Around the Throne

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Revelation 7:9-17

With last night being Halloween, that makes today All Saints’ Day, a too often not recognized day on the church calendar.  The Roman Catholic Church set November 1 as All Saints Day back in the 800’s AD, moving it from a date in May.  The suspected reason was that of trying to Christianize a Celtic festival that celebrated the end of the harvest and the beginning of Winter, or the dark season.  The Celts called it Samhain, but I don’t know how to pronounce it.  The Celts believed it to be a day when the veil between the living and the dead was thinner so that the dead would try to come back to their homes.  People would light a candle to help them and set a place at the table for them.  They also believed that some of those spirits would come seeking vengeance so trying to find a way to scare them off developed into the tradition of wearing scary costumes and scary Jack-O-Lanterns.  The history of Halloween is a very interesting read (Wikipedia) and I am admittedly being way too simplistic here for history of Halloween fanatics.

  As far as All Saints Day itself, back in Roman days throughout the empire people used to celebrate a day of remembrance of the dead by going and having a meal on the grave of a loved one.  That was in the Spring close to when Easter occurs.  The Church built on to that day making it a time to celebrate a mass to remember saints and martyrs.  At some point they started to celebrate All Souls Day the immediately following date to remember all the faithful deceased.  In later Roman Catholicism, All Saints Day mass was/is held to remember saints martyrs, and the faithful dead in heaven and All Souls was to be a mass to pray for loved ones in Purgatory.  In the Reformation, Protestant and Reformed Churches did away with Purgatory and mushed the two days together.  We celebrate All Saints Day for all the faithful are saints in our interpretation of what a saint is.

All Souls Day had a neat tradition called “Souling”.  Children and poor people would go door to door offering to pray for your deceased loved ones in exchange for a “Soul Cake”, which was basically a spice and fruit laden piece of shortbread. As you may have surmised, therein lay the roots of Trick-or-Treating.  After the church moved All Saints and All Souls Days from the Spring to the beginning of November the custom of wearing costumes and carrying a hollowed-out turnip with a candle in it to scare away the dead found its way into Halloween customs.  

I really am touched with the idea of “Souling”.  Imagine a child coming to your door and offering to pray for you in your grief.  Since the demise of the Doctrine of Purgatory, we don’t pray for the dead anymore; that God would release them from Purgatory and welcome them into Heaven for Eternity.  We Presbyterians, being of the Reformed Tradition, since we have gotten over people being Predestined either to Heaven or to Hell, we believe the faithful deceased go to be with Christ where he is in Heaven until the Resurrection when Creation is made new and we get a new body like he has…and we have to remember that Jesus’ arms open wider in welcome than do our own.  But anyway, keeping these ancient practises in mind, just imagine if we took a day out of the year to go as families to have a picnic at the grave of our dearly departed and that the night before that picnic children came to our door and asked, “Who are you sad for and can I pray for you?” and you give them a cookie.  I think the world would be a better place.

Anyway, about Halloween today and how it is celebrated; I am troubled that an event that has for the longest of time been a part of how people grieve their dead and how the Christianized version of it was so much thought of Heaven in it, I am troubled that Halloween has been morphed into a commercialized celebration of Hell and the demonic.  Long ago scary costumes were meant to scare evil spirits away.  Now they seem to invite an embodiment of evil spirits.  And yes, I realize that’s the extreme.  Most kids are going door to door dressed in an innocent costume and it is good for them to be complimented.  It’s also good for neighbours and strangers to cordially interact outside the doors of our homes.  The little bit of spooky is fun.  The celebration of Halloween can genuinely foster a good sense of neighbourhood…until the teenagers start pranking.  Versions of toilet papering a house have been around centuries longer than you would think.

