Security

Revelation 5:1-14

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I’d like to say I’m a little bit concerned.  What about?  Economics, the cost of living, the cost of housing in particular.  I was already concerned about it a few years ago as the cost of real estate was in a huge bubble and…bubbles burst.  But the bubble has continued on biggering and biggering even now as we pull out of the pandemic.  People from urban centers are discovering they can work remotely from remote-ish places like ours.  They sell their million and a half or more dollar houses in the city and can pay way above asking price out here with quite a bit left over.  Meanwhile, we out here can’t compete.  The government says the bubble is a supply and demand issue; that there’s not enough housing and when supply is low and demand high, the price of the commodity will go up as things tend to sell to the highest bidder.  Tragically, there’s no regulation on the price of real estate.  Land and homes are something people can speculate on and make money.  

The only filter in this sewage treatment facility called the housing market seems to be whether the banks think the buyer can afford the inflated mortgage and no one ever says anything about the ethics or even the morality of something called a market inflated price.  I’m reminded of 2008 when the banks caused a lot of trouble for everybody but the very rich by letting people like you and me have high risk mortgages to buy that house that we really couldn’t afford.  The economy got tight and people started losing homes in a bad way.  It was brutal in the States but a little less brutal up here because thankfully the Canadian banking system is a bit more regulated, a bit.  

You may also remember that when all was said and done that the U.S. government’s Securities and Exchanges Commission charged Wall Street’s biggest investment firm, Goldman Sachs, with fraud.  To spell out the sickening nature of the crime committed; they speculated on people losing their homes, made money, and it was apparently legal to do that.  Goldman Sachs was charged with fraud because they weren’t telling other investors that the hedge funds involved, instead being a cushion to protect against other losses, was actually set up to lose money to get the insurers to pay the investors.  This sort of risky tricky business was one of the things that helped cause that nasty recession in 2008 that took years to recover from.

Honestly, I cannot understand why anybody with any moral or ethical sense would call the banking and investment business “securities and exchanges”.  There is nothing secure about it and the fact that people would speculate and indeed prosper on people losing homes just makes me sick.  Just because governments say they regulate this kind of stuff in no way makes it secure.  In this global free market economy, it seems the only certainty is that greed will find a way and that a few will prosper at the unfortunate expense of very many others.  Seriously, there are people who have made money off of this pandemic.  There are people making money on the supply chain issues that are causing inflation for us right now.  There are even people making money on the war in Ukraine and would dramatically benefit if it expanded.  Hardship for the many always seems to be lucrative for the few.  I’m really worried what’s going to happen when the current bubble bursts.  I don’t feel secure.

Well, the Book of Revelation is given to us to give us the security of knowing that the love and reign of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is at work behind the scenes of this twisted world in which we live and will in the end win out.  God will have his day and the culmination of it all is here beautifully summarized in the testimony of this elderly, exile named John the Beloved.  He says, “I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!’”  Though it may appear to us that all Hell has broken loose in human history, what God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is doing in history will culminate in every creature everywhere, indeed all of creation, worshipping; worship that was, is and always will be undergirding creation.  The security that we have to lean on is that when all is said and done, whatever evil may befall us and it will, what God has in store for his creation is so unimaginably good that the universe and every creature therein will be spontaneously moved to worship.

This vision here in chapter five, believe it or not, is all about human history, indeed the history of creation, being integrally bound to Jesus Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Lamb who was slain, God the Son become human, the one who is in himself the indestructible reconciliation of God and humanity, the one whose very existence as the union of God and humanity, says we are forgiven all things and all will be healed.  Jesus crucified and risen is the only one worthy to open the scroll which contains the will of God for his creation.  

So, what is the reality behind what is going on in this, our world, in which every person and every event is both good and evil?  Well, Jesus has conquered.  The cross was a victory.  It was a victory over sin and death that in the end reconciles us to God and cures our alienation from God.  The cross was a victory, a victory proved by Jesus’ resurrection.  Jesus has defeated sin and death and evil and is now calling forth a people who are to live as those freed from slavery to sin and death and who then proclaim and live out the Good News of Creation’s salvation in Christ Jesus.  This way of life is unconditional love, extravagant generosity, and unrestricted hospitality and it speaks loudly against the evil that’s in this world and threatens its hold on things.  But it comes with a cost.  Many faithful followers of Jesus have, do, and will die for him, lose jobs and friends, and lose spouses, and be ostracized from family on account of him. 

Jesus has bought, ransomed, redeemed people from slavery to sin and death to be the people of God and he did it, as John says, at the price of his own blood.  That’s not some sort of revivalist conversion gimmick to get us all to feel guilty because somebody died for us.  To the Hebrew, blood is the life of a person or animal.  The sin/atonement sacrifices in Old Testament times involved blood(life) passing through death by the death of a sacrificial slaughter to be sprinkled on the Ark of the Covenant where God was believed to be seated in heaven and then also on the one bringing the sacrifice.  This union in blood (life) between a person and God kept the Israelites rightly related to God.  So and thus, Jesus’ life passed through his own death and is now sprinkled on us as the Holy Spirit who unites and thus rightly relates us to God.  This union in the life/blood of Jesus is God’s means of defeating sin and death that we might now live knowing God personally, something which John in his Gospel called eternal life (Jn. 17:3).  God uniting himself to his sin diseased creation can have no other end than Creations healing.  Death will thus end in Resurrection.

