The Way to Abundant Life

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John 10:1-31

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

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

A better way to think of these passages that fits more with the context of this whole passage is that whoever enters through, with, and by means of Jesus will be kept safe.  Jesus is the gate by which the sheep come safely into the fold and safely go out to find pasture.  He is also the shepherd who keeps them safe, safe from thieves while they are in the fold and from the wolves while they are at pasture.  He is both the gate and the good shepherd of the flock.  Safe keeping in life for his followers, for us, is at the heart of what Jesus is getting at here. 

You see, God’s people at that time were not being well kept and protected by those who were shepherding them and keeping the gate so to speak.  Something we need to take into account here is that Jesus is saying all this Good Shepherd and Gate stuff in the context of a dispute with the religious authorities, particularly the Pharisees.  The dispute arose because Jesus had healed a man on the Sabbath, a man who had been born blind.  We have to wonder why that was an issue rather than something to celebrate.

Well, the religious authorities back then believed that because this man was born blind, he was utterly cursed.  He was born punished by God because his parents had committed some terrible, secret sin(s).  So, the authorities wanted to know who had done this act of healing on the Sabbath because there was something not quite right about it in their eyes.  One, it overturned an apparent verdict by God to utterly punish the man’s parents for their secret sin.  Two, it was done on a Sabbath when everybody including God should be resting. This healing was at face value something only God could do, but does God change his mind acquit the really guilty and does God work on the Sabbath.  Thus, they were suspicious that this healing was not of God, if you can imagine that.  They just couldn’t see, couldn’t perceive that it was God present and at work in their midst.  They were blind.

Well, they had the healed man brought before them.  They put him through the 10^th degree and in the end, they drove him out of the synagogue making the verdict that only someone working by the power of the devil could have healed a man so cursed on the Sabbath.  They were so totally wrong so Jesus calls them blind themselves as they could not see that the healing was an act of God.  When we look at the passage that we read, it is these religious authorities who are the thieves, the wolves, the hired hand that flees in the face of danger that Jesus refers to.  That man, the healed child of God, was not safe among them.

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

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

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

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

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

            So, to wrap it up, this passage isn't about dying and going to heaven.  It is about the fellowship that God has placed here in the midst of our congregations.  The way we love one another is the face of God to the world.  As small congregations, we are intensely relational in nature and this can be our boon or our bane.  Large congregations have to work really hard to have the sense of community that comes easy for us but so also we can be hard for new people to settle into.  Regardless, the abundant life, eternal life, the safe life is in our midst at present, at this very moment.  As that’s the case, in these post-Covid days of isolation we need to be especially keen to do things that share our God-indwelt fellowship with the community around us.   Throughout Covid there were plenty of churches and individual Christians that did not look, act, or talk like Jesus and the media was quick to point it out.  But there were so many fellowships like our own who grew closer and we learned how to love one another more deeply from the heart.  We need to let that shine.  You are good people with a lot of love to share.  Your faith is not in vain.  This Christian fellowship is a glimpse of God.  Amen.

 

Hearts Cut and Burning

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Acts 2:36-41; Luke 24:13-35

In our readings this morning the heart is mentioned twice.  The Jerusalem crowd on the day of Pentecost seeing and hearing the promised Holy Spirit being poured out upon the disciples of Jesus realized they had missed the mark and they were cut to the heart by it.  Then, the two disciples on Easter afternoon on the Road to Emmaus not realizing they were in the presence of Jesus raised.  Their hearts were burning within them as this Beloved Stranger explained the scriptures to them.  Spiritually speaking, being cut to the heart and hearts burning are two ways of describing spiritual conditions of the heart…heart conditions, if I may.  Let’s have a look at them.

Many of you know that I sport a pacemaker.  Though I’m not sure I really needed the thing, the cardiologist who prescribed it certainly did.  He says my heart has a condition, a problem with rhythm.  I say, “Nothing new there.  You should see me try to dance.”  Anyway, the thing about a heart condition is that too often you don’t know you have it and what symptoms you do have can be easily explained away.  That fluttering and leaping sensation is just a tummy spasm.  The lite-headedness is from sitting too long.  The lack of energy, well, that’s from getting older.  A heart condition can also really affect your drive.  You have to push yourself to get things done. You want to do things, but…eh, maybe tomorrow.  It’s quite like the motivational problems that arise with depression.  Everything requires more effort than it should.