Looking a few hours past Halloween to today, All Saints Day, this is a day to remember all those who have gone on before us.  Gathered for worship is a good place to be.  It has long been a teaching of the Church that when we are gathered for worship this is a time when the veil between the heavenlies and earth is thinner.  Here now in the bond of the Holy Spirit, the fellowship or communion of the Holy we are participants in the heavenly worship that John saw around God’s powerful throne of grace.  Angels are here.  The Creation, the Four Living Creatures, is here.  Saints and martyrs are here.  Loved ones are here.  All Creation shouts, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb!”  Everything is singing the song of praise, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen!”  Now is the time to have our tears of grief wiped away.  I wish to share with you a prayer I found.  Please pray with me.

That one that I loved, O God, is now with you. I can say that, not knowing “how” or “where,” but say it because it makes no sense that so rich and full a life would come to an abrupt end…except for memories.  Still, I am bereft for she is not with me. I listen to all the clichés of my friends, spoken to console me: “He is better off.” “She is past her pain and suffering.” “He is in heaven,” whatever that means. I listen and am not consoled. My grief is selfish. I want to feel her touch and hear his voice and see her smile. I am confident he is with you, and I am just as confident, O Lord, you understand how it is with me. I cannot help recalling times I might have been gentler, softer, more thoughtful. I wish I could live some hours over. I wish I could say “I love you” just one more time. These failures I must accept. “Time heals all things,” they say. I do not believe Time does anything. You, O God, are Healer and Helper. You can heal me in time, help me through the lonely days and long nights. You can give me renewed zest for going on and entering into life once more. “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” I believe that. But right now, I grieve; I hurt; I am bereft.  Thanks be to God who understands through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

 (Kenneth G. Phifer, A Book of Uncommon Prayer, Upper Room Books, 1981, pp. 106-107)

 

The Secret for Being Content

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Philippians 4:10-20

There’s a shortage of clergy and I won’t sugar coat it.  It’s bad.  In our denomination and most others, the number of ministers retiring in a year nearly doubles the number of seminary graduates headed for ministry.  In our Presbytery we have 29 churches and seven ministers and four of those are going to retire in the next four years.  What are we going to do?  Well…and here’s where my sarcasm is going to come oozing forth like a lanced boil…AI.  AI can solve all our problems.  I don’t subscribe to any of the big AI services like Chat GBT or Open AI.  But having seen what they can do, I am without a doubt that an AI service can write a better sermon than me hands down.  It might lack creativity, intuition, and spiritual insight but it will be a damned good sermon.  Yes, I meant to use that word for spiritual emphasis.

Anyway, I decided this week to hold hands with the devil and use Google Chrome’s AI thing to help me write a sermon on Contentment.  You just type in a question and it gives a quick summary of an answer that saves a whole lot of time and for that I am thankful.  So here we go and this would be so cool if I could do this workshop style with slides and everything.

I asked Google Chrome “What is Contentment?” it answered: “Contentment is a quiet, steady state of happiness, satisfaction, and inner peace where you feel at ease with your current life situation and what you have.”  It then listed characteristics of contentment. First, it involves a Peaceful Mindset – meaning a calm grounded emotion as opposed to an ecstatic, momentary “Woohoo! Yeah!”.  Second, there’s acceptance of the present which means accepting your current circumstances, relationships, and resources rather than constantly chasing more.  And third, it’s also not complacency.  You can still set and achieve goals and strive for self-improvement while still feeling grateful for where you’re at presently.

Well, that sounds good enough for a sermon.  All I need to do is throw in some illustrations, personal stories or something and “Voila!”, a decent sermon á la Toastmasters.  But I noticed as I typed my question, Google suggested I try “What is Contentment in the Bible?”  That would be a better question because bringing God into the equation would be something that the typical mental health professional schooled in the secular sense of psychology would not and likely could not do.  