Moving on, Jesus bought us so that we might be the people through whom God’s work of reconciling all people to himself takes place.  As God’s people, we are a kingdom and priests.  We are an organized realm spread all over this earth where God’s reign becomes evident in communities of faith readily practicing unconditional love, indiscriminate hospitality, and extravagant generosity.  And yes, the church has failed miserably at this.  Unfortunately, the church is still a fallen, human organization where good and evil happen.  But even still, within this institution called the church are the people of God through whom the reign of God breaks forth.  

Last week, I said Jesus has paid the price and made us to be priests who lead Creation’s worship of its Maker.  We have immediate access to God.  We proclaim forgiveness.  We pray.  We worship.  We are those who give voice to the worship of God that undergirds all of creation.  When all hell is breaking forth on earth, we are those who hear and see and sense the worship that is going on in and behind everything, the worship that transcends time and place.  This worship confronts and subverts the powers that be. 

You know, and here I will wrap up, what’s behind the free-market economy and driving it exists in the hidden, speculative realm of conspiracy theorists because it has to remain hidden to do the evil that it does.  In this Revelation of Jesus Christ in the Book of Revelation God is freely making known what he is doing to save his creation and us with it. It may sound lame or far-fetched to say that reality is that God the Father loves his creation and us so much that God the Son became human and was crucified to defeat the powers of sin, death, and evil; and by this God has purchased people from all peoples by giving us the gift of God the Holy Spirit that we may be God’s kingdom and priests; and though Hell may break lose now in the end every creature on earth and in heaven will worship God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in New Creation.  

It may sound lame and far-fetched to profess that God’s love and will are where our security is, but…look at the alternative.  Do we live and die for the security of securities and exchanges where greedy people full of power lust do things like speculate and make money on people losing their homes because they can and, God help us, because they can get away with it.  Not me.  I look around and sense and listen to the powerful, peaceful calm of the Creation at worship and I join in saying, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!  To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”  Let God’s creation say, “Amen”.  Amen.

Freed to Be a Kingdom of Priests

Revelation 1:1-8

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One of the most unforgettable movies of the 1990’s in my opinion was Braveheart, Mel Gibson’s portrayal of the War of Scottish Independence and its leader, the legendary William Wallace.  For me, the movie has two unforgettable moments.  The first when the small, ragtag, army of Scots with faces painted blue mooned the English army which grossly outnumbered and out-dressed them at the Battle of Stirling and then the Scots whipped them silly.  Moral of that story, go to war only by moonlight.  The second moment was the execution of William Wallace.  Gibson’s directorial reputation for making a big, bloody mess of big, bloody messes certainly showed true here with Wallace, played by Gibson, being dragged through city streets behind a horse, then hanged almost to death, and then drawn and quartered while still alive and watching.  Gibson’s Wallace endures all of that all the while screaming, “Freedom” for everybody to hear until they finally chopped his head off.

Freedom, that’s an important word in human history.  Wallace fought and died for the freedom of the Scots to rule themselves, political freedom.  There have been many wars for religious freedom.  One of the major reasons behind the American Civil War was freedom from human enslavement.  Many people talk about economic freedom, freedom from debt.  What do we mean by freedom?  

I remember as an adolescent saying, “It’s a free country.  I can do what I want.”  Is adolescent anarchy what we mean by freedom?  Most national constitutions written since the French Revolution will say that humans have an inborn right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness which basically means that to be human is to have the freedom to pursue one’s own happiness; i.e., to be able to do what you want to do.  Yet, we also acknowledge the need for order and so there are laws to prevent anarchy because we can’t just go and do what makes me happy.  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be held accountable to the pursuit of a more perfect union, better society.  Freedom isn’t just freedom to do what I want.  It is freedom to pursue a more perfect society in which life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness can thrive otherwise revolution will rise up.  

For a better definition of freedom maybe we should just keep it simple and consult a dictionary.  The dictionary says freedom is the state of not being imprisoned, enslaved, or otherwise constrained.  When someone is set free it means that what bound a person and kept that person from rightful participation in human community for the betterment of society has been removed and they are now free to participate in human community for its betterment.  It does not mean that we are free to do whatever we want to do if it makes us happy.  It means we are free to pursue a more perfect union amongst human beings.  True freedom only exists within the confines of human community not apart from it.

Freedom is also big topic in the New Testament.  Jesus said in regard to discipleship in John’s gospel 8:31-32: "If you abide in my word, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."   True human freedom is thus found in discipleship, in following Jesus in learning how to abide in God’s live-giving, creative ordering of the creation.  After saying that Jesus then explains that his truth sets us free from our enslavement to sin.  Basically, we are slaves to sin.  In Western culture we don’t like the word “slave” because of our past association with that evil institution.  But, brace yourselves, anywhere in the New Testament you see the word servant, the word in Greek is likely going to be the word they used for a slave.  Paul’s preferred way of addressing himself was “Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ.”  Slave is even how John introduces himself at the beginning of the Book of Revelation.  

Part of the Truth Jesus wants us to know that will set us free is that human beings are slaves not servants to sin.  Humanity is bound, restrained by sin from keeping its created purpose of glorifying and enjoying God.  Sin isn’t just that we like doing bad things.  That’s only the symptom.  Sin is the alienation we experience in our relationship with God.  Sin is that we are unable to know God and therefore we fend for ourselves and this fending only drives us further away from him and one another so that we become a virus to God’s creation rather than its worship leaders.  We are enslaved, under compulsion to serve this twisted state of alienation that we exist in.  If I had to describe life under sin, it would be a lot like adolescent anarchy: “It’s a free world, I can do what I want.”

