgiven.  And we the people of God won’t judge you.  We will hold you just as you are in the arms of the unconditional love of our Father in heaven to reinforce the love he has for you.  Just come.  Amen.