Where's the Power?

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Mark 1:16-28

I’ve spoken before of when I was in seminary and went on a study tour of the Middle East that included a stop in Capernaum, where the story in our passage takes place.  It’s now just a tourist stop, not much to see other than a small cathedral over the house where Peter lived, the house where Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law so that she could show them hospitality.  It's also likely the place where four men lowered a paralytic down to Jesus through the roof.  One of the ruins there is of a synagogue that dates back to the 400’s CE that is built on top of the synagogue where Jesus often taught.  The synagogue ruins themselves are not all that spectacular; just some remnants of walls, a stone floor, and a few pillars.  There's also an old olive mill and press from Jesus' day. 

Back then Capernaum was little more than a backwater fishing village of probably about 1,500 people, as seemingly insignificant as its ruins are today.  Yet for me, Capernaum was quite significant.  It was the most “soul-touching” place in all the Holy Lands for me.  Capernaum was the place where it just really hit home with me that Jesus had actually been there and taught.  Just a few feet below me, Jesus really did what we read about here in Mark's Gospel. 

It was the first Saturday or Sabbath after Jesus called Peter and Andrew and James and John.  He called them and immediately they all went to Synagogue together.  It would have likely been a very under attended synagogue.  The Jews in Galilee were a bit laxer than those down around Jerusalem.  Jesus and the four entered and for some unknown reason the local rabbis let Jesus teach.  The people were amazed at Jesus’ teaching.  He taught with an authority that the scribes, their usual teachers, just didn’t have.  

Let’s not mistake Jesus’ authority as mere charisma and say that the rabbis were boring and irrelevant while Jesus was enthusiastic and able to “make it practical”; the sort of thing for which so many Christians today check their brains at the door.  The Greek word for authority there is exousia – ex meaning “originating from” and ousia meaning “being”.  So, roughly it means originating from the very root of being.  Here it means that Jesus with his proclaiming and teaching about the arrival of the Kingdom of God was the root of a new creative act by God in and among his people.  He was teaching them that what God had long ago promised by the voice of the prophets, God was now doing in their midst, indeed in them right in the midst of their little backwater community.  

Amazed is too weak of an adjective for the people's reaction.  Here was this backwater under attended synagogue in a fishing village on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee and the Lord God of Israel was right there at that moment in their midst finally beginning to bring about his Kingdom through the actions and preaching of this Jesus of Nazareth.  The authority that Jesus taught with was the reality of the Kingdom of God actually coming into their community and into their actual lives.  Frankly, we really do need to be thinking on the scale of this being an event as big as creation itself.  In this backwater, under attended synagogue a new act of creation was beginning.  The Big Bang of all things being made new n Christ was happening in their little Synagogue.

Things got strange in Capernaum that day.  Something the people there I’m sure never thought would happen in their synagogue.  There was a man among them, a man with an unclean spirit, and he stood up to challenge Jesus.  What he said was something that no one could possibly know.  Jesus of Nazareth is the Holy One of God, the Messiah.  At this point in the story, it takes behind the scenes knowledge of reality and what God is doing to know that.  Well, the people in that synagogue are about to find out just how powerful the nature of Jesus’ authority is.  As this is an act of New Creation, we should expect that the powers of Darkness or Chaos would show up as well.  God spoke the first Creation into existence out of the primordial waters of darkness.  Not only is Jesus’ authority rooted in the power to create, it is also the power to dispense with darkness, with evil in its hidden, twisted, personal form.  Jesus told the unclean spirit to shut up and get out of the man and it obeyed.  If that happened here, it would quite literally scare the Hell out of us.

So, what is this unclean spirit?   The man didn’t have a mental illness as many scholars would say.  He had something else. The writers of the Bible believed that there was a spirit realm, a part of the creation that we don’t see but it is there and is inhabited by personal beings and by personal I mean relational.  They are presences and powers that will at times relate to us and have effect on us, even possess us.  The Bible speaks of these beings as angels, demons, evil spirits, unclean or impure spirits, and also the dead.  It also strongly warns against trying to conjure up or enter into a relationship with any of those things.  

This man at the synagogue had an unclean spirit possessing him.  Unclean is an Old Testament term meaning impure due to contact with death, blood, or something “unnatural” and because of that it was not permitted to be in the presence of God or in contact with others.  If one was unclean, one was not allowed contact with other people nor allowed to go into the temple until pronounced clean by a priest and the required sacrifices made.  So, this unclean spirit was a relational being so impure as to not be permitted into the presence of God, a being that had the capacity to possess a person and depersonalize that person as a human being by keeping him out of God’s presence.  