Back to Google, so I asked “What is contentment in the Bible?”.  Wiley ole me, I could tell I was dealing with a particular theological persuasion from the answer it gave because it mentioned God’s sovereignty.  You’d think that Google would know better because words like sovereignty are offensive to people who got colonized.  It appears Google AI ain’t all that woke.  Just saying.  Google answered: “Contentment is a quiet, steady state of happiness, satisfaction, and inner peace where you feel at ease with your current life situation and what you have.”  That wasn’t all that different from the non-biblical definition above.  The difference lay in the three characteristics which were now called Core Biblical Meanings.   The first one said, contentment is rooted in God, not in things. Contentment is not simply being satisfied with externals.  Rather, it comes from knowing, trusting, and being satisfied in God Himself.  Second, it’s a learned posture not something we naturally have or achieve through self-sufficiency.  Contentment is learned through faith, trials, and dependence on God.  Thirdly, the biblical definition also says contentment is not complacency.  It comes from doing your best and being faithful in your calling and leaving the outcomes to God.

Well, that’s not bad for a biblical definition of Contentment.  Google also points you to helpful websites that are also of a particular persuasion.  You see, AI tends only to work with the most popularly viewed content.  We have to be careful with that because we may just be getting our ears tickled by stuff that sounds biblical.  Regardless, I think we’re safe to say that contentment is found within the context of a life lived in faithful service to Jesus and wanting no more than God has to give in the midst of whatever the trial.  So, not bad Google AI.

Now, let me show you what you pay me for.  Looking at the passage we read, I am struck with the question:  What does Paul the isolated prisoner living in a cold, dark, damp cell eating God only knows what while daily facing the possibility of execution for the fallout of faithfully preaching about Jesus and having just received a care package from the Philippian church via his friend Epaphroditus…what does Paul the prisoner have to say about contentment under such circumstances upon receiving a gift?

He says, “I rejoiced greatly because your concern for me has blossomed again.”  Just a few verses early he said, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.”  Rejoicing was how he dealt with prison.  Paul has a heart that worships.  No matter the circumstances he is able to look around and sing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”  And then in the face of this gift from Philippi he says, “Now to our God and Father be glory forever and ever.  Amen.”  

Worship.  Wonder and feeling blessed in the presence of God no matter what the circumstance.  There is no true contentment if there’s no worship involved.  I have a friend who has lived two years longer than expected with a rare form of aggressive cancer.  The only thing she has said to me about the cancer is “It is a blessing.”  Our culture is so violent, so “Fight, Fight, Fight” when it comes to cancer.  She calls it a blessing and lives with it.  All I can say is there is something beautiful going on in her, not the cancer but rather the God thing, still being able to praise God.

Paul says he has learned the secret of being content.  He says, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”  Jesus makes him able to endure all things even when the thing to be endured is having plenty.  Some of the most discontented people I’ve ever met are the wealthy.  I say to Paul, “Okay, Paul, but what is it to be strengthened by the Lord?  You're sounding a bit cliché.”   I have been through some difficult stuff in my life and from my own experience I can say that part of the strengthening is just knowing the Lord is with me, sensing his presence, and knowing that I am not forgotten but rather God hears me.  Knowing that Jesus, the Holy Spirit, is with us and that our prayers are heard and that things are going to work to the good somehow that bit of “faith” feeds contentment.

But there is something else here that Paul brings up with respect to contentment that gets looked over.  It’s that contentment is something we find and participate in together with others.  Feeding each other’s contentment is a responsibility that we bear towards one another.  Contentment isn’t simply a “me and my” contentment sort of thing.  Let me try to explain this.  Paul says, “It was kind of you to share in my distress.”  The Greek word is synkoinoneo.  It means to participate in together.  It is to come alongside someone in life’s circumstances and share in their lives.  It’s not simply walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.  It’s walking beside them holding them up while they endure those uncomfortable shoes and even sharing your own if they fit.

The Philippian disciples were very mindful of Paul in that way.  They shared with him by sending care packages, and letting him know he was not alone.  The Philippians did this when other churches did not.  Paul calls it “the matter of giving and receiving.”  Sharing together.  It amazes me that in all the definitions of contentment that are out there you never see anything involving sharing togetherness.  Sharing from our plenty feeds our own sense of contentment as well as the contentment of those we share with.  There is no better way to let a person know they are cared for and not alone, things integral to contentment, than to share in their experience with them.  Share time together, quality time.  This feeds contentment all around.  Sharing in life together is the way the Lord strengthens us in all circumstances.  Contentment is something we find together.  That’s the secret to contentment if I am to add my two cents worth.

