Behind the Scenes

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Revelation 4-8:1

I like to imagine what it would be like to part reality in front of me as if I were poking my head through closed curtains to see what was happening behind the scenes.  Would I see some wizard pulling levers that makes things happen on this side of things?  Well, that’s kind of what John is recounting here.  He’s parted open the curtains of reality and stepped on into what’s going on behind the scenes of everything and one could say that what he sees going on there is the foundation, the driving force of what happens on this side of things.

He sees God the Father (not the Wizard of Oz) seated on a throne at the center of everything.  Except, he can’t see God because God is hidden behind an almost indescribably magnificent light display as the hymn says, “Tis only the splendour of light hideth Thee.”  Circling the throne are four living creatures who represent all of life on earth.  Day and night they forever sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty who wert and art and evermore shalt be.”

Surrounding them are twenty-four elders, twelve from the tribes of Israel and twelve for the churches planted by the Twelve Disciples.  When they hear the four living creatures sing, they fall down and “casting down their golden crowns upon the glassy sea” they begin to sing, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things and by your will they existed and were created.”  If you’re a first century hearer of this, you will be thinking that this God is bigger than Zeus and you will notice that none of that Greco/Roman Pantheon are there.

The next wave of concentric circles rippling out from the throne of God are myriads upon myriads upon thousands upon thousands of angels also singing praise; Cherubim and seraphim falling down before him; God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”  Then there is the fullness of the Twelve tribes of Israel.  And then there is every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth singing praise as well.  And then there is an uncountable multitude of people singing “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb.”  A first century person hearing that would say, “I thought salvation was what the Emperor claimed to bring through the Empire by means of his military.”

Our reality, God’s very good creation, is centered on God and worship of God is the lifeline that holds everything together – worship of God not political power, not militaristic, not economic power.  When we gather for worship or when we’re out in the field struck with awe and gratitude, we are joining in on the worship that holds everything together that’s going behind the scenes.  When we gather in the presence of God and worship the curtain is open.   

That said, when something else seeks that central place and the songs of worship are disrupted, our reality gets disrupted at the very core.  That is what empire and emperor have done.  Something I’m curious about here is something is something that can’’ be determined for certain for there is no evidence, but I am suspicious and I think it’s highly likely that the hymns that John hears here as he is peering into heaven probably sounded quite like things the citizens of the Roman Empire were required to say about Caesar when they worshipped him and the power of the Empire at the Imperial temples and/or Zeus at his temples.  Just conjecturing, but I think John is co-opting the songs of civil religion – the worship of nation and national leaders – and directing them to the One who rightly deserves to be worshipped with those songs.  Civil religion is quite alive today.  It’s very easy to get people quite worshipful in an idolatrous kind of way over flags and national values and popular national leaders who brand themselves as Saviours.

In God’s right hand is a scroll with seven seals.  The scroll is history – what was, is, and will be until God ends it.  If we want history to make sense we need to know what’s on that scroll.  But the scroll is sealed and no one on earth or in heaven is worthy to open it.  The fact of that is incredibly, incredibly sad.  But wait, suddenly in front of the throne there appears a Lamb who was slain, the Lion of Judah who has conquered by being slain and he’s full of the Spirit of God.  He is worthy, so worthy that the heavenly songs of worship change and become new songs.  Sing a new song unto the LORD.  “You are worthy to take the scroll and to break its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed a people for God, saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they reign on earth.”  “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and glory and honour and blessing.”  “To the One seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever.”

This Lamb is Jesus, the crucified and risen one, the faithful one, the only faithful one.  If we want to know and understand the course of history, we must look at him and get involved in what God is up to in history in, through, and as him in the power of the Holy Spirit.  History, indeed life, is centered on him.  It is otherwise purposeless without him.  He, and only He, is worthy to sit on the throne of God as he is the true Son of God.  Caesar claimed to be that but is not.  Those who are loyal to Jesus even unto death are the true kingdom and the true priests who serve the true God.  The Emperor, the Empire and the priests of the Imperial Cult are not.

And now…the moment we have been waiting for…the Lamb takes the scroll and begins to peel away the seven seals.  If you are looking for a roadmap to history, this is it.  This is the past, the present, and the future of human history.   But, one should rather call it the history of Empire.  It is what has happened, is happening, and will happen because of Empire-ism until God ends it all.  

The first four seals are horse and riders, affectionately known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  What each of them brings is a side effect of Empire-ism.  The first horse and rider, deceptively white, brings conquering.  A red horse and rider take peace from the earth and replace it with slaughtering.  A black horse and rider deceptively carrying the scales of equity take economic security away. The fourth, a pale green horse and rider…is Death…brings war, plaque, famine, and animal attacks.  These are the incurable symptoms that are present when Empire is around.  I am troubled at how well this describes the world we live in. 

The fifth seal is the struggle and fate of those who try to remain faithful to Christ Jesus and his kingdom.  This seal is the fact that there are martyrs.  These faithful ones abide in the most sacred place of heaven, the Altar.  And they cry out the question of those who suffer: How long, God, until you judge and take vengeance on our behalf.  The answer seems coldly disappointing.  First of all, there’s an honour in being on the right side, a white robe.  There is also a rest of a kind that the world doesn’t have.  But, the cruel reality of Empire-ism is that there will be more and more martyrs for Truth until their number is complete, however many that is.  The time frame is also trying – a little while longer.  The timeframe of suffering always seems to be a little while longer!

The sixth seal is the end.  Empire-ism will end.  Until that day the Empires that be will in time all implode or be themselves conquered.  Yet, the Day will come that Empire-ism will end.  John describes it with all sorts of celestial and earthly disturbances.  This wild imagery is the typical way the prophets tried to describe the indescribable nature of God ending the way things are to bring about something new.  It’s inconceivable.  One thing is for sure though; those rich and powerful slugs are going to hide in fear and in shame.  It’s called being held accountable. 

The seventh seal is silence; a long half-hour long, palette-cleansing, pregnant silence as God prepares something new.  Have you ever sat in the restful, peaceful presence of God in silence for a half-hour?  Amen.

 

To the Church In...

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Revelation 2-3

In chapters two and three Jesus asks John to write to the seven churches in the Roman province of Asia which today would be western Turkey.  Given the significance of the number seven in biblical numerology as the number of completeness or perfection, it is easy to say that the letter was to go to the entire church and that it contained not just a word for each of those individual churches named but also a universal message.  At least that’s the way the book was received in the early church.  I bet you didn’t know it but in the first couple of centuries of the church the Revelation was the most widely circulated book of the New Testament.  During the Cold War and since, with the world threatened with nuclear annihilation, the book has been quite popular as well.  For the rest of church history, the book was largely ignored and there were even some major leaders in the church who wanted it out of the Bible altogether because it was weird and provided ample food for fringe groups.

The seven churches were in seven cities that were connected together by a major postal route.  John, in exile on a small island off the shore of Turkey, likely would have sent seven copies of the Revelation by means of a courier.  The first went to Ephesus, the second to Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and finally Laodicea. The letters would have been read aloud when Christians gathered together to worship not in church buildings but in homes and most likely in the home of the wealthiest patrons as they had the big houses.  Once one church read it, the letter would have gone to the next church in the area until all the small house churches in the city and its surroundings had heard it.