So, here in this under attended synagogue in a backwater fishing village we have this New Creation event of the Kingdom of God breaking forth by the word and actions of Jesus of Nazareth.  In the midst of the event evil came forth embodied in an unnamed man.  Strangely, the unclean spirit seems unable to keep itself from blurting out who Jesus is.  Here’s an odd literary fact for you.  In the Gospel of Mark, only the unclean spirits know for sure exactly who Jesus is and what he's come to do.  The unclean spirit cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”  Jesus boldly told the unclean spirit to shut up and get out of the man.  Immediately, in a horrific display of screams and contortions it left the man.  The man was freed and cleansed from that evil that that possessed him and made him less than the person God had created him to be.

Well, if amazed was too weak of an adjective to describe how Jesus’ teaching impacted the people there in that very under-attended synagogue, how could we describe their reaction now?  This man, Jesus of Nazareth, has authority even in the spirit realm, even the authority to cast out the evil spirits from which all evil and fallen powers on earth derive their twisted, abusive power.  The people blurted out, "What is this new teaching?!  With authority he commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him!"  The word Mark uses to describe their reaction is that they are amazed almost to the point of terror.  Other exorcists in their day had to invoke gods and do all sorts of rituals to maybe get the job done, but Jesus simply spoke and it obeyed.  Only God can do that.

So, what does this story have to do with us?  And remember, it was the first act of ministry Jesus did in front of his first disciples; a ministry which also included healing people, confronting the hypocrisy of the religious authorities, miraculous feedings, calming a storm.  And also remember, Jesus sent his disciples out with the authority to do these very things as well and they did and were themselves amazed that they could.  These things continue to happen today in ministries which the traditional church regards with much suspicion and usually disregards as fake, but mostly just doesn’t know what to do with them.    

For the past two hundred years or more in North America and centuries before that in Europe the church has been little more than an institution serving as the agent and enforcer of morality undergirding political powers.  Christian faith has become little more than a matter of private belief.  It has no power.  It’s lost its exousia and hence it wanes.  How off guard would it catch us if Jesus came here to this under-attended backwater church and did what he did in that under-attended synagogue in a backwater fishing village as a matter of first course?  Friends, the Jesus who turned Capernaum upside-down is our Jesus and he's with us now.  He lives.  He has power even over the grave.  Call out to him.  Trust him with your life.  Settle your life on him without reserve.  Paul wrote in Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.  The life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.”  I don’t know if you/we can grasp it, but Jesus, the one who has power even over the unclean/evil is living in us.  Trust yourself to him.  He loves you and has given his life and exousia to you.  Why be afraid?  Why worry?  He is here.  Amen.

This Ole World Is Passing

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Mark 1:14-20; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31

A long time ago in a country not that far away a singer/songwriter by the name Bob Dylan wrote this little ditty about change:

Come gather ’round people wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide the chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

 

Dylan wrote The Times They Are a-Changing in the Fall of 1963 just before American President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  The song skyrocketed to popularity as the younger generation was rising up against the perceived crony-ism of the older, established generation.  They were crying out for civil rights, an end to the Vietnam War.  They wanted a world of peace, love, and understanding.  

The Times They Are a-Changing is now sixty years old and we just might want to ask has anything really changed.  The young people the song was meant to give voice to and to rally up, well, they were the front end of that demographic affectionately known as the Baby Boomers.  Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964 and are the largest and wealthiest demographic in North America today.  If you are between the of 62 and 80, well, “Hey, Boomer.”  Did the Boomers change the things they so idealistically set out to change?  I would answer that question by quoting Pete Townsend of classic Rock band The Who who in the last line of their iconic song “Won’t Get Fooled again” which is about Third World revolutions, he said, “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”  You hear the answer in the hurt and sarcasm of the voices of their children, the Gen X-ers, and their narcissistic grandchildren, the Millennials, when they affectionately say, “Thanks, Boomer.”  Their great grandchildren, Gen Z’s, are as tuned out as tuned out gets due to device addiction, devices which are handed out in public schools where the focus of their education is “Be all you can be”.  