While we’re on the topic of the heart and drive, in the Bible the heart is the chief organ of human life, the centre of vitality.  The Hebrews believed that the blood held the life of a person and the heart pumped that life through the body.  More metaphorically, the heart is the seat of your drive.  Your passion. 

Jesus said some things about the heart.  He says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Lk. 12:34).”  But wait, treasure sounds like pleasure, or that’s the way the heart’s sin-sick buddy the mind makes it sound and, therefore following your heart is not always the best advice to heed.  The heart’s drive for what it treasures can be and so often is deceiving, self-deceiving.  The LORD spoke through Jeremiah saying, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it? (Je. 17:9).”

Since the heart can be so misleading, God fortunately promises us a new heart.  Through Ezekiel God promised, “I will give you a new heart and put a new Spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh (Ez. 36:26).”  Since Pentecost, we have had a taste of that new heart promise fulfilled in us in Christ by the gift of Holy Spirit who works within us changing our hearts (and our minds) to be more like Jesus’s. 

But back to the heart being the seat of our drive, our passion.  As I said, following the heart can be misleading because the heart can and most often is be wrongly impassioned.  Similarly, the heart can lose its passion.  You hear this with athletes.  They played the game so well for so long.  It was their passion.  Anytime, anywhere, they’d play.  But then, it’s not that something happened.  It’s just their hearts aren’t in it anymore.  They’ve been on the job too long.  They’ll finish the season, but don’t expect them to do more than just show up.  Their hearts need to be rekindled with passion.

Congregations can get to the point of where their hearts just aren’t in it and will start to show evidence of a “heart condition”.  We show up, but that’s about it.  Many Psalms encourage us to “serve the Lord with our whole hearts”, but…I think I’ll just sit here. My heart’s just not in it.  Another fundraiser.  Another meeting.  Another anniversary.  Meh.”  The passion is just not there anymore and church is a just duty, an obligation among many,…and wouldn’t we just love a break from it.  But, that feels too much like quitting on God. 

I think the root cause of this heart condition is that passion for the church took the place of passion for the Lord.  You see, rightly impassioned hearts, hearts impassioned for the Lord, will be passionate about knowing him and serving him no matter what form of ministry that takes.  If we lose our passion with respect to the church, it just may be because Jesus is trying to get our hearts to burn with passion, to be impassioned for him.  The end result of hearts turned back to Jesus is usually a new way of being the people of God, a new way of being the church in which our passion is to love God, our neighbours, each other, and ourselves more deeply from the heart; a new way of being the church in this world is, I think, where we are at these days.

Back when I was a kid I watched a TV show called The Land of the Lost.  It was about a father, son, and daughter going rafting down this “unexplored river”.  But they get go over a waterfall or get sucked into a whirlpool and somehow wind up in this absolutely beautiful place with plant species and animals that have been extinct for millions of years.  They think they’ve found Paradise…that is until the T. Rex shows up.

The 80’s and 90’s were the end of the era of when non-churched people got on the raft and came to church because there was a cultural message that impressed upon them that people needed to come to church to find God and “peace”.  They came and often found something really special…the presence of the Lord in the midst of good people who cared about them.  But, these church people were a people lost in time and it didn’t take long for the T. Rex to show.  The vicious carnivore of “the institutional church” bearing the fangs of “what churches are supposed to do” and this is “the way we’ve always done it”.  Then dinosaur hounded them and guilted them into doing things they didn’t know how to do and criticized them when they made mistakes.  Instead of hearts burning with passion as they felt Jesus speaking to them through the Scriptures these newcomers found themselves being chased into a cave by a dinosaur that would kill and eat their spirits.  And so people got “done” with the church to the extent that the box regarding religious affiliation on our national census that is most checked is “None”.  