To close, that care package to Paul fed his contentment more than just “I got some stuff from you that made me happy. Thanks.”  What fed Paul’s contentment was the fruit (profit to their account) that arises.  It fed their contentment too.  It fed Paul’s contentment, a prisoner for Christ, to see that one of the churches that he planted got it.  His labour was not in vain.  The seed he planted blossomed in their care for him and bore the fruit of mutual contentment. Love shown in sharing, whether it be sharing material stuff or going and visiting to share time together, befriending those in their need, what Paul calls “the matter of giving and receiving”, is the tangible reality of the Lord’s strengthening.  That is the secret to contentment.  Amen.

P.S. I did go back to Google after writing this sermon and asked it to write a sermon on contentment.  In less than two seconds it sealed the deal.  It was a good sermon, even used this passage.  But it was an "all about me and my contentment" sermon and said nothing about sharing or that contentment is something we find together. 

 

Citizenship in the Heavenlies

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Philippians 3:17-4:1

Let’s all act like we are in High School again and talk about Citizenship.  I have no idea whether “Government” or “Civics” is covered in the High School curriculum anymore.  If not, it would explain a lot.  But I’ll spare the rant and cut to the chase.   The IRCC (Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada formerly known as the CIC or Citizenship and Immigration Canada) basically defines citizenship as being entitled to certain rights and freedoms and having certain responsibilities while living within the borders of Canada.  The rights are to justice, equality, and mobility and the freedoms are of speech, thought, religion, and assembly.  Some of our responsibilities are to obey the law, express our opinions and respect the right of others to do so, to help others in the community, to care for and protect Canadian heritage and the environment, and to eliminate discrimination and injustice.  

Those rights, freedoms, and responsibilities actually pertain to anyone living in Canada legally even if you’re not a citizen.  Citizenship then adds the additional rights of applying for a passport so that you can leave and re-enter the nation at will as well as voting and holding office, and one should emphasize actually voting.  Thus, in Canada citizenship boils down to being a legal resident entitlement to certain rights, freedoms, and responsibilities within the boundaries of the nation especially the rights and freedoms to leave and enter that country (i.e., the passport), to vote in elections, and to hold office; and the particular responsibility of voting.  

Moreover, the rights, freedoms, and responsibilities that citizenship entails vary from nation to nation.  Thus, when talking about citizenship one must not only say what it entails but also in what land.  In our passage, when Paul speaks of “Citizenship in the Heavenlies”, “citizenship” does not mean what it means in Canada or any other nation.  So, we need to define citizenship and Heaven as they would have been understood by Paul and let’s start with heaven.  

Let me say something briefly about heaven.  The Greek word for heaven is actually plural and would be better translated as “the Heavenlies”.  Paul did not think of the heavenlies as the place where immortal souls go after death to a pearly, golden city where they are given angel’s wings and a harp to spend eternity lounging on a cloud strumming away.  That’s Medieval fiction.  Paul was a Jew and they believed the dead went to a place called Sheol and it was under the earth and what went there wasn’t an immortal soul.  That’s what Greeks believed.  It was everything a person is except for the dead body.  What we ought to mean by going to Heaven when we die is what Paul described early in Philippians as going to be with Jesus wherever he is in the heavenlies without this physical body that died because of Sin and there we await the resurrection of the body.  If the Book of Revelation is peek into that world, worship will be primarily what we will be doing along with the angels, the whole creation, and the saints of all times and places.

The heavenlies were actually a part of the creation.  Paul likely believed that the part of Creation we know was like a big bubble within the heavenlies.  If you go stand somewhere where you can see all around, it looks like we’re in a bubble.  The heavenlies were behind the dome formed by the sky.  They believed the heavenlies to be the home of God where the will of God is done unhindered by Sin and from the heavenlies God rules the earth.  It is from there that salvation was begun and the Lordship of Jesus Christ is being extended to earth.  

