Seeing Clearly

John 20:1-18

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There is a song I get in my head around Easter time.  It’s Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now”.  It’s about that moment of “I’m going to be all right” that eventually comes after your life has been utterly turned upside down with a loss.  Sorry, I’m just going to have to sing it.  If you know the words, join me.

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone

I can see all obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)

Sun shiny day

 

I think I can make it now, the pain is gone

All of the bad feelings have disappeared

Here is the rainbow I've been prayin' for

It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)

Sun shiny day

 

Look all around, there's nothin' but blue skies

Look straight ahead, nothin' but blue skies

 

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone

I can see all obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)

Sun shiny day

I like that song at Easter.  Because it does what a worship service on Easter is supposed do – be a moment of seeing clearly; seeing that nothing is greater, nothing is more powerful than our living, loving, life-giving God who raised Jesus from the dead and started a New Creation that will one day blossom to be the whole creation filled to the brim with his glory.  And just as God raised Jesus from the dead so will he raise us from the dead to live in the New Creation that is no longer diseased with Sin; and Evil will be no more; no more Death; no more futility; no more grief; no more sickness.  Just everything healed and filled with the glory of our life-giving God.

I got a taste of seeing clearly one warm December Sunday morning in 1999.  At about 4:30 that morning my brother called to tell me our Dad had finally gone to be with our Lord after a bought with cancer.  With it being Sunday and kind of late in the game I didn’t want to have to back out of the church services I had to conduct in my charge down in West Virginia.  Truth is I just wanted to be with God’s people that morning and worship.  I did the main service in Marlinton and then had to head up Elk Mountain to one of my little churches, Mary’s Chapel.  

With it being so warm that morning a fog had settled down in the bottom there in Marlinton.  The road up Elk was a main road but it climbs pretty fast and has a lot of turns.  I didn’t know what to expect with the fog going up the mountain.  Would it be thick as pea soup or would I be able to see the road a little bit? Fortunately, it was the latter.  About two-thirds up the mountain I drove out of the fog and the sun was bright and the sky was cloudless.  There happened to be a fortuitously placed overlook there so I stopped and got out and had a look.  It was absolutely beautiful.  The leafless trees were glistening silver in the bright sunshine.  The fog was now a cloud below me that stretched out like a blanket as far as I could see.  I could see it clearly.  My Dad was my best friend.  He had died but at that moment looking out over glory, I knew everything would be all right.  God had set that moment up for me just to tell me that.

Mary Magdalene, probably Jesus’ closest friend, went to Jesus’ tomb looking to be with him, to anoint his body, say “Good bye”, to cling to him.  He wasn’t there.  Instead, there are two angels and they ask, “Woman, why are you weeping?  What are you looking for?”, as if she should have been expecting to find the tomb empty.  I can’t imagine her shock.  Then there’s a man standing behind her.  She’s too shocked to see that he’s Jesus.  “Where has he been taken?”  She demands.  “Mary!” the man says and she realizes this is Jesus.  They have a moment meant for her alone.  She goes back to the others and says, “I have seen the Lord.”

Occasionally, like Mary, we have moments with Jesus; moments in which we know he lives and so we will truly live; moments that he’s orchestrated just for us just to let us know that all things are in the hands of our loving Father in heaven and nothing, not even Death can separate us from that love.  In these moments we sense that Jesus comes to us as he did with Mary.  He calls us by name; he gets our attention in ways particular to us each…and we see clearly.

So also, in this moment now we see our Lord.  Gathered here around this table.  He is with us.  His body given for us.  His blood shed for us.  His presence with us.  We can see clearly now.   God raised Jesus from the dead.  We’ve nothing to fear.

This morning we gather for worship.  It’s Easter morning and God with the help of Bob Marley has a message for us: 

Don't worry about a thing,

'Cause every little thing gonna be alright.

Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,

'Cause every little thing gonna be alright!"

 

Rise up this mornin',

Smiled with the risin' sun,

Three little birds

Pitch by my doorstep 

Singin' sweet songs

Of melodies pure and true,

Sayin', "This is my message to you-ou-ou:"

 

Singin': "Don't worry 'bout a thing,

'Cause every little thing gonna be alright."