We, those who still come, need to be cut to the heart as our Acts passage says. Cut to the heart…this is what happens when we realize our hearts have been otherwise even wrongly impassioned, burning for the wrong things or not burning at all.  The Jerusalem Jews realized how far off the mark they had been about Jesus and what God was doing in, through, and as Jesus of Nazareth.  God was doing something new in their midst, but they couldn’t see it due to their otherwise impassioned hearts.  Their hearts were so otherwise impassioned they tried to kill this new thing.  When God came to the people of God with a new revelation of himself, the people of God killed him and persecuted those who followed him.

Yet, because of the work of the Holy Spirit in their midst that day, the people there in Jerusalem realized that Jesus truly was their Lord and Messiah and…they had indeed crucified him.  They realized this and they were cut to the heart.  They were remorseful, fearing the punishment they knew they deserved.  They needed to sit in holy silence before the Lord and feel the sting of how lost they were; feel humbled, indignant with themselves at what they had done.  They felt the need to do something to right the wrong that was in them so they asked the Disciples, “Brothers, what can we do?”

Peter’s answer was basically repent and receive the Holy Spirit.   The Greek word for “repent” literally means to change your thinking, to change your mindedness – rethink and orient yourself to what God is up to.  We need to commit ourselves fully to discovering and getting onboard with what Jesus is doing in our midst and in our communities rather than just doing church according to what we believe churches are supposed to do in the ways we’ve always done them.  That’s the T. Rex, remember. 

A good way to open our eyes up to what God is doing in and among us and around us to help change our thinking on what the church, our church should be up to is to talk to strangers.  The hearts of those two disciples on the road to Emmaus began to burn, to become impassioned as they began to talk to that stranger, that person they didn’t know, that person who was unfamiliar to them.  Those two disciples could only see the death of Jesus, the injustice of it, and feel the grief of his loss.  They were feeling disillusioned.  They had hoped that Jesus was the one who would restore God to God’s people, but the leaders of God’s people kiboshed that.  They handed him over to the Romans and killed him…but…some of those “hysterical” women say they saw him raised.  Those two disciples were going back home to figure what to do next having seemingly bet and lost everything on Jesus.  The Stranger, Jesus in disguise, told them this was the way things had to happen and opened the Scriptures to them.  When they had grown friendly enough with this stranger to share a meal, their eyes were opened to who this stranger really was.

It goes to show what might happen if we who are still quite loyal to Jesus but are growing disillusioned with the Church or already are disillusioned what could happen if we talk to strangers, people outside the church, about this Jesus to whom we are loyal and why we are loyal to whom, talk to them about what he means to us personally, and talk about how it is obvious this institution called the church in our culture at present majoratively just does not look and act like Jesus.  Out of that conversation, conversation with those quite different than ourselves, those strangers, we just may find Jesus in our midst opening our eyes to what he is doing in the lives of others and in our communities.  Who knows?  We may just find a new sense of passion when we have so long suffered a lack of energy and enthusiasm for church.  Who knows?  Amen.

 

What Is Faith?

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1 Peter 1:3-9

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

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

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

The meaning of words change over time and this has certainly happened with the word faith.  Today we think of faith as being emotional trust in something or cognitive ascent to beliefs or realities that can’t be objectively measured or established by fact.  It’s also the opposite of doubt.  Centuries ago, fidelity or faithfulness would have been the primary way of understanding the meaning of the word faith.  Let me walk us through that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faith isn’t just that we believe God raised Jesus from the dead as a historical fact or something.  Faith is that we are participating in that reality, the real course of historical events, that have ensued since Jesus lived, died, and was raised.  Faith is allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ and loyal participation in his kingdom reign being manifest now in us as we live as hope-filled people who are prayerful, compassionate, and gracious.  Faith is maintaining the prayer relationship with God.  Giving God time and space for communication.  Faith is loving unconditionally, unselfishly, and sacrificially.  Faith is showing extravagant hospitality and generosity. Faith is love of those who would be our enemies.  Faith is seeking peace and reconciliation.  Faith is being restorative rather than retributive when it’s a matter of justice.  Faith is participating in the sphere of reality in which God is healing this hurting world.  Amen.

