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.

 

The Beautiful Mind of Christ

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Philippians 2:1-13

The movie, “A Beautiful Mind”, told the story of Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. of Bluefield, WV and his struggle with paranoid schizophrenia.  It begins with his college struggle of being a genius but unable to come up with anything unique until the day when in a flash of insight, he produced ideas that revolutionized economic theory.  He went on to become one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century.  Unfortunately, genius has its cost.  At age 31 he became delusional with paranoid schizophrenia and spent the next 20 or so years in and out of hospitals, but still functioning as a brilliant mathematician. 

Nash's story is remarkable because he was able to use his rationality to work his way around his schizophrenia without medication.  He came to see that his politically oriented delusions were hopeless wastes of intellectual effort and so he chose to come back to the rational world of scientific thinking where his efforts were genius level.  He was eventually awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994 and an Abel Prize in 2015 (a Nobel-like prize specifically for mathematicians).  

For Nash, the return to rationality was not a joyous thing or a feeling of being healed.  His world of delusion was what felt like reality and that was where he found his strongest sense of purpose, where he was most alive.  Unfortunately, he experienced rationality as a limitation he had to place upon himself that kept him from experiencing the fullness of reality as he knew it.  Nash's case is an exception and his story is by no means meant to encourage people with mental illness to not take or to stop taking medications. 

"A Beautiful Mind" did a lot to raise public awareness as to what paranoid schizophrenia is like from the viewpoint of the person suffering with it.  It disorders the mind with a delusion which disorients a person.  The delusion defines what a person sees as their purpose and what they devote their lives to. It’s more than just a cockamamie idea.  Due to chemical imbalances in the brain schizophrenics become delusional, meaning they follow a wrong mind - a false belief based on incorrect assumptions about external reality and they stick to it despite what almost everybody else believes and the incontrovertible and obvious evidence to the contrary.  A "normally" functioning mind would say, "I saw a red car, therefore there are red cars in the world.  I like red cars.  Maybe I’ll buy one."  A paranoid schizophrenic’s mind functions more like: “I saw a red car, therefore my food is being poisoned.”  They cannot help but believe the delusion is true reality because the chemical makeup of their brain is saying it's real.  In response to this delusion the schizophrenic will enter into an unquestionable world of controlling what they eat and trying to determine who is doing the poisoning. 

We tend to want to think of the mind as being that part of us that simply thinks.  We go to school to train our minds to function in a world where everybody thinks alike and knows the same things – reading, writing, math, science, history, literature.  Yet, the mind is much more than just our thinking mechanism, our ability to reason.  But the mind is more.  It's that part of us by which we understand and order our existence and it particularly involves what we believe about reality.  Dr. Nash in his autobiography states that the way he keeps his existence orderly is to keep his delusions, his false beliefs about what is really going on, at bay by consciously choosing to live in a world that operates according to the beliefs of scientific rationality, logical thinking.  He complained that rationality was a limitation placed upon the human mind, which in his case limited his relationship to reality as he knew it.  His delusional world was apparently quite brilliant.  

When we say we have a sound mind we mean that we function according to acceptable beliefs about reality.  People who live functionally with schizophrenia must choose which mind they are going to live in if they can.  That's what the medication helps with and again Dr. Nash's case is an exception if not an anomaly.  He was able to keep his mind in check due to his genius level ability to choose to think like a scientist.  He had to constantly tell himself that what he believed was real was not real and keep himself distracted with the world scientific endeavors limited him to.

Our text here speaks of the mind of Christ.  In the biblical worldview, the mind is that part of the person by which we understand and order our existence.  In particular, the mind determines what is the truth and how one lives accordingly.  What our mind believes to be “the truth” is what we will order our lives around.  Biblically speaking, sin is primarily a problem of the mind not of behaviour and morals.  Sin is that our over-focus on “me, myself, and I" is a delusion around which we orient our lives. A healing of the mind is what we need, the healing of sin’s self-oriented delusion. 

Actually, the New Testament Greek word for repentance is metanoia.  Meta means with and noia means mind.  Therefore, the root meaning of repentance in the Bible is “with mindedness”.  The call to repentance is for us to become with-minded, of the same mind or mindedness, as Christ Jesus.  Growing up in the Bible Belt in the Southern US I was cultured into thinking that repentance was behavioural which meant don’t smoke, cuss, or drink; don’t look at women; avoid being a jerk; and go to church.  But to be with-minded with Jesus is to share in his sincere love for and fidelity to God the Father and that in turn affects our lives to the point of wanting nothing more than his will for our lives and to live accordingly with selfless compassion, kindness, patience, forgiveness, generosity, and hospitality.  

Repentance comes to us as a gift from Jesus by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who plants in us a new mindedness.  By mindedness I mean what we believe is true and how we orient ourselves to pursue it and live accordingly.  Unfortunately, our sin-deluded mind struggles against it.  Jesus puts his mindedness in us, his understanding of reality and his love and drive to serve his Father, so that we can choose to understand and live in his reality known as the Kingdom of God.  We have to daily, moment to moment, choose which reality we want to live - sin-deluded reality or the Kingdom of God.

Paul tells us, “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind (Phil 2:1-2).”  Most importantly, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross (Phil. 2:5-8).” 