The Revelation was given to John to encourage Christians to remain faithful to Jesus during a wave of persecution that was beginning or soon to come.  Persecution?  Well, what typically happened in the early church was that either Jewish synagogue authorities or pagan religious authorities turned Christians over to the Roman authorities because they would not burn incense to Caesar as part of their civic responsibility.  This was in fact an act of treason.  Christians who would not worship Caesar as Lord and Saviour (two imperial titles) were arrested and usually made to fight wild animals or gladiators in the civic games at the coliseum.  Persecution became a serious problem in the mid-90’s AD during the reign of Emperor Domitian who was insane enough to require that he be worshipped as a living god, the incarnation of a son of Jupiter.  Emperors were believed to become gods after they died, but Domitian got a bit ahead of things. 

It was not easy to be a church back then.  They had problems that were unique to their day.  In Chapters two and three of the Revelation John is instructed to write something specific to each of the Seven Churches addressing particular problems they each had.  I’ll run through those briefly. 

Ephesus had lost its first love.  It’s agape love – unconditional, sacrificial love.  Reading through the brevity of the language it seems that they had struggled against false teachers who wanted to be their leaders.  They stood faithfully against them, but with a cost: their Christian fellowship had fallen second place to doctrinal witch hunts.  It can happen that Christians can get united around correcting the theology of others more so than attending to loving and supporting one another.

The Christians in Smyrna were already facing persecution and impoverishment because the Synagogue authorities were very persistent in hunting out Christians.  Christians could face being outcast in their communities and lose work for being different.  That seems to be what they were going through but with the added burden of some of them being imprisoned for their loyalty to Jesus for which they could die.

Pergamum was the capital city and the Imperial Cult was strong there, and they had stood faithful against that.  But there was another problem in the church there.  They were tolerating among themselves, the Nicolatians, a group of Christians who taught that it was okay to feast with pagan worshippers and participate in the orgies those feasts became and not only that but it was okay if they themselves feasted like that when they celebrated communion.  Jesus tells them to repent of that or he himself would come after them with the brutality of the two-edged sword…the Truth.

Looking at Thyatira, in many to most cities back then if you were a tradesperson, you could not work unless you were a member of a trade guild.  Well, each trade guild had their own god to worship and that worship involved feasts and we all know that feasting led to dancing if you know what I mean.  Therefore, Christians couldn’t work unless they participated in their guild’s pagan feasts.  In response to that, there was a woman leader who claimed to have had a word from Jesus saying that it was okay for them to participate in the trade guild feasts and a good many of the Christians took her word for it.  Jesus said some pretty strong words against her and those who followed her.  But he also encouraged the others to remain loyal to him at all costs. 

The church at Sardis was a perfect model of a “going-through-the-motions” inoffensive Christianity.  Keep to yourself.  Don’t confront.  Just give the outer appearance of being good.  There was apparently nothing that distinguished them from any other religion or civic club or guild.  He told them to wake up and also encouraged the few there that were still faithful.

Philadelphia was the only church to receive no correction.  They had recently been through a wave of persecution and had remained faithful.  They were a fine example of what it is to patiently endure, to bear up under having their faith severely tested. 

Finally, Laodicea; they were rich Christians.  Their wealth had blinded them to their need for God.  They were lukewarm; comfortable.  Having everything they needed but really having nothing.  Therefore, they were going to have to spend some time in the school of hard knocks, i.e., Jesus knocking at their door and they’d better have enough sense to open it or they won’t have Jesus with them.  Ephesus had lost its agape love in an exchange for doctrinal fidelity.  Laodicea sold it for wealth.  They needed to learn compassion, to see and feel the needs that people have.  That we love one another and how we do it matters.  One cannot say, “I’m rich. I have everything I need.  Therefore, I don’t need your love…it would make me look weak.”

That’s a snapshot of the church back in that day and I would say even in our day we can find some commonalities.  As you could see their main struggle was with fidelity, with remaining faithful to Jesus and his kingdom whether it be in the face of outright persecution or avoiding cultural appropriation.  Through these churches the Kingdom of God was breaking in through the reign of agape love.  It was important that their loyalty to Jesus shine brightly through acts of compassion, through warm fellowship, and that they abstain from the unrestrained hedonism involved in the worship of other gods even if it cost them their job or led to systematic persecution. 

Jesus tells all these churches that in the face of this testing of their fidelity, they must conquer.  Conquer is an imperial word involving winning in war.  Just as Rome led by the emperor had conquered most of the known world, so they also are to conquer.  But, in the Revelation conquer does not mean take up weapons and dominate and oppress.   Quite the opposite.  It is to stay loyal to Jesus, keep the confession of faith and live as communities marked by agape and a lack of hedonism.  In our culture where the gods of power, wealth, sex, consumerism, and the Almighty “Me” are readily worshipped, we face the same challenges the early Christians did – do we follow Jesus taking seriously his one commandment that we love or do we seek political power by joining the Imperial Cult, judge one another’s doctrinal purity, party with the hedonists, or probably the worst thing of all…simply just fit in?  Will we conquer…?  Amen.

 

Standing in the Midst of the Churches

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Matthew 1:9-20

You’ve all probably seen enough AA meeting moments on TV to know that when one of the members stands before the group to give their story, their testimony, they begin with “Hi. I’m Randy. I’m an alcoholic.” and the rest of the group will enthusiastically respond “Hi, Randy.”  The introduction is done that way because being an alcoholic is a hard thing to accept, there’s a lot of shame that comes with it.  Introducing yourself as an alcoholic and then being welcomed instead of judged is a huge thing in recovery.  Admitting this about yourself in a room of other alcoholics makes you realize you are not alone in this disease.  In that room you have a family and you are all co-sharers, bond together in having the disease and recovering from it.  In a meeting the first thing you say about yourself is, “I’m an alcoholic.”  That sets the stage for everything else.

I hear something similar happening here in how John introduces himself in this letter as he begins to give account of the things he has seen.  He first says, “I, John, your brother” to highlight the family nature, the family-like bond in Christian fellowship that is due to the presence of the Holy Spirit in and among us binding us together as brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, God’s family.  

He then identifies himself as a fellow-sharer with them in Christ in three things: the persecution, the kingdom, and the patient endurance.  Fellow-sharing means we are bound together to each other and to Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit dwelling in and among us, what happens to one of us, happens to us all.  As Jesus more or less said in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, “Whatever you did to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did to me.”  As Jesus suffered, so we suffer in like manner.  We all go through it together and we all feel it and so does Jesus for he is with and in us.  This “fellow-sharing” is the one quality I appreciate most about small congregations.

Persecution is one of the things John states they were going through together.  That is what happens when the kingdom of God comes into contact with the kingdoms of the world.  Small communities of Jesus followers indwelt by the Holy Spirit in which the reign of God shines through them in acts of humble and enduring unconditional love is a powerful affront to the powers that be.  We North American Christians presently are not (yet) suffering persecution, but it could very easily happen with the authoritarian bent that’s working its way through our nations, an authoritarianism that is oddly undergirded by a large segment of the North American Church that is deceived and deluded by political power.  Thus, the persecution that could erupt would be Christian on Christian.  We’ll talk about this more in two weeks when we look at chapters 12 and 13.

