Long for the Pure, Real Milk

1 Peter 1:22-2:10

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Many of you may remember the Nestle Boycott back in the late 70’s due to its unethical marketing of infant baby formula in poorer nations.  Nestle was promoting its baby formula with several blatant lies such as saying it is a healthier option to breastfeeding or that it would free up a mother for other things like working outside the home to make money.  They used advertisements that stigmatized breastfeeding as disempowering to women.  

Well as it turned out, that baby formula proved problematic in poor areas where clean water wasn’t available and proper sanitation practices are difficult to observe.  Mixing powdered formula with tainted water was giving babies dysentery and worse.  Moreover, because formula was more expensive than breast milk people were watering it down to make it go further resulting in babies becoming undernourished.  And to cap it all off, Nestle had the audacity to sell to poorer countries baby formula that was not as nutrient rich as what they were selling in richer countries so that white Westerners who used it had a better go with it giving the “home front” impression of “well it works for us so the problem must be them”. 

Babies do better physically and emotionally when breastfed for at least the first six months of life.  That's an indisputable scientific fact true for all mammals and marsupials.  Breastfeeding passes immunities and other beneficial goodies from mother to child that infant formula simply cannot.  It strengthens the bond between mother and child by the physical, skin-to-skin contact breastfeeding involves, which incidentally, also produces stress reducing hormones.  Baby formulas are a godsend if there is some reason, like latching issues, that breastfeeding just can’t happen. Otherwise, real mother’s milk is the best food for a baby to grow on.

Back in Bible times they had alternative foods for infants other than their mother’s milk.  They knew that human breast milk was best for the baby.  But they also had this Nestle thing going on too. If you were rich and didn’t want to be “inconvenienced” by motherhood, you procured a wet nurse slave to nurse your child.  Unfortunately, it often meant the death of the slave’s own child because yours came first.  So also, if you were not well off and a breastfeeding issue arose, you had the wet nurse option if another woman in your family was nursing at the time.  But most often, if you couldn’t feed your baby your own milk, you had to feed her milk from a goat or an ox.  This meant that your baby would not have the immunities it should have and the chance of infant mortality was greater.  Though they didn’t understand germs, they did see the risks.  It was risky not to feed an infant human breast milk. 

That in mind, Peter tells us here in our reading, “Like newborn infants long for the pure, genuine milk so that by it you may grow into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”  You folks have heard the phrase “Born again” that comes from the Gospel of John.  It really means to be born from above.  The Greeks had two words for being born; one pertaining to the moment of conception emphasizing the male’s role in birth and the other pertains to coming out the birth canal emphasizing the female’s role in birth.  Translated literally, what we are used to hearing as “born again” should really be “sired from above”.  It means that God the Father has sired us anew with the Holy Spirit so that we are now his children, members of his family, brothers and sisters of and in Jesus the Son.  Peter plays that image out a bit further to post-birth pointing to the reality that as newborn infants, we need to eat.  If we are going to grow up into salvation, into people who bear the image of Christ, then we need to eat real food rather than watered down goat’s milk or something like that.  We need pure, spiritual milk.

So back to Peter and to the pure, spiritual milk; what is he referring to?  Well, right at the end of chapter one he refers to the love that is within Christian community, inviting us to love one another deeply from the heart.  We who have been given a new birth by the Holy Spirit so that we are the children of God the Father grow to salvation by participating in the loving community of Christian fellowship. The love we share is God’s image on earth.  

So, in 2:1 Peter tells us to put some things aside and these things are what I would call the watered-down goat’s milk that we should avoid if we are to grow into salvation. And here, salvation does not mean going to heaven when we die.  Salvation is being an active participant in a mature, loving Christian community.  I can’t emphasize that enough. The things that we are to put aside are all things that hurt community and they are unfortunately things or rather behaviours that broken and hurt people do to break and hurt others.  Peter mentions hostility, deceit, hypocrisy or putting on pretences, envy, and spreading lies about other people.  All these behaviours destroy trust and kill community.  They weaken friendships and give a false sense of power and security when all they really are is an instinctual cover for the insecurity we all feel when we don’t have that sense of God’s unwavering love for us.  Bringing these watered-down, unsanitized infant formula behaviours into Christian community kills it.  It turns a congregation into a club dominated by dominant personalities who are afraid of their own insecurities.

Peter says that if we have tasted the good stuff, the love of God in Christ embodied in Christian fellowship, then we are to desire it and choose it above all else.  He invites us to come to Christ Jesus the living stone who is the cornerstone of a living temple of which we are the living stones of which it is being built.  The early church didn’t have church buildings or temples like the other religions.  We only had our fellowship.  To come to church was to come to a gathering of Jesus followers wherever they happened to meet.

Peter also says we are the priesthood of “the temple” who offer up the true spiritual sacrifices that come with helping one another be disciples of Jesus and grow in him.  Christian community is built on discipleship, people committing to following Jesus together.  Small groups of people committed to one another to study Scripture together, to share our lives, our struggles and joys, and to pray together.  

Peter then goes on to point out that Christian community matures into a visible, holy nation among the nations.  The biggest mistake the Church ever made throughout history was to get involved with empires and nations so that a national body can today call itself a Christian State while in turn having absolutely nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus; especially his teachings that we are to love our neighbour and our enemy and the immigrant among us.  We ignore these essential teachings all the while co-opting the reputation of God to seek the will of a power hungry few who just want to own everything.  Oops.  Sorry.  Got side-tracked.  

The “Jesus” nation exists in and amidst the nations as small gatherings of people who by earnestly following Jesus strive to do things like eliminate poverty in their immediate communities, care for the elderly in their immediate communities, help with childcare in their immediate communities.  The Jesus nation brings healing to their immediate communities in which they exist expecting nothing in return.  This is the way we proclaim the mighty acts of the one who called us out of darkness into his marvellous light.

I know I sound idealistic, but…this is the way the early church was for the first couple of centuries before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the early 400’s.  Over the centuries there have been times when the church has risen to the occasion and manifested this idealistic behaviour.  Believe it or not, it was during plagues and pandemics.  When these things broke out it always seemed that the official State church spent its time saying God was getting the people for sins; or, scapegoating immigrants or other ethnic groups as the cause.  Yet, there were also small groups of faithful followers of Jesus who didn’t play like that but rather shut up and fed the hungry, nursed the sick, buried the dead, cared for the widowed, raised the orphaned at great risk to their own health and sacrifice of their own resources, hid Jews in their attics at the risk of dying in gas chambers themselves. 

As I said, I know I’m sounding idealistic, but…this wouldn’t be the first time that longing for ideals has changed the world for the better.  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream that inspired and is still inspiring good change in the world.  We live at a time when the ideals of Jesus are what this world needs to counter the myths of privatization, consumerism, and materialism and so perhaps we, the followers of Jesus, should begin to long for, to deeply desire, the pure, real milk of Christian community as we have indeed tasted that the Lord is good.  Perhaps this deep longing in reality looks like a deeper commitment to Jesus and to being his disciples together and to let the mighty acts of God arise from us as he moves us to greater acts of love towards one another and for those outside our fellowship.  Long for the pure, spiritual milk that will cause us to grow into the salvation that arises among God’s family loving one another deeply from the heart.  Amen.