There are learned folks these days who would say that Paul is inviting us to enter into a world of delusional thinking, a world that does not jive with the reality to which most people seem to subscribe.  It would be okay if Paul was just that the virtue of humility is good for humanity.  But Paul here seems to be inviting us into a world these learned folk would call poor mental health.  In this world where self-realization and being all you can be is considered the definitive healthy mindset, it would seem wrong to invite people to a world where you find yourself by dying to self, a world marked by the wisdom of the cross.  There are those who would say that we are deluded to believe that Jesus' power to save us is found in putting one’s self aside in love for others.

Jesus’ beautiful mind apparently operated according to the unquestionable love of God, a love that led to a life lived in perfect conformity to the will of God the Father.  He did not question his love for the Father nor his Father’s love for him despite the undeniable evidence against it…the way he was publicly scorned and his death on the cross.  As he is the Beloved Son with whom the Father is well pleased, displeasing the Father was something he would not do because of love.  In adoration of his Father, he continually offered his life as a living sacrifice to do his Father’s will, an act of offering that led to the cross.  In the Holy Spirit Christ Jesus gives us to know and understand his beautiful mind that we might also love God the Father by offering ourselves as living sacrifices by loving each other unconditionally and selflessly.  The only healing for us from sin’s delusional thinking is Jesus' gift of his beautiful mind to us and our humbly choosing to live according to it.

 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus – his self-emptying humility, compassion, and mutual love - unity.  Amen.

 

Live Together Worthy of the Gospel

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Philippians 1:21-30

Revisiting again that study trip I took to the Bible Lands in my seminary days, I wish to reflect for a moment on that elusive, Loch Nessian, Sasquatchian rare sighting of a thing known as Christian unity.  You may notice my sarcasm bleeding through at points here over the next ten minutes of your life.  

Probably the most eye-opening reality for me on that trip was that even though it’s the Bible Lands, Christians were few and far between; roughly 5% of the population.  In the early 20^th Century, it was around 20%, but for some reason in the last 100, really 80, years Christians have emigrated to other parts of the world.  You do see churches in the Bible Lands but they are mostly very old basilicas and cathedrals being maintained by priests, monks, and nuns that are visited by Christian tourists.  There are still worship services in a good many of them, but you’re not going to find a congregation.  New church buildings with vibrant worshipping Christian communities are rare.  

In Jerusalem, Christians make up hardly 2% of the population.  This 2% consists largely of monks and nuns attending to the religious sites of Christian significance under the care of their particular denomination. There are also mission/relief agency personnel who are mostly immigrants.  As far as indigenous Christianity in Jerusalem and Israel in general, they are mostly Palestinians.  A goodly number of Christians have suffered in Israel in this past century not for being Christian, but for simply being Palestinian.  

In Jerusalem, there are a good number of significant Christian “Holy” sites that people pilgrimate to for a meaningful selfie.  And wouldn’t you know it, there is big business all around it.  There are lots of tour agencies, lodgings, restaurants, religious trinkets, and lots of little “come step in my little holy, prayer niche, light some incense, say your prayer, and leave a donation if you please” places. 

Of these “Holy” sites the most holy for Christians is The Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  (It wasn’t really that holy for me.  I was more moved by the synagogue ruins in the Galilean town of Capernaum which was probably Jesus’ home base once he started his ministry.  Everything is so religious in Jerusalem.)  The Church of the Holy Sepulcher claims to house Golgotha, the place where Jesus was crucified, as well as the tomb where Jesus was laid which became the spot of the resurrection.  Long ago the church was called The Church of the Resurrection instead of The Church of the Holy Tomb.  I’m sure there’s some interesting history and some profound theology in that name change.  You know, how it kind of changes the focus of Christianity's most holy site from resurrection and new life in Jesus to a dead guy and a grave.  There’s a big difference between saying “I want to go see where Jesus was raised from the dead” and “I want to go see where Jesus was buried”.

Now about Christian unity, you may or may not know that three Christian denominations have primary responsibility for overseeing The Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  One would think that this to be a great sign of Christian unity.  Well, let me lean in a little closer and give you “the details” on that.  The three main denominations are the Greek Orthodox, the Armenian Apostolic, and the Roman Catholic churches.  The Coptic Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox, and the Syrian Orthodox also share minor responsibilities.  You will notice there are no Protestant or Reformed denominations represented.  The Protestants have their own “Holy Tomb” spot a couple of blocks away that actually looks like a tomb in a garden.

The operating arrangement that the Catholic and Orthodox churches have is known as the Status Quo.  It was drawn up in 1757 by the Ottoman Turks (Muslims) who ruled Jerusalem back then.  An arrangement had to be made because disagreements, often violent in nature, broke out between the different denominations over worship times and places and cleaning schedules.  The Caliphate, a Muslim, very graciously brokered the deal but he decreed that a Muslim family would always hold the keys to the church itself because if one of those denominations happened to be granted the keys…, well, we know how that would go.  That Muslim family still holds the keys.

The denominations are still known to have their disputes.  Notably in 1902 ,18 Franciscan friars were hospitalized and a number of monks jailed when the Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox got in a dispute over who could sweep the lowest steps of one of the many chapels throughout the complex.  In 2002 on a hot summer day, a Coptic monk moved his chair into the shade from its agreed upon place. The Orthodox Ethiopians saw it as a hostile act resulting in 11 monks being hospitalized.  In 2004, on September 13 when the Greek Orthodox had a special celebration commemorating the relic of the Cross they have there, the Franciscans, (Roman Catholics) accidently left the door of their chapel open.  The Orthodox took that as an insult.  A fist fight broke out but no one was hospitalized.  In 2008, a big brawl broke out there on Palm Sunday because one of the other denominations removed a Greek monk from the building for some odd reason.  The brawl was big enough for it to make global news.  When I was there in 1995 standing in line waiting to have a moment inside the tomb, one monk started yelling at another and cuffed him on the back of the head.  A German tour group also cut in front of us.  Needless to say, though it seems that there is much unity involved in operating the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, it is just as well-known and maybe overshadowed by the fighting among its Christian caretakers.  