So how are we freed?  What is the “Truth” that sets us free.  Jesus, God the Son become human, is the Trinity’s self-revelation to us.  The Holy Spirit opens our eyes that have been scaled or cataracted over by sin to see Jesus and enables us to be his disciples.  The presence and work of the Holy Spirit who is freely given to us to be in us and among us is the proof that the shed blood of Jesus has freed us from sin, freed us from our alienation from God.  We are now reconciled to God, bound to God through union with Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.  Thus, we know, we experience the Truth that sets us free; the Truth that God so loves us that he gives his life not only for us as Jesus did, but also to us by the presence of the Holy Spirit living in and among us.  

We are free from sin, free from that alienation from God, but…not free to do what we want.  We are now free to carry out our created purpose to which we are bound by our created nature, which is glorifying and enjoying God as the priests of creation.  We are the part of God’s very good creation that gives voice to the worship the Creation gives to God and that relates to God on behalf of the Creation.

John writes there in Revelation an ascription of praise to Jesus, “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”  Jesus has freed us and made us a kingdom.  As a Jesus’ Kingdom, we are the domain, the realm in which Jesus reigns blatantly as Lord.  The disciples of Jesus are a visible public union that covers the planet.  Yet, the nature of Jesus’ Kingdom is not to be an empire and rule as the church has attempted to do in the past to disastrous consequence.  We are a kingdom of priests who give worship to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Jesus, by his blood, has freed us from our slavery to sin to be the priests who everywhere on this earth bring worship to God.  Being priests is a special vocation.  God has specially marked us with himself (the gift of the Holy Spirit) and set us aside to do special work.  In the Old Testament, God was always with the Hebrew people, but it was only the priests who had immediate access to God.  Only the priests went in and out before his presence in the temple.  So also, we are those in the world today who live in the presence of God.  We are his temple.  We are where God is.  Through us God is personally addressing all people.  

In the Old Testament, priests proclaimed the forgiveness of sin.  We, therefore do so also.  We have the responsibility of proclaiming to the world that all has been forgiven so live accordingly.  Jesus has annihilated everything that could separate anybody from the love of God in Christ.  So, we proclaim this forgiveness and call people to turn and come to him, to abide in his word that they might know the Truth and be set free to live in it.  

Priests also intercede for people.  Therefore, God has set us aside to be those who pray for people.  The work of prayer is something we should train ourselves to be continual about.  I’ve often tried and failed miserably at praying for everyone I see, the things I hear about in the news, and for when people just come to mind.  Prayer is hard work.  It requires a complete retraining of the mind from thinking what me, myself, and I think about all the time to praying.  And, like the disciples who went with Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemane; we fall asleep at the task.  Our minds wander.  We start thinking about lesser things than the needs of our neighbours whom Jesus calls to love as we love ourselves.  Imagine, training your minds to be as preoccupied with the needs of others as much we are preoccupied with our own.

Finally, priests lead worship.  We give voice to Creation’s praise and adoration of its maker.  If you’ve ever looked at the sunset and felt you were looking at the glory of God, what you were sensing wasn’t God’s glory.  That’s yet to come.  You were sensing the Creation’s worship of its maker.  We are those who God has made able to give voice to that praise.  By the gift of himself for and to us, we are those whom God has lifted forth into an eternal song of praise that everywhere surrounds us.  We are also those who know that there is definite reason to give thanks.  We are those who know the steadfast love and faithfulness of God.  

We are freed from the darkness and destruction of lives in alienation to God, freed to praise God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Worshipfully serving God, giving voice to Creation’s praise of God is where we find true life, liberty, and happiness.  

We’ll be looking at a few passages from the Book of Revelation in the coming weeks and one thing that stands out in the Book is that behind everything there is worship going on.  Another thing we’ll notice is that if we want this Creation and what happens in it to make sense then we need to look at in light of Jesus, the one who was, who is, and who is to come.  Want to know freedom?  Put Jesus and worship at the top of your list.  Amen.

Considering the Endgame

 1 Corinthians 15:35-58

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The New Testament is pretty clear with respect to what happens to us after we die.  It is that our ultimate end is bodily Resurrection into a Creation made new and filled with the glory of God.  Yet, we don’t hear much talk of that.  I expect that if we were to start talking resurrection with people particularly those under the age of forty most would start imagining a Zombie Apocalypse – ashen corpses with near superhuman strength suddenly pushing their way out of graves to stumble about the streets groaning and growling in pursuit of our brains.

For people in the church, we seem to regard Resurrection as something that happened to Jesus but for us we place our bets on our “immortal souls” going to Heaven when we die.  Southern gospel singers sing about God having a room for me in that heavenly mansion in that city of gold.  Joke after joke we convince ourselves we have to make it past St. Peter at the pearly gates and if so, we will spend our days wearing white robes and halos, sitting on clouds, strumming harps.  Or, more popularly since all the talk about Near Death Experiences, we walk off into that bright light at the end of the tunnel and meet Jesus who reunites us with our loved ones.  And of course, going to Heaven is conditional upon whether we have believed in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour and lived good lives.  If not, then there’s Hell – eternal torment, flames, worms, demons, weeping and wailing, and that slimy, pitchfork wielding, red dude who looks like a slicked-up Wayne Newton who’s so looking forward to torturing us for eternity according to Medieval Catholicism, the poet Dante, Puritans, and scores of American Revivalists.