 

The New Amidst the Old

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1 Peter 2:9-3:9

At the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer we pray “Your kingdom come.  Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”  We pray for God’s reign to come to Earth, not the other way around which would be to get us off of Earth into Heaven.  Bringing his reign to Earth is what God was up to when God the Son became human as Jesus.  He became a sinner just like each of us.  That may be hard to hear, but if he didn’t, there is no such thing as salvation.  He was a sinner who struggled with it every minute of the day but he did not sin.  He lived faithfully, that faithful life that is impossible for us to live no matter how hard we try.  He bore sin-filled human being to the cross where it was judged and put to death ONCE and FOR ALL.  With his resurrection, human being was changed in that we share in his new human being through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who is working in and among us, remaking us and helping us to become more like Jesus until he comes and all things are ultimately healed and made new.  This is God’s reign coming to Earth, becoming on Earth as it is in Heaven.  The followers of  Jesus exist as the new amidst the old, the new life of Christ growing amidst the old and dying sin-diseased humanity. Humanity being transformed by the Holy Spirit into the image of Christ on Earth is the Gospel – by grace through fidelity the reign of Christ comes to earth from heaven.  

Unfortunately, when the Roman Empire co-opted the Christian faith beginning in the 4^th and 5^thCenturies, the Holy Roman Empire through the decree of Emperors, Kings, and Popes claimed itself to be the reign of Christ on Earth and thus supplanted the Kingdom of God.  The Gospel of new life in Christ ceased to be proclaimed and was replaced by a coercive gospel that told us to be good citizens submissive to the will of Pope, King, and Church or go to Hell instead of Heaven when we die.  

With this usurpation came a switch in our understanding of the direction of salvation that plagues the church today.  No longer do we envision God’s Kingdom, the Reign of Christ, coming to earth from heaven and ourselves as faithful followers of Jesus playing a crucial role in that.  Instead, we are preoccupied with how do I, the individual, get from Earth into Heaven when I die – that’s if we’re preoccupied with questions of faith at all because Western Christians got burned out trying to be faithful in a world where the Church and the State have done and still do horrible things in Jesus name that far outshadow the good we do.  The Gospel ceased to be the new life in Christ coming amidst the old and instead became simply a coercive vehicle for escaping the eternal consequences of the old life at the moment of death.

That said, our reading from 1 Peter deals with the practicalities of living the new life in Christ amidst the old sin-diseased life in the hopes of transforming the old.  The overarching basic point is that Jesus himself serves as our primary model for how to live the new amidst the old.  The effect of the Holy Spirit living in us making us to share in Jesus' new resurrected life is that we now feel a loyalty to him and a compulsion to strive to live as he lived.  He lived righteously and he lived honourably, subjecting himself to the powers that be even though they had no power over him, and he suffered sacrificially and died for it.  Accordingly, as he suffered for doing good in this sin-distorted world, so will we.  In the end this will bring glory to God and perhaps convince a few that God’s reign is coming on Earth as it is in Heaven.

But one needs to be careful, the boundaries that are in place as cultural norms in the community in which we live need to be respected. Disregarding or dismissing them will bring persecution on oneself and the Christian community by being brazen.  And so, Peter says at verse thirteen, “For the Lord's sake accept the authority of every human institution.”  One view about the ordering of society that is presented in the Bible is that societal authority originates with God as a gift from God for a peaceable society in God’s image.  The image of God is a community thing.  Marriage, family, government; all these orderings are a gift from God.  Living righteously in these orderings should result in a just and peaceable society, but unfortunately, sin has mucked up the way we relate to God and one another, corrupting it totally.  Instead of an ordered harmony among people that glorifies God, people use these orderings for the pursuit of their own pleasure and gain.

Peter’s insight into how to live the new life in Christ is that if we each pattern ourselves after Christ’s way of life, the human institutions of order in society should begin to reflect Christ to the glory of God resulting in harmony, justice, and peace in society.  Peter sums it up when he says, “have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind” this approach to life by individual Christians is our participation in God’s will to heal the sin-diseased state of human society.  Peter addresses civic life and the household here, but for sake of time, I’ll just deal with the household.  

In Peter’s day, much like our own, the household was the basic building block of human society.  The typical household consisted of a husband and wife, children and household servants.  Unfortunately, the way Peter words his thoughts about marriage has largely been misunderstood and misapplied over the centuries.  His telling wives to subject themselves to their husbands' authority has unfortunately too often been used for the subjugation of women.  But, if you dig a little deeper, you find Peter is saying quite the opposite.  He sees men and women as equal in God’s eyes as we are both inheritors of the gracious gift of life and new life in Christ.  

The church believes that marriage reflects the relationship between Christ Jesus and the Church.  A husband’s authority is like Jesus' authority and is based on the principle that in weakness there is strength.  So, a husband is to lay down his life for his wife and family sacrificially serving them in love as Christ served his disciples when he washed their feet.  Husbands should listen to and be understanding of their wives, bring honour to them, and not make them feel degraded or ashamed by making them serve his own needs.  Peter’s word to wives is for them to like-wise serve her husband. 

Peter is not giving us a mandate for spouses to stay in abusive marriages.  Marriage is the basic building block of human society.  It is a holy institution.  Therefore, those who enter into the covenant of marriage are to honour Christ with it, indeed, use it to give testimony to Christ Jesus.  When those in marriage carry on as if they were not married, it destroys the basic rubric of human society.  Furthermore, it is just as damaging for those not married to behave as if they are.  God gave us the bond of marriage to order the relationship between men and women in his creative love.  So, we keep it holy for Christ’s sake.

In summary, in, through, and as Jesus Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit God has given the means for humanity to come to a new, healthy, peaceful, and just unity in the image of Christ.  We Christians are called to live in this new order known as "in Christ" in the midst of the old until Jesus returns to make it complete.  Therefore, pattern your lives after Christ Jesus.  Live honourably and honour everyone.  “Have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind” especially in your homes.  Amen. 

 

About Beasts and False Prophets

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Revelation 13

Just a few days ago our denomination, The Presbyterian Church in Canada, released the following statement by means of social media responding to the rather strange relationship between politics and religion that’s exhibiting these days.  We said: “In response to claims made by the President of the United States of America and his administration, the Presbyterian Church in Canada reaffirms its rejection of the sinful use and misuse of the church’s scriptures, language, symbols, and theology to condone or justify violence, killing, and the shame and inhumanity of war.  The PCC also rejects anything that destroys life and diminishes our ability to fight hunger, poverty and disease, and to seek justice in the world.” 

If you have been doing nothing besides binge watching baking shoes the last little bit and have to ask why such a statement was made or had to be made, well here’s just a bit of what’s been going on. The relationship between the American President and the American Vice-President (who is a Catholic) and Pope Leo XIV has begun to resemble the relationship that the ancient king of Israel, Ahab and his wife, Jezebel had with the prophet Elijah.  Elijah kept holding them to account for their idolatry, immorality, and abuse of power until they finally sought to kill him and he had to flee.  I’m not saying that the American President, Vice-President, or the Pentagon have put a hit out on the Pope, but in response to the Pope’s critique of Israel and the US attacking Iran the three have definitely told the Pope to stick to religion and stay out of politics, on the one hand, and to bring his theology in line with the administration’s war policy, on the other, with an implied “or else” attached to it.  All the while, the current administration has no problem invoking the faith of American Evangelicalism to serve their own political interests.  This is a far cry from the relationship that Ronald Reagan had with Pope John Paul II.  Those two actually teamed up to help with the freeing of Poland and hastening the end of the Cold War.