Seek the Things Above

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Colossians 3:1-17

Many years ago when I was in West Virginia, I helped a friend of mine baptize some folks in one of the swimming holes on Knapp’s Creek.  That was a new experience for me. Baptism by full immersion, that’s something we Presbyterians don’t get to do or see very often if at all.  Baptisms are rare events anymore and are mostly of infants.  Adult baptisms in a river, that was new to me and probably once in a lifetime.  I have to tell you, not only was the experience new to me, it was…well, I can’t think of the word.  I’ll just say getting somebody, a body, the human body to lie back in the water to be submerged isn’t something that comes natural nor is it easy to do.  The human body and survival instinct resist being submerged like that.  It literally felt like we were trying to drown those people.  It took some muscle to push them under and bring them back up.  There was one guy in particular, his body just did not want to go under and we really had to get on top of him and work him under and I felt like we were trying to drown him.  

After that experience, I understood how the early church understood baptism as dying and rising with Christ.  Full immersion was the way they primarily did baptism.  The point to be made to the one being baptized was you have died and you now live anew in Christ.  Paul sums it up very well in the Letter to the Galatians 2:19b-20: I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the fidelity of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”  It is a powerful thing to say.  “My life is not my own.  I have died.  It is now Christ who lives in, with, and through me.  The life I now live is his and for him.”  

It is so counter-everything about our culture to say that.  In our world, life is all about me and what I want to be and do, self-discovery, making myself happy, being fulfilled.  Even when we include God in the topic, the talk is usually of me and how good God makes me feel.  Some folks will go as far as saying what I am becoming is the expression of my own divinity.  Wrap your head around that.  I’ve met a few people like that.  They do a lot of damage. There is a lot to be said about knowing yourself, your strengths and faults and the way you affect other people and working on what needs to be worked on so that we don’t suffer needlessly or hurt others.  That’s called self-awareness and self-acceptance.  Self-fulfillment is another matter.  Fulfillment is a gift from God.  A path to fulfillment that does not involve the way of the cross is seeking one’s own pleasure almost always at the expense of others.  Enough on that rant.

Most of us here are baptized and we were likely baptized as infants and certainly not by full immersion.  The effect of this is that we are missing that core theological and emotional experience of dying and rising with Christ in our paradigm of what it is to be a Christian.  Not to mention the inordinate emphasis on the washing away of sin that we have given to baptism because Christianity has been the moral police of Western culture.  We just don’t seem to get it that we died with Christ Jesus and are raised with him.  Our lives are not our own to do with them what we want.  We belong to him.  We are his and, in a way, we are him in that together we are his body.  Therefore, we must turn from seeking “my” own fulfillment and seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Now what’s that mean?

I once had a female friend ask me, “Randy, do you ever imagine what it will be like in heaven?”  I answered her honestly and said, “No.”  And then let her go on about how we need to do that and how good it made her feel.  I wished I had gone on to say I was too busy with trying to be a follower of Jesus down here to get too caught up in trying to imagine pearly gates up there but no one ever says what they want when the possibility of dating is on the line.  There is a huge strand of Christianity which I will call escapist as well as manipulative because they think seeking the things above is focusing on all these medieval imaginations of pearly gates, and streets of gold, and angels, and singing in heavenly choirs.  They then go on to say, if you want all that, then you have to be a good, church supporting person because you certainly don’t want what’s down below, all them flames and worms and screaming tortured people.  

That’s not what “above” means.  Above is where the presence of God is.  Therefore, above is with us.  Above is where worship happens.  Above is where the steadfast love and faithfulness of God happens.  Above is where God’s will is happening.  Above is “Thy Kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Above can be both in heaven and happening on earth.  It is where what God wants done is happening…and that happens here on earth as we seek to follow Jesus enlivened, empowered by the Holy Spirit.  Above happens in prayer as we talk with God and God with us.  Above happens as we lay ourselves bare before the Scriptures and listen for the voice of Jesus in them.  Above happens in Christian fellowship.  Above happens when we love our neighbours as we love ourselves.  