As things stand today, the Climatic stability of this planet is in jeopardy.  It’s nearly impossible to get young people involved in government mostly because it involves “politics”.  Western democracies are facing a significant threat from populist authoritarian movements.  The press, the Media, is so agenda-ed on all sides that one can’t expect them to serve the prophetic purpose Dylan imagined it should.  But, the prophetic office is one that belongs to the church but let’s certainly not talk about what’s become of the church in the last 60 years (there’s brutal sarcasm in my voice for those who are reading rather than hearing this).  The times they were a-changing but nothing really changed.

Well, I guess if we’re going to eat Dylan for breakfast maybe we should take a look at the Apostle Paul who roughly 1,970 years ago, “the appointed time has grown short” and “the present form of this world is passing away”.  We could ask Paul what has changed and then come up with a myriad list of atrocities committed by the Church, the institution of which Paul could have and would have never imagined.  I can only answer that line of thinking by saying that if attacking a Church that has merited quite a bit of the attack is the way you want to go, you’ve missed the point.   

I apologize for jumping right into a Greek lesson, but the word for “appointed time” is an interesting one.  Jesus says, “The time (Kairos) is fulfilled; the Reigning of God is at hand”.  Paul writes, “The appointed time has grown short.”  That word for “time” there in Greek is kairos.  It is not the word for the tic-toc of time nor is it so much the word for meaning the times of the Old Testament of the times of the Middle Ages.  Kairos is different.  It means a decisive moment in time.  It’s a time for something specific to happen; a time in which the events of history have obviously come together in such a way that people need to rise to the occasion and do the right thing because the impact of the decisions made at this time will profoundly shape history from there on out. 

As an example, marriages can have kairos times, be they difficult times or good times but usually difficult, where spouses can say that the way we handle this moment, these weeks, these months, even years will make or break us.  We will either come out with a stronger relationship, a deeper friendship, or we’ll just set up boundaries we know not to cross.  That’s kairos – a period of time in which important decisions need to be made and proactive actions taken.

 With respect to God.  Kairos is a decisive period of time when people of faith need to get off their laurels and be faithful.  A period of time to stand up and be counted.  At the time Paul wrote this, he was expecting the imminent return of Jesus to establish the Reign of God which would put an end to the world as we do it.  So, he advised the Corinthians to put their allegiance to Jesus first, even before their marriages.  Quit grieving, Quit rejoicing.  Quit acting like possessions make any difference.  Quit being so businessy for the way this world works will soon not be the way this world works anymore.  The form, the rubric, of this world is passing away.  Obviously, Jesus hasn’t returned yet and life goes on.  We cannot act in such an abrupt way as Paul is prescribing here that would cause the world to end.  (To the reader that was meant to be humourous.)

Kairos time is a period of time for people of faith to stand up and be faithful because faithful action during this time will affect the faith of others for generations. There have been several moments in the history of the church that have been kairos times.  The Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties, the abolition of slavery, the Reformation, to name a few.  These were times when the disciples of Jesus need to act and people like Rosa Parks did and things changed.  

Let me reframe Kairos time in a way not so literal as Paul did.  Jesus came in the midst of a kairos time bringing with him a kairos time.  The office of Roman Emperor was just over 20 years old when Jesus was born.  The known world was beginning to figure out what it was to bend the knee to one man and call him Lord and Saviour and Son of God.  The Roman Emperors promised peace and prosperity all the while enforcing their whims with the most powerful military the world had ever known.  The world we know would not be the world we know apart from the decisions made by these few powerful men and those surrounding them even though they lived 2,000 years ago.  Imperial Rome is still with us.  We might call it Democracy and have figured out how to limit the powers of want-to-be Emperors, but Western Culture is still Roman Culture.  Like the movie Groundhog Day, we are stuck reliving Rome.

Jesus came into that kairos time bringing with him a moment of decision for each person to make.  He was a Jew, one of those pesky people who wouldn’t bow the knee to any other god than their own God, the one true God.  As truly being the Son of God, Jesus stood in opposition to everything the Roman Emperor stood for.  The Spirit of God rested upon Jesus and empowered him.  Everywhere Jesus went he proclaimed good news to the poor.  He healed people.  He cast out demons.  He raised the dead.  He called people to love God and neighbour.  He called people to forgive each other.  He called people to act and react peaceably.  He called people to share their stuff.  Invited the rich to give to the poor.  He allowed himself to be “bothered” by children.  He regarded women as equal to men.  He listened.  He cared.  He prayed.  He knew the Scriptures and taught them.  He confronted religious hypocrisy.  He fed over 15,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish.  He calmed a storm.  He walked on water.  He was crucified for treason, but God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead in vindication starting a New Creation that will come to its fullness when this time is fulfilled and Jesus returns.