Then there’s the bizarre stuff.  The American President in the middle of the night posted a picture of himself wearing a white robe and flowing red stole. He had healing orbs of light in his hands and was healing a man while surrounded by distraught looking people who were praying to….  This AI-generated picture proved quite offensive to even his Christian nationalist supporters because he looked a little too much like Jesus.  The President took the post down and tried to excuse it by saying he thought it made him look like a doctor.  He soon replaced it with another late-night AI-generated picture of Jesus embracing him.  In the caption he called his opponents a child sacrificing cult and said that he is God’s Trump card against them.  Strange stuff.  Oh, and I forgot to mention the threat he made to completely annihilate Iranian/Persian civilization if they didn’t open the Strait of Hormuz by 8:00PM ET on Tuesday, April 7.  

I was glad to see a few days ago that the Presbyterian Church in Canada released its brief statement on these matters.  When the national leader and ruling party of the world’s largest economy and strongest military coopts a faith system and uses it as a means to obtain and consolidate political power and then tries to say God is on his/their side to excuse the misuse of that power in ways that affect global security and the global economy, well the church world-over should rightfully address it.  This unholy relationship between political power and religious faith is, I believe, exactly what the 13^th chapter of the Book of Revelation addresses.  

The Book of Revelation is not a roadmap to the end of time.  It’s the Apostle John’s Holy Spirit inspired attempt to explain to the churches of Western Turkey in the 90’s AD in apocalyptic coded language why they were being persecuted and to assure them that in the end, whenever that may be (God only knows), Jesus will reign victorious.  It needs to be said that there was no official Roman edict to round up Christians at that time.  Persecution happened because Christians, as did the Jews, worshipped only the God of Israel and this made them “different”.  They would not worship or feast the Roman gods like everybody else did throughout the Roman Empire.  When trade guilds and civic activities revolved around such feasting, that could cost you your job and make you a target for thuggery.  Christian fellowship was uniquely open to and inclusive of all peoples regardless of ethnicity, race, and social status and thus it threatened to destabilize the social order of Greco-Roman society.  Finally, the Christian claim that Jesus was Lord and Saviour and Son of God, titles which were all validated by his resurrection from the dead, was treated as treasonous because these were titles reserved for the emperors.  

These claims about Jesus conflicted to varying degrees of severity with the Roman Imperial cult which was the state religion that people of the empire were required to participate in.  In its most benign form people came to the imperial temples to burn incense and offer prayers on behalf of the empire and the emperor and to offer worship to dead emperors who had ascended to Olympus as lesser gods.  But, at least two maybe three of the emperors of the first century demanded to be worshipped as a living god.  These were Caligula, Nero, and Domitian.  Are you ready for some bizarre stuff?

Caligula became emperor at age 20 in 37 AD and was an absolute menace for four years.  This was during the first decade of the church when it was primarily seen as a Jerusalem-based sect of Judaism.  Caligula was sick.  He behaved like he was extravagantly rich and he just liked to be cruel to people.  He wore masks of the gods and pretended to be them in public.  He made the Senate behave subservient to him and humiliated them by making them worship him in public.  He even pretended that his horse was his chief advisor to make the point that he didn’t see anyone in the Senate capable or worthy of doing that.  He was known for standing naked in water and making young boys swim between his legs.  Christianity wasn’t really a thing yet, but he had it in for the Jews because they wouldn’t worship him so much so that he ordered a brass statue of himself be erected in the Jewish Temple.  This caused a non-violent revolt among peasant Jews but fortunately, the Praetorian Guard and a number of senators assassinated Caligula before the statue could be built.  The Christian claims of Jesus being Lord would have only made things worse in their relationship with Jews because it would lead to more Roman mistreatment of the Jews which led to Jewish persecution of the early church.  It was about this time that the Apostle Paul was making his name as a persecutor of the church.

Nero became Emperor at age 17 and reigned from 54-68 AD.  He was a violent man with a love for Greek theatre.  He liked acting on stage and playing his lyre and singing for the public and competing in athletic games.  Early in his reign, he was very popular with the common people and had a gift for knowing what would make them like him.  He liked to wear clever disguises and go party with the common folk and get into fist fights.  He had his “interfering” mother and his two wives murdered.  He gifted the head of his first wife to his second whom he later killed in a violent outburst with a kick to the stomach while she was pregnant.  Her death fed his insanity for he had one of his young male slaves who bore a resemblance to her castrated and he married him.  His popularity faded after the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD which he likely had started in the area of the shops so that he could rebuild the area in the style of Greek architecture including a massive golden mansion for himself.  He blamed the fire of the Christians in Rome who were growing ever more popular in the city and ordered they be put to death.  Peter and likely Paul died as a result.  He died by suicide and after his death, three impostors arose creating the myth that he had risen from the dead.  He is the first Beast that our reading refers to.

Domitian became emperor in 81 AD and reigned for 15 years.  Prior to his reign there was a Jewish revolt in 70 AD in which Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed.  Mt. Etna erupted in 79 AD destroying four Roman cities.  There were earthquakes and darkened skies and the moon turned orange; all that end of the world stuff.  Domitian was the Roman emperor at the time the Revelation started to circulate.  He was a strong, authoritarian micromanager remembered for being a cruel, paranoid bully with a sadistic bent.  Like Caligula, he liked to humiliate the Senators and have them worship him in public.  He wanted to make Rome great again and liked to build, build, build.  He also wrote a book on the subject of hair care.  He died by assassination.  It is not clear who orchestrated it but it was for sure that everyone wanted him gone.  

Domitian knew that emphasizing his own divine status would help unify the empire.  So, he pushed the expansion of the Imperial Cult throughout the empire by building temples which resulted in Christians being persecuted.  He made no edict requiring the persecution of Christians.  It was patriotism, one could say, that led to persecution.  He had a very large Imperial Temple built in Ephesus in honor of his family line, the Flavians.  A very elderly Apostle John was arrested there and imprisoned on the island of Patmos as a consequence of not participating in all the patriotic fervor.  

Fearing a repeat of what happened under Nero, John compiled the Revelation from prison and sent it seven times over to the seven churches of Western Turkey to explain why they were facing persecution.  Chapters 12 and 13 explain that it is Satan who has given authority to the insane emperors who demand to be worshipped as gods.  It is Satan who has raised up the false faith that causes people to worship these emperors.  John encourages his brothers and sisters in Christ to patiently endure by remaining faithful to Jesus Christ.  Worship him alone.

In the fourth century that unholy marriage between imperial power and religious power began to hide under a Christian umbrella when Christianity became "the" religion of the Empire.  Since, emperors, kings, and priests and presidents and preachers have declared that God is on the side of our nation and Western culture.  It has resulted in much war, poverty, abuse of women and children, and genocide of indigenous cultures.  It has a strong foothold among American Evangelicals at present.  People waking up from it is the primary reason why the Church has declined in Western culture.  There have been men over the centuries who have risen up with inexplicable power who have sought to be emperor over the world claiming Almighty God is on their side.  They have become something the world has had to momentarily patiently endure.  Faithful Christians have suffered for not following them but it is important that the church catholic take its stand when the beasts obviously rear their heads as the Pope has been doing and the PCC did earlier this week.  Amen.