In the Heavenlies was a Temple from which God ruled.  To the Old Testament Jews, the Jerusalem Temple was a/the place where the Heavenlies and earth were open to each other.  The Jerusalem Temple was like a shadow of the Temple in the Heavenlies and thus God could come and dwell in the Jerusalem Temple provided Sin was dealt with in the way God prescribed – the sacrifices.  And, it was at the Temple that Israel’s/humanity’s relationship with God was maintained by worship and sacrifice.  God’s will being done on Earth flowed forth from the Temple like a River of Living Water.

To say that our citizenship is in the Heavenlies is to say that we have rights in the land where God lives, where his will is done, and from where his rule and salvation are extended to earth, a room in the mansion so to speak.  When a Christian congregation gathers for worship, we are the new temple, a replica of the temple in the heavenlies like the Jerusalem Temple was.  This one will blow your mind…we, right now, are presently occupying time and space in the heavenlies here on earth.  Don’t think of the Heavenlies as simply being somewhere up there.  Think of the Heavenlies as the kingdom of God, the loving reign of God, breaking forth or opening up right here, right now as the Holy Spirit is in our midst.  Indeed, God is in our midst.  

We are in the Heavenlies right now gathered around God’s throne with angels, the Creation, and the saints from all times and places worshipping.  It might be like looking through a mirror dimly but here as we are gathered together by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ to worship God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, here is heaven on earth.  God is here so therefore let his will be done on earth as it is in the Heavenlies.  So, let’s talk about citizenship in the Heavenlies.

            The Greek word for citizenship is politeuma which gets its root from the word polis meaning city.  A polis was a fortified settlement.  The city walls and military presence provided a sense of security and freedom which allowed for the development of arts, education, trades, and a middle class.  In Paul’s day, cities were also sacred places.  There was a god whom everyone believed had decreed the law upon which the city was established and who was the ultimate protector of the city and therefore everyone worshipped that god not only out of devotion but out of civic duty.  So, citizenship in a city was a very religious matter.  Citizenship in a particular city usually involved being protected in a privileged way by the god, laws, and government of that city even beyond the bounds of the city.  

Now, for our citizenship to be in the Heavenlies means very much that we have the Father’s favour upon us because of Christ Jesus’ faithfulness on our behalf, God’s presence with us as the Holy Spirit indwelling us and our fellowship, and God’s acting for our benefit as Paul says to transform us, to transform our bodies of humiliation to conform to the glorious body of Christ Jesus.  Every Christian congregation is in essence a city, the New Jerusalem, a fortified settlement of God among his people, and, moreover, we have God’s grace and protection wherever we are.  

Our responsibility as citizens in the Heavenlies is to be fellow imitators of Christ Jesus.  Our understanding of what it is to be an imitator is a bit different from what the word means in biblical Greek.  We tend to think of the act of imitating as something inauthentic, a copy, not the real thing.  Imitation sweetener though sweet is not the same thing as sugar.  Quite often, imitation takes the form of mockery.  We call that aping.  

The biblical idea of imitating is more like the phrase “like father, like son”.  Many children try to be just like one of their parents because they share a special relationship and they are blood related.  To be an imitator of Jesus means we share a special relationship with him by means of the bond of his blood in the Holy Spirit who is dwelling in us and therefore we are becoming like Jesus.  We are not just following Jesus’ example by simply imitating him, we are bound to him by his Spirit so that as he is so are we becoming because he lives in us.

So, as citizens of the Heavenlies we are ambassadors called to live in this world the way Jesus lived in it – the Way of the Cross, the way of unconditional and sacrificial love.  As we worship God alongside the Creation, we must be careful not to exploit it but rather to give voice to it.  We are the one’s through whom God is making obvious what it says in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done.  On earth as it is in heaven.”  For a century and more (169 years) the River of Life has flown forth from the Temple in the Heavenlies through this congregation (Latona) as we have gathered for worship and shared a meal and loved our neighbours.  Our citizenship here precedes any claim to citizenship we have elsewhere.  Here around this Table national boundaries do not exist, only the loving reign of God.  Let it flow.  Amen.