Singin': "Don't worry (don't worry) 'bout a thing,

'Cause every little thing gonna be alright!"

 

So, as those who see clearly now, we must live as those who have hope; real hope.  As Paul said, “…be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.”  In this world that is ate up with the futility of selfish ventures, we who see clearly of all people must conduct our lives in such ways as to give other people hope.  It is very easy for us just to do our thing hoping the Lord will take care of us and bless us and those we love.  But, Jesus doesn’t call us by name and give us clear sight for our own sake.  As those who see clearly we must live our lives in such a way as to create a hope-filled vision of God’s New Creation Day coming for everyone to see.  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 Pants” or “As Pants the Hart” Psalm, the thirsting for God Psalm.  It is a Psalm of Lament wherein the Psalmist is experiencing the profound emotions that come with unjust, undeserved 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 them to have abdicated.  “Where is your God?” they mock.  The Psalmist wants vindication, justice, but all he’s got to hold onto is a wisp of the sense of the steadfast love of God and remembering how God was faithful to him in the past, and also, how good it was to gather with God’s people to go to worship.  Though there’s reason to be hopeless, he’s not entirely hopeless.  For one, he still knows that God is his only reliable help and that 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 a 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 those words of that Psalmist.  He spoke hope, real hope, into me; the sure faith that He was going to see me through and 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 praying this Psalm as he was dying.  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’ clothes. 

There’s also more going on with Psalm 22 emotionally and theologically than God-forsakenness.  Yes, feeling God-forsaken is where starts but if you pay close attention to 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.  But God was just 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, of 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 verse 21.  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 from the voice of someone lamenting but rather from the voice of someone praising God because God acted to save them.  Something happened.  God saved.  God delivered and the effect of it wasn’t just for the sole benefit of 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 this act and turn to the Lord.  Every family will come and worship before him.  Quite frankly, many scholars will say this act 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 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 expressed through 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.  No matter how many little pills we take to try to avoid it, we die.  But something happened with the Psalmist when he died 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 then 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.  We don’t have this way of doing verbs in English.  We have a saying that captures it.  We say, “Consider it done”. Even though it hasn’t happened we tell a person “consider it done” because we are certainly going to do it and then we 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 lay on the other side was and will be new life for all.  

So, when we feel God-forsaken and wish God would act and get us or the people we love out 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 been 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 though and seems lost, even if death is the final outcome.  Our God is the God who raises the dead…and he hears you and will utterly answer.  Amen.

Donkey Riding

Mark 11:1-11

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

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

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

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

Imagine the crowd there.  This is a ragtag group of Jesus followers from all walks of life.  Rich and poor, old and young.  Luke says there’s even Pharisees, the archenemies, in the crowd following Jesus and they are a bit worried about how seditious this all looks.  Well, of course it was seditious, but couldn’t the Pharisees see how their daily and very public “dot your i’s and cross your t’s” legalism was also seditious.  Faithfulness to God, no matter its form, will always be, or should I say should always be, seditious.  If you ever have a religious group supporting a nation or government or political leader without question, there is something hugely wrong.  

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

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

Here it was the few day days before the Passover festival.  Jewish pilgrims were flocking to Jerusalem entailing a need for more of a Roman military presence.  Pilate was known for riding into Jerusalem mounted, not on a donkey, but on one of those massive, well-trained warhorses that the Roman military paraded about. Surrounding him would have been at least a legion, a thousand or more Roman soldiers, decked out in their battle regalia and a good many of them also mounted on warhorses.  Take a moment to ponder the difference in the symbolism portrayed by the Romans riding in on well-trained warhorses verses Jesus riding in on an unridden Jack donkey. 