 

About Armageddon

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Isaiah 2:2-4; Revelation 16:12-16, 19:11-21

We are six weeks now into this undeclared war that the United States and Israel have teamed up to wage against Iran.  We don’t have a lot of time for me to rant on politics this morning, so I’ll save that for next week.  Though there has not been an official statement released by the Presbyterian Church in Canada, I suspect that we as a denomination would stand, as do I, in total agreement with Pope Leo XIV and his calls for a return to diplomacy amidst an observation that this warring madness in no way resembles the way of peace that we are challenged with by our Lord Jesus Christ.  Peace does not come by means of strength because there is nothing to keep the strong from just taking what they want from those weaker than themselves…and that they do. 

Since the beginning of this undeclared war, I have heard a few news commentators and seen more than few remarks on social media outlets wondering if or straight out positing that we are in the midst of World War III and headed towards Armageddon, that last great battle between good and evil when Jesus returns to establish the Kingdom of God, a global Christian theocracy.  To speak to those thoughts, World War III…well, I think economics will soon determine how what Prime Minister Carney calls the “middle powers” get involved.  I am thus far surprised that the rest of the world has not responded to Israel and the United States in like manner to how it responded when Russia invaded Ukraine, with sanctions and freezing the personal assets of key government officials and the oligarchs.  But I guess nothing is fair in war and divorce. 

As far as Armageddon, well, I wish we had a few hours to do this one justice, but this being a Communion Sunday we don’t.  First, I’ll give you some background.  There is a Populist movement in the Church in the United States and mostly among the Evangelicals.  It weaves American Christian nationalism and Zionism and a fascination with End-Times Bible prophecy in the context of the Nuclear Age into a tapestry that is quite scary and…it’s likely the largest voting block in America.  They believe America is God’s chosen nation to carry out his will on Earth, the New Israel one might say.  They believe that the Modern State of Israel is the restoration of biblical Israel that they believe was prophesied in the Bible.  For them, this was a sign that the end is near.  They believe the Jewish people need to be in full control of the land of Israel so that they can rebuild the Temple so that Jesus can return.  Thus, there is no questioning on their part with regard to how the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians what White Colonials did and still do to Native Americans.  They are expecting an Anti-Christ to arise and cause great economic suffering in the world and a dreadful persecution of Christians that will end with the Rapture of true Christians.  Finally, a great World War will erupt where all the armies on earth will gather to do battle at Armageddon which they believe to be the Jezreel Valley in Northern Israel…and then Jesus will return and defeat the Anti-Christ and his armies and lock up Satan and his minions and Glory Hallelujah there will be a thousand years of unopposed Christian rule on earth.

Well, in order for the tapestry to work you’ve got to read the Bible very literally and in particular, a mega-mess of very weird and very vague biblical prophecies which leave a lot to the imagination.  But, the Revelation was not meant to be read literally.  It was written to late 1^st Century Christians at a time of persecution in an attempt to explain to them why they were being persecuted and to give them hope.  One of the vehicles the Romans Emperors used to unify such a large bit of real estate full of many different peoples and religions was to make them worship the Emperor/Rome.  Historians call it the Imperial Cult.  The Romans built temples all over the empire where the people were to go and worship the emperor and pray for him or even to him as a god.  There was a priesthood that looked after this.  Our reading mentions a beast and a false prophet.  This was John’s way of talking about the Emperor and the Imperial Cult.  One of the reasons for which the early Christians were persecuted was refusal to participate in the Imperial Cult.  I’ll say more on this next week.

Back to the text, if one is going to read this text literally, then one must say that when Armageddon goes down Jesus is going to show up on the battlefield on a white horse and start hacking people to pieces with a double-edged sword which he wields from his mouth.  I got a problem with that.  I think that what John is giving image to here is that all those who have been deluded into following the Beast and the False Prophet and their cult of followers will be brought to account by the truth of the Word of Jesus Christ.  This wouldn’t be the only place in the Bible that the Word of God is called a two-edged sword.  

If I were to take this a step further and apply this image to today’s world, I would and will take my lumps for saying that whenever there is a national leader claiming to rule by the authority of God coupled with a religious movement backing him up as if he were a messiah, that there is Anti-Christ.  That’s the Beast and the False Prophet.  Jesus will bring them to account.  And it might just be the voice of the Pope that God is using to do that.  The irony of it all is that there are many in that group who have often claimed that the Pope and Roman Catholicism are Anti-Christ which might have something to do with why there wasn’t a Good Friday Mass at the Pentagon this past Holy Week.

About Armageddon, the proper Hebrew pronunciation of that is Har Mogeddon, which in Hebrew means the Mountain of Mageddon.  This does not refer to the Jezreel Valley in which sits the ancient city of Megiddo.  Megiddo is not a mountain.  In Isaiah there is reference to Har Magedd being the dwelling place of God; thus Jerusalem on Mount Zion.  That being the case, I am inclined to interpret the Battle of Harmoged, if I dare call it that, in light of the Isaiah 2 passage and the image of the nations streaming to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of God, to learn the way of peace.  Jesus will settle the disputes between the nations and, “They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation will not take up the sword against nation, and they will never again train for war.”

Harmageddon is anytime throughout history, and this is not the first time, that those political leaders who claim to be enacting the will of God and their cultish followers get confronted by and held accountable to the Truth, the Life, and the Way, Jesus Christ, who walked the way of peace by walking the way of the Cross.  His power is found in our weakness, in humility, in compassion, in serving for when we are weak, he is strong.  Unfortunately, it is a true cosmic battle of apocalyptic proportions for us humans to learn that.  Amen.

 

Witnesses

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Acts 10:34-44

It is no secret that the most convincing evidence in a trial by jury is eyewitness testimony.  There’s the belief that for the prosecution to win, they need only put the victim on the stand to tell what happened and provided the defence cannot find a way to discredit the witness (and they will try), victory is a given especially if there are corroborating witnesses.

Well, that works on TV, but in reality, it has been shown beyond reasonable doubt by study after study that eyewitness testimony is the most unreliable evidence that can be submitted in a court of law.  Even and especially if it’s the victim giving the testimony.  75% of all exonerations by DNA cases involved people who were convicted on false eyewitness testimony.  Most notable among these exonerations was a man named Ronald Cotton who was convicted of sexual assault on the eyewitness testimony of the victim who picked him out of a line-up.  He was sentenced to life in prison.  Ten years in, some DNA evidence was found and the true perpetrator was identified and he confessed. Cotton went free but the victim remains convinced against all evidence it was still Cotton who assaulted her.

Human memory is an odd animal.  We remember images, feelings, smells, etc.  These are what could be called raw data.  But the story with which we tie the data together into a “memory” is actually a creation of the imagination.  Brain scientists have found that when people recount a memory, the part of the brain that lights up on the brain scan is the part we use to create fictional stories.  Our memory of something that happened to us that we think is as factual as a history book is actually a story that we make up and… that story gets rewritten every time we set out to remember it.  And…, every time we rewrite the memory, we mysteriously alter the raw data so that the raw data fits the memory according to the way we want to remember it, not according to what actually happened.   Studies in memory have shown time and again that the further in time we get from an event, the less likely what we remember is really what happened.  This is because we can and will alter the details of the raw data according to the story we want to remember.  This is why when something happens at work that might wind up going to Human Resources for one of those special reviews, we are told to write it down as soon as possible after the incident. 