John then mentions something called patient endurance which was an earmark descriptor of Christian life in the early church.  As we wait for Jesus to come and put things to rights, we patiently endure the consequences that come with being followers of Jesus Christ whose primary loyalty is to him.  The word in Greek for patient endurance is a profound word – “hypomeno”.  “Meno” means to abide in.  Hypo can mean “by means of” or “under” as in bearing up under.  Jesus said, “Abide in me, as I also abide in you.  No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must abide in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in me.  I am the vine; you are the branches.  If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.  Apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:4-5).  “Meno” is also associated with the word for “a room” – “In my Father’s house there are many rooms.”  Patient endurance is the room in which we abide as we await Jesus’ coming with the room that he has prepared for us in our Father’s house, the New Jerusalem which shows up at the end of the book.  The sufferings, the trials of faith that we go through in this life, we are going through them because we have one foot, so to speak, in the door of our heavenly and the world is opposed to it.  We taste of our heavenly home, and the things of this world pale in comparison.

Now looking further in our reading; It is quite often the case that when I find myself in a conversation with people that involves the Book of Revelation someone will contribute that they believe John had to have been on something to have come up with all of this.  Well, though hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and Ketamine are enjoying favour in the worlds of psychiatry and psychology these days for treating severe depression and a few other things, John was not tripping.  He was having ecstatic or mystical religious experiences – visions.  He had his head in the door of the heavenly home, not just a foot.  

John recounts that he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day – Sunday – for this first vision.  He heard a voice from behind telling him to write in a book the things that he was about to hear, messages for the seven churches he named.  Yet, these messages are for the whole church as there are seven of them and seven represents wholeness or completeness.  He turns to see who is talking to him and he sees seven golden lampstands which represent the church.  Being lampstands emphasizes the church’s role of being light to the world.

He sees “one like the Son of Man” standing in the midst of the lampstands.  The prophet Daniel in a vision also saw “one like unto the(a) Son of Man” taking his seat at the right hand of God.  This Son of Man is of course Jesus.  Jesus says “Do not be afraid” and gives reasons why.  He is the first and the last, the one risen from the dead who now has the keys of Death and Hades.  This is meant to be an encouragement to the churches that their Jesus is the one who has power over death and the place to the holding place of the dead.  The persecutors of early Christians often threatened them with death.  Death was nothing to be feared by a faithful follower of Jesus even if it came while fighting wild beasts in a coliseum for public entertainment. In Jesus’ right hand were seven stars that were the seven angels for each of the churches.  Each church is protected by an angel.  The words that come from his mouth are a two-edged sword of the Truth.  His face shines with the full power of the son meaning that those who persecute Christians will find themselves exposed and it will “burn”.  But his followers need not fear him.

“Do not be afraid” is the first thing Jesus has to say to his churches and to us.  To us, his brothers and sisters; to us fellow-sharers in his sufferings he says “Do not be afraid.”  He is standing in our midst and there is no greater power than he.  In this world, we are patiently enduring through many kinds of things that try our faith in Jesus, things that Satan is using to try to break our faith in Jesus, because we are part of Jesus' bringing in the Kingdom of God.  It is through these sufferings that the kingdom comes, they are the catalyst to our own growth and fruit bearing as we abide in Jesus.  

In Acts 14:22 Paul, “It is through many persecutions that we must enter the Kingdom of God.”  He said that after he and Barnabas had been stoned for proclaiming Jesus.  We aren’t getting stoned for our faith, but it is often the case that the reason for some of the things we suffer, the behind-the-scenes reason, is our faith in Jesus.  So we pray, “Save us from this time of trial and deliver us from evil (the evil one).”  Patiently endure for the kingdom is coming and do not forget that Jesus has promised to be with us to the end of the ages and he indeed is.  Amen.

 

King of the World

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Revelation 1:4-8

One of the most iconic moments in film of the 1990’s, Leonardo DiCaprio playing the poor world-roving artist Jack Dawson and his best buddy Fabrizio De Rossi standing at the very tip of the bow of the RMS Titanic as it sets sail on its maiden voyage carrying some of the richest people in the world to America where they intended to make themselves more and more wealth.  For Dawson, he’s going home, back to the land of dreams having roamed the world a bit.  Like sons of Poseidon, they peer over the gunwale to watch the dolphins escort them out to sea.  The ship’s captain, like Zeus, is watching from high above on the bridge while he has his tea.  The sweating minions are down below in the belly of the beast shoveling that dirty coal into the largest steam engines ever made that propel the largest steamship ever made out to sea.  The RMS Titanic, the symbol, the prophetic emblem of the Imperial power of the British Empire and Capitalism and Industrialism, and so on and so on but mostly it was the symbol of the pride and fall of man.  Caught up in the moment, Fabrizio says, “I can see the Statue of Liberty, very small though.”  Then Jack climbs up on the railing stretches out his arms, his coattails flapping in the wind as if he’s flying and with a Superman fist pump, he shouts, “I’m the King of the world.  Woohoo.  I’m the King of the world.”  We, of course, know how it all ends.  Three hours later in the world of film, the unsinkable Titanic sinks and Jack dies after heroically making sure his new found love, Rose, is safe.  

How could the Titanic and the Empire-ism of Modernity that it represented sink?  It had a fatal flaw, the pride of its makers.  They deemed it unsinkable. It’s avantgarde design was such that nothing could pierce its hull.  Believing that icebergs can’t sink ships, the captain dismissed warnings of icebergs in the area and kept going at near full speed with no adjustment to course and relied only on lookouts peering through the dark of night.  And in an ode to arrogance and irony, the designers only equipped it with just 20 lifeboats that could seat 47 people each, enough to save just half of the passengers.  The Titanic sank due to the denting of its hull that caused seams and let water in.  Over 1,500 died.  This captain honourably went down with the ship.  Such is the fate of just about every man who would be King of the world.  Human ingenuity is no match for Nature.  And like the Titanic, empires end.  Emperors and kings come to their end.  Those who seek to be almighty and rule the world come to their end…usually due to the pathetic foolishness of pride.  That’s the unveiled prophetic message behind the sinking of the Titanic.  The Titanic sinking signalled that the British Empire would end.

There’s a reason why kings and emperors and empires don’t last.  The Book of Revelation prophetically reveals it.  It’s that there’s only one king of the world, Jesus, the truly faithful witness to what rule and power is – giving oneself in love.  He is the ruler of the rulers of the earth.  Empire emboldened by religion killed him but God, the God of the Jews albeit, His Father, raised him from the dead.  Even death and the fear thereof (which is the power of Empire) has no power over him.  The Romans liked to call their great god Zeus (Jupiter) the one who is, who was, and who is to come, but that’s who Jesus is - the First and the Last, the Alpha and Omega.  Jesus is the One who is, who was, and who is to come…and the message of the Book of Revelation is…he is indeed coming.  Jesus is coming and you kings, you little emperors who like to think you are gods on this earth will face his judgement and you will mourn.  You will weep and mourn and wail because you will find yourself in the presence of God confronted by his love and then you will utterly realize how you have utterly wasted your life and abused your power and hurt people and that realization is a lake of fire reserved for Satan, his minions, and for Sin and Death themselves.