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

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

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

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

Where is Jesus?  Where is God?  First, of all let’s just remember Jesus can ride an untrained Jack donkey and he’s riding it.  Everything will work out.  And, we know donkeys aren’t known for getting anyone anywhere fast, but he is coming.  He’s stopping to weep as he did in Luke’s Gospel because humanity just can’t seem to realize that he is here with us in our midst and yet we can’t seem to grasp that which will bring us peace.  There’s a lot of hurt and he’s grieving too.  So, if we don’t feel like waiving our hands in the air in joy, well, just maybe God doesn’t either.  With every public scandal of a celebrity minister, he’s clearing his Father’s house of big business, for-profit religion.  

Most of all, he still occupies a porch among his body, the Church.  He is present in small gatherings such as ours of those who yet still continue to gather in his name when so many just seem to be “done” with the public practice of faith.  He is present by the Holy Spirit who is with us.  We gather to learn his way of unconditional love and humility, to pray, to share a meal, and support one another.  Never underestimate the power to change and heal the world that Jesus has conferred unto us as we simply publicly gather in houses of prayer to learn his Way.  Gathered around his table is the way of peace.  It will come.  He will visit us.  Amen.

 

Troubled Glory

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John 12:20-33

A few years ago, I remember hearing a radio interview of Ra McGuire who was the lead singer of a Canadian rock band called Trooper.  Trooper was huge in the late 70’s and 80’s.  There were a couple of others on the show as well: Mike Reno, the lead singer of Loverboy and another guy, Jim Vallance who co-wrote a lot of Bryan Adams’ material.  These may be unfamiliar names and bands to you, but it was a fun show for me.  It took me back to my High School days and cruising Main Street with my buddy Darren cranking some tunes.  

The host asked them if there was a moment when they realized they had made it big.  Ra McGuire told of a time when Trooper was playing Memorial Stadium in St. John’s, NF, a smaller venue for them of only 4,000 seats.  It moved him that the people were singing along with him.  They knew the words as if they were there with him in his living room when he wrote the songs.  In that moment he knew they were now a Canadian band not just a Vancouver phenomenon.

Ra reminisced again about a show Trouper did in Winnipeg at Pacific Hall.  It was a sold-out crowd of 100,000 and Winnipeg was his home town.  Just before Trooper went onstage one of the guys told Ra he should take a moment and just enjoy what was happening there.  Instead of running out on stage as they normally did, he walked out and there were his family and friends down front and the home town crowd cheering.  He knew he’d hit the big time and had made his hometown proud.

Well, I wonder what Jesus would say was the moment he knew that he’d hit it big.  I don’t think he would say that it was the time he preached at his hometown synagogue and almost got thrown off a cliff.  I rather suspect he would mention this moment when these un-named, unremarkable Greeks came to see him.  Their significance lay in that they were the first Gentiles to seek him.  “How so?” you may ask.  Well, let me take you back in time.  

The Book of Isaiah was quite popular in Jesus’ day especially among those who were expecting the End to come at any moment.  Judging by how often he quotes it, Jesus knew the Book of Isaiah very well.  There are several prophecies in Isaiah (Isaiah 11:10; 60:1-14; 66:19-21) which indicate that the Gentiles seeking the LORD was a sign that the end times were beginning.  That “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”  If he had left it at that, it would have sounded like a good thing.  He, the expected end times Son of Man was ready to be honoured by delivering Israel and taking his throne to establish the Kingdom of Reign of God, a reign that was to extend to and over all peoples. As it says early on in Isaiah: “In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Is. 2:2,3)

Yet, enthronement was not the kind of glory that Jesus was after.  He wanted to be honoured by the God whom he called “Father”.  In order for him to receive honour from God he had to be obedient and, in his case, obedient unto death.  Isaiah also has some prophecies about a Suffering Servant who though innocent would be punished and suffer on behalf of all the people in order to heal them.  Jesus knew that as the Son of Man he had to suffer and die so that reconciliation between God and humanity could happen, so that he could bear our sins away and that by his wounds we be healed and all with the result of the gift of eternal life, life of an eternal nature be given to humanity in him and through union with him in the Holy Spirit.  To be who he is and do what God the Father desired he could not love his own life more than the Father’s purposes and plans for us.  Therein lay a deep, painful struggle for Jesus’.