Above also has its effect on us.  In the wake of having been above is a profound assurance of “I am beloved by God, a beloved member of the family of God” and that has the profound effect of castrating the sense of shame we all live with.  In the wake of having been above, we can have a profound sense of contentment, joy, and gratitude.  We can also feel the need to go seek forgiveness and make amends with those we’ve hurt and find the strength to do that humbling work.  Above leaves us with hope, the sure knowing that God is acting for us particularly in the most painful situations of life.  Above leaves us with a profound sense of loyalty to Jesus.  That is what faith is.  Carrying through on that loyalty no matter the cost is what love for him is.

So, Paul says “Set your minds on things that are above.”  But, he did not mean mesmerize yourself with pearly gates and such.  Here in Colossians he actually gives us a list of things to set our minds on: compassion, kindness, meekness, humility, patience, bearing with one another, and forgiving.  Being grateful and singing the praise of God to ourselves.  Getting into conversations with one another about Scriptures that have spoken to us.  Holding each other accountable.  Letting peace dictate our relationships with others.  Doing everything in the name of Jesus who is our Lord.  Rule of thumb: if we think Jesus wouldn’t do it or say it, neither should we.  Sometimes it’s hard to make that call, so we need to shut up and listen to that person in front of us and listen for the Word from above.

Winding down, people will say there is no evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.  Well, to be technical about that there is more evidence in “the historical record” for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus than there is for other such great historical figures from that time like Socrates and Julius Caesar.  But, let’s not play that game.  There is evidence right now.  It is the noticeable changes that happen in those who seek the things that are above, where he is.  It is in the healings and other miracles that happen in his name when we pray.  Frankly, we each are the evidence that he lives and will come again.  Seek the things above and live this new life he’s given you.  Amen.

Something Happened

 Psalm 22

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Though this sermon is supposed to be about Psalm 22, I would like to tell you about an experience I had with Psalm 42 (and 43).  It’s the “As the Deer” Psalm, the thirsting for God Psalm.  It is a Psalm of Lament wherein the Psalmist is experiencing the profound emotions that come with unjust loss.  He is longing for God and feels cut off from God, forgotten by God.  Someone or somebodies have deceitfully and unjustly wronged him and, moreover, are taunting him for having faith in a God that seems to have abdicated.  “Where is your God?” they mock.  The Psalmist wants vindication, justice, but all he’s got to hold on to is a whisp of the sense of the steadfast love of God and remembering how God was good to him in the past, and also how good it was to gather with God’s people to go to worship.  But he’s not entirely hopeless.  For one, he still knows that God is his only reliable help and to crying out to God is not in vain and so he does. 

Now interestingly, there several times in those two Psalms where the psalmist speaks to his self, to his soul, to his inner being because sometimes you just got to tell yourself like it is because you are the only one who can do that because you’re the one who’s got to accept reality.  He says to his self, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me. Hope in God for I shall yet again praise him, my help and my God.”  He had to stop and tell himself to have hope because God will indeed act for him.  Some might call that still festering in denial or deluded thinking…but God loves us, hears us, and will vindicate his faithful ones when we are treated unjustly.  Feathers may hit the fan in unbelievably horrible ways sometimes but God will be with us and will in time bring us beyond the brutal, discordant tones of the tears of lament to where we can worship joyfully again because God has answered us. 

Now let me tell you about my experience with those two Psalms.  My first marriage ended in divorce.  A couple of weeks after we parted, I was having my morning devotional which involved Psalm 42 that day and that verse in which the Psalmist spoke to his self just stuck out to me.  “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me. Hope in God for I shall yet again praise him, my help and my God.”  It caught my eye so I memorized it so that I could recite it to myself throughout the day.  Then, I had a bite to eat and went for run all the while reciting that verse to myself.  About a mile in something happened.  It just really struck me – “I will yet again praise God, my help and my God.”  “I will yet again praise God.”  “I will.”  Yes, I was hurting.  Yes, I had reason to be worried and scared.  But…God was going to make sure that I came to joy again.  Something happened.