Jesus’ last teaching to his disciples was, “Love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34,35).  This is what Paul was getting at when he told the Philippians to live your life in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ.  If they/we were/are going to make the proclamation that Jesus is the Son of God become human, the true Lord and Saviour, who was crucified and raised from the dead and that by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit his kingdom, the Kingdom of God is at hand, and that he will return to fully establish his very good reign in his very good Creation, then we ought to have something to show for it.  That something is our unity which Paul speaks of by saying that their life lived in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ shows up when they are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the loyalty to Jesus Christ that arises from the Gospel.  That’s a wordy way of saying “Everyone will know we are Jesus’ disciples by our love for one another.  

Now, I need to go Greek on you for a moment because there are few things in what Paul is saying here that very unfortunately get lost in the translation.  What we translate as live your life in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ in the Greek doesn’t say what we individually minded post-Modern Western culture types here it as.  When I hear those words, I immediately start thinking that “Me, Myself, and I” need to live my life in a gospel-worthy manner.  Ok yeah, but that’s not what it’s saying.  First, the verb incorporates the plural you.  He is not saying each of you live your own life.  Rather, it is y’all live your shared life, your common life together in a Gospel-worthy manner.  There are ways in Greek to focus on how we live as individuals, but Paul doesn’t use those ways here.  He pulls out a rather obscure word whose root word is the Greek word for city, which is polis.  What we translate as "live your life" is quite literally, “Let the way you do city (common life in a commonwealth) be Gospel-worthy.”   

To help you understand a little better.  Philippi was a Roman colony in which Roman citizenship was very important.  Rome turned a small mining community into a colony that would be a place where Roman citizens could settle down, like retire.  Being a Roman citizen was important.  In a couple of weeks, we will talk in a few weeks of how Paul tells the Philippian Christians that they are citizens of heaven.  In Philippi the civic life shared by Roman citizens was very important.  It’s also interesting to know that when Paul first visited Philippi around 49-50AD, he and his companion Silas eventually got arrested and beaten for “disturbing our city”.  He cast a demon out of a young slave girl that made her able to tell the future.  Her owners lost a means of lucrative income.  They were arrested and beaten and imprisoned all without trial.  They were released the next day, but Paul made it known that he and Silas were Roman citizens and refused to leave without some sort of apology.  The city magistrates all came and escorted him out of prison acknowledging their mistake.

Paul wrote this letter about ten years later from prison and was expecting that at any moment the order could come to put him to death.  This letter has a “last words” kind of feel to it.  Paul’s “last words” focus on unity.  The Philippian Christians also seem to be suffering some persecution as well.  Paul’s word to them is that their openly displayed love for one another, the Christ-like quality of the common life, their unity is the evidence of the Truth of the Gospel of Christ to those who are wronging them.  Love for each other, love for neighbour, love for enemy – these are the heart of civic life in the kingdom of God, the proof of one’s loyalty to Jesus Christ, the true Lord and Saviour.

We don’t really know specifically why the Philippian Christians were being wronged.  We can suppose that their proclaimed and lived loyalty to Jesus rather than to Caesar and the gods in a city full of people proud to be Roman citizens proved problematic.  Moreover, the egalitarian nature of their fellowship would have proved a disturbance to the order of Roman life that was very caste/status oriented.  Loving and treating everyone as if they were family – slaves, the poor, the diseased, refugees, even enemies – would have threatened to overturn the Roman way of life.

For us today, we are the body of Christ in a world that has grown to have apathy if not antipathy towards the Christian faith largely because of our unholy marriage to imperialism.  Jesus being Lord does not mean the Church is.  Sadly, the reputation of the Church centres on our disunity and judgmentalism more than for our unity in love, for living our common life together in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ.  There is a lesson we need to learn from monks fighting at The Church of the Holy Sepulcher over the silliest things.  

The world we live in and the Church’s place in it is not all that different today from what it was in the first century.  The early church grew in an oppositional environment because their love for one another backed up their message.  The love that people found in small Christian fellowships was the evidence that Jesus is alive and in their midst through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  We must do the same today – focus on our unity in Christ.  We don’t need petty fights about whose responsibility it is to do what.  We just need to get together as often as we can in loving fellowship centered on knowing Jesus and invite, invite, invite, and invite some more.  Most importantly, be that friend to all people, the friend who loves as Jesus has loved you.  Amen.

 

 

Live for the New Day

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Romans 13:8-14

There’s something about sunrises that can be perspective changing with the coming of a “new day”.  My most memorable sunrise was again back in Seminary.  I was on a study tour of the Middle East.  I was on the Sinai Peninsula on Jebul Musa, the Mountain of Moses.  For centuries people have journeyed to the top of Jebul Musa to await the arrival of a new day. I was soon to join their ranks. This mountain as Christian, Islamic, and Jewish tradition has it is the mountain upon which Moses heard God speak from the burning bush; the mountain where God passed by Moses as he hid in a crack among the rocks; and most of all the mountain where Moses received the Law of God, the Ten Commandments. 