The Remedy for When Life Becomes a Prison

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Philippians 4:1-9

I’m sure we all remember a few times when we were children being sent to our rooms or made to stand in a corner as punishment for being bad.  The idea was to restrict our freedom of playing wherever and however we wanted and to give us some time to ponder what we had done and whether we would do it again.  Thus, we have the rudimentary reasons for the incarceration of criminals: retribution or punishment, incapacitation or removal of freedom, to deter criminal behaviour, and rehabilitation.  

The temporary removal or restriction of a child’s freedoms usually works for the typical kid from a stable family to get them back on track.  When my kids were young, “timeouts” were popular.  All they needed to get back on track was a short break of sitting alone for one minute per year of age and they checked back in.  Too bad it’s not that easy in the adult world.  When we look at mass incarceration being used as a society’s means of dealing with criminals, we find it doesn’t work so well.  If rehabilitation is the ultimate goal, which is our society’s claim, mass incarceration is a miserable failure.  

Please don’t read into what I’m saying that I think criminals don’t need to suffer the consequences of their actions.  There will be crimes committed because we humans have a disease of the mind called Sin.  But high crime rates are an indicator that something is wrong with society in general that if dealt with would likely reduce the crime rate.  Things like wealth disparity, poverty, racism, childhood trauma, etc., feed crime.  Reduce or eliminate them and crime will drastically disappear.    

Sending people to prison doesn’t solve much.  More than often, it makes things worse because life in prison is a game that is soul destructive - dehumanizing.  The majority of people who leave incarceration have a high likelihood of suffering anxiety, panic, depression, hypervigilance, PTSD, and a loss of identity and sense of autonomy.  While in prison, they have likely been assaulted, manipulated by fear, humiliated by other inmates and even by the guards and have found that the only way to survive the game is to play it – Do or threaten to do onto others what that evil SOB did to me or enlist yourself in helping an evil SOB bully the populace.  When released, inmates usually do not have a support network and have a difficult time trusting others.  They face stigma and barriers to employment.  Because life outside is so stacked against them, they are likely to return to crime.  If this is rehabilitation, we fail miserably.  

I had some exposure to prison ministry when I was in seminary.  I was a chaplain intern in the prison unit at a hospital.  I visited the prisoners twice a week inside their little caged ward.  I saw the game firsthand.  The only prisoners that I met that truly seemed to be surviving the game without playing it were men who had come to faith in Jesus.  Unlike most convicts, they admitted and accepted what they had done and when possible sought forgiveness, attended church and prayer meetings, read their Bibles, and sought to be faithful disciples.  They stuck together with other Christians.

Paul was such a man.  He regularly suffered brief jailing and being stoned or whipped for proclaiming that Jesus was Lord and Saviour and would be returning to establish the Kingdom of God and that the Holy Spirit is present now as a foretaste and the evidence.  His message was proved through healings and exorcisms, and a couple of times he raised the dead.  But there were at least two times that he suffered an extended long-term incarceration.  There is a strong likelihood that Paul wrote Philippians while he was briefly imprisoned in the early ‘50’s in Ephesus and he may have fought a lion there.  But that is anecdotal, undocumented.  Regardless, he did spend most of the last ten years of his life unjustly imprisoned because of Jesus and never got a fair trial.  