This moment of realizing he had hit the big time, so to speak, deeply troubled him.  Get this, the Greek word for troubled could and should also be translated here as terrified him.  Jesus was in a crisis of faith.  His soul, his psyche not his heart, was deeply troubled.  If you remember from a sermon a few weeks ago, the soul is the totality of our being as we stand in relationship with God, ourselves, and others.  Jesus was struggling with his relationship to the Father and what the Father had sent him to do and it was terrifyingly agonizing.  Here we see just how very human Jesus was/is.  It says in the Book of Hebrews that he was tempted in every way that we are.  This struggle with the Father’s will and Jesus’ having to be faithful unto death really tried him.  It was indeed possible for him to say no, but he didn’t.  He chose faithfulness over love of his own soul., his own self, his own “I did it my way.”

For us, the struggle to subject ourselves to God’s way and will is one we all know.  Being the persons that the Lord would have us to be and discerning what it is that the Lord would have us do in serving and following him is deeply troubling and at times even terrifying when we consider the risks and the costs particularly to the ego.  Speaking honestly for myself, I would do almost anything Jesus wanted me to do as long as it catered to my ego, but if there is the slightest chance that I might be embarrassed, appear weird, or vulnerable, I struggle.  If it is something I feel safe doing like preaching and teaching, no problem.  But, when it comes to unsafe things like dealing with difficult people and difficult situations or sharing my faith, I struggle.  Yet, I can not imagine what kind of person or even who I would be apart from this struggle.  In the midst of this struggle the Triune God of grace changes me, really all of us to be more Jesus-like.  Through this deeply troubling struggle God uses us to be ambassadors of reconciliation and ministers of his grace to those around us. 

But there’s something else that is really special about this struggle to follow faithfully.  Jesus says, “Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves me.”  We have Jesus’ promise that he will be present with us and that we will be honoured by the Father when we follow him faithfully.  This I can say without a doubt in the times of my life that have been most difficult, the more I strove to be faithful to Jesus and to handle those difficulties faithful to him, the more I felt him present with me, his strength, his comfort, his guidance, his assurance.  I’ve grieved the death of a loved one, been through a divorce, been unemployed, been without a home to call my own, suffered what they now call Alcohol Use Disorder and in the midst of it all he has never abandoned me, but rather drawn me closer and given me a stronger faith.

Moreover, Jesus says those who serve will be honoured by the Father. That reminds me of the story of Ester in the Old Testament.  Ester is a beautiful, young Jewish women who was taken to be the Queen wife of King Ashuerus when the Assyrians to the Jewish people captive into exile.  Mordecai, her uncle, informed on a couple of men who were conspiring to kill the king and saved the king’s life.  So, as a reward Ashuerus gave Mordecai a ring and a royal robe and had Mordecai paraded around the city on a horse the king himself had ridden.  We don’t necessarily get honoured like that that though it is a honour for God to give us his Spirit to dwell in us.  To be honoured means to have God looking out for us, listening to us, acting on our behalf.  Serving Jesus, living loyally and faithfully for him has the benefit of God being for us.  In all matters, God will work for our good.  Things may take time and require great patience from us, but in all things, God will be with us and working for our good.  That’s what it is to be honoured by God.

So, serving Jesus, faithfully following Jesus, has a reward.  Our efforts to love as we have been loved, the things we feel led to, these may at times appear to be wasteful exercises in futility.  In this world where things have value only if there’s “something in it for me”, serving Jesus, seeking to live faithfully in ways that bring honour to him, will often be viewed as suspect or ridiculous.  So what!  In the end it is the faithful servant of Jesus whom Jesus rewards with his own peaceful, reassuring presence and whom the Father listens to and works all things to the good.  Amen.