It gets worse.  We can be motivated in how we shape our memories.  If a memory is of something that we did that we’re not proud of, we will instinctively - not on purpose - change and narrate the details of the memory to paint ourselves in the best light so that we can live with ourselves.  If the memory involves something that someone did to us for which we would like to seek revenge, we will remember what happened in a way that makes that person look their worst.  And even worse, we can create very vivid memories of things that never happened; memories that are so vivid that we will never be convinced it never happened.  When it comes to memory a person can believe something to be absolutely true, when in fact they made it all up to serve their own purposes.  Human memory and thus eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.  

Now you can guess where I might be going with this since here in our reading Peter says that he and the other disciples were “witnesses” to all that happened with Jesus.  They witnessed his ministry in Judea and Jerusalem, his being hanged on a tree (wait a minute, I thought it was a cross), and that God raised him from the dead and that God had chosen Peter and the other ten disciples to see Jesus alive (that seems a bit cliquish, don’t you think? But to their credit the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that over 500 men and women at the same time saw Jesus after his resurrection.  In fact, Peter goes on to say, Jesus was so bodily alive that they even ate and drank with him.  Given that human eyewitness testimony is so notoriously unreliable, how can anything Peter has to say here about being a witness, especially to Jesus’ post-resurrection, be taken not just as true but as reliable?  

I don’t know if this will make sense, but just because someone believes their own testimony to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me God does not therefore entail that their testimony is reliable.  Peter, as do I, believes it absolutely true that Jesus was raised from the dead.  So did the other ten witnesses, the other ten disciples.  Their joint testimony can be and quite often is dismissed as the fabrication of a cadre of revolutionaries who see religious belief as a powerful way to get people to join your quest to take over the world.  Hence, the interesting relationship between authoritarian regimes and the religious nationalists that back them.  So, how do we know their testimony is true and reliable?  Well, let me ramble some stuff off.

First, we have to give some credit that they all saw him together rather than having their own individual moments.  People try to say that they were just having an experience of grief induced mass hallucination.  But that would be the only time ever something like that has happened.  Yes, it quite often happens that in the wake of the death of a loved one, individuals will see the deceased, maybe even talk with them.  But, a whole group of people having the same experience, indeed multiple shared experiences including meals over the next forty days?  That mass hallucinations don’t happen is what leads people to say Jesus never died in the first place.  But, there is no way anyone could have survived what the Romans put Jesus and others like him through before they crucified him.  Moreover, Pilate confirmed with the executioners that Jesus was dead before allowing Joseph of Arimathea to take his body several hours after he died.  And that Joseph of Arimathea, a powerful Pharisee serving on the council that had the Romans crucify Jesus would allow himself to be remembered by name as the one who personally looked after Jesus’ burial  in his own tomb says more for reliability than anything else.

About those eleven eyewitnesses, their testimony has persisted for almost 2,000 years.  Religious movements, political movements, even empires don’t last that long.  They especially don’t last that long under adversity.  Why did these eleven and especially the early Christians of the first three centuries who did not see Jesus post-resurrection continue to witness to him often under severe persecution?  Peter and the others stuck to the story.  They never recanted nor did they seek to use their role to grow rich.  They just did what Jesus told them to do: go into all the world making disciples.  If they were lying, they certainly would have recanted in the face of death.  Peter was crucified upside down in Rome.  Andrew was crucified on an x-shaped cross in Patras, Greece.  James, son of Zebedee, was the first martyr.  He was beheaded by Herod Agrippa II in Jerusalem starting a persecution that caused the church to spread out from Jerusalem.  Phillip was either stoned or crucified in Hierapolis in Turkey.  Nathaniel was skinned alive in Armenia.  Thomas went to India where he was impaled by soldiers.  Matthew was killed by sword or spear in either Ethiopia or Persia.  James son of Alphaeus was stoned in Jerusalem.  Thaddeus was axed to death in either Persia or Syria.  Simon the Zealot was either sawn in half in Persia or crucified in Britain.  John was the only one to see old age but he spent a good deal of time in exile on the island of Patmos.  Facing persecution and horribly painful deaths why would they further a fabrication and why would anyone listen to them and become followers of Jesus?  The obvious reason, I think, is they knew it was true and reliable.  But how?  

The answer to that.  Well, it isn’t a matter of simple rational belief so that  we do what we can to convince someone to rationally accept that God raised Jesus from the dead and thus validated everything about him.  Although, in my humble opinion, the evidence to that fact is as credible if not surpassing in credibility to the details of the lives of any historical figure from that time.  It is also not simply a matter of accepting Jesus’ teachings nor with coming to grips with how his death was for us and for our healing.  It is certainly not a matter of scaring the Hell out of people, literally, “Believe this stuff about Jesus or you’re going to Hell”.  

The proof of it all is what happens when Jesus is proclaimed.  Our text says, “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came down on all those who heard the message.”  Where Jesus is proclaimed as living, witnessed to, lived according to, the Holy Spirit shows up.  Healing happens whether it be emotional, physical, or relational.  People are “touched” by him.  They sense his presence.  His peace.  The Presence of God is what makes the message of Jesus true and reliable.

Jesus is alive and that means there is reason to have hope in this very messed world.  Be his witnesses.  Live like you have hope.  Amen.

 

More Than a Sacrifice

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Hebrews 10:11-25

To understand Good Friday and the meaning of Jesus’ death we have to take a dive into the sacrificial system of ancient Israel and find our meaning for it there.  Otherwise, we are left with Medieval Christianity’s over use of the metaphor of penal substitution, that we deserve the legal penalty of death for our sins but Jesus died in our place and appeased God the Father’s wrath earning us an acquittal.  If you take a plunge into the Book of Leviticus and look at what was going on the Day of Atonement, the day that Ancient Israel dealt with its sin, you will find something there that is markedly different than a sacrifice to appease God’s wrath or what is known as a sacrifice of propitiation meaning going to a god to gain favour.  

The Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur was a very solemn day.  Everyone spent the day prayerfully reflecting on their walk with God and each other according to the Covenant.  They fasted.  No one worked.  It was the day that the Temple, the Lord’s dwelling place, and the people were cleansed of iniquity.  Iniquity basically means stain, the stain of sin.  We feel it as the stain of shame, guilt, regret, betrayal, denial; the stuff that persists in broken relationships.  It’s like if one person in a relationship has done something they wish to hide from the other, that person and that relationship is stained.  Things become different and not in a good way.  The ancient Israelites believed that iniquity, this stain was transferable to anything a stained person came in contact with and in the end, everybody is stained.  It’s like if one person in a relationship stains a relationship it changes the way that person and the couple interact with other people.  

The stain could even be brought into the temple into God’s presence by means of the priests who dealt with the people’s sins on a daily basis.  It’s like germs.  Everything the priests touched in the Temple became stained with the unseen but obvious stain of iniquity.  They believed that if the iniquity of the people became too great God would not be able to continue among them and would vacate the Temple or just go nuclear so to speak.  Therefore, the temple and the people needed to be cleansed from its contact with iniquity and the people’s iniquity was removed far from them.  

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, was the day they did this in the way that God told them to do it.  The sacrifices on Yom Kippur were sacrifices of expiation through which the LORD God drew forth, cleansed, and healed the people from their sin and its stain.  It’s like if you take a warm moist tea bag and put it on an infected wound, it will draw out the infection.  On the Day of Atonement, the Israelites were not trying to appease God’s anger and stop God from getting them.  None of the sacrifices in ancient Israel were for that purpose.  God gave them this Day as the means of extracting, of expiating, of drawing out the infection of sin and its stain to cleanse and heal them of it.