Psychologists, therapists might call that “something” the pivotal point of acceptance and the starting of moving forward.  I see it as more than that.  Something happened not only in me but to me that changed things.  God spoke it into me with the words of that Psalmist.  What I would call it is hope, real hope, the sure faith that God was going to see me through.  I would praise God for it.  Something happened.  God spoke something new.

Now let’s look at Psalm 22.  In a very uncanny way and though this Psalm predates the event by nearly 1,000 years, it could easily be a foreseeing of Jesus dying on the cross from Jesus’ own eyes.  Jesus certainly felt an affinity for this Psalm since he quoted it as he was dying.  “My God.  My God.  Why hast Thou forsaken me?”  We cannot comprehend how Jesus, “God with us”, could feel God-forsaken, but apparently Jesus did feel that way and he expressed it by quoting this Psalm.  But I’m not willing to leave it at that.  

Just a lesson on Bible reading…whenever a verse is quoted somewhere else in the Bible, it’s a prompt telling you to go back and read the verse in its context.  Quoting one verse usually means go read the whole paragraph or chapter it came from.  If you do that with Psalm 22, you find yourself in the midst of an experience of someone who is dying wrongfully on public display and being mocked for it.  You find description of bodily suffering of the kind that many medical professionals say somebody being crucified would have experienced.  There’s even description of people dividing up the person’s clothes the way the soldiers did with Jesus’ cloths.  There’s also more going on with Psalm 22 emotionally and theologically than God-forsakenness.  Yes, it starts that way but if you pay close attention the next host of verses, you find that whoever wrote it was a person of profound faith who was calling out to the God he knew would come and save him, the God whom he had known to be with him and who had acted on his behalf time and time and time again to save him.  This person felt God-forsaken because God was not acting the way he wanted God to act right then and there in the midst of the horrible.  God was doing what God so often seems to do, hold off until everything that needs to happen for the good and the healing of the many to the all happens.

Now, if you keep reading along in Psalm 22 something happens around verse 21 and just so you know there is considerable debate as to how to translate it.  I would do it like this: 

“Save me from the mouth of the lion and from the horns of the wild oxen.

(Long dramatic pause.)

You have utterly answered me.

I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters; 

In the midst of the congregation I will praise you.”

Something happened.  God did something and the rest of the Psalm is no longer lament but rather praising God for an act of salvation that seems to encompass everything.  Something happened.  God saved.  God delivered and the effect of it wasn’t just for the person in the Psalm.  It was for the whole people of God, indeed for all people.  All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord.  Every family will worship before him.  Many scholars will say it really sounds like the death and resurrection of Jesus.  

This is Good Friday and we are here to remember Jesus’ death and try to make some sense of it.  I’ll say up front that Good Friday doesn’t make sense without Easter.  Jesus’ death is pointless without his resurrection.  Without Easter he is just a good and faithful man who though very innocent died a horrible death on public display all the while being mocked for his faith.  Yes, for all shapes and purposes he appeared God-forsaken.  But, if Psalm 22 is our script, we know that behind the scenes we know there’s more to the picture than meets the eye.  If we are familiar with the Scriptures we know that in Jesus’ death an innocent man was suffering the penalty of death for every human for we all are guilty of sin and deserve condemnation, deserve death.  And it just so happens that this innocent man is God the Son, God himself paying that penalty for us.  Moreover, this is God himself taking Sin and Death into himself to destroy them with His Self.  In another sense, Jesus dying on the cross is humanity’s judgement upon God for letting so much senseless suffering and death happen in his Creation.  In Jesus’ death God put man to death and man put God to death and that is the end of it…the end of death.  “It is finished” (Jn. 19:31).

Something happened.  Something happened with this man Jesus who was “God with us” and his death and resurrection.  I shy away from calling it the pivotal moment of acceptance and the point at which things began to move forward, but I don’t quite know how else to put it other than to say it is real hope coming alive.  A new Creation began with his death and resurrection.  Those who follow Jesus and who have received his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, are part of that New Creation that is indwelt by the presence of God that will be raised from the dead when the Day of Resurrection comes, but who, for now, are being made alive in him by his Spirit and empowered to live the Jesus way of unconditional love which he modeled supremely by living a faithful life of giving hope and healing to others and then dying on a cross for us and in our stead.