Jesus came proclaiming the Gospel.  Let me break it down for you, “The kairos is fulfilled.”  Humanity’s ability to rule itself and solve its problems on its own will never become anything more than a repeat of Imperial Rome.  If you want to know everything Man can be when Man sings “I did it my way”, Imperial Rome and its pathologies is as good as it gets.  The Kairos of Man is fulfilled.  Come to its end.  If humanity wants to move forward, then we truly have to take Jesus seriously.

Jesus the said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.”  This makes more sense if we say the reigning or ruling of God is upon us.  Everywhere Jesus went through everything he said and did the ruling of God manifested.  It continues today through those who follow him and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and love God and love neighbour unconditionally and even sacrificially.  

“Repent and believe the Gospel.”  The Greek word for repent literally means “Be with-minded.”  Be with-minded with God.  Think on the things of God not the things of Man.  Want the things of God rather than indulge the compulsions of Man.  Humanity has lived according to the lie that God is Almighty Power.  Jesus showed us the love of God when he died on the cross and was raised.  He did not inflict his power upon anyone in any kind of way that was not healing or freeing or empowering.  God’s power is sacrificial, unconditional love that respects persons and heals them.  It is not this survival of the fittest leading to domination by the fittest thing.  The Greek word for believe does not mean “I think these ideas to be true.”  It also goes beyond a simple matter of trusting God.  It is loyalty that arises from being befriended and loved; loyalty which we demonstrate by faithfulness.  To repent and believe the Gospel that the kairos is fulfilled and the Reign of God is at hand is to become a loyal disciple of Jesus.  It is to gather together with a group of Jesus’ friends to prayerfully hash out the question, “Who are you, Lord Jesus?”  He will show up where people gather in his Name in the fullness of the love of God in the power of the Holy Spirit to heal us and make us new.  

If humanity wants to be anything more than what it was under Imperial Rome, we each need to take Jesus seriously.  This kairos time that we are in is the same kairos time that humanity has been in.  You, the elder church stand as a testimony to the faithfulness of God, of God’s love for you as God has proven himself faithful to you time after time after time after time after time throughout the many years of your lives.  This is Truth.  This God who has been true to you is pouring his reign in love upon the world through Jesus by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.  Have the courage to share this truth with your children and grandchildren pointing to Jesus as the Way forward.  Teach don’t preach Jesus and his ways.  Be disciples who disciple.  To sound like Paul, in this kairos time, Jesus must become our primary loyalty, our primary devotion to him is the way forward for this world stuck in Rome.  Amen.

 

What's Best for Us

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1 Corinthians 6:12-20

One of the new species of alien in the Star Trek series that don’t involve Captain Kirk and the gang are the Ferengi.  The Ferengi are probably the ugliest aliens anyone has ever come up with.  They are short and have great big bulbous bum-shaped heads that are rimmed by a uni-brow of cartilage that becomes their earlobes that they find pleasurable when petted.  Their teeth are very sharp fangs; an orthodontic nightmare that they are frequently seen rather vainly sharpening with a tooth-file.  To make matters worse, Ferengi men think they are God’s gift to women no matter the humanoid species.  Simply said, they are disgusting little grunts.  

The Ferengi are rather flat characters in the Star Trek universe meaning they have only one defining characteristic: everything they do is motivated by financial profit.  They are überkapitalisten or uber-capitalists.  Their society is a free-market economy gone to the extreme.  The only code of law they have are what they call The 285 Rules of Acquisition which are simply legalized ways to cheat people out of their stuff.  For them, the good person is the most profitable person.  Their lust for profit is so extreme that pregnancy is simply a matter of renting space.  Their religion is even based on profit and resembles the Christian Prosperity Gospel.  What happens to a person in the after-life is determined by how much profit one made in this life.  People who’ve made profit go to the Divine or Golden Treasury and those who haven’t go to the Vault of Eternal Destitution also known as the Debtor’s Dungeon.  