The morning started at 3 AM and the procuring of a camel to ride up most of the mountain.  It was not a very comfortable ride.  The camel’s saddle was nothing more than shaped wood covered by a blanket. To top that, the camel stunk and had fleas.  All that discomfort aside, the ride was quite soothing.  You see where the saddle is placed upon the camel’s back is actually a big mass of fat.  As the camel walks that mass of fat sends you forwards and backwards and side to side and around in a circle all at the same time.  All this swaying at three o’clock in the morning can make you sleepy. The only thing which kept me awake was this slight fear that the camel might decide to walk over the edge.  We really had to rely on that camel’s ability to see in the dark and that the man leading it knew the path.

Apart from the discomfort and smell, the mesmerizing sway, the fear, and this building relationship I had with that camel, I soon began to realize that I was on a journey, a pilgrimage along with hundreds of other people on our way to the top of Jebul Musa, to the spot where Moses heard the voice of God and I began to wander if God would in some way speak to me. There I sat on the back of this camel looking up at the stars.  It was very dark.  The only human light was the orange glow of the cigarette of the man leading the camel.  It was “dark as Egypt”, if you’ve heard that phrase actually referring to the Ninth Plague which was Darkness.  Never had I seen so many stars. 

As we bobbled and swayed for some reason I couldn’t get “How Great Thou Art” out of my head.  It was like I knew all the words when I didn’t.  Soon my thoughts turned to how it happened that I, me, was there in Egypt on the back of a camel riding to the top of the Mountain of Moses early in the morning. How did I get there? Why me? I did not deserve to be there. The feeling of awe which encompassed me moments earlier had changed to humble gratitude for I knew that nothing short of God’s special love for me had brought me to that particular point in my life - sitting on the back of a camel in Egypt riding to the top of Jebul Musa to watch the sunrise and to welcome the arrival of a new day.  What a gift!

As he did with Moses and I am sure with everyone else who dares to listen on this mountain, God spoke to me. By showing me the stars God told me that he was the God of all creation and when I took note of where I was, I realized that I was there only because this great God of creation loved me and thought me special. On the same mountain where Moses was overcome with the awesomeness of God and heard the voice of God proclaim God’s love for his people, I too was overcome with God’s awesomeness and his love for me. Where Moses heard the words “Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet.’’ I learned the lesson that the ability to love your neighbor as yourself comes from knowing God loves us each and regards us each as special enough to give us good gifts. 

Soon we arrived at the point where the camels could go no further and oddly enough, I found it difficult to leave this newfound friend behind. We then climbed some 1,000 steps to get to the top of the mountain and await the sunrise. There was a snack stand there and I got a candy bar and a cup of hot chocolate which unfortunately tasted like a camel. I huddled up with some friends and we kept warm while we waited for the new day.

As darkness faded and light filled the Sinai more and more people began to arrive. Italians, Germans, French, British, American, Japanese, and Korean - people from all over the world began to gather at the top. Soon the Koreans began to sing “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” and the whole mountain became alive with this song sung in many different languages, a sort of Pentecost. As daylight approached and peoples from all over the world gathered around, I sensed that salvation was nearer to us than when we first believed. God was close to us on that mountain. In all those people from all over the world night was fading and daylight was already near.

There is something about the arrival of daylight, something about the rising of the sun each day that fills all who watch the sun rise with hope. There is no other time such as this when the beauty of creation becomes so evident. As the sun rose on Sinai the colors of the granite rocks blossomed from deep purple and blue to emerald green, to ruby red and blazing orange. All of God’s crown jewels were put there on display so that it might sparkle in the coming sunrise. 

When daylight came, a new day arrived. The experience of the camel ride though just hours passed seemed to be fading. Now that daylight had arrived all who had climbed the mountain in darkness now began to rush towards the pathway down. I was soon caught up in this rush to leave the mountain. Somehow I failed to ask myself this question: would the religious experience of God’s awesomeness and love experienced in the night which had just faded before me have any effect on the new day that was now here? How would I live in this new day having heard the voice of God just hours before? 

Our text this morning asks this same question of us. How are we going to live in this new day? All of us have been in darkness of one form or another. I don’t think that I would be exaggerating to say that all of us at times have been strangely awakened to the awesomeness of God. Nor would it be a lie to say we all have been struck with gratitude at knowing that we are where we are by the grace of God who loves each of us deeply. God has never left us. He has always taken care of us. God has been with us when it was night. How will this affect how we live each new day?

I said a few minutes ago that the arrival of a new day, the rising of the sun, can fill us with hope.  This Cooperative Ministry formed a little over eleven years ago and was a ray of hope.  I can’t imagine what would have happened to each of these four churches had you not listened to the Holy Spirit’s prompting you to join in ministry.  A new day was upon us.  I wondered why more churches in the Presbytery didn’t join with us.  Three years in we went from two ministers to just me and some dedicated pulpit suppliers particularly Joel Jongkind.  We adjusted and then Covid hit.  The churches that made the news during Covid weren’t making it for the myriad of creative ways they came up with to continue to show love for one another and their surrounding communities.  Nevertheless, the Pandemic put a pall of darkness over, a form of mass depression that lasted a couple of years.  Now, just as that pall had begun to lift and life was getting back to normal, we find ourselves facing an inexplicable trade war with our former best neighbour.  We had just begun to recover from the Pandemic induced economic crisis and now we’re wondering how much worse it’s going to get.  And I won’t depress you with the state of the church today especially here in Grey and Bruce Counties.  Where’s the hope?  Where’s the sunrise?