On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would take a bull and two goats from the people for this purpose.  The bull was for expiating the iniquity of the priesthood, as they stood as representative of the whole people in dealing directly with matters in the temple.  Their own sin-stained hands and lives and the iniquity they incurred from dealing with the sins of the people stained the temple, God’s abode, and themselves.  The High Priest would slaughter the bull by slitting its throat. He would catch some of the blood in a bowl and then take it and some incense and go into the Holy of Holies, the room at the back of the Temple where the Ark of the Covenant was which was God’s throne on Earth.  The lid of the Ark was called the Mercy Seat and it was there that they believed God sat enthroned on earth.  In the Holy of Holies, the High Priest would light the incense and fill the room with smoke.  This represented the prayers of the people and made it so that he could not directly see God.  Then he would dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle it seven times on the Mercy Seat.  

Then he would choose one of the two goats by lot.  It represented the iniquity of the people.  He slaughtered it in like manner as the bull and returned to the Holy of Holies to sprinkle the Mercy Seat with it as well.  But on the way to the Holy of Holies, he also sprinkled some of this goat’s blood around the rest of the temple to cleanse it.  When he came back out, he then took blood from both the bull and the goat and sprinkled each seven times upon horns of the altar upon which sacrifices were made and cleansed it of iniquity.

For this all to make sense, we need to know something about what the ancient Israelites believed about blood.  Leviticus 17:11 says, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood.”  The blood of the slaughtered bull and the goat represented life that had passed through death (Yes, just as Jesus has passed through death) and having passed through death it was free of sin.  Being life that was free of sin, they believed it had the power to cleanse iniquity from whatever it came in contact with; and one more thing – it unites God and the people.  

The High Priest who stood in representation of the people gets this blood, this life that has passed through death, on his hand and sprinkles it onto God sitting on the Mercy Seat.  Thus, through contact with the blood – this life that has passed through death – the high priest, the people, and God are united.  The relational bond between God and the people that had been stained with iniquity was cleansed and healed with this life that had passed through death.  That’s what Atonement is (At-One-Ment).  

I hope you see the foreshadowing here of Jesus and his death and resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit to us.  By his death and resurrection Jesus’ human life passed through death and is given to us through the work of the Holy Spirit.  When you hear all those metaphors about being washed in the blood of Jesus and so forth this is what it means.  We are united to God by the Holy Spirit who gives us Jesus’ life which has passed through death.

We still have one more goat to go.  The High Priest then took the second goat and placed both his hands upon its head and whispered the sins of the people into its ear.  Then somebody simply led the goat out into the wilderness and set it free so that it could be utterly destroyed by whatever befell it.  You have heard of the term scapegoat, when some innocent party takes the blame for somebody or usually somebodies else.  This goat bears away the sins of the people to where these sins may be destroyed in death.  

There is something significant we must note here as well.  The Hebrew word for forgiveness does not mean a simple release of guilt. It is not a “legal” transaction where someone apologizes (or not) for a wrong done to someone else and that someone else decides not to punish them for it.  The Hebrew word for forgiving is nasa.  It means to bear, to pick up and carry.  The Space Shuttle would be a good metaphor here.  If you remember the story of the four men who carried a paralytic to Jesus to be healed and how they had to tear through the roof of the house to get him to Jesus because of the crowd outside.  The Bible says that when Jesus saw their faith or rather their faithfulness towards their friend he said to the man “Son, your sins are forgiven.”  These men for love of their paralytic friend whom others would have called cursed by God for some concealed sin and refused to touch him, they picked him up and carried him to Jesus who declared him forgiven.  That act of love and their friendship with someone everyone would have called cursed is what forgiveness is.  

Jesus, the Son of God become human, does the same thing for us as the Scapegoat goat did for Israel on Yom Kippur.  He innocently shares our fallen humanity with us and bears it away into death removing it from us.   This bearing away of our sin is what forgiveness is and it is cleansing.  Just as you would put a tea bag on an infected wound to draw out the infection, so Jesus’ death draws out sin’s infection from humanity so God can heal it with the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Looking at our reading from Hebrews Jesus has opened once and for all a new and living way to God.  He has permanently cleansed the living temple of humanity and God the Holy Spirit now dwells in us and works to heal us from the inside out.  God has written his covenant upon our hearts.  And so as Paul writes in our passage from Hebrews: “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.  Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.  And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.”

God has expiated our sin and iniquity by Jesus’ blood, his life that has passed through death.  There is no longer any need for any sacrifice of expiation and certainly not propitiation.  We are in union with the Trinity atoned by Jesus’ life-giving blood, his life that has passed through death.  Moreover, he has scapegoated our sins away into death where they are utterly destroyed.  The Trinity no longer counts anything against us.  There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.  Amen.

 

A Favourite Hymn

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Philippians 2:1-11

For a funeral I always ask the family and sometimes I have the opportunity to ask the almost dearly departed what hymns they might want to have sung at their funeral.  I rarely come across someone who’s got that all figured out.  So, I’m going to make it easy for my family when the day comes and, well, here’s my   funeral list.  I would like my funeral to start with “I Sing the Almighty Power of God” sung to a tune that I wrote for it.  I should probably record it so that the musicians will know it and not play it to the tune of Forest Green which works for “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, but not so much for “I Sing the Almighty Power of God”.  I am moved by the last two lines of that hymn: “While all that borrows life from Thee is ever in Thy care, and everywhere that I could be, Thou, God, art present there.”  

Next, I would have everybody sing, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” but do it the way my friend and contemporary Christian artist Glen Soderholm does it.  The melody is the same as in our hymnals, but I like his accompaniment.  I have found the end of verse two to be always the case and a helpful reminder.  “Have you not seen how your heart’s wishes have been granted through God’s kind ordaining?”  I would next have everybody sing “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” to the tune of Nettleton.  To me that hymn most adequately describes what it is to be human before a gracious God.  We are “prone to wander” yet God tunes our hearts to sing his praise.  

I would also have a couple of Christmas hymns at my funeral.  “Come, Thou Long-expected Jesus” to the tune of Hyfrydol.  That’s a song of hope and my prayer for this messed up world.  We would also have to sing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”.  That would serve as the theology lesson for the day.  It is all about God with us as the man Jesus.

Next, we would sing “I know whom I have believ-ed, and am persuaded, that he is able, to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day.”  That’s an appropriate hymn for when you’re leaving people you love behind.  That’s also a very special hymn to me because whenever I would go back home when Mom was alive she would pull out the old hymnal of favourite hymns and start playing that one and that’s the one I will always hear her voice singing in my head.  We’d also have to sing “In the Sweet By and By” because in the weeks before my dad died my sisters and I sang that with him as best we could in harmony.  Dad always wanted to sing bass in a Gospel quartet.

I would have three passages of scripture read.  Psalm 23 KJV of course. Isaiah 35 about the desert blooming.  I’ve seen those deserts in bloom.  1 Corinthians 15:51-58 about resurrection and when it comes to where it says, and I would have it written in the bulletin “Death has been swallowed up in victory.  Where, O Death, is your victory?  Where, O Death, is your sting?” and everybody could shout it at the top of their lungs together, And then again at the graveside too!  Whoever is preaching need not say anything about me, but rather proclaim Resurrection into Creation made new because Death is not the last word in God’s very good Creation.

Finally, the service will end with “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” to the tune of Hyfrydol.  I want all them grieving people leaving with a taste of being “lost in wonder, love and praise.”