In the big picture, the Ferengi are a parody of Westerners and our free market economy because if you look at us from outer space it just seems our highest of values is making the money we need to afford the stuff with think will make us happy.  In fact, the name Ferengi is derived from the Arabic word for European traders or Westerners in general and it’s derogatory.  The Ferengi are supposed to be what human society would look like if benefit, usefulness, success, and even “the Good” were determined by financial worth.  In an off-handed way, the presence of the Ferengi and their way of life in the Star Trek universe forces us to see that there is more to life than turning a profit.  

The foul taste the Ferengi leave in our mouths make us ask what motives underlie how we determine what we think is best for us.  For, you see, we live in a culture that’s quite selfish at this task.  In High School I’m pretty sure that we all had to read Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  Polonius’ last words of advice to his son Laertes when leaving for France became the motto for many guidance counsellors: “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”  The advice is to be honest with oneself.  If you lie to yourself, you are a lie before all people.  Being honest with yourself is good advice, but difficult to do.  So, Polonius’ advice is straight forwardly just be honest with yourself and you will be honest all people.   The converse of that is that if you lie to yourself, you are a lie to all people.  Well, for some reason that’s not what we, today, hear Polonius’ advice to be.  We hear it as if I must do what seems best for me.  I must do what makes me happy and that will be best for everyone.   Follow my joy.  Follow my bliss.  Unfortunately, and if you haven’t noticed, living that “me, myself, and I” way oddly tends to leave a wake of hurt people behind us.  Doing that is marginally ok when we’re young and out to conquer the world, but once commitments are made and there are people relying on us, we have to start thinking outside the box of simply what’s best for me and rather think about and foremost do what is best for us.  

In this passage from 1 Corinthians Paul pushes us in this direction and leads us to see that what is best for the Christian community of which I am a part will in the end be what is most beneficial for me; not the other way around.  This is subordinating oneself to the community.  He says, “‘All things are permissible for me’ – but not everything is beneficial.  ‘All things are permissible for me’ – but I myself will not be enslaved by anything.”  To give you some background, Paul is taking a common phrase that was frequently used in the early church in the dispute over whether or not eating meat sacrificed to idols was permissible.  Back then, it was nearly impossible to buy meat in the marketplace that hadn’t been sacrificed to one god or another.  The Jewish Christian part of the church had a huge problem with eating marketplace meat for they saw it as participating in idol worship so also the memory of past persecutions of the Jewish people by Greeks and Romans who forced them to eat idol meat or die.  On the other hand, the Gentile Christians who grew up on such meat didn’t see anything wrong with it because the gods those idols represent didn’t really exist.  So they coined the phrase, “All things are permissible for me”; meaning it’s not hurting anyone if I do this.  

Well, Paul picks up on that and runs with it by saying, “it might be ok for you, but is it beneficial to anybody else?  And, we have to ask what Paul meant by “beneficial”.  The New Testament Greek word for “beneficial” is symphero.  It is often translated as profitable or to one’s advantage.  Yet, quite literally it means “to with-bring” or “to bring together”.  This verse really ought to read, “All things are permissible for me” – but not everything promotes community”.  He follows that up with “yes, all things are permissible for me” – but if we get carried away with it there is an awful lot out there that will become master of us.”  The point of his argument is that we have to do what’s best for building up our Christian community.  To make the case even stronger, Paul says as much in 1 Corinthians 10:23-24, where he says: “‘Everything is permissible’-- but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible’-- but not everything builds up.  Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.”  Though we might not see any harm in a particular activity, if it hurts another, then we ought not do it.  Rather, we should do that which draws us closer together in Christ.

The others inferred here are the fellowship of believers.  Paul has something special to say about Christian fellowship – we are the body of the resurrected Jesus.   The Holy Spirit is in us each and, therefore, we each are members, body parts of the body of Christ.  Our collective body, our fellowship, is a temple of the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, since the Holy spirit dwells in and among us, we ourselves are not our own and what we do with our bodies should bring glory to God.  So, since we are united by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ we need to make our decisions according to what is best for building up Christ’s body. 

Paul presents us here with a very radical paradigm for how we make decisions about our lives.  We are not our own.  We belong to Jesus Christ who bought us when were slaves to sin at the cost of his own life that we might live free for him, not for ourselves.  Therefore, as he is physically present to us in his Body, the Fellowship of believers, in all matters we are to do what is best for the body of believers with whom we are growing together in Christ afs his body.  Let’s flesh this out a bit starting with me the minister.