Our passage ends with calling Jesus “the Almighty”.  I don’t like the English word Almighty as a title for God.  That’s what Hitler called the god he claimed to serve, the god who undergirded the Third Reich.  The word in Greek is Pantokrator.  Krator means ruler and panto means over all.  I’m sorry to steal your thunder there Leo DiCaprio, but Jesus is King of the world, Ruler of all that is.  Everything was created by and through him and this creation will come to its completeness in him.  Everyone and everything will answer to him.  He is coming.

Well, sorry to get off on that bit of a King Jesus gonna get you rant.  But, and bear with me, that’s how John opens this letter – with a little bit of bravado, of bragging on Jesus like introductions at a professional wrestling match.  In this corner is Arnold “the Terminator” Schwarzenegger, prepare to meet your end and in this corner, Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, you’re going to get crushed.  John is throwing some titles out for Jesus and interestingly, they are all titles that are falsely attributed to the Roman gods and the emperor back in the day.  Right off the bat John is blatantly saying the real God and Ruler of this earth is coming to put things to rights and you false gods and rulers are going to get your due.

This is scary if you’re one of the Imperialists who has bought into the Dark Side.  But that’s for them.  John also opens with some very comforting words for those who follow Jesus.  The Book of Revelation is actually a letter of hope written by John while he himself was exiled, imprisoned on an island off the coast of what we call Turkey.  He was a political prisoner during the reign of the emperor Diocletian, one of the real nasties of the emperors.  Dio was a big enforcer of the Imperial Cult.  The emperors had temples built all over the empire that worship might be offered on their behalf or that they themselves could be worshipped as a god.  Diocletian was one of the latter.  Refusal to worship there was treason.  As an elder pastor-type, John was the leader of groups of people who refused to bend the knee to the man who would be a god and so John was made an example of and fortunately it was only exile.

John wrote the Revelation to the churches of western Turkey who were threatened with or undergoing persecution encouraging them to remain faithful.  This letter was a prophecy predicting the end of the Empire but also of “Empire-ism”, that evil abuse of power by which we humans conquer and oppress with militaries and take economic advantage of those people who live in the lower decks of the Titanic and who shovel that coal so to speak.

To those who follow Jesus John writes: Grace and peace to you.  Grace is a world from the world of monarchy not the courtroom.  Grace is not acquittal as some would presume.  Grace is that the faithful have been welcomed into the very presence of the God and Ruler of all Creation who extends his favour to them and promises to act on their behalf and unlike worldly kings and emperors, King Jesus carries through on his promises.  Peace is what one has when in the presence of the King feasting.  It is good.

John goes on to say that King Jesus loves us.  The word he uses for love is agape, the humble love of putting oneself aside to serve the needs of others.  Emperors don’t do that.  They demand to be served.  

John also points out that King Jesus freed us from our sins at the cost of his own blood.  On the one hand that’s God’s forgiveness of all we have done to hurt others and ourselves.  Emperors don’t forgive.  They hold such things over our heads to exact a false loyalty.  On the other hand, this freedom is from the realm of sin to live in God’s kingdom of grace and peace amidst a faithful community who love as Jesus loves.  Don’t renounce that freedom.  Enjoy it.

John then says that King Jesus has made us a kingdom of priests.  We share in Jesus’ reign.  We conquer by being faithful by loving as he loved as a living testimony to how God reigns even if it means we die for him as Christians all over the world have done and continue to do.  Emperors and empires are not founded in love.  As priests, we pray for the needs of the world and even for our enemies.  We give voice to the song of praise that God’s very good creation continually sings, a Creation that moans because of human Empire-ism.  We are those who never cease to point to God’s goodness.  Emperors only seek to be worshipped themselves.  

To close, the core message in the Revelation John brings is that emperors and empire-ism get what’s coming to them.  God makes sure of that.  King Jesus is the Ruler of all…and he’s coming with his Kingdom to reign.  If you look at the course of history, this has held true.  Rome fell.  Like a virus, it imploded until in the 400’s, Barbarians, the Huns, Attila himself dealt the final blow.  The emperors, well, next to none of the Roman Emperors came to an end that looked like living long and prospering.  They were routinely assassinated, went insane, or died in horribly gross ways.  There was never a moment's peace for them.

Carrying this message into today’s world.  Rome died but Empire-ism still needs to meet its end.  The emperors are gone but there are still powerful world leaders, nearly all men, who would be kings or even gods if you gave them enough rope.  The urge to conquer and dominate still persists in the form of multinational corporations and in some governments.  Plaques, poverty, economic disparity, and wars still persist as the symptoms of the disease of Empire-ism.  The message of the Revelation today is still the same…Jesus is coming to put an end to Empire-ism finally and for good.  Until then, all you little emperors, men who would be kings or even gods, you will get your comeuppance.  Jesus is coming. 

And now to the one who, by the power at work with in us, is able to do far more abundantly than we can ask or imagine; to God be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, forever and ever.  Amen.  

 

 

Know Christ and the Power of His Resurrection

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Philippians 3:4-14

Imagine if you had the power to actually change things.  If we had that power, we would probably use it to make our little corners of the world exactly the way we want them to be so that we and those we love are healthy and comfortable and the people around us don’t rub us the wrong way.  Things are good.   Yet, we tend to assume that what is good for me is good for everybody.  So that if I have the power to change things, I should rightfully change the things around me that would make life better for me and everyone will benefit.  Unless of course, I’m a sociopath or psychopath who likes making others suffer, then I will create chaos for the heck of it and revel in the addictive thrill of having power.  Rarely, do we humans exhibit the wisdom to presume that if we had the power to change things, what needs to change first is me. 

If we want to change the world, the change must begin with ourselves.  In our passage today, Paul is spending some time reflecting on the change he himself was going through having encountered the resurrected Jesus.  His birth lineage was a cut above.  He was very zealous in his faith; exceedingly mindful of keeping the Law of Moses.  He was so zealous that he was adamantly attempting to quell a big change that was happening among his people as the result of what he believed to be a lie, that God had raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.  Paul believed that Jesus was a treasonous blasphemer who deserved death by crucifixion for claiming to be the Messiah and the Son of God.  But he had since come to call all that vainglorious zeal dung since coming to know Jesus and the change meeting Jesus was working in him.

Paul was on a trip to Damascus to round up Christians, when in a prolonged flash of light seen by all in the party, Jesus confronted him.  Paul responded to this confrontation with a question, “Who are you, Lord?”  Thus began Paul’s desire to know Jesus and the power of his resurrection. 

The question Jesus confronted Paul with was “Why are you persecuting me?”  Paul was persecuting Jesus by persecuting Jesus’ followers.  It’s likely that this question created a desire in Paul to want to know what it was about himself that made him want to persecute Jesus and his followers.  I say that because it’s interesting that in our reading the means that Paul choses to get to know Jesus Is to step into the shoes of Jesus’ persecution, the shoes of suffering as Jesus suffered, and walking a bit more than a few miles.  If you want to know someone, walk a mile in his shoes so they say.

  Paul’s very to-the-point encounter with Jesus on the Road to Damascus was for Paul the evidence that God had raised Jesus from the dead.  This meant that according to Old Testament prophecies God had poured out his Spirit upon the followers of Jesus and that through them God was bringing in the kingdom of God and changing the world by calling people to loyalty to Jesus.  This changed Paul.  His goal was no longer rising to power in the midst of the Jerusalem Pharisees by Law observance and persecuting the followers of Jesus, but rather to know Jesus, to personally know Jesus, and the power of his resurrection – a power that changes people – a change that is nothing short of being born into a new life in which you know yourself to be a beloved child of God.