Let’s go back to Psalm 22:21 for just a moment.  The Psalmist is pleading with God to save him from the mouth of the lion and the horns of wild oxen.  That is a hopeless situation in which one is certain to die.  Such is life as we know it.  We die.  But something happened with the Psalmist and I like for there to be a dramatic pause in the reading of the Psalm much like the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter.  He then says, “You have utterly answered me.” And he goes on to praise God.  Something happened.

The Hebrew language has a way of doing verbs that says the action of the verb is completely completed even if it hasn’t happened yet.  It’s the voice of certain promise (Qatal).  We don’t have this way of doing verbs in English.  We will just say “Consider it done” and do it and when it’s done it’s utterly done so consider it utterly done right now.  Get my drift.  The Psalmist says, “You have utterly answered me.”  He was dead and now he is alive again to praise God and because he lives all peoples will praise God.  The God who was ever faithful to him had to let him undeservedly go through what felt and looked like God-forsakenness, being mocked for his faith, and even a horrible death because what lays on the other side was and will be new life for all. 

So, in closing on a personal note, when we feel God-forsaken and wish God would act and get us or the people we love out of a living Hell, well, that’s only the first verse of the Psalm and God-forsaken really isn’t the case.  The rest of the Psalm, the behind the scenes if you may, is that God who has been with us and faithful to us our whole lives is still with us and will utterly answer us in new, hope-filled, healing, joyful, praise-filled life.  Hold on to faith, hold on to hope, hold on to love even if and though we must die.  Our God is the God who raises the dead.  Amen.

Save Us Now

 Matthew 21:1-17

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I remember when Palm Sunday was a big day for the kids.  At some point during the service, the kids would parade around the sanctuary waving their palm branches and shaking tambourines and banging drums while the congregation sang, “Hosanna, loud hosanna, the little children sang; through pillared court and temple the joyful anthem rang.”  This was the Sunday the children got to make a lot of noise in church!

My first church had a lot of kids.  We made a lot of noise circling the sanctuary with Palm branches.  My second church was a small church with a small group of kids.  We had a lot of fun, but that group of kids grew up and teens when they come are too cool for palm waving.  Now…well, we have to raise the age of childhood to 70+ in order to have children.  Palm branches are optional.  And, we all sing with a bit of sorrow and the anger of lament in our voices as we miss the joyful noise of all those children banging and clanging in a well-attended service.  

I don’t know about you folks, I feel some, well no, quite a bit of sadness if not disillusionment around Palm Sunday.  The loud voice of children having fun in church is dreadfully missed.  Things Christian have fallen so far off the map in our culture that it’s a rare kid even counting those 70 and under who could answer if you stopped them on the street and asked “What’s Palm Sunday?”

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

The people in this crowd and the people of Jerusalem were living under occupation.  The Roman Empire and its virus of an army permeated the land.  The people led sequestered lives.  You didn’t want to be out too late for the Romans might think you were an insurrectionist.  You didn’t know whom you could trust, so you kept your thoughts to yourself.  You kept yourself distant.  There were zealous religious types wanting to start revolts.  Religious legalists who wanted you to wash your hands, wash your dishes, and forbade you from interacting with certain types because purity was what they believed would get God to act faster to save his people while “impurity” would bring down his wrath.  And, there was the religious establishment making money hand over fist on the desperate people coming to Jerusalem to make the sacrifices the Law of Moses required of them at the Jerusalem temple believing God will look after his righteous ones.  Jesus came “humble, and riding on a donkey” to a people just wanting God to act and deliver them – save them – both from their Roman oppressors and from those corrupted religious leaders. 