Oh well, talking about your funeral list may be a bit morbid but I think what we have here in Philippians 2:5-11 is Paul’s funeral hymn.  Whether or not he wrote it is not known to us.  He wrote Philippians from prison in Rome.  He writes with confidence that he will be released, but he does so recognizing that it was highly possible that he might be martyred there in Rome.  So, his death was on his mind and he used this hymn to speak a word, maybe his last word, to the church at Philippi who were in the midst of a conflict.  Two leaders in the church who had worked alongside Paul to plant it, Euodia and Syntyche, were at odds.  Paul wants them to get past their conflict by having in themselves the same attitude of humility that Jesus embodied.

The hymn tells us that though he was equal to his Father, Jesus humbly set aside all claims to equality with God and became a man, a servant, a slave.  As a man he humbled himself unto death, indeed death on a cross.  So, God the Father has exalted him so that everything must bow to him, to the Father’s glory.

This hymn preaches. At its heart is the message that Jesus did not do what worldly power does, which is to exploit status and power for his own benefit.  He let those worldly powers who were claiming to be gods or even to have power over God do the worst they could do to him...death on a cross in utter humiliation.  The Prince of peace, Lord of all creation – the powers put him to death in the way they put treasonous thugs to death.  Behind the scenes, undergirding these men who would be gods, were the powers of sin, evil, death, even Satan was in there deluding them that they had power even to put God to death.  

But Jesus stuck to the plan of humbling himself.  Though he was God he did not use his power as God to assert himself and to bully the powers aside to set himself on a throne as King of the World.  Rather, by his humiliating death he unmasked the powers and shamefully exposed them for the petty tyrants they are.  The worldly powers kill the innocents, kill the good, kill the meek, kill the faithful, kill those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, kill those who mourn, kill those who show mercy, kill the pure in heart, kill the peace-makers, kill those who heal people, and worst of all the traumatize and kill children.  They kill to keep themselves in power.  By exposing their petty and shameful behaviour Jesus opened our eyes to see the powers for what they are and even to see ourselves for what we are - complicit.  No one can hear the story of Jesus and his death and say anyone other than Jesus was in the right.   Well, not only did Jesus unmask the powers.  He shows us what God is like.  Jesus on the cross is the very nature of God.  

Jesus and his cross is the way God establishes his kingdom on earth.  His way, the way of humility, of emptying oneself of power and status in order to bring forth healing to this creation’s brokenness is the way we, his followers, are to conduct ourselves…yet, not simply in imitation of Jesus, but because we have his mind/attitude in us.  He has poured his Spirit into us making us able to be humble as he is humble.  He has made us able to bend our knees before him.   The challenge we are faced with every moment of every day is whether we will empty ourselves of prideful opinions, judgemental oughts, and attempts to get our own way and yield ourselves to him?  His kingdom comes amidst each one of us.  Amen.

 

Enfleshing Hope

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Ezekiel 37:1-14

One of my favourite pastimes is watching a show called Startalk on YouTube.  The host of the show is the one, the only Neil deGrasse Tyson.  He’s a very popular astrophysicist and author and has a real gift for making very complicated topics in science accessible and exciting.  I was watching an episode of Startalk on death.  It was entitled: Why do We Die?  The guest was the world’s foremost expert on the science of dying/aging, Venki Ramakrishnan.  There was nothing spiritual about the episode.  It was mostly about the science of aging and anti-aging.  When they did talk about Death, they presented it in such a way as to say if you take death out of the equation life goes stagnant.  You put off until tomorrow what you could do today and so you sit and do nothing.  But once you get it that you know you are going to die, life becomes more special.  You want to live every moment realizing time is short.  

deGrasse Tyson summed it up at the end of the show with his Cosmic Perspective.  He said: “I, at this stage in my life, value the knowledge that I will die because that gives meaning to every day that I’m alive; knowing that there’s one fewer days left in my future to love, to have new ideas, to make discoveries, to embrace all that it is to be alive in this world.  …If the knowledge of death is what brings meaning to being alive, then to live forever is to live a life with no meaning at all if you can just put off to tomorrow what you could’ve done today…for now, knowing that I’m going to die is what’s keeping me going.”  

When I first heard that, at first blush, it sounded quite wise.  Live every moment to its fullest for you never know what a day may bring.  I’ve done some hospital chaplaincy work inclusive of EMERG and I know without a doubt that there is a place called left field and things do come flying out of it.  So, yeah, don’t put off until tomorrow or the next day or the next to do what needs to be done or would be good to do.  But I have a problem with saying “the knowledge of death is what brings meaning to life.”  That’s something that people with means and privilege say.  

Here's something along that line from the more churchy side of things.  Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s it became fashionable to tell young university age people that God’s calling could be found is where their greatest passion and the world’s greatest need meet up.  That sounds really wise but...who’s going to clean the filters at the sewage treatment or pick the apples?  It takes a certain amount of means and privilege for me to be able to do what I believe will make my life meaningful.  At least 90% of the world’s population does not have the means or privilege to pursue their dreams.

As far as I see it, death is not what drives our pursuit for meaning.  I rather think that death is the capstone on the monument of futility that this disease we call Sin has made of human existence.  Sin robs life of its beauty and meaning and purpose and the fact that we die just makes it all the more futile.  If death does anything, it ends the futility.  That philosophy of “live fully because you’re going to die”, it’s good advice but it totally ignores human nature and how we are affected by Sin.  

For most people, knowing you’re going to die doesn’t change much.  A study was done a couple of decades ago on humans and our seeming inability to change.  I wish I had the time this past week to dig through my books on why churches don’t change even when faced by imminent death to make sure I got it right, but… in the study people were told by their doctor that if they continue on living the way they are living – the lack of exercise and poor diet – they will be dead in less than five years.  Did they change?  80% of the study participants did nothing to change their habits.  Some tried and gave up.  A handful succeeded.  Such are we.  So, knowing we are going to die doesn’t change much about how we live.

deGrasse Tyson would place himself in the category of being an atheist.  Unlike some of the more popular atheists today, he is not belligerent towards people of faith unless those people of faith are using their religion to violate the rights and dignity of others as often is the case.  As a scientist, he is quick to point out that faith can be a bias that keeps one from seeing what’s really there.  The same can be said in reverse, that a lack of faith can be a bias that keeps one from seeing how this unimaginably immense Creation everywhere glorifies its Maker.  God created this universe and called it very good.  What God created and called very good, God will not resign to the futility of Sin and Death.  Death is not the last word in God’s very good Creation.  Jesus Christ and him raised from death is God’s final word that heals everything.  As it went with him, so will it go with us.

Well, I don’t want to give you an Easter sermon just yet, so I’m going to hold off on the topic of Resurrection and go back to the topic of meaning. Knowing that I’m going to die doesn’t compel me to do the things I find meaningful.  The fact that they are meaningful compels me.  In the struggle to find meaningful life in the face of the futility caused by sin and death, I think it is important to consider purpose.  Life will be meaningful if it serves a purpose so what is my purpose.  

As Christians, when we talk about purpose and meaning our thoughts will likely be undergirded or at least informed by and maybe even formed around three theological thoughts: one, God created us; two, God created us to live full and meaningful lives, three, on God’s terms.  The one who made us knows what will make life meaningful for us and give us joy so seek out what God wants.  In searching for what this is I find the first question in the Westminster Larger Catechism of the Christian Faith helpful.  It asks: “What is the chief and highest end of man?”  It answers: “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”  Let me give this a paragraph or two.