Then there’s what we tell our children when somebody has died.  Grandma’s gone to be one of the stars now.  Or, God needed another angel in heaven so he took Aunt Sally to be his special helper.  Grandpa’s gone but he’s watching over us or Grandpa’s gone but he still lives on in the love in our hearts.  Then we sit them down to watch Disney’s The Lion King where they learn about the circle of life.  …and we’ll stop there with the analogies before the sarcasm starts dripping.  

Little do we realize it but all of what I just said about what we believe happens to us when we die with the exception of bodily Resurrection are ancient Greek, Egyptian, Celtic, and even Nordic Pagan beliefs which the Medieval Church dressed up with Biblical imagery.  Those very vocal atheists that are writing prolifically these days with a real hatred for Christians have a field day with us on the simple fact that we don’t have our endgame sorted out, and that we prefer to believe what ancient Pagans believed rather than the Bible, and, and most troubling, we aren’t honest with our children about it.  Moreover, for more than three-quarters of the time span that the Christian Religion has dominated Western Culture we have used the threat of Hell to coerce conversions and to control the general population.  We have finally realized how unethical and immoral that is, but nobody has taken up the challenge of trying to sort out the Bible on the meaning of its Hell-like imagery.  Hell seems to be a proverbial skeleton in our closet that we’d rather not deal with.  

When we sort Paul out on what happens when we die, we find that he taught what New Testament scholar and former Anglican Bishop of Durham N. T. Wright calls “life after life after death.”  Of course, Wright is having a little of fun with that question that shows up in news headlines when the topic of Near Death Experiences comes up – Is there life after death?  Ever since the invention of CPR and with medical science developing some pretty remarkable resuscitation methods people saying they have experienced life after death have increased.  Wright says that the Bible does teach that there is life after death and more specifically that there is a life after life after death.  Let’s look at Paul on this.

Paul and the Christians to whom he wrote had a very strong belief that Jesus would return to establish his Kingdom on earth.  This belief was so strong that it seems they talked very little about what happened to believers who died before Jesus returned.  Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, his earliest letter, deals with that question.  Paul says that those who have “fallen asleep” in Christ will be resurrected first and those who are alive will be changed to have a body like Jesus’ resurrection body.  Early Christians referred to death as “falling asleep” with the expectation that those who have fallen asleep will also be awakened, resurrected.

The image of falling asleep begs the question of what happens to us while we are sleeping.  Do we die and suddenly wake up resurrected with a new body or is there something else to expect?  In the first chapter of Philippians Paul, writing from prison, gives the impression that he believes his death, death by execution, was imminent.  Verses 19-26 show us that Paul believed that his death was nothing to be feared, but was actually a good thing because he would get to go and be with Christ Jesus.  This reminds us of what Jesus told the thief who died beside him on the cross, the thief who believed Jesus was innocent and defended him.  Jesus said to him, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”  

So, it seems that in the early church they believed that when we died, when we fell asleep, somehow in a disembodied state we went to be “with Christ” until the Day came when God the Father said it was time to bring everything to its fulfillment.  When that trumpet blows, everything will be made new, the dead will be bodily raised, and there will be judgement even of the faithful.  Everyone will have to give account for their lives.  Then, sin, death, and the corrupted powers will be finally destroyed and as Isaiah said, “The earth will be full of the knowing of God as the waters cover the see” (11:9).  

So, there is life after life after death.  When we die, we go to be with Christ in Paradise until the Resurrection.  To say any more than that is speculation and obviously I’ve said nothing about “nonbelievers” or “the wicked”.  That’s a topic for another day.

Looking closer at what Paul has to say here in 1 Corinthians 15.  He’s answering the question of what our bodies will be like when we are raised.  Paul’s answer is really quite poetic.  He says God gives everything bodies that he has purposed them to have.  The body we have now is like a seed that falls into the ground and by dying it gives life to a plant that gives more life.  The sun, moon, and stars are all different kinds of bodies with different kinds of glory, which means brightness or shininess.  The body we now have simply houses who we are.  It is perishable, has no glory, and is weak.  Our new body will be made alive by the Spirit of God and will be imperishable and will have glory and power.  It will be a body like Christ’s heavenly body, made alive by the Spirit of God, and life-giving.  In short, it’s a bit beyond imagination, but it will be imperishable and immortal.

To close, it is time we get our endgame straight.  God created this Creation and called it very good not just to let it be destroyed by sin and death just so we can blip off and live on clouds in heaven.  God’s purpose for his Creation is that his Creation bear his glory.  This is why bodily Resurrection into a Creation made new is our endgame.  Therefore, there is nothing wrong with telling people that God loves his Creation and intends to save and renew it with his own glory; or with saying that this Creation is an awesome gift from God, so for now be kind to it and care for it or, as we are learning, this planet can indiscriminately let us know it’s not happy with how we are treating it.  Exploiting it only cause everything, all creatures great and small, and us to suffer needlessly.  There is also nothing wrong with telling people God loves us each and that we are unique and wonderful persons whom God intends to save and renew with his own glory.  The body we have now indeed dies, but it is a gift of God to us that we would do well to care for otherwise we suffer needlessly.  Lastly, there is nothing wrong with telling our children that when we die we go to be with Jesus in a wonderful place until that Day when God makes us alive again.  So, let’s just look forward to that day and love everybody on the way because that is what makes life now all the better.  Amen.