Well, what Paul said to the Roman Christians back then speaks to us still today, especially today.  Paul here focuses hard up front on loving each other, loving neighbour as yourself.  But then he says, “Besides this, y’all know what time it is.  How it is already the hour to wake from sleep.  For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.  The night is far gone.  The day is near.”  We know what time it is.  I apologize for going Greek on you, but the Greek word for time there is not the one for tic-toc on the clock time.  It’s the word for an age, an eon, an epic.  We are in the age when following the Creation changing event of Jesus Christ, his resurrection, and God’s pouring out the Holy Spirit making alive those who follow him.  We are the sunrise.  We are the new day.  

Even though it still looks dark outside with the way things are, our God is the God who deals in resurrection - new life.  The way we always did things as congregations, well there’s only a glimmer that those ways will find their way out of this present darkness.  If God in his great love for each of us has touched us and awakened us to his awesomeness, his faithfulness, his love for us, then we gotta get up and live this new day shining with the good news that God has not abandoned humanity.  When it’s dark out, it’s the worst that humanity has to offer that seems to be running the show.  But the darkness fades, flees from the light of the truth of God’s presence and love. 

We know what the time is.  We know the sun is rising because Jesus the Son has risen.  The night will come to an end as we each take the time daily to sit with God and pray and read some scripture.  Day comes as we each show our loyalty to him by loving our neighbours, our literal neighbours.  We may not be able to get people through the doors of the church for worship, but we can be kind and befriend the person in front of us in the checkout line at the grocery store.  Be kind and someone may eventually ask you why and there’s your chance to give account for the hope you have.  So here and now while darkness lingers, get up and be light.  Live for the new day.  The sun is rising.  Amen.

What's Wrong with Christian Nationalism?

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Romans 13:1-10

I ask your pardon up front for talking about things American at a time when our economic well-being here in Canada has been attacked and the sovereignty of this nation has been trifled with by executive order of the President of United States and, if the polls are right, his actions are applauded by about 1/3 of the general American populace.  These actions were taken for no valid reason.  The resulting betrayal of trust has terminally injured what once was the fairest and most productive trade relationship between two sovereign nations that there has ever been.  As an American living in Canada I’m struck with disbelief, anger, and disgust as I powerlessly watch the reputation of my homeland become that of being the poster child for betrayal, unreliability, and corruption.

Since there is no valid or reasonable why behind these actions we may move on to the next question of how this has come about.  Well, it is no secret that the current president would not have been elected if he had not had the support of a large block of voters professing to be Christian and who voted for him because they believed he was God’s man for the task at hand, which was to make America Christian again.  Regardless of the man being morally unqualified according to standards the same block of voters have put to every president since the 80’s, these Christians put him in office.  How?  He played into one of America’s foundational Christian heresies – Christian Nationalism.

Not everybody calling themselves Christian in the U.S. espouses Christian nationalism.  Most of the mainline denominations have in recent months written statements condemning it.  And, Christian nationalism isn’t just an American problem.  We have a milder version of it up here in the Great White North.  It made a resurgence back in Covid.  At our General Assembly this past June the Presbyterian Church in Canada released a statement rejecting Christian Nationalism asking that the document be discussed throughout the denomination in the hopes of weeding Christian nationalism out.  The document contained a couple of pages of background leading to this statement:

“Christian nationalism is an ideology that seeks to establish Christian cultural and political domination within a nation, claiming that a particular nation was founded as Christian and must remain ‘Christian.’  Such claims conflate religious and national identity and marginalize all those who are not Christian or who do not align with the particular values Christian nationalism promotes. This pursuit of cultural and political domination distorts the gospel and embodies teachings that do not reflect the love God showed to the world nor the ministry to which disciples of Christ are called.

We acknowledge that Jesus’ ministry began with his own rejection of political power and social influence (Luke 4:5–7) and that throughout his time of ministry and teaching he continued to eschew political power and influence.

We affirm that, as followers of Jesus, so too our focus should not be control over the social, political, and economic spheres of this world but rather, like Jesus himself, loving service to God through preaching and living the Word of love, caring for the marginalized, and ministering to those in need.

Since the church is called to faithful public witness to the gospel message of God’s love for the world, we therefore reject Christian nationalism as a sinful ideology at odds with the gospel and with the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.”

Personally, as my biblical and theological education began among Mennonites at Eastern Mennonite University and Seminary, I am partial to a definition produced by a sister seminary, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary located in Elkhart, Indiana.  It reads: “Christian nationalism, in short, is a worldview where one’s theological imagination is coopted by state power. It exchanges the church’s loyalty to the Lord of Peace for a false god fashioned by the myth of American exceptionalism. In fact, Christian nationalism is a form of political idolatry that distorts our knowledge of God and neighbor through a xenophobic, racialized and militarized gospel that is at odds with the life and teachings of Jesus.”^[1]

Our passage from Romans is one that can and often does get used in support of Christian nationalism.  Historically, it has served as the biblical basis of what was long ago known as the Divine Right of Kings.  Back in the days of empires, kingdoms, and colonial empires Paul’s teaching here was co-opted to mean that emperors and kings ruled by God’s authority and therefore their actions were acts of God.  Paul taught that the authority to govern is part of God’s ordering of creation and that those who govern are God’s servants for good and that they wield the sword for the good of society.  We must therefore be subject to the governing authorities for to oppose them is to oppose God.  So also, we must do good because the governing authorities only come after those who do bad.  So, pay your taxes and tariffs and give respect and honour where due.  Unfortunately, Paul didn’t say anything about what to do if a government is corrupt and abusive.  It wasn’t until the 1500’s and John Calvin in the last chapter his Institutes of the Christian Religion boldly claimed that citizens had a right to overthrow a tyrant.  Hence, a wave of revolutions over the following few centuries leading to democracy and voting became the way to limit or peacefully oust a corrupt government.