When we talk about glorifying God, we are not talking about a Great Leader Cabinet meeting in front of the press where you go around the table and everyone shamelessly grovels and lies about the great things the Great Leader has supposedly done.  The biblical concept of glory is like a solar eclipse, when the moon passes in front of the sun.  There comes a moment when the moon perfectly overlaps the sun and all you see is a black circle encircled by a crown of pure light – the glory.  To glorify God is for us to live our lives such that the glory of God shines around us.  It is to live lives of compassion, kindness, humility, and patience.  It is to bear with one another, forgiving one another.  It is to dress ourselves in love and thankfulness.  Love is patient and kind.  It doesn’t envy nor is it boastful and arrogant, rude, and self-seeking, or irritable keeping a record of wrongs.  Love rejoices in the truth!  Be filled with the Holy Spirit.  People will know the Spirit of God lives in us when they see the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I’ve left out one word thus far – hope.  Our God is the God who raises the dead.  This world is rapidly filling with darkness, yet again.  Wars, lies, cover-ups, sinking economy, climate disaster.  I could go on.  God has not absconded.  God is being eclipsed by the vainglorious misdeeds of men who think they are gods.  But just like in the midst of a solar eclipse the crown of glory of the sun encircles the moon and the darkness then starts to fade so are we who live in by the Spirit in the image of Christ.  Friends, breathe the Spirit of God and be enfleshed with hope.  The glory of God shines through us into this dark world.  Glorify God and you will know what it is to enjoy him and this world will glimpse its one hope – Jesus Christ.  Amen.

 

A Heart of Humility

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1 Samuel 16:1-13

Earlier in the week I searched my files to see if I had ever preached on this passage before and oddly, I couldn’t find anything.  Verse seven of this passage is so popular when it comes to the topic of choosing leadership, it surprises me I haven’t brought it out when elder elections were upon us or during civic elections.  “For the LORD does not see as mortals see; for they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”  The world would be a different place this morning if we elected leaders on the quality of their character rather than on how well our ears get tickled by their spiel or by their party affiliation.  Good people will do their best to do what is peaceable and right.  Bad people…well that one’s obvious.  There’s that maxim Jesus said: Good trees bear good fruit.  Bad trees bear bad fruit.  You’ll know them by their fruit. 

Unfortunately, a person’s true character is difficult to discern because it involves seeing what so often can’t be seen outwardly.  The heart we wear on our sleeves is too often not our true heart.  Yet, true character shows up in what a person does when no one is looking.  We need to see how they treat animals, how they treat children, how generously they tip even when the service is bad.  Do they have moments of worship?  Do they know humility?  This may sound crude but it is a character tell, will they clean a toilet.  Maybe it’s more important to know if they even know how to clean a toilet.  I can think of at least one world leader out there starting wars who has never had to clean a toilet and wouldn’t know where to start.  I think it was Jesus who said: “The greatest among them will be servant of all.”  If only that were the way of the world instead of this delusion that the greatest must be served by all.

I may never have given a sermon on this passage but I’ve used it quite often for a youth group study.  I would assign roles to each of the youth and we would act it old.  I would have the biggest and oldest in the group be the first brother and so on down the line to the youngest and scrawniest and hopefully nerdiest kid being David.  After we acted it out, we would talk about things like how it felt to be picked over and it’s especially poignant if whoever played the eldest brother was someone who always got picked.  We would talk about judging people by appearances and how just because someone looks the part doesn’t mean they have what it takes.  

The lesson ended with talking about the true qualities of David that would make him fit to be a king.  He definitely did not fit the bill for what one would expect a king to be like.  He was the youngest of the brothers, kind of scrawny, and for all shapes and purposes rosy-cheeked and “pretty” like an 80's big-hair heavy metal star.  He may have even been red-headed.  He shepherded the family flocks.  Back then, shepherds were on the bottom rung of society as far as public esteem went.  They were always dirty and smelled like sheep, usually had no education, and had reputations for being crude and rude.  His brothers didn’t think too highly of him. If you look at the story of David and Goliath there’s a conversation between David and his brothers that reveals that they thought he was arrogant and irresponsible, nothing more than their father’s errand boy.  He was too puny to fight the Philistines and they accused him of only coming to the battle to watch the Israelites lose like those people who go to NASCAR races just to see a crash.  

But there was more to David’s character than what we would deduce from appearances.  The Bible’s overall picture of David was that he was a man after God’s own heart.  Even after the affair with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah, he remained a man after God’s own heart.  He wanted to please God above anything else.  He was a poet.  He wrote worship songs.  The 23^rd Psalm is probably the most often recited poem in history.  David the shepherd wrote, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.”  There is something more to this shepherd thing than the stigmas attached to it.  In the writings of the Old Testament prophets, God calls himself the shepherd of Israel and referred to the leaders of Israel as shepherds.  What his brothers called arrogance was actually courage.  In his work of shepherding, he had had to kill lions and bears often having to go hand to paw with them.  Goliath the giant was nothing to be afraid of.  David wasn’t coming to the battles to watch.  He was there bringing supplies in obedience to his father.  David knew what it was to serve.  He knew humility.  So, David was worshipful, creative, courageous, and humble and did what he was asked to do.  He didn’t abandon the sheep when there was danger.  All of these qualities could have easily been looked over if he were judged by the outward appearances of being the youngest and a shepherd.

If I could pontificate for just a moment on what I think was David’s greatest quality.  I would say it was his humility.  He didn’t act like the kings around him.  The one time that he did, the affair with Bathsheba which led to him having her husband murdered, in the end served to reveal his humility.  He was deeply remorseful knowing he had trampled on God’s little lambs.  He did not grasp at power nor did he wield it for his own sake.  He was simply a shepherd who cared for his sheep.  Everything he needed to know about being king he learned from tending the flock.  Humility. 

I am reminded of a man from my childhood named Charlie.  He was the janitor at my elementary school.  He was a quiet man who always had a smile and a “Hello” and he would have a brief chat with us kids when paths crossed.  If he saw you crying in the hall he wouldn’t walk on by.  He kept the classrooms, the hallways clean, and especially the bathrooms.  Sometimes those bathrooms could be a bit trying especially when you get little boys seeing who could stand the furthest from the urinal and still hit it.  Or, when the mischievous boys in the higher grades made wads of water-soaked toilet paper stick to the ceiling, he was the one to get the ladder and scrape it off.  When we threw up, he was the one who came to clean it up and he would be sure to speak kindly to the little one who got sick.  Charlie was an African American man looking after an all-white student body at a time when many of those white children would have been silently taught by parents and grandparents to be wary of black men. Regardless, we all loved Charlie and he loved us.  When Charlie died the local paper prominently displayed his obituary.  As you would expect, Charlie never went to high school.  He was deeply loved by his family and his community.  Charlie went to church every Sunday.  Charlie was one of those in whom we caught a glimpse of Jesus.  He had a heart of humility.

Applying this passage to real life situations where we are choosing leaders whether it be for the church or for the nation, I think one question to consider is whether a particular candidate measures up to the standard Charlie set.  Heck, do each of us measure up to the standard Charlie set.  Let us remember what Jesus said in Luke’s Gospel when his disciples were arguing over which of them was the greatest.  He said: “The kings of the gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather, the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves” (Lk 22:25-27).  If the royal scepter a leader wields is a toilet brush or a broom or a basin and towel, we’ve likely got the right person in charge.  Amen.