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.