Friendship with God

2 Corinthians 5:11-21

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Back in the 60’s a form of mental health therapy called Reality Therapy erupted on the scene and proved to be revolutionary.  It helped people get their lives together not so much by dealing with the past to make the present better, but rather by making the present better and the past will resolve itself.  When we think of going to counselors or psychiatrists or psychologists, we imagine that we’re going to have to lay on a couch and start dealing with our childhood issues to understand how they affect our lives now.  There’s truth in that approach because we do pick up many emotional barriers to living life as we grow up and understanding them helps us to be free of them.  Reality Therapy doesn’t begin with mulling over the past.   It focuses on the here and now.  

Reality Therapy starts with the question: if you were to wake up tomorrow morning and as the result of some sort of miracle everything in your life was perfect, what would be different?  To answer that question you have to begin to imagine a new reality and then list a few things.  Then, the therapist simply asks: what do you have to do now to make those things a reality?  You then set about making that new, healthy life a reality with the help of the therapist who simply coaches you through changes and helping you to acknowledge fears and childhood emotional barriers and face them as they arise.  

Reality Therapy is a very practical approach.  It really helps people dive right into the nitty gritty of our own lives by the work of striving to bring about a vision of hope.  Moving to the nitty gritty of this sermon, I think Reality Therapy makes a good analogy of what God has done and is doing for us in, through, and as Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Let’s just be honest about Reality for a moment.  Reality for us from the cosmic level right down to the personal level is plagued by a rift that exists between ourselves and the loving communion of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and each other.  God created us to live in close fellowship with himself but for some reason we instinctively rather do our own thing as if we were gods of our own little worlds.  Even when we do our best not to be our own gods, things still remain fairly messed up.  Even when we say we are simply trying to do what is right and best for everybody, self-interest still lurks on the backsides of our motives. 

 This problem, which we call Sin is a relational disease.  It hampers our ability to know God and to have the close fellowship with him for which he created us.  And, as it is a disease it leads to Death.  Due to this relational distance from God we start coming up with our own ideas of what God is like – myths, religions, superstitions – and we start relating to false images of gods that we make in our own image; things like power, wealth, sex, celebrity.  The end result is that we just do not know God and wouldn’t know him if we saw him. The crucifixion of Jesus proves that.  What we are left with is a relational blindness that results in us being self-willed, self-indulgent, and self-interested and we die.  And I haven’t mentioned how Sin complicates and destroys our relationships with one another. 

Getting back to our analogy of Reality Therapy, if we were reality therapists and had nerve enough to ask God that if he were to wake up tomorrow and by some miracle overnight it was now a perfect world, what would be different?  I think he would answer that by saying, “My creation right down to the last sub-atomic particle of it would enjoy friendship with me as I intended it to enjoy.  This rift and brokenness would be no more.  There would be no more sin and death and sickness and disasters and people hurting people and people just plain hurting.  They would love as I love for they would know me as I am.”  Playing the roll of the therapist a little more we would have to push God a bit further and ask him what he’d have to do to make this perfect world a reality.  Well, if we take what Paul writes here seriously, God’s answer is not to keep making us miserable until we break and get ourselves right with God so that we can enjoy his blessing.  God’s answer is that he is going to have to become as we are, knowing sin and taking it upon and into his very self, and by the power of his very being destroy it within himself and heal this cosmos by uniting it to himself…and then we would see God for who he is.

According to Paul this is exactly what God has done in Jesus Christ.  “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  In Jesus of Nazareth God the Son became human.  He took upon himself our self-willed-ness, self-indulgentness, and self-interestedness but never acted out of it.  Instead, he took it to the cross and there as an innocent man wrongfully suffered the death deserved by the most heinous of us.  He died.  God within himself suffered death.  The mechanics of that are beyond our understanding.  Needless to say, God knows and has experienced death.

Well, death has no home within the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The rift that human sin has brought about between God and humanity cannot exist in the loving communion of God.  God raised Jesus from the dead vindicating him, proving that God is righteous and faithful because God is Love.  In the very being of Jesus the Christ the rift has been healed.  In him God and humanity are in communion as God intended.  For now, Jesus has taken resurrected and healed humanity back into God and has sent the Holy Spirit to be with and in us so that we are united to God and are partakers of Jesus resurrected and healed humanity.  It is not enough to say that we simply have restored fellowship with God.  Rather, it is more accurate to say we have communion with God in Jesus the Christ because we are grafted to Jesus by the Holy Spirit.  Indeed, God has reconciled us to himself in Christ Jesus.  

Jesus’s uniting our sin-laden humanity to himself and dying with it has forever changed things for the whole of the creation.  Paul says, “…we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.”  In Christ all of humanity has died and has available to it in Christ the new life of his resurrection.   All who are in Christ indeed are a new creation.  By sending the Holy Spirit into us Christ unites us to himself and the Holy Spirit begins the work of healing in us that began when in, through and as Jesus of Nazareth God the Son became human.  God will complete this healing when he raises us from the dead just as he raised Jesus.  For now, just as Jesus lived his earthly life with the struggle of two wills within him-the human and the divine, so also we live and experience life that way.  And as he enjoyed friendship with his Father in the Spirit so we enjoy the friendship of God forever.  It’s all the result of God’s doings, not our own.  

Reality for the whole creation has changed because God has put us into friendship with himself through Jesus Christ in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit with and in us.  Things are different now since Jesus lived, died, was raised, and sits at the right hand of the Father.  We no longer have to look at our own little realities in the same way.  We can have hope, the hope of knowing that God is our friend and is working his loving will in us and in the details of our lives.  God isn’t out to get us.  Rather, God is making us his friends.  He wants to listen, to comfort, to have fun, simply to enjoy every moment of our lives with us.  He’s working to heal us of the hurts that we live with.  We just have to accept his friendship, draw near to him, and start living in the New Reality, the New Creation, the New Humanity that he has created in, through, and as Jesus the Christ and let God heal us.  Amen.