I am confident here that Paul was not granting a divine, carte blanche, free ride ticket to the Roman emperor or any other governing authority.  They already claimed that power for themselves by the name of Zeus (Jupiter).  Paul instead was writing to Christians who were often socially outcast and bullied because of their confession that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour and Son of God (titles the emperors reserved for themselves) and because of their refusal to worship the Greek and Roman gods and because of their egalitarian (all folks are equal) fellowship.  At heart, this passage is Paul telling Christians throughout the Roman Empire to keep their heads down and not draw attention to themselves and their fellowships by resisting what they all knew was an evil empire bent on conquering for reasons of power-lust and greed.  The Roman Christians would have remembered very well the very perverted and cruel Emperor Caligula followed by Claudius and the then emperor Nero.  No Christian would have called any of those emperors a godly man nor thought of the Roman Empire as sanctioned by God.  So, Paul was not trying to claim the imperial rulers or the empire were God’s special appointees on earth to rule in his name the way American Christian nationalists do with their current president and America.

So, this passage was not ever meant to endorse a particular nation or leader as being specially sanctioned by God.  It therefore should not ever be used for that purpose today.  In fact, the early church would have not been looking to a particular nation or empire to be serving God’s purposes on earth.  They would have understood God’s kingdom coming on earth through the spread of the church which had no national borders.  The only Christian nation on earth is the church universal.  If we take the conversation Jesus had with Satan seriously when Satan was tempting him as well as Chapters 12-13 of the Book of Revelation, then we have to be warned that the political power embedded in nations at present is the domain of Satan.  If it is true that power corrupts and ultimate power corrupts ultimately, then when Christians try to take control of their nation, they will get corrupted ultimately.  Such is Christian nationalism.  I would invite those espousing Christian nationalism to revisit the role political power plays in your loyalty to Jesus Christ and as an American living in Canada I would especially ask you to give a good ponder to what the commandment means, “Love your neighbour as yourself.  Love does no wrong to a neighbour.  Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law.”  Amen.

 

 

When in Rome...Don't Do As the Romans Do

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Romans 12:9-21

I’m sure you have heard the phrase, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”  It’s been around since the 300’s AD and is attributed to St. Ambrose who was Bishop of Milan which is about 500-600 km from Rome.  The church in Rome had different fast days than the church in Milan.  St. Ambrose was advising Christians traveling to Rome to do what they do in Rome so as not to offend.  

Today, the phrase is often used to advise international travellers to be aware of the customs and practices of the cultures they are visiting so as not to be offensive.  Being an American who lives abroad and who has also travelled a bit and observed other Americans travelling, the phrase does not seem to mean that.  It rather seems to mean something akin to “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”  When in Rome do as the Romans seems to mean party hard like it’s a Bacchanalian feast.  Bacchus was the Roman God of feasting.  The feasts they celebrated in his honour made Ivy League frat parties look like a four-year-old having tea with her favourite teddy bears.

Ambrose’s advice was good advice for Christians travelling to Rome to visit other Christians.  God help you if you offended the Romans.  But I think otherwise, when it came to visiting unChristian Rome, your stereotypical American tourist would have fit right in.  Romans travelling abroad could be just as insular.  They thought that the way the Romans did things was the way everybody else should do it and they had a military to back it up.  As things were in ancient Rome, so also they are still today.  Things were run by a number of very wealthy families particularly the men heading the families.  Most people were poor.  Government was about as corrupt as governments can be.  Everything was “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”.  You had to be careful not to offend the reputation of another, or rather the inflated ego of another, or vengeance would be sought against you.  It was a very vengeful culture.

If I had to sum up Roman culture, I would say look at what Paul says here.  If my suspicion is correct, he has done a pretty good job here of encouraging Roman Christians to do the exact opposite of the Roman way.  Let me see if I can do the great reversal here.  The Roman way would have been more like:

“Feign love to get what you want from others.  Show a semblance of love only to your own family.  Trust no one’s motives for no one is good.  Only show honour to those of a higher social status.  Be zealous in making a name for yourself.  Always seek to climb that social ladder even at the cost of others.  Don’t rely on hope, patience, or prayer.  Only help the needy and show hospitality if there’s some gain in it for you.  If someone wrongs you, put a curse on them.  Only show sympathy to those from whom you have something to gain.  Always try to get others to do things your way.  Be overconfident and boastful.  Always try to get a foot in the door with those higher up the ladder than you and have as little to do as possible with people who are lesser than you.  Betray others.  It’s expected.  When your honour is offended you must seek vengeance by any means.  You cannot let an offense go unanswered.  Never show kindness to your enemy.  Rather, burn their house down.  Conquering is the Roman way and who cares if you have to do evil to come out on top.”