 

  

Faith and Signs

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John 3:1-22

I remember a news story from over a decade ago about a 13-year-old Kansas boy and his grandmother were hitting the garage sales one Saturday.  At one particular sale, he came across an old Polaroid camera and he bought it for a dollar.  Later that evening he opened the camera and found a picture of a man and woman.  He showed to his grandmother.  She stared at it for a moment in disbelief - the man in the picture was the boy’s uncle who died in a car crash 23 years prior.  They checked back with the seller who said he had no idea who the people in the photo were nor from where he got the camera.  The boy’s father, the brother of the deceased was a bit taken aback from the whole thing noting the astronomical odds of this happening.  You can’t explain what brought his son to this camera and its photo.  Nevertheless, he found comfort in the fateful find.  He said, “When you have faith, you believe they’re always with you and when you see signs like this, it kind of reaffirms that.”

I got to admit that this incident is more than a bit freaky.  If it happened to any of us we would be thinking that it meant something; but what?  The boy’s father goes that way saying that faith and signs are involved; faith here meaning believing in a spiritual realm that we can’t see but which does manifest itself by signs and when a sign occurs it is a communication carrying some sort of message-from-beyond relevant to life hear and now.  For this man it was confirmation that his deceased brother was nearby in the spiritual realm.  No one can say for sure whether this incident was anything more than an astronomically rare coincidence, but…one cannot help but say that this was more than coincidence.  Statistics demonstrate that 80% of people who have lost a loved one (That’s nearly everybody), will experience some sort of communicative event of or from that person.  Yet, I should point out that we need to be a bit careful about holding out faith and signs as mere belief in and evidence of a spiritual realm.  In the Bible, faith pertains to a relationship with God the Trinity – a relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ the Son in the Holy Spirit; and signs are strictly meant to point us in that direction.  The step of faith for the brother in this story, isn’t so much acknowledging the spiritual realm but giving thanks to the God who made this sign possible.

Well, if you want to spend some time mulling over faith and signs, John's Gospel is a good place to go.  Faith and signs are a frequent topic there as is the case in our passage today concerning Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus.  At the very beginning of the conversation Nicodemus came to Jesus and noted that the Jerusalem authorities had surmised that Jesus had a God-sanctioned ministry because of the evidence of the signs he was doing, but they don't yet have belief in him.  In John’s Gospel for belief to happen God would have to open their eyes to see Jesus for who he is and enable them to receive him, entrust themselves to him, and worship him.  Faith or belief is a gift to us initiated by God through God’s revealing of his self to us.

So, there with Nicodemus in the dark Jesus rather bluntly lets him know that he/they are not going to believe who Jesus is or understand what he has come to do and be a part of it until he/they see the sign that reveals how God loves the world; the sign of Jesus the Son of Man/the only-begotten Son of God, the Word of God become human and dwelling among us, the light of the world, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; until the see him, Jesus, hanging on a cross like the bronze serpent of Moses’ day; Jesus lifted up (glorified, exalted) to the effect that everyone in association with him and having loyalty to him has eternal life; and eternal life according Jesus in John 17:3 is knowing God the Father and Jesus, the one the Father sent.  Eternal life is a relationship with the eternal God, a relationship that starts now and persists into eternity.

It is safe to assume that Nicodemus came to Jesus with the agenda of trying to sort out for himself whether or not Jesus is the Messiah who has come to establish the Kingdom of God.  So, through a bit of a humorous exchange, Jesus tells him that no one can see or enter the Kingdom of God without first having been "sired from above" or rather "conceived anew" by means of the regenerating indwelling of the Holy Spirit and Baptism.  This means that unless God has opened our eyes by revealing his very self to us (the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), we are simply unable to see God's reign in this world through Jesus.  Moreover, without that eye opening plus committed participation in the Spirit-filled communion of Jesus' disciples, no one can enter into the New Creation reign of God that is breaking in on us from the future right now, even as we are gathered here in Jesus’ name.

I cannot emphasize enough here that the ability to see and enter the reign of God in Jesus comes by the means of the personal working of the Holy Spirit at the Trinity's initiative and doing and not of our own.  Jesus makes this very clear with the born again-anew-from above teaching.  The word we translate as “born” is better taken as referring to the moment of conception rather than the moment of breaking forth from the womb. (I’m sure you farmer’s understand “siring” and that’s what we’re talking about here.)  Just as we were conceived and birthed into this fallen creation as sinners, so must we be conceived anew from above by the Holy Spirit to live in an embryonic state of New Creation now as faithful disciples of Jesus and as his co-heirs sharing his relationship with God the Father in the Holy Spirit until we are birthed into the New Creation at the Resurrection.