If you take Paul’s letters and suss out his metaphors, his images for what salvation is, at the top of the list would be that salvation is that I was once an estranged God-hater, but through what God has done in, through, and as Jesus the Christ in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, I now know myself to be a beloved child of God as Jesus is.  I am a beloved member of God’s family here on earth.  To know Jesus is to know ourselves to be beloved children in the family of God.  The power of Jesus’ resurrection, though powerful enough to create this Creation, raise the dead, heal the sick, and cast out demons, now works powerfully in us by bringing us to want to know Jesus himself more and more in order to grow to be more like him in his selfless love. 

We get to know Jesus when we live according to that one commandment he gave us, that we love one another as he has loved us.  Unfortunately, loving the way Jesus loved doesn’t come apart from suffering.  It is costly to love.  I remember a song from back in the 70’s done by a band called Nazareth entitled “Love Hurts.”  It does.  To love the way Jesus loves means we will always be feeling empathy for others as we join with them in their struggles, so through what this world calls happiness out the window.  But it’s not all doom and gloom.  There are moments of celebration, moments of victory when God powerfully answers prayers.  There’s a contentment, a joy in knowing that God is for us, with us, and will work all things to the God of his beloved children.  Seek to know Jesus and to experience that power of his resurrection.  I am wholeheartedly convinced that as Paul says everything else is dung.  Amen.

 

The New and Living Way

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Hebrews 10:16-25

Charles Wesley wrote a hymn in the late 1700’s that became quite popular during the American Civil War.  Its first line is “And am I born to die?”  That was quite a pertinent question back then.  Wars abounded.  Plagues.  Sicknesses for which there were no cures.  You could die at sea on the way to that new land where you were hoping to make a new start or get killed by the inhabitants once you got there.  Kicked by a horse.  Attacked by a wild boar.  Childbirth.  Life expectancy then was around 30 yrs.  Life was short and Death (capital D) abounded.  Wesley wrote:

And am I born to die? To lay this body down?
And must my trembling spirit fly into a world unknown

A land of deepest shade. Unpierced by human thought.
The dreary regions of the dead, where all things are forgot?

Soon as from earth I go, what will become of me?
Eternal happiness or woe must then my portion be;

Waked by the trumpet's sound, I from my grave shall rise,
And see the Judge with glory crowned, and see the flaming skies,

 

Well, one doesn’t need to be in the midst of a war or a plague to wonder if the sum total of your life is simply death.  The question should hit us every now and then but we tend to be occupied with other questions.   When we are young, we ponder and dream of what we will do with our lives.  The middle years make us wonder if we’re really doing anything useful because we’re beginning to realize how fast the years go.  The elder years hit and we look back wondering what part in the grand scheme of things we played?  Did we make a difference?  All along the way we are confronted by the harsh reality of the death of friends and family.  One doesn’t have to look too far to garner the awareness that life in all its wonder and goodness has a monstrous beast lurking about that cannot be tamed - the futility of death.  One must either wear the rose-coloured glasses of denial or gird up with the hope of resurrection that God gives us in Christ Jesus.  If we don’t, we will perish in the despair of Wesley’s pointed question – Am I born to die?

Well, are we?  Are we just born to die?  The answer to that question is an emphatic “NO!”  Death was not what God created us for.  We are fearfully and wonderfully made as the Psalmist says, fearfully and wonderfully made to praise and to bring praise to our awesome God who loves his creation with a love we cannot begin to comprehend.  We can appreciate the beauty of a flower, smell hope wafting from the mud in Spring, understand the wonders of a Black Hole, feel delight watching a baby smile, cure diseases, play, and feel joy.

Yet, something is dreadfully wrong in God’s very good creation.  With the same hands that can build little rovers that explore the surface of Mars, we build weapons of mass destruction.  We can write wonderful works of literature but also the propaganda that leads to genocide.  That’s how we to tend treat people different from us.  Do I really need to go into how we lie to, hide from, blame, manipulate, betray, and disappoint those we love the most.  I believe it was the fifth century theologian Augustine who was the first to say that the line between good and evil runs through the middle of everyone.  So, therefore, there’s no use in calling another person or their actions evil until we’ve sorted through ourselves and our own actions and miraculously found ourselves guiltless and without shame.  Guiltless and without shame doesn’t describe anybody I know much less myself.

This dreadful wrongness in God’s good creation is the insidiously deceptive Power which we in our language call Sin.  It is a disease affecting everyone, a disease that leads to Death.  Like addicts we are powerless over it.  We are both its victims and culpable of it.  It is a disease that affects the mind.  It blinds us to seeing, perceiving, and knowing the way things are supposed to be in a world where humans are to live in the image of God.  It turns us inward with a compulsion to serve our own wants and needs.  It makes us want to be our own gods and to serve false gods in sick efforts of self-preservation.  It subtly makes Good seem Evil and Evil seem Good and with even more perversion it can turn the Good we do into Evil and make doing Evil the means to doing the Good.

What does God do about this perversion of his very good Creation?  Well, it was God’s plan all along that at the right time God the Son would become the man, Jesus of Nazareth, and crown God’s good creation with his very self.  Also in this plan was God’s pouring the Holy Spirit upon all humanity and upon his creation perfecting it so that what Isaiah prophesied long ago would be true, that “the Earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea” (Is. 11:9).  But, with God’s good creation infected with the disease of Sin and powerless against it, God’s crowning and perfecting of his creation with the incarnation of the Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit had to take the horrific form of crucifixion and death. For now, the power of God’s glory and love is seen, perceived, and known by us by the death on the cross of Jesus, the incarnate Son of God and Lord of all creation.  

If we can say that anyone was born to die, it was Jesus.  In this act of incomprehensible love God took upon himself our Sin diseased nature by which we are all victimized in order to heal us of it.  He took upon himself His own judgement of condemnation against us for our culpability in Sin and suffered the sentence of the most publicly humiliating form of criminal execution humanity has ever devised in order deliver us from our deserved condemnation and sentence of death.  

How perverted!  How twisted!  How wrong!  We humans in our blindness took the one who was God’s crowning and perfecting of us and crowned him with a crown of thorns, and enthroned him on a cross, and mocked him, and spit on him.  We judged it preposterous and blasphemous that he claimed to be the Son of God come to deliver us.  We, in the blindness of our Sin may say, “No, it wasn’t me.  I wasn’t there.”  But, as Jesus taught, whatever we have done to harm even the least of us, we have done to him.  We are liars if we say we have not hurt, harmed, and broken the trust of others, especially those closest to us whom we say we love the most.

Well, we will have to wait for Easter for the full details of this story but by his death Jesus opened a new and living way to God.  It was on this day that Sin and Death were condemned and sentenced to death.  This is why we call it Good.  The great mystery of this tragic event is that God the Son become human as Jesus of Nazareth somehow experienced death himself, death on the cross.  God the Father and God the Holy Spirit somehow suffered the death of God the Son.  These are things too big for this small mind to comprehend.  It is enough to say that God the Trinity knows in his very self what it is to die.