What if I were to receive an offer to go and minister to a congregation that would pay $40,000 more a year.  Most people would say, “That’s a no-brainer.  Take it.”  It would be good for me career/ego-wise to finish out in a bigger pulpit.  It would be good for my family financially.  But if I listen to Paul and take him seriously on this, upward career move and financial incentive is not enough reason for a minister to move on.  Any such move on my part would have to involve a consultation, indeed a prayer-filled conversation with the folks among you who know me best concerning what is best for you and the greater church.  The point being a prayerful discernment of whether our Lord Jesus through the voice of the Holy Spirit is telling you to send me forth to this other calling.  

The same is true for all of you.  According to Paul, what is best for building up this worshipping community is supposed to be the determining factor in all our decisions from what we do in retirement, to personal family matters, to career moves, to kids in sports, even to matters involving morals.  We are a temple of the Holy Spirit.  We are each body parts of the body of Christ.  Christ Jesus has bought us at the price of his own life.  Our lives are not our own anymore to just do what we think makes us happy or follow our bliss.  Happiness is found in subordinating ourselves to the will of God as discerned with the body of Christ.

Jesus has blessed us with having a praying community of devoted Christians to consult with in respect to the important stuff of our lives, people through whom he will speak if we give him opportunity.  To bring a matter before the LORD is to bring it before our brothers and sisters in Christ so that prayerfully we may speak the things of God to one another and lean on the godly wisdom that the Holy Spirit has wrought in us each.  God has not left us in this world to fend for ourselves nor to do what simply feels right to me in my gut.  God wants to direct us down his pathways that he might bless us.  Praise be to God.  What a beautiful thing this is.  Amen.

Arise and Shine

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Isaiah 60:1-6,17-20

Let’s step back in time nearly two and a half millennia to ancient Israel in the 500’s BC and revisit the story of ancient Israel going into exile in Babylon and then the eventual return of a small faithful remnant.  I know I tell this story a lot but I think it’s a biblical story that is very applicable and relevant to the Church today.  The church today resembles Israel at that time as the majority of Israelites were living in cultural captivity in Babylon which means they had adopted the culture of Babylon and lost their Israelite distinctiveness.  So also, most of those bearing the label Christian live culturally captive to the beliefs and values of “secular” Western culture.  So also, a small faithful remnant of Israelites returned from exile to Jerusalem to try to distinctively live faithful lives much like the faithful remnant of the Church today that exists in smaller gatherings such as ours.  

In 586 BC(E) God sent the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem and level the temple.  They did so with vigor and then took anybody who was anybody away into exile in Babylon.  The reason God gave for this through the voice of prophets was their idolatry which included child sacrifice and also the more privileged Israelites were taking advantage of the poor in their midst for their own gain.  The Land of Judah, the Land God promised to Abraham on which his descendants had become a great nation, was then left undefended and became cheap, quick real estate for foreigners.  The great nation was exiled.  According to one prophet, the Land had vomited them off.

Those who went into exile, well, they had it tough at first but over time the actually began to fair quite well and they became comfortable resembling Babylonians.  You may not know it but the Babylonian diaspora of Jews remained the largest community of Jews worldwide up into the 1800’s AD.  Significant things happened in the Babylonian community.  Most significantly, in the 400’s BC there in Babylon, the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible as we know it, received its final edit by a school of the descendants of some of the Jerusalem priests who had been taken into exile.  This edit included the addition of most of the legal stuff you find in the Old Testament.  Like the Amish have their rules to preserve their distinctive identity so also the Jews in the Babylonian exile wanted to write down and codify everything about their way of life to keep it distinctive while in Babylon.  In fact, the roots of Judaism as we know it today formed in Babylon.

In 539 BC(E) King Cyrus of Persia defeated the Babylonians.  His policy was to allow the peoples that the Babylonians had taken into exile to return to their homelands.  Not soon after that a trickle of Jews, a small remnant, began to head back to Judah and to Jerusalem with the hopes of rebuilding what they had before.  Yet, they returned to find that Jerusalem was in tatters.  The wall still lay torn down.  They strongly felt they needed a wall to make Jerusalem great again for they were outnumbered by the people who had moved in on the vacated lands and “those people”, those not Jewish people, weren’t going to leave and they strongly resisted any effort by the remnant to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple.  It did not take long for this faithful remnant of former exiles to become disillusioned in the realization that their resettlement was going to be difficult.