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

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

Well, I can very easily imagine that day being like a political rally.  At such events people will chant something to get themselves rallied up.  I can hear them loudly chanting, “Hoshiah nah.  Yeshua nah.  Hoshiah nah.  Yeshua nah.”  In English that would be “Save us now. Jesus. Now.”  Now imagine this if you can; a political rally today where a ragtag crowd of the poor and homeless, the disabled, the deformed, the disfigured, the stinky; prostitutes, drug addicts, loan sharks and so on (you get my drift, all those peoples who get stigmatized and judged).  Imagine a crowd like that marching on the nation’s capital (either Ottawa or Washington D.C.) not headed for Parliament, but rather for the biggest church in town and they are chanting, “Save us, now.  Jesus, now.  Save us now.  Jesus, now.”  And, imagine this crowd as being joyful and celebrative rather than angry.  That would be a little different, eh?  Those folks are usually too outcast by politics to care about politics.  They are not the type of people one would expect to fill the pews of big downtown established churches.  They are the outcast, the stigmatized.  Every one of them would fit into the category or persons we so callously throw around…“Those people.”  You might want a token one or two persons like these at your rally (maybe in your church), but not a whole freaking’ crowd of them…and they’re holding Jesus up as their saviour…and they’re joyful because each and every one of them has in one way or another been touched and even healed by Jesus…and they are coming to the church not to worship it but too…

Looking back to Jesus’ day, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem that day the crowd was indeed singing out a very politically charged chant. “Save us now, Saviour Jesus, Son of David, the one coming on the authority of God bringing salvation from the highest reaches of heaven” (my paraphrase).  Note; salvation here doesn’t mean going to heaven when you die.  Salvation to them meant the presence of the Kingdom of God on earth casting out the oppressive rulers and once again also note, they were not headed for the government buildings.  Jesus and his crowd were headed for the Temple, the bastion of the religious establishment., but also the house of God  This Jesus crowd’s conflict (protest, whatever we want to call it) is with the religious establishment not so much the government or the Roman oppressors.  They were marching on those who were blatantly misrepresenting the God of Israel to the people of Israel.  They were coming to the front steps of the ones who were making big business out of faithful practice of the worship of God, and who were trying to run the country by using their religious authority to control the masses with fear of God (meaning fear of them).  They were a “good ole boy club” that oppressed women and hated foreigners.  They had no problem colluding with the Roman invaders because it reinforced their power over people.  They were a religious establishment cherishing power over people for the sake of power and here comes Jesus.  They are going to meet God and his followers…Jesus and his crowd of those people…and be held accountable.  

Well, back to today and our sad angry lament that there are next to no children in the churches that still remain.  If we want to know why the church is in the shape it is one way to find out is to give a good, honest ear to those who have left the church in droves these last several decades and trying to understand their reasons for doing so.  Doing so we will realize that it is because the church has been and continues to be too much like that religious establishment in Jesus’ day that coveted power over people rather than actually loving God with all its heart, soul, mind, and strength and its neighbour as itself.  We have been too much like that institution with our judgementalism and exclusion of vulnerable people while not inventorying our own “sins”.  We have not only colluded with corrupt political powers whom we should have held accountable, but we have also sought governmental power for ourselves and abused.  We’ve been warring.  We’ve blamed the poor.  We’ve been racist.  We’ve been misogynist.  We’ve stood by while children died in educational institutions run by us.  If you ask people out on the streets why they don’t come to church, if they know what church is they will tell you what I just said and more. 

It was that religious establishment by means of coopting the power of government that crucified Jesus who was God come to be with and among them…with and among them manifesting the power of the reign of God.  But, they were too corrupted by power to know their own God so it was not among them but rather amidst all “those people”, the outcasts whom those religious authorities had deemed to be not allowed in the presence of God, that “God with us” manifested the Kingdom.  The same thing happens today.  Instead of our owning up and admitting our own weaknesses and blatant failures and thus truly becoming a part of the ragtag crowd of outcasts needing Jesus to save us now, we’ve let ourselves be an establishment that cruelly insulates itself against the outcasts among whom we will find Jesus.  Maybe the best thing we can do this Palm Sunday is to welcome him in as he comes to cleanse our Temple, welcome his crowd of outcasts realizing we each are one of them.  Let’s put our pride and fear aside and humbly join the joyful chorus, “Save us, now.  Jesus. Now.”  Amen.