 

Riding an Unridden Donkey Colt

 Luke 19:29-48

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Sometimes we get so used to hearing a particular story that we miss certain details for thinking them insignificant to the story as we know it.  Looking here at Jesus donkey riding into Jerusalem, well, we are so accustomed to hearing Matthew’s and John’s version of the story that we automatically just assume that Jesus is riding into Jerusalem on a docile, old, peaceful donkey.  Matthew and John quote some Old Testament at us which make us think their versions are the seemingly “official” versions.  Zechariah 9:9 speaks of Zion’s king coming to her “righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”  Also, historians tell us that donkey riding was the appropriate way that ancient Israelite kings came to town after a victory. (If you’re a Maritimer, you realize the pun here. Donkey riding is what you do in a little boat outrigged with a little steam engine that will get you nowhere in no hurry at all.)  And so, we just wave our Palm branches and welcome King Jesus.

But if you notice what Luke says here (Mark too), there are a couple of small details we miss about this particular donkey.  It is a colt and it is unridden.  If you are familiar with equestrian terminology, a colt is an uncastrated male younger than four years.  In donkey terms an uncastrated donkey is called a Jack, hence the term “Jack Ass”.  There should be a lot of vim and vigour to this young steed Jesus is riding.  Also, this Jack had never been ridden which would entail that it hadn’t been trained to be ridden.  So, this young Jack full of vim and vigour likely ain’t going to do what you ask it to do.  In the very least if he even lets you on his back, he’s just going to do what he wants to do while you hang on.  This unridden colt is going to have a bit more cantanker and stubborn than you would really want to deal with.  

Many a donkey lover will advise against even trying to ride an untrained “Jack Ass.”  But somehow, “Way, hey, and away we go.  Donkey riding. Donkey Riding”, this young, untrained, unridden, uncastrated donkey seems to just joyfully lift up and carry Lord Jesus the King into Jerusalem without incident; no stopping, no starting, no sitting down, no bucking, no running off.  If only people could be that easy to work with.  If we ever needed proof that Jesus was God become human, then this Jack donkey carrying him would be just that.  Nature serving its Lord.  Maybe that’s why Jesus told his disciples to tell the person who donated it “The Lord needs it,” meaning God needs your donkey.  Even this unridden donkey colt can show proof that Jesus is God.

Well, I could end this sermon now and just say no matter how big of a jack ass we think we may be, Jesus will still welcome us.  But that would be too quick for a donkey ride.  We’ll need to be slow and deliberate on this hack. So, let’s look at some other details.

Imagine the crowd there.  This is a ragtag group of Jesus followers from all walks of life.  Rich and poor, old and young.  There’s even Pharisees, the archenemies, in the crowd following Jesus and they are a bit worried about how seditious this all looks.  We have to chuckle at that.  These Pharisees, they daily and publicly lived their lives as observant of the Law of Moses as they could be with all its dietary and dress codes and rituals.  They did this because they believed that getting as many Jews as they could to follow the letter of the Law would hasten the coming of the Messiah to deliver them from the Romans and establish the Kingdom of God.  That’s seditious, eh?  Here they are concerned about Jesus riding a donkey and the crowd crying out, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”  Well, of course it was seditious, but couldn’t the Pharisees see how their daily and very public “dot your i’s and cross your t’s” legalism was also seditious.  Faithfulness to God, no matter its form, will always be, or should I say should always be, seditious.  If you ever have a religious group supporting a nation or government or political leader without question, there is something hugely wrong.  I find the Pharisees’ concern a bit odd as the hoped-for result of their devotion to the Law of Moses was in their midst happening…just not as they expected.  They were expecting angel armies and so forth, but this was just Jesus the miracle working Teacher riding an unridden Jack donkey into Jerusalem being praised by a ragtag crowd.  

Let’s not miss how Luke tells us why the crowds are praising Jesus.  He says it was because of all the deeds of power Jesus had done…power, but not political power or authoritarian power as one would expect.  Jesus had power to cast out evil spirits; most notably a legion (Roman military word) of evil spirits from a man into a herd of pigs.  He healed so many people even people with birth defects.  Raised a young girl and a young man from the dead.  Forgave sins.  Touched lepers and cleansed them.  A few of his followers had even seen him calm a wind storm and walk on water.  His most famous act was probably the two miraculous feedings of massive crowds out in the wilderness using just a couple loaves of bread and a few of fish.  Jesus had done and said things that only God could do and say.  He wasn’t just coming in the name of the Lord.  He was the LORD, the God of Israel riding into town on an untrained unridden Jack donkey to be their king.  No wonder that if the crowd wasn’t shouting out praise, the very stones would…no wonder he rode that unridden Jack with no consequence.

There’s one last little detail that would get missed unless you were there at the time or were a good student of biblical history.  Jesus wouldn’t have been the only person riding into Jerusalem round about then.  Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor would have also been riding into town, but not on a donkey.  Pilate lived in the coastal city of Caesarea and only bothered himself with coming to Jerusalem during the big festivals of the Jewish faith so as to impress upon the Jews the strength of Rome and discourage any revolts.