In the wake of the horrific event of our crucifying Jesus what needs to be said is that through the death of Jesus, the Christ, God the Son, God the Trinity has established in our hearts a new covenant, a new way to live in response to him, a new and living way of coming to him.  The result of our Death going into God is that the life of God, the Holy Spirit is now poured upon us.    

God is flooding us with his very life and being and thereby recreating us to bear forth the living image of Christ Jesus and his self-giving love that he modeled on the Cross.  He calls us to live according to the Way of the Cross.  If there is a sense in which we are born to die, it is that we have been born anew to live the cross-formed life of denying ourselves and laying down our lives for others in the war against Sin, Death, and Evil; a war that Jesus has already won.  In this new life we do not simply live as good people who live according to higher standards of morality and altruism.  We rather live forth from the new life of faith, hope, and unconditional love that we find God has gifted to us, life filled with God’s continual presence with us bearing our old life away and transforming us with Jesus’ life.  Jesus' once and for all death has made it possible for us to be a part of God's life-giving, dignity-restoring work of healing this broken, hurting and indeed, dying world.  We call this day Good because by Jesus’ death, God gives us life.  Let us gratefully live it for him.  Amen.

 

Do We Understand?

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John 13:1-17, 34-35

When I was a child, my dad would on occasion say to my siblings and me, “Do you understand me?”  I can hear his voice in my head as clear as a bell.  “Do you understand me?”  He said it in what were usually situations where we kids had messed up royally and he had had to explain what was so wrong about what we had done and what would happen if we ever did it again.  “If you ever pick a skunk up by the tail again, I’ll duct tape your hand to your nose and you’ll be smelling skunk for the next 15 years.  Do you understand me?”  “Do you understand me?” was always the last word for life’s greatest lessons. 

It is hard for me not to hear Jesus in the same way here saying to his disciples after washing their feet, “Do you understand what I have done to you?”  In essence, “Do you understand me?”  “Do you know me?”  Jesus, the Teacher, at the last meal he would share with his disciples…his last opportunity to teach them…his greatest lesson…he stood up from the table, stripped down to his undergarment, took a basin and a towel, and washed their road dirty and probably fungus and hookworm infected feet.  They, the students, laid around on pillows while he silently worked his way around the table.  

Only Peter spoke up and objected…and maybe rightly so.  A teacher should never humiliate himself like that before students.  “Are you going to wash my feet.”  Jesus gently responds, “You don’t get what I’m doing, but you will soon understand?”  That wasn’t a good enough answer for Peter so he objects all the more strongly with an answer that sounds more like the voice of his own pride rather than an effort to protect Jesus’ honour.  "You will never wash my feet."   Well, Jesus put him in his place, “Unless you let me wash you, you have no place in me!”  This foot washing was apparently the pass or fail lesson.  Do we understand this!?

Jesus finished up, reclined on his cushion, and began to explain, “Do you understand what I have done to you?...If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”  Humility is the lesson.  Jesus finishes his last lesson by saying to them, “I give you a new Commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, so also you should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  Do we understand this!?

You may not have noticed that in John’s Gospel chapter 13 follows chapter 12.  No duh, eh?  Chapter 12 begins with Mary anointing or more like washing Jesus’ feet by wasting a bottle of very expensive perfume.  She poured it on his feet and used her hair to scrub and dry them.  The whole house was filled with the fragrance of that perfume, indeed, the beauty of the act.  Mary got it.  She understood who Jesus is and that he had to die.  In an act of extravagant, wasteful love she modelled to the disciples the heart of God and the humble, unconditional love by which the disciples were to live their lives as followers of Jesus.  Chapter 13 rolls in with Jesus humbling himself to wash his disciples’ feet also in an effort to model humble, unconditional love to them. Do we understand this!?

Between these two acts of foot washing lay Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  Jesus the Messiah mounted on a young donkey like a king at his inauguration.  The people threw their cloaks in front of him shouting, “Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord—the king of Israel.”  Presumably he went to the Temple.  Some Greeks came to him.  For the first time in John's Gospel some Greeks, some non-Jews come seeking Jesus.  They understand who he is or are at least curious.  Oddly, after their visit Jesus began to talk about his death.  The voice of God the Father speaks from heaven.  Then Jesus noted how the Israelites, despite all his miracles and signs, despite the obvious, just didn’t believe in him.  Do we understand him!?

King Jesus, the nature of his character and of the way he reigns is humble, unconditional, indiscriminate, even wasteful love, indeed sacrificial love.  He laid his life on the line.  He gave himself over to death, a horrible, horrible, horrible death that we may live and find our life when we share in his humility, in his love.  Do we understand this!?

There’s an election coming up here in Canada in a couple of weeks, an opportunity for a new "king" to ride into town so to speak.  In Canada, a candidate’s religious background doesn’t come up in the campaign and get scrutinized the way it does in the States.  Up here, party platform and campaign promises (that have the shelf life of a New Year’s resolution) are what seem to matter most.  As a minister, I can’t tell you who to vote for but I can suggest that if humility expressed through humbly serving by expressions of unconditional love is the nature of Jesus, the Lord of history, who will return to put things right; then, as this is Jesus’ nature, we should look for the light of it to shine through in the actions and moral character of those we elect to office.  Humility and the courage to express unconditional, sacrificial love should top the list for why we vote for a candidate.  If a candidate just seems to be seeking power, has difficulty being honest, only wants to make the wealthy wealthier, sees no need for feeding the poor, healing the sick, clothing the naked, giving shelter to the homeless, and does not have a heart for the refugee and the migrant or for the needs of those who have served their country particularly in war…well, maybe it is something else that is shining through them.  Maybe they have no share in him.  Do we understand this!?

Jesus modeled humility.  In unconditional love he washed the dirty feet of those who deserted him, denied him, and betrayed him.  The crowd who ushered Jesus into town as king just hours later were yelling…yelling “Crucify him!”  One might be led to say that love has no place in politics, in the kingdoms of this world.  Regardless, King Jesus said to us who do have a share in him, “I give you a new Commandment, that youlove one another.  Just as I have loved you, so also you should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  Do we understand this!?

   

Wasteful Love

 John 12:1-8

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How does one define waste?  One way is to say waste is something that has served its purpose and is ready to be thrown away.  A used tissue is easily defined as waste.  Then again, the conversion of trees into disposable paper products to be used for human hygiene is a huge waste of a tree when you consider that trees are the largest producers of the oxygen we breathe.  There are tree farms for this very purpose.  We can pride ourselves on buying such products made from recycled paper for this purpose, but the chemicals used in producing such paper are never fully extracted and eventually wind up in our water.  And since we are on the topic of waste, if you have ever attempted to wipe a baby’s bottom with toilet paper, then you may have concluded that this particular Modern convenience doesn’t really do down there what we believe it does down there thus making the killing of trees for that purpose all the more just an utter waste.  