There are several books in the Bible associated with this time.  Ezra and Nehemiah record the history.  The Prophets Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and whoever wrote the last six chapters of Isaiah speak to this disillusioned remnant.  They hoped they could just go back and rebuild and things would be like they were before but without all the bad stuff.  Things would be ideal…back to the good ole days.

To this disillusioned, doubly heart-broken people who had been unwelcomed back to their ancestral homes as if they were the squatters by “those people” who actually had moved in to squat on the land, to these Isaiah writes: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.  For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the glory of the Lord will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.  Lift up your eyes and look around…your sons and daughters will come from far away…the wealth of the nations shall come to you…a multitude of camels shall cover you…They shall bring gold and frankincense, and they shall proclaim the praise of the Lord”.  Like Paul Revere at the beginning of the American Revolution riding out to proclaim “The British are coming;” so Isaiah proclaims “The camels are coming.”  

This chapter-long exhortation concludes in verses 21 and 22 with God saying, “Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever.  They are the shoot that I planted, the work of my hands, so that I might be glorified.  The least of them shall become a clan, the smallest one a mighty nation; I am the Lord; in its time I will accomplish it quickly.”

“In it’s time,” says the Lord. “In its time.”  Step up to the time of the birth of Jesus nearly 400 years inclusive of eight generations later and I wouldn’t use the word “quickly” to describe that.  It took 200 years for the Jewish people to repopulate the land.  But then 100 years in, the Greeks came and then the Romans and they didn’t bring their wealth.  They brought their armies and oppressed these Jews who were only trying to be faithful.  Unfortunately, like people living the “Adult Lifestyle” today, many Jewish people back then particularly the leadership and the wealthy began to live “the Greco-Roman Lifestyle”.  Yet, there was still a faithful remnant in the Land waiting, waiting, and waiting some more for God to do what he said he would do through the mouth of Isaiah – bring the nations, their kings, and their wealth to Israel to proclaim the praise of the Lord.  

Joseph and Mary were part of this remnant.  Jesus was born, the Son of God, the glory of the Lord, the presence of the Lord had come to dwell among his people.  The promised light began to shine.  From angels and shepherds, from highest to lowest, they all began to proclaim the Good News that God was bringing salvation to his people as this baby.  As Matthew says an unusual light appeared in the skies and following that “sign” came a caravan of camels carrying three astrologer kings from afar; kings bearing gifts of gold and frankincense, just as Isaiah said.  They came not to oppress the Jews but rather, just as Isaiah said, “to proclaim the praise of the Lord.”  The little town of Bethlehem was covered in camels but it wasn’t quite like Ottawa being shut down by protesting truckers.

In a small, insignificant way the camels had indeed come and thus began God opening the doors of his faithful people up to peoples of other nations, of other cultures, and races…to all peoples.  This “New Jerusalem”, this “New Zion” didn’t need walls around it for protection.  It was open to everyone.  

The Baby Jesus grew up.  He lived and died and was raised and lives and reigns and is coming back to fully fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy in time and quickly when the time comes.  In the meantime, as promised God pours his very own Spirit into those who follow Jesus as his disciples claiming us as his very own children who live distinctly according to the way of unconditional love that Jesus modeled to us.  Instead of building a wall, God sent out apostles and evangelists such as Paul to tell the people of the nations that they were welcome to come and have new life in Jesus…new life…life filled with God’s own life.

Here is an epiphany for us today.  Our lives are now hidden with Christ in God as Paul says at Colossians 3:3.  He says, “Set your minds on things above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”  When terrible things happen and our lives fall apart, because our lives are hidden with Christ in God, God has a future for us that is full of his glory, full of his self, a life that we will find in drawing closer to Jesus who is walking with us always.  Our instinct may be to try to recreate our lives the way they were or to just give up and live like everybody else around us.  We must resist those blackholes and seek the Holy Spirit-filled life God has for us.  “In its time” we will heal and shine with the light of God’s glory.  The same is true for us even when things are good.  When things are good our instinct is to resist change and try to keep things just as they are.  Yet, our lives are still hidden with God in Christ and in seeking him “in its time” God will bring it about; life made alive in a prayerful relationship with God in the Holy Spirit in which we learn we are loved by God and learn how to love as we are loved.  God gives us a community of friends like us to grow up together in Christ learning the way of non-judgementalism, compassion, forgiveness, building each other up, speaking the truth.  This is the light of God’s glory shining through us.  So let us arise and shine.  Amen.