If I were to venture a guess, our passage today sounds a whole lot like how Paul dealt with the dehumanizing effects of prison, especially wrongful incarceration.  At the center of it was his awareness that the Lord is near.  He was not alone there in the cold, damp, hungry, solitary, darkness.  He felt the peaceful presence of the Lord.  Even there in prison, the threat of execution looming, he found the joy of the Lord in his heart and instead of bitterness and grumbling, he rejoiced.  He found reason to praise.  He tapped into that song that the whole creation sings in praise of God.  He found within himself that instead of being grumpy and snippy with others, he was able to be gentle and gracious with others, even the jailors.  He says “with everyone”.  He also had learned that worry was not necessary because God hears and answers our prayers.  Instead of worrying about things, pray about them.  He wraps up by guiding us that we need to focus our minds on good things.  Choose to dwell on the good.  When you find yourself “Stinking Thinking”, choose to rejoice, pray, be gentle, dwell on the good.  Do these things and the peaceful presence of God will be evidently with you.  This was his remedy for life in prison.  

None of us is likely to go prison, but there are times when life can become like a prison – living paycheck to paycheck, a meaningless job with a bad boss but you have no choice but to work it, unemployment, debt, a chronic illness, chronic pain, mental illness, a detached if not abusive partner, an addiction, having to live with someone with an addiction.  Some would say that old age is the one prison we all have to endure.  Grief tops the list of the worst prison of all.  There are so many situations that just come up in life that make us feel like we’ve been imprisoned, that rob us of our vitality, that make us feel punished for no reason, that make us feel alone and isolated, that can make us become and be a person we don’t want to be.  

Life can become a prison.  In that prison it is very easy to lose faith and get bitter, anxious, and depressed; hopeless.   Paul’s remedy is the cure.  It’s during these times that it’s most important that we just sit in the presence of the Lord for he is indeed present with us with peace to give.  Pray and pray and pray some more.  What we need the most, God will provide.  Choose to dwell on good things rather than ruminating on the bad.  Make it a point to be gentle and gracious with others.  Above all, stop ruminating on our situation.  Many people would see a life of prison as pointless and dehumanizing, but for a beloved child of God it is a time to grow closer to him and grow more human.  It won’t last forever.  Amen.

 

I Want to Know Christ and the Power of His Resurrection

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Philippians 3:4-14

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.”  Every time I come across that sentence it just rips into everything about me.  As a disciple of Jesus Christ – and I should say that in a way that’s inclusive of all of us – as disciples of Jesus Christ, this sentence is the one sentence in the entire Bible that sums up what our lives should be about – knowing Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection.  It forces us to ask ourselves that one question in which we find salvation: do I want to know Jesus and the power of his resurrection?  Do I want to know the person, the man, my Lord Jesus and the new life he has to give me through the presence and working of the Holy Spirit.  Do I really want to know Jesus and be changed by him?

If I am honest with myself, my answer to that question is “Yes”.  But then, I have an immediate inner voice response that arises.  I’m pretty sure it’s my conscience.  It’s not God speaking.  God is like an AA meeting.  AA knows that guilt and shame won’t bring a person to sobriety.  Instead, AA says “Keep coming back”.  We are invited to keep coming back, sober or not.  Keep coming back and the unconditional acceptance works a miracle.  That’s God.  That voice inside me says, “Really Randy? Is knowing Jesus and being healed by him really your primary pursuit in life?”  I hear that.  I hear that and I’m cut to heart.  I do want knowing Jesus to be my primary pursuit in life but I am so distracted by so many things.  There’s so much I just need to let go off and find my rest in him.   Though I’m cut to the heart, I also feel that familiar, gentle, peaceful pull that’s found in those familiar lyrics: “Be still and know that I am God.  Be still and know that I am God.  Be still and know that I am God.”   Seeking to know Jesus changes us in a healing way.

Thinking about Paul here, he is writing to attest to the change he was going through since encountering the resurrected Jesus on the Damascus Road.  He was once an up-and-coming Pharisee in the Jerusalem establishment.  His birth lineage was a cut above.  He was very zealous in his keeping the Law of Moses.  You see, the Pharisees believed that the more observant people of Israel could be in keeping the Law of Moses, the sooner the Messiah would return and put the world to right.  He was so zealous that he chose to climb that ladder of what we would call professional recognition feigning as faithful devotion by trying to squash a big change that was happening among his people as the result of what Paul believed to be a lie, that God had raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.  