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

The topic of waste comes up in our reading today.  Judas, the keeper of the disciples common purse from which he was known to dip, asked why Mary had wasted this quite expensive bottle of perfume but pouring it out on Jesus rather than selling it and giving it to the poor.  On the other hand, all the Gospels tell the story of a woman anointing Jesus for his burial in the days following his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  In Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s version Jesus speaks highly of this woman saying that she had done a beautiful thing and that everywhere the Gospel was proclaimed what this woman had done for him in anointing his body for burial would be told also.  It should peak our attention that what Judas the Betrayer, the Keeper of the Purse, called a waste is remembered by the Church wherever the Gospel is proclaimed as a beautiful thing.  Every year in the weeks before Easter, this woman and her beautiful act is remembered.  Personally, I try to at least read this story if not preach on it at least once a year.  What is so special about this waste of expensive perfume?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just as we will live by the power of Jesus’ resurrection, we must now live according to it.  We who know Jesus must waste our lives just as he did, just as Mary demonstrates, we must waste our lives doing acts of extravagant love.  In gratitude, we must live our lives doing beautiful things.  True and abundant life is lived through acts of extravagant generosity and extravagant hospitality and extravagant service to others.  So, Go forth live a life of wasteful love.  Amen.

Check Your Aim

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2 Corinthians 5:4-21

One of my favourite movies is “A Christmas Story”.  It’s about a little boy named Ralphie who all he wanted for Christmas was a Red Ryder BB Gun.  There was something in Ralphie’s wish that struck home with me.  I always wanted a BB gun but unlike Ralphie, I never got one.  Even so, I still got my BB gun experience.  My best friend Ronnie not only had a BB gun, but a pellet gun too, and at some point, he wound up with a BB pistol.

BB guns can be used rightly or wrongly depending on what you’re aiming at.  Obviously, you don’t shoot people with BB guns…but inadvertently that’s what little boys do with BB guns.  I don’t remember ever shooting anyone but I do remember being shot in the back of the hand by a boy down the street who denied it up and down.  Another of my friends got shot, I think in the thigh, and the BB was embedded enough to have to be pried out with a knife.  

You’re not supposed to shoot peoples’ pets either…but that’s what little boys do with BB guns.  A pellet gun pumped only once will only sting an animal.  You can make a cat jump four feet in the air and assure they will never return to your yard like that.  I remember Ronnie’s neighbour had a dog penned up in the backyard that barked incessantly.  Ronnie solved that problem.  Every time the dog started barking, he cracked the screen on his bedroom window and shot it in the bum.  After a couple of days, the dog immediately stopped barking at just the sound of the screen cracking open.  

Another thing you shouldn’t shoot are animals in general…but that’s what little boys do with BB guns.  Ronnie and I needlessly killed bunches of birds and squirrels pretending to be hunters.  The smaller the bird, the better shot you had to be.  I remember one time while spending a week at my great-grandmother’s, we even shot a bull in the tenders.  We were expecting him to run off in a rage, but he only twitched.  

The right way to use a BB gun is shooting appropriate targets like cans or paper targets under parental supervision.  Ronnie was always a better shot than I.  When it came to a can on a fencepost he rarely missed.  I, on the other hand, more often than not missed.  My genius lay in a different use for a BB gun…killing flies with the air burst and stuffing grasshoppers by the head into the end of the barrel and using the airburst to make a big splat.  (I’m glad I’m not preaching for the call with this sermon.)  

Now hold to your thoughts here on the difference between Ronnie’s marksmanship and my own and let’s talk about sin.  The NT Greek word for sin is hamartia and it’s an archery term meaning to miss the mark.  Sin, biblically speaking, isn’t just a collection of things we’re not supposed to do.  If the life that we’ve been given were a BB gun, sin isn’t simply that we use our BB gun to shoot things we’re not supposed to shoot, though that’s a part of it.  Rather, sin would be that we have a problem with our aim.  We can’t hit the target.  So, even when we are shooting at things we’re not supposed to shoot, though it may seem fun or beneficial, whether we hit or miss there is a down side.  Either we kill what we’re shooting at or if we miss, there is always something nearby that’s going to be damaged by the stray BB and usually, it is the people we care about the most.  

Sin is the fact that the human aiming system, how we orient our lives towards goals, our ambition, our endeavouring is fundamentally flawed.  Sin even comes through in people who are religiously oriented.  There is no such thing as saying I’m going to stop sinning and on my own effort start trying to please God that always leads to legalism and self-righteousness because we will supplant pleasing God with serving religious laws.

Sin means that there is a problem with our aim.  In our NIV translation 2 Corinthians 5:9 reads, “We make it our goal to please Him (God)”.  The NT Greek word there for “making it our goal” can also read “we make it our aim” or “we have as our ambition”.  Sorry for yet another Greek lesson.  The word is philotimeomaiand it consists of two words being smashed into one and then being made a verb.  The first word is philos.  We know it as one of the root words for philosophy.  Philos is the devotion friends have for each other.  Philosophy simply means or devoted to wisdom (Sophia).  The next word time means honour.  So, philotime means devoted to honour.  The last part of the word, the ending –omai makes the word a verb in the sense of “I do this for my own benefit, for myself.”  So, to make something your aim, to philotimeomai, is to be devoted to honour for one’s own benefit.  The scope of this word (philotimeomai) is how we bring honour to ourselves?  The point of the verse is that we bring honour to ourselves when we live to please God…when we make it our aim to bring honour to God.

When we talk about sin as a problem of our aiming mechanism, we are saying that we have a fundamental problem with the way we go about trying to be honourable.  God created us, indeed, this whole creation in such a way as it brings honour to God.  This isn’t to say that God is a narcissist.  When an artist makes something beautiful, the artist receives praise.  Part of the beauty that created in us is that when can and should strive to be honourable people.  There is nothing wrong with striving to be an honourable person, that’s the BB gun so to speak.  The problem isn’t as simple as saying we tend to use that striving, that BB gun, in the wrong way.  Yes, we do that.  We will at times seek our own glory by an entirely wrong means.  The problem with sin, the problem with our aim, is that we just can’t hit what we’re aiming at when it comes to being honourable.  In the best of worlds if we strive as hard as we can to bring honour to God in everything we do, there will still always be the specter of seeking our own glory that taints it.  There will always be something lurking about in us that dishonours God, that doesn’t bring praise to God.  It can be overt in our actions; in the way we treat others through our bent to serve ourselves.  It can be covert in our inner world of the things we think and feel but don’t express.  Those things that we hide believing that if anyone knew this about me, I am toast.  There will always be something about us that dishonours us, that dishonours God, and it can, does, and will leave a wake of pain like a spray of stray BB’s.

So now, what does this look like in real life?  I guess it starts with simply asking the question of how am I striving to bring honour to myself and is it pleasing to God.  For example, does our cultural value of striving for wealth bring true honour in God’s eyes?  Let’s also question the myth that wealth is God’s blessing upon those who work hard and are morally upright, i.e., those who are honorable.  Check out the billionaires who have been in the news lately, are they honourable, are they blessed by God?  

I think true honour is not found in playing that evil power trip game of accumulating wealth but rather in the humility of setting oneself aside, not seeking one’s own glory but rather seeking to be compassionate, generous, patient, forgiving, hospitable, faithful, even-tempered, self-controlled and honest to your family and to neighbours and to friends and to strangers and to the downcast.  These efforts bring honour to God.

Above all, I think that just letting yourself be a vehicle through which God proves his love and faithfulness to others is the honourable life.  God has put his own Spirit in each of us for us to be just that, a vehicle.  The Holy Spirit is fixing our aim, making your aim to become more and more like Jesus’ aim in which everything we do brings honour to God.  The Holy Spirit prods that desire in us to be a loyal disciple of Jesus.  Because the Holy Spirit is in us and we have this desire, we each are a new creation.  The old life is gone.  That old life is wrapped up in death.  The old life of being a BB gun that shoots anywhere and everywhere like it had no aim.  We are New Creation.  Let us make it our aim to bring praise to God rather than to ourselves by emptying ourselves of the desire for self-glory and bring praise, bring honour to God through the beauty of unconditional love.  Amen.