With that in mind let's take a poke at John 3:16 and what it is to be a believer in Jesus, the Son of Man who was lifted up since salvation seems to hinge on that.  Jesus is working with the analogy of Moses lifting up the bronze serpent in the wilderness so that the Israelites could look at it and be healed rather than die due to bites from poisonous snakes that the LORD had plagued them with for wanting to return to Egypt and Egypt's gods.  A very literal translation of John 3:16 would read: Indeed, in this manner God loved the world; he gave his only begotten Son with the effect that every believer in and in association with him absolutely does not perish but certainly does have eternal life.

John 3:16 is not a conditional statement saying we must believe in Jesus so that we may have eternal life.  It is a statement concerning the way things are for those who find themselves presently believing in and in association with Jesus.  These believers absolutely are not perishing in this world even though the situations of their lives may beg to differ.  Rather, they are certainly having eternal life.  Umm, eternal life?  In John's Gospel eternal life means the same as what salvation means in the rest of the New Testament; that Jesus has brought us into the Kingdom of God which at its heart is a living, personal and communal relationship with God the Father through Jesus the Son in the Holy Spirit.  In John 17:3 Jesus says this fairly clearly: "And this is eternal life, that they (his disciples) know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."  Eternal life is knowing the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit.  Eternal life is being in relationship with the Trinity, the relationship in which God conceives/sires us anew and enables us to live for the New Creation now.  This relationship, eternal life, is a certainty for all those who are loyal to Jesus.

So then, what is it to believe?   Well, believing begins with knowing and acknowledging that Jesus is the One whom God has sent in his own name to save the world, the Son of Man the prophets foretold come from heaven to defeat and destroy everything that stands between God and his creation, that Jesus is the very Word of God by which God created everything now come into the world to create it anew, that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  As I have been saying, the ability to know and acknowledge who Jesus is comes to us by the eye-opening work of the Holy Spirit.  Due to our utter blindness because of sin, we are unable to perceive who Jesus is.  The Holy Spirit must open our eyes. 

Knowing and acknowledging who Jesus is must progress to receiving him, to showing him hospitality in our lives through prayer and Bible Study and Christian fellowship and just trying to walk the walk, just simply letting the Holy Spirit do his healing and transforming work on us.  It is sitting at the table with and in the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit enjoying eternal life in the midst of this world's death.  This is the personal devotion side of believing.   

Next, knowing and acknowledging and receiving Jesus for who he is must then become entrusting our lives to him and obeying him, living according to his way, truth, and life in this world, taking up our crosses and following him, laying down our lives for one another rather than living in accordance with the fallen powers, standards, and values of this world.  Faith necessitates faithfulness.

Finally, loyalty to Jesus culminates in worship.  In Chapter 9 of John's Gospel Jesus heals a man born blind who, as a result, gets thrown out of the synagogue.  Jesus afterwards comes to him and asks him if he believes in the Son of Man.  The man responds, “Show me who he is that I might believe.”  Jesus says “I am he.”  The man explodes forth, “Lord, I believe” and worships him.  The way God has loved this world, giving his only-begotten Son for us making us to believe and have fellowship with the Trinity in his very self, inexplicably fills us with awe and adoration and drops us to our knees screaming “Yes!  Amen!” from the deepest part of ourselves.  

It is one thing to consider the astronomical odds of a fateful find at a garage sale as a sign from God and evidence of something unseen.  But it is entirely another for Jesus and the Holy Spirit to break forth on us with the love of the Father causing us to be lost in wonder, love, and praise.  It is my prayer that the Trinity awakens belief in all of you.  Amen.