Paul believed that Jesus was a treasonous false Messiah and a blasphemer who claimed to be the Son of God.  Paul believed Jesus deserved to die by crucifixion and those who followed him needed to clam up or face the consequences.  But when he found himself in the presence of Jesus resurrected on the Damascus Road, he had come to realize that all that arrogant zeal for status and recognition, that fake faithfulness was just a bunch of dung (the S-word would be the most accurate translation).  His heart was now set on knowing Jesus and the change Jesus was working in him and so many others.

This personal encounter changed Paul.  Jesus confronted Paul with the fact that even though Paul thought himself to be a superbly faithful Jew, he was really working against what God was doing and what God had for him to do.  We’re all like that quite a bit, we good church people who do what churches have always do resisting change as if it’s the Plague.  Paul’s goal was suddenly no longer to rise 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 for salvation, his images for what salvation is, (there are about twelve) at the top of the list of what he might call personal salvation as he experienced it is adoption – I was once an estranged God-hater, but through what God has done in, thru, 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, adopted and loved by the Father as He loves Jesus.  

In Christ, we each are a beloved member of God’s family here on earth.  The power of Jesus’ resurrection – 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 more and more in order to grow to be more like him in his selfless love which is the family resemblance. 

Well, winding this down in a way that might make some sense; “I want to know Jesus and the power of his resurrection” also makes me think of people in my life whom I’ve known, who had a great impact on me, and whom I wish I took the time to know better.  My grandfather tops the list.  He was the son of a farm worker.  I don’t know if he finished high school.  Born in 1917 he came of age during the Great Depression.  He was a machine gunner in WWII and somehow, he came home while so many of brothers in arms did not.  He had to take human life to free the world from an evil man and his deluded regime.  He came home and became a police officer, first as a patrol cop and then he became Chief of police in a city the size of Owen Sound.  In his day, in police work you either had to talk people down or knock ‘em down and drag ‘em out.  I don’t want to brag and I’m not at all biased, but everyone who had anything to say to me about my grandfather as a law enforcement officer…well, he was probably the most respected Chief of Police Waynesboro, VA ever had for his peaceableness, wisdom, bravery, honesty, approachability, fairness.  To me, Granddaddy was a quiet man who put his family first, generous, over the top when it came to hospitality (especially considering some of the men one of my aunts in particular brought to Thanksgiving Dinner) everyone was welcome at his table.  He listened more than he talked.  He was always there for us.

With Granddaddy being so quiet he was difficult to get to know.  What you got to know of Granddaddy was a sense of his presence.  Because of that I have spent quite a bit of time wondering what it was like to be him.  I think about his character, what the war did to him, the courage and prudence it took to make a career of policing, the way he was with us, his family.  The last thing we did together, just the two of us, was we to sit in his car not saying anything as we watched heavy equipment at work replacing a historic old railroad bridge that he probably saw built.  What was he thinking?  What was he remembering?  Though nothing was said, it was priceless time together.  What an honour to sit with that man.  I’ll never be the man he was, but there is a bit of him that lives in me and I try to honour that by being a servant of others, with generosity, hospitality, and trying to understand people rather than judge them.

So it goes with getting to know Jesus.  We have to take the time to sit and be aware that even though we can’t see him, he’s present.  We know his presence in his absence.  The Holy Spirit is present.  If it helps, put an empty chair in front of you for him to sit.  Today is World Communion Sunday.  We come to his table where he is the host.  We come as followers from several different traditions to be with him at this meal.  He is here as the one who gives himself for us that we might be nourished and live.  He selflessly gives his very life to us.  How he is present with us in this meal is probably the greatest theological debate of Church history.  My tradition just says that it is a mystery.  Regardless, through this meal Jesus in selfless love gives himself to us.  This is who we are.  This is his life and way of living.  When we go and do likewise, we come to know him more and the seed of the power of his resurrection that he has planted in us changes us to be more like him.  We will never be the person that he is but there is a bit of him that lives in each of us.  Honour him.  Love one another as has loved us each.  Amen.