Here it was the few day days before the Passover festival.  Jewish pilgrims were flocking to Jerusalem entailing a need for more of a Roman military presence.  Pilate was known for riding into Jerusalem mounted on one of those massive, well-trained warhorses that the Roman military paraded about.  Surrounding him would have been at least a legion, a thousand or more Roman soldiers, decked out in their battle regalia and a good many of them also mounted on warhorses.  Take a moment to ponder the difference in the symbolism portrayed by the Romans riding in on well-trained warhorses verses Jesus riding in on an unridden Jack donkey. 

Moreover, let us note that Jesus rode into Jerusalem from the east to enter at the gate that would take him immediately to the Temple.  Pilate would have come in from the west and gone immediately to the imperial quarters; thus, each to his own house.  Jesus had to stop to weep over Jerusalem for it could not recognize that it was at the moment being visited by God.  Compare this to his followers too.  They are worshipping like hands in the air charismatics while God is weeping over the state of his people.  Pilate would have entered town demanding to be shown the proper respect and probably would have flogged a few people along the way; and, he would have likely just been annoyed for having to leave cushy Caesarea to come babysit gnarly Jerusalem.  

Upon entering Jerusalem Jesus went straight to the temple, his Father’s House, to cleanse it of the big business, for-profit religion going on there and then he “occupied” it by simply sitting in a portico teaching about the Kingdom of God while the religious experts unsuccessfully questioned his authority.  Pilate would have just gone to the imperial quarters and exercised his authority looking after administrative and judicial stuff which included ordering the crucifixion of rebels and such.  Please notice how Jesus conducts the reign of God through the simple practice of teaching his Way at a house of prayer and how Pilate enforces the reign of Rome from imperial offices through threat of capital punishment.

Well, anyway, what does all this have to do with us.  We who live in a day when yet another Caesar/Pilate-type has invaded a neighbouring country and the atrocities of war are relentlessly upon our hearts and minds and television sets; a day when the king of celebrities slapped a colleague at a globally televised event celebrating celebrity over a joke; a day when the church seems to have no credible voice left because the loudest voices among us don’t seem to be the most Christ-like and rather through the eyes of the media make us followers of Jesus all seem to be nothing more than supporters of autocrats and mindless followers of celebrity ministers who love big business, for-profit religion; a day when all information seems “fake” and “expertise” is determined by personal feelings and “likes” on social media.  

In the midst of all that “Jack ass-ery”, there’s little ole ragtag us.  We’ve all suffered the trauma of living in a pandemic and the resulting isolation.  We’ve all got personal concerns, financial concerns, health concerns, we’re grieving, have family members seriously ill.  The feelings we feel the most are sadness, loneliness, anxiety, and being on the verge of crisis.  We’ve all grown up remembering better times and thought days like these wouldn’t ever happen again.  We’re not exactly shouting “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Although, “Hosanna”, which actually means “save us” is a strongly felt desire.

Where is Jesus?  Where is God?  First, of all let’s just remember Jesus can ride an untrained Jack donkey and he’s riding it.  Everything will work out.  And, we know donkeys aren’t known for getting anyone anywhere fast, but he is coming.  He’s stopping to weep because humanity just can’t seem to realize that he is here with us in our midst and yet we can’t seem to grasp that which will bring us peace.  There’s a lot of hurt and he’s grieving too.  So, if we don’t feel like waiving our hands in the air in joy, well, just maybe God doesn’t either.  With every public scandal of a celebrity minister, he’s clearing his Father’s house of big business, for-profit religion.  Most of all, he still occupies a porch among his body, the Church.  He is present in small gatherings such as ours of those who yet still continue to gather in his name when so many just seem to be “done” with the public practice of faith.  He is present by the Holy Spirit who is with us.  We gather to learn his way of unconditional love and humility, to pray, to share a meal, and support one another.  Never underestimate the power to change and heal the world that Jesus has conferred unto us as we simply publicly gather in houses of prayer to learn his Way.  Gathered around his table is the way of peace.  It will come.  He will visit us.  Amen.

 

Wasteful Love

 John 12:1-8; Philippians 3:4-14

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How does one define waste?  One way is to say waste is something that has served its purpose and is ready to throw away.  A used tissue is easily defined as waste.  But the conversion of trees to paper products to be used for human hygiene is a huge waste of a tree when you consider that trees are the largest producers of the oxygen we breathe.  And since we are on the topic of waste, if you have ever attempted to wipe a baby’s bottom with toilet paper, then you may have concluded that this particular Modern convenience doesn’t really do down there what we believe it does down there making the killing of trees for that purpose all the more an utter waste.  

So, you may have noticed our definition of waste just expanded from something that can no longer serve its intended purpose to using something for useless, futile purposes.  In that line of thinking we can waste natural resources.  We can waste money.  We can waste time.  Above all, we can waste the lives that God has so wonderfully entrusted to us.  There’s the Prodigal Son kind of wasting our lives where we spend ourselves and everything we have on “desolute living.”  But, we can also waste our lives in the pursuit of what many would call a successful life.  We can work day and night for a nice house, nice cars, fine dining, all the stuff that wealth affords.  Yet, is being “wealthy”, being “successful”, really what God gave us “life” for?  The fact that there are more poor people in the world than there are Middle Class and wealthy combined should tell us something is askew with our definition of success or at least with how we go about getting it.