Cleansed from the Religion

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John 2:13-22

One of the greatest social upheavals that I have lived through has been what one could call the systematic removal of Christian symbols and practices from North American public culture.  Some call it secularization.  Others call it pluralisation.  Others call it privatization.  I’m sure there are other words for it, but no matter what you call it, the fact today is that when we walk into a courtroom, we’re not going to come face to face with the Ten Commandments.  All of those e-mail spam campaigns to save the Ten Commandments just didn’t work.  There was a cultural tsunami happening and if you’ve happened to see any video footage of a tsunami you know the question you are faced with isn’t “how do we save what we have” but rather “how do we live now that it’s gone”.  So, in the wake of this cultural tsunami that has removed Christian “religion” (and notice I’m not saying faith) from North American public culture the question we Christians have to ask is “How do we live now that it’s gone?”

To answer that question maybe it would do us well to ask what the Ten Commandments are in the first place. If we look at them in the Hebrew language we find that they aren’t really commandments.  They are statements of reality stated negatively.  They describe the way the people who owe their lives to God are to be by saying what they are not to be.  Because the Lord delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and they owe him their lives they will not worship anything other than him.  They will keep a Sabbath.  They will honour their parents.  They will not do those things that destroy trust among people, you know, murder, stealing, adultery, coveting, those sorts of things.  The Ten Commandments weren’t simply a moral code that God commanded the Israelites to obey.  They were to be the Israelite way of life, a way of life shared among a particular people in whose lives God had really acted to save; and here’s the important thing to note, a way of life that gave image to the very nature of God.  God told them not to make any little idols of him because the way they were to live together would be his image. 

It is interesting to note how in ancient Israel the way of life brought forth from the Ten Commandments got overshadowed by a big business religion centrally focused in a very wealthy priesthood who controlled nearly everything from a great big building in Jerusalem.  It was supposed to be that if you wanted to know what the God who inhabited the Jerusalem temple looked like you just had to look at how his people lived together so genuinely and peacefully.  But what you really saw was oddly dressed hypocrites who grew rich off the spiritual needs of God’s people.  It’s no wonder Jesus was so angry with them. 

Well, pushing this into our “since Jesus” context, the Apostle John gives us a new spin on this idea that the way we live together shows what God is like in 1 John 4:12-21 where he writes: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.  By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.  And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them…We love because he first loved us.  Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.  The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

Paul also sets us in this direction at Romans 13:8-10: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’  Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”  So for ancient Israel and for us in the church today, if the Lord God who delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt is our God too and who has saved us from sin and death, then we fulfill the Law and give image to God by being a people who love one another and our neighbours as ourselves. 

So, to answer the question of how we Christians are to live now that a cultural tsunami has washed away Christian religion from our public culture, well maybe it’s by getting back to the foolishness of the cross, the way of self-denial and loving our neighbours as ourselves that marked the earliest Christian churches.  Christianity in North America has been little more than a religion that served the public good.  We are guilty of simply being good people who are blessed with comfort who do what good people are supposed to do and that’s go to church so God will know whose side we’re on.  That’s a start, maybe, but it resembles little of what Jesus meant when he said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel, will save it.  For what will it profit them to gain the world and forfeit their life?”  

That’s a good question for us.  Have we forfeited the new life we have in union with Christ Jesus by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit so that we share in his fellowship with God the Father because we have resigned ourselves to believe that God has blessed our particular culture and we in turn practice our religion by being good, moral law-abiding, church-going citizens.  That’s the way of religion not the way of the cross.  We like to believe that we are not bad people but how many of us try to live on less in this materialistic and consumeristic culture so that we are able to give more towards feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, and clothing the naked.  How many of us turn off our TV’s or put aside our leisure reading so that we may know the joy of prayer and reading the Bible?  How many of us are too busy to gather with our brothers and sisters in Christ for Bible study or to serve in his church?  

I could let this guilt trip go on.  It’s Lent, the time of year we do this sort of thing.  But I’ll end with a Jesus quote. Jesus said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  The way of the cross; it may be foolishness even scandalous in the eyes of our culture, but it’s where the Triune God of grace abides and offers his rest.  Give it a try.  Amen.