If my suspicion is correct, the way Paul is encouraging the Roman Christians to live sounds more like, “When in Rome, don’t do as the Romans do.”  Let love be genuine.  Love everybody the way you would love your family.  Do good.  Be zealous for what is right.  Be humble.  Bring honour to others, not just yourself.  Be a servant of the Lord.  Share what you have.  Show hospitality as a way of life.  Bless those who offend and persecute you.  Don’t curse or begrudge them.  Have empathy and show sympathy.  Return no one evil for evil.  Live honourably before everyone.  Be at peace with everyone.  Do not seek vengeance.  Let God vindicate you.  Seek the well-being even of your enemies, it will prick their consciences.  Conquer evil by doing good.”

The way Paul encourages the Roman Christians was as uncharacteristically Roman back then as it is uncharacteristic of life in today’s world of reality show drama.  Imagine if the world we live in was founded on things like humility, selfless love, peace, harmony, and putting the real needs of others first so that everybody has enough instead of this seek your own gain, win, build a privacy fence around your house world that we live in.

Here's a story to help your imagination:  A Western aid worker went to a village in southern Africa and one day decided to have one of those Western-style esteem building games for the children.  He put candy at the foot of a tree and told the children, “I want you to race.  Whoever gets to the tree first will be the winner and gets to have all the candy.  On your marks. Get set. Go." And off they went.  Unexpectedly, they all held hands and skipped off to the tree together.  When they got to the tree, they all sat down and shared the candy and laughed and had a good time.  The aid worker was shocked and asked them why nobody tried to win so that they could have all the candy.  The children said one word, “Ubuntu.”  “What is ubuntu?” the aid worker asked.  They answered, “How can one of us be happy if all of us are sad?”  There is no such thing as joy unless everyone shares it.

Ubuntu is a word from the Bantu people living in southern Africa.  It is one little word, but it takes several words in English to define it.  It means “I am because we are.”  No one is an island unto themselves.  Humanity exists as people in a web of relationship.  In that web the good we do builds everybody up.  So also, the harm we do harms everyone.  Thus, at the heart of what makes us human is interdependence, compassion, community mindedness, and forgiveness.  One person seeking their own gain harms us all.

Paul was unknowingly encouraging the Roman Christians to seek ubuntu in a place that had lost its humanity.  Though Rome called itself the greatest civilization ever, it was sorely lacking in anything resembling the image of God we are created in.  Little has changed for us today.  We think we are thus far living in the apex of human civilization, but... it should greatly concern us that more and more of those billionaires today are building doomsday bunkers.  The people who have all the candy are bunkering down in fear of some great cataclysm.  These are some crazy times.  But I am of the persuasion that the more we who claim Jesus as Lord, the more we live ubuntu in his name the more humanity will change for the better.  

In the first three centuries of the church, before Christianity was co-opted by the Roman Empire as its official religion, the followers of Jesus grew from a handful of disciples to a handful of households in Jerusalem to several millions of people spread all over the world.  St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote in the mid-300’s that we know Jesus was raised from the dead because the worship of the pagan gods has all but ceased.  For two of those centuries Christians were outright persecuted.  But the Church grew nevertheless.  How?  Ubuntu.  While in the Roman Empire they did not do as the Romans did.  They picked up their crosses and followed Jesus letting their love be genuine, honouring everyone, and not seeking vengeance for the wrongs done to them.  Let us in these days of dwindling churches go and do the same.  Amen.

 

What We Worship, We Become

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Romans 12:1-10

You folks are probably going to think I’m stupid, but I think the movie Conan the Barbarian has as profound a message to it.  It first came out in 1982 with Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the lead role of Conan.  It was the movie that gave Arnold his entry into Hollywood and the rest is history.  I never would have thought that he would grow up to be Governor of California.  

Conan’s story begins with him as a small boy watching as his village is raided and destroyed by the Snake King played by James Earl Jones (so the movie wasn’t a complete loss.).  The children of the village were carried away as slaves.  Conan grew up to be a gladiator under the tutelage of the Snake King so there’s a bit of a relationship there.  He eventually won his freedom and you would think that would be great.  But unfortunately, Conan grew up hating the Snake King and he rather lived for the day when he could take his vengeance.  The day comes and Conan catches the Snake King undefended while he’s leading something like a political rally. Conan sneaks up and stands behind him, sword drawn, poised for victory but the Snake King turns and with the wisdom of Darth Vader (also played by Jones) he causes Conan to pause and ponder.  He says something to the effect of “My son.  I made you who you are.  I gave you the will to live.  When I am gone what will you have to live for?  What will you become without me, my Son?”  The implied answer to that last question is that if he takes his vengeance, Conan will become just like the Snake King.  Conan snaps out of it and does the deed.  Vengeance won.

I call the movie Conan the Barbarian profound for the way it portrays hate and vengeance.  You’ve likely heard it said that love and hate are the two sides of the same coin.  Love for another shapes us whether it be for parents, spouses, friends, etc.  It pretty much goes without saying that we tend to become a lot like those people whom we love and admire, one could even say idolize.  This is one of the reasons we need to tell our young people to be careful whom they choose as friends and to be mindful of who their heroes are and engage them as to why.  Love and adoration for someone or something can give us drive and shape our personalities and what we pursue in life; what we’re minded on.  Idolization will guide what we orient ourselves towards. For example, I taught myself to play guitar when I was eleven because I wanted to be like Paul Stanley from the iconic rock band KISS.  