Looking at Paul here in our reading from Philippians we see that it is possible even to waste our lives on godly pursuits.  Paul claims that he wasted his life pursuing what he thought God wanted him to do.  Prior to his Damascus Road experience he was very zealous for an Israel that was Law-abiding.  He was a model Pharisee in Jerusalem riding the escalator up in power and status.  This culminated in his willingly imprisoning the followers of Jesus and desiring they be put to death for blasphemy.  After his encounter with Jesus on the Road to Damascus, he discovered that his zealous efforts were contrary to the life God actually desires and were actually a waste of his life.  He considered his pre-disciple rise to success life to be dung and that’s putting it mildly.  

Paul realized he had wasted his life on doing what he thought God would expect of a zealous, faithful Jew.  Then after the Damascus Road experience of meeting Christ his greatest desire becomes wanting to Christ Jesus and the power of his resurrection.  To help maybe understand what Paul means by this this we can look to this young woman, named Mary, who wasted a bottle of very expensive perfume on Jesus because, unlike everybody else in Jesus’ day, she kind of gets who he is and especially that he is going to die.  She knows Jesus and her act of wasteful love foreshadows the power of his resurrection.

   All the Gospels tell the story of a woman anointing Jesus for his burial in the days following his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  In Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s version Jesus speaks highly of this woman saying that she had done a beautiful thing and that everywhere the Gospel was proclaimed what this woman had done for him in anointing his body for burial would be told also.

As Jesus said, this woman had done a beautiful thing.  In the Jewish faith one could say she performed an act of Chesed, an act of loving kindness that truly reveals the heart of God; which is unconditional, wasteful, and one could even say broken-hearted love.  The perfume she wasted on Jesus in an extravagant act of wasteful love was worth upwards of one year’s salary for any of us here.  Yet, to Jesus she had done a beautiful thing that revealed the very heart of God.  

You may ask, “How does wasting perfume on Jesus’ feet reveal the heart of God?”  And also, in light of Judas’ question, we may want to ask how does wasting expensive perfume reveal the heart of God any more than would selling that perfume and giving it all away to the poor.  Well, her anointing of Jesus with this perfume corresponds to Jesus’ wasting his life by dying for a humanity that didn’t deserve it.  There’s a Good Friday Sermon here that we don’t have time for this morning, but it must be said that Jesus wasted his life over to death to destroy death and its cause, which is the disease of Sin.  Then, by raising Jesus from the dead God created a new humanity that would bear his Spirit and in essence be his Temple, the Body of Christ.  The end result is that Jesus’ wasting his life to death restored value to human life which we have wasted in Sin. We are now also reconciled to God in an organic union kind of way; united to the Son of God, the Living Christ, by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us making us to become Jesus’ sisters and brothers and beloved children of the Father just as he is.  With the wasteful gift of his Spirit, which God poured upon us similar to the way Mary wasted expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet, God has truly united us to the love which God is as the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  By anointing us with the perfume of the Holy Spirit, God has made us partakers of the relationship which Jesus the Son shares with God the Father in the Holy Spirit.

Well, enough of this theology stuff.  God has wasted the perfume of his very self on us.  He has wasted the life-giving blood (the life) of Jesus the Son on us in the gift of the Holy Spirit to us.  I have said wasted.  This is not a very nice thing to say of us, especially as we know that God loves us dearly, indeed loves all people dearly even the most evil of us who have ever lived.  Yet, when we look at the whole condition of human existence – the wars, the poverty, the diseases, the way we abuse one another, our pride, our self-involvement, our self-indulgence, our self-righteousness, the way we judge one another – it would make more sense for us like Judas the thief and betrayer to turn to God and say, “Why have you wasted the gift of yourself on us. You should destroy us all and start again!”

Well, here is how Mary’s act is so significant, why it was such a beautiful thing.  Of all the disciples, only Mary seemed to know who Jesus is and understood that her beloved friend was going to die.  Knowing no other way to express her overwhelming grief at knowing Jesus would die, she rather spontaneously took a bottle of very fine, very expensive, very pure perfume and wasted it on Jesus’ feet.  An act that simply says, “My heart is broken, but I understand that you must die.”  All she could do with her grief was this futile, wasteful act of preparing his feet for burial.

Mary’s beautiful act mirrors God’s understanding and deep grief over our wasted-ness and the inescapable fact that we, God’s beloved children, must die.  God is a grieving God not an angry God who demands “obey me or else”.  We are God’s beloved children and we, God’s beloved children, are dying by our own demise.  Of course, he’s upset about that.  God’s response to this isn’t to mope about barking out “They’re getting what they deserve”.   Like Mary, God anoints us for our death and burial. Yet not with just any old perfume, but rather with his very self, the Holy Spirit, so that being made alive in the new life he created by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection we also will live through death and be healed of Sin in our own resurrection.  

Instead of destroying us God the Father in an act of wasteful love sent God the Son who wasted his life as one of us and died so that God the Father and God the Son might wastefully give us their very life in the gift of God the Holy Spirit that we might live through death.  Praise be to God!  Praise be to God!  He understands.  He understands that the end result of the dung of our lives is that we must die so that the disease of Sin will end, but out of his love for us he will raise us just as he did his only begotten and beloved Son, Jesus, because he has poured upon us the same Spirit that lived in him so that he may live in us and we may live through death.  

Just as we will live by the power of Jesus’ resurrection, we must now live according to it.  We who know Jesus must waste our lives just as he did, just as Mary demonstrates, we must waste our lives doing acts of extravagant love.  In acts of extravagant generosity and extravagant hospitality and extravagant service to others is where we will come to know what Paul meant by wanting to know the power of Jesus’ resurrection.  Amen.