 

 

Curing Functional Agnosticism

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1 Corinthians 13:1-13

I’m sure you folks have heard of Agnosticism.  It is not the same thing as Atheism which denies the existence of God.  Rather, agnosticism simply claims to have no evidence one way or the other as to the existence of God.  The Agnostic is unknowing.  There has been nothing in the world of experience that either proves or disproves the existence of God.

I mention this because Paul begins our reading from 1 Corinthians expressing the desire that he did not want them to be unknowing (agnostic) about God’s actions towards the Hebrew people when they were wandering in the wilderness between slavery in Egypt and arriving at the Promised Land.  Some people translate that word unknowing as ignorant, which is inappropriate.  The word is actually the word from which we get agnostic.  Paul does not want them left without evidence either way of God and his steadfast love and faithfulness especially while they themselves were going through the wilderness of disunity in their fellowship.  He wants them to know that the God whom they have come to have faith in was the God of a very real people for whom he did very real things.  He also didn’t want the Corinthians to make the same mistakes the ancient Israelites made, which they appeared to be doing.  He didn’t want them to believe without or apart from the evidence of God’s real acts in history for his people.  That would make them what I would call functional agnostics.   

Functional Agnosticism is believing in God but having no proof either for or against God’s existence.  Paul didn’t want the Corinthian Christians trying to serve a God they didn’t know.  The God they were worshipping is the God of the Jewish people who became the man Jesus of Nazareth who died for our sins and was raised and is also God whose presence they have encountered powerfully as the Holy Spirit in their midst.  Unfortunately, the people of God tend to drift away from a living relationship with this God – the loving communion of God the Father Son and Holy Spirit - into functional agnosticism and once there create a religion centered on their own faithfulness rather than their God’s faithfulness to them.  Paul would have said that serving a God they had ceased to know for themselves is why the Jewish people in his day didn’t recognize Jesus as their God among them.

I would hold that functional agnosticism is at the heart of the decline of Christianity in Western Culture the past 60 years.  We were taught just to believe there is a God and to believe certain things about this God.  We served this God dutifully usually through serving the Church because we believed serving the church is what good people are supposed to do.  But, with respect to having personally experienced God’s presence and God’s acting on our behalf according to his steadfast love and faithfulness, well, we are agnostic.  We have no personal proof as to whether or not God is present with us and steadfastly loving and faithful to us.  So, we wind up being Christians who place our faith in our beliefs and dutifully serve those beliefs which we institutionalize as the Church.  To bitter the stew even more, some of us will regard as religious fanatics those who say that they have experienced God’s presence, steadfast love, and faithfulness.

Our agnosticism becomes functional when we forget or are just plain unknowing that the Trinity is acting in and through us and in turn just do what we believe churches are supposed to do.  We do worship.  We have Sunday School.  We do fundraising.  We help charities, visit one another, and have potlucks.  Yet, somewhere in the mix of doing these things we lose sight of what God is actually doing in and through us.  

What God is really doing in our midst is building community.  God the Trinity works to build community in the Trinity’s own image by pouring his Holy Spirit into us that we may love each other and the world outside as Jesus has loved each of us.  The sure sign of functional agnosticism in a church is that it winds up doing things for the sake of doing things rather than taking the risk to do things to build deeper relationships among themselves and with the surrounding community.

Paul writes the Corinthians hoping to prevent them from falling into this functional agnosticism.  Their churches were being torn apart by factions who were competing for control of the churches in Corinth and the resulting disunity was causing them to lose sight of their Christ-mindedness, their love.  In actuality, they were slipping back into being just like all the other cult-like charismatic religions in Corinth.  So, Paul reminds them of how the Trinity provided for the Israelites in the wilderness.  Together, they followed the whirlwind cloud and passed through the sea.  Together, they followed Moses, their leader.  When, together, they hungered, the Trinity fed them with manna and quail.  When, together, they thirsted, the Trinity gave them water from the rock.  They had provision everywhere they went because Christ, the Rock, was with them.

Yet, regardless of the mighty acts of the Trinity’s steadfast love and faithfulness and even though the Trinity was personally present to and with them, many of the Israelites fell into a most tragic form of functional agnosticism by declaring that none of these mighty acts were for sure the acts of God of their ancestors.  So, they made an idol of an Egyptian god, a golden calf, and claimed it to be the God who delivered them from Pharoah.  Then, they rose up to worship it with a feast that culminated in an orgy.  They also put God to the test, routinely complaining of hunger and thirst and wishing to be back in Egypt where the food was better.  Most strikingly, because of fear they refused to enter the Promised Land the first time they came to it.  So, along the way God struck many of them down and prolonged their time in the wilderness.  Like the Israelites, the Corinthians were in the wilderness, a wilderness of disunity and infighting, a wilderness in which they were having to learn faith.  

God brings us into wilderness places to teach us to learn that he is with us and to rely on his steadfast love and faithfulness.  God brings us to where we hunger and thirst for knowing Jesus so that he may provide what we really need and prove his love and faithfulness.  Wilderness places keep us from becoming functionally agnostic.  In the wilderness we can find ourselves tempted to carry on like the ancient Israelites.  We can and do create false gods out of our perceived needs and serve them hoping that in so doing we will satisfy our hunger and thirst for “in God we trust”.  We will test the Trinity telling him to prove himself in a particular way making the bargain that if the Trinity does what we want, we will do better at what it is we believe serving God is supposed to be.  We complain at the Trinity because life in the wilderness isn’t as fulfilling as doing our own thing was.  We complain about what the Trinity provides for because it doesn’t really meet what we believe our needs to be.  Unfortunately, for some our functional agnosticism in the midst of the wilderness will turn to atheism.

Yet, the Trinity provides us with exactly what we need.  Learning faith is learning that the Trinity can and does satisfy our thirst to have a relationship with Jesus in the Spirit.  The Trinity leads us into the wilderness of trials that are common to life, very painful trials where the test is to trust the Trinity and let him show us his living and healing way out.  As Isaiah said, “God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and our ways are not God’s ways.”  When we find ourselves wandering in the wilderness thirsty to know Jesus, asking God are you there or are you real, we just have to trust the Trinity is doing something for our good.  

Truly, when God speaks his word, it accomplishes its purpose.  Everything that happens in our lives good and bad is the Trinity working to establish our faith and to make us more Christ-like.  When we come to the end of our time in the wilderness, and it does end, we truly do find that the Trinity has brought forth a new peace and joy in us that satisfies our thirsting.  Somehow, he speaks and things happen that teach us his love and faithfulness and we can’t help but draw closer to him in faith.

So, my friends, when in the wilderness seek the Lord because it is there in the wilderness that he certainly can be found.  Pray, read scripture, spend time with Christian friends, share your trials and most importantly avoid doing anything that you know is just an effort to meet what you perceive to be your needs.  God is working way deeper in you than you can understand and in time he will provide.  Friends, seek the Lord.  Amen.