Well, as it goes with love, so also it goes with hate.  Just like love, hate for another person or persons can and will shape who we are as persons and what we pursue in life.  Moreover, hate and revenge, hate’s counterpart to adoration, can take us over and destroy us.  There’s been some really interesting brain studies done in the last ten years showing that the desire for, seeking of, and attaining of revenge work the same areas of the brain addictions do.  Grudging and revenge seeking is an addiction.  Seeking and taking revenge is as harmful to ourselves and everyone around as are substance abuse disorders.  

What we love and adore we will worship, meaning we will devote our lives and efforts to serving them or it.  Just as love and adoration are at the heart of worship so also hate and vengeance are a form of worship.  Hate has the power to change and mold who we are.  We will become powerless over it if we do not seek to forgive.

Anyway, all that to say we must choose carefully who or what we worship for it will change us.  I think that maxim is at the heart of what Paul is saying to us in the first two verses here: “in accordance with God’s compassion, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship.  Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of what you’re minded on…”  These two verses are a strangely worded way of saying that the way we are to worship the true God is to live like Jesus, the true Son of God, in accordance with his nature of sacrificial, self-giving love and in so doing we will be transformed by the Holy Spirit to be like him.  

At the beginning of Romans Paul pointed out that the basic human problem is idolatry – the worship of things other than God.  He says that though it is obvious from nature there is a God, we choose to make our own gods from the things of nature and worship them so that we might pursue baser things for the simple reason of pleasure.  The Greeks and Romans had gods for just about every facet of life and they were obligated to worship them by some sort of sacrifice in the hopes of keeping them pleased.  We would call them superstitious and ritualized, but we’re not much different.  We may not worship golden statues (as does happen at certain golf courses) but we do devote our lives to things like gaining power, wealth, success, fertility, nation, family, immortality.  We even still worship stones and brooms, and even sticks and pucks.  Lord, have mercy on us.  Our devoting our lives to things other than God – Whoops. I forgot the unholy trinity of me, myself, and I – that false worship of false gods makes us subhuman.  

The Jews had sacrifices too, but the Old Testament sacrifices were not attempts to buy God off or keep God appeased.  Speaking simplistically, the Old Testament sacrifices were of two types.  One was simply giving a portion of God’s provision for us back to God as a means of giving thanks.  The other was basically a means of removing the stain of sin from us and restoring union between God and the people.  Sorry, I don’t have time to explain that fully.  Jesus’ death and resurrection and God’s gift of the Holy Spirit to us is the fulfillment of that sacrificial system rendering it no longer necessary.  In love, Jesus gave himself as the once and for all sacrifice in order to heal humanity of the disease of sin and restore union between God and humanity forevermore.  The Holy Spirit, God’s personal presence with us is making this healing union real in us as we, in thanks, live as Jesus’ faithful disciples.  We don’t conform to the world to our own demise.  We conform rather to Jesus and yield to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.  

Paul writes that our presenting ourselves as living sacrifices is our reasonable act of worship.  Some translations say spiritual which doesn’t work because it creates a false dichotomy between rationality and spirituality.  I think what Paul is saying is simply that in accordance with God’s compassion (shown in Jesus), the only reasonable response is to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, meaning to serve one another selflessly in love as Jesus did.  Jesus said, “the greatest among you will be servant of all.”  So, Paul tells us l to let our love be genuine.  Be sincere in selfless love for one another.  Not a mess of obsequious, transactional, back scratching which would have been the Roman way.  No favour went unanswered.  If it did it would be cause for revenge.  We love with mutual affection, mutual love, we put each other first, out of love for Jesus.

To live in selfless love requires a lot of humility.  Paul pushes us to not think more highly of ourselves than we ought.  There is such a thing as healthy boundaries and we need to be careful that in our efforts to love that we not get walked on and taken advantage of.  Regardless, self-giving, sacrificial love will seem wasteful; like there’s nothing in it for me.  

Paul also encourages us to act according to sober judgement.  I know from my time in a former life that alcohol can make you selfish, reckless, and foolish in judgement.  Paul wasn’t talking about drunkenness or anything like that; though it’s a good example. Rather, Paul’s definition of sober judgement is acting according to the measure of faith given to us.  What he means is that we must judge our own actions and our motives by where they fit into our loyalty to Jesus.  To varying degrees, we all have a sense of loyalty to Jesus, I hope, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.  We must let that loyalty guide our actions.

Summing up, do unto each other, unto all people, as you would do unto Jesus.  Paul states that we are all members of one body.  In First Corinthians, he picks up on that by saying we are all members of one body, His body, Jesus’ body.  He lives in us and we live in him.  To love one another is to love him.  That is being a living sacrifice, that is our reasonable worship.  In loving one another the Holy Spirit works to transform our mindedness, our orientation in life from the self-destroying serving of false gods to life-giving serving of the true God.  

So, be careful what you worship, be careful what you devote yourselves to.  If it is not loving Jesus by loving one another in self-giving love, then it is idolatry.  The first thing that happens when we worship something other than God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is we lose our sense of compassion and empathy and become focused on ourselves and suddenly hate and revenge become our nature. Be careful what you worship for you will become just like it.  Amen.

 

Wrestling with God

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Genesis 32:22-31

Our reading is of Jacob struggling with a man/angel/God but Jacob’s whole life was one of struggle.  He was the one through whom God would continue to fulfill the promise he had made to Abraham to give him a land and make his descendants to be a great nation that would be a blessing to all other nations.  One would think that with Jacob being the one on the receiving end of that promise that life would roll on fairly easily without a hitch.  Just like people think ministers are prayer warriors who never have any real-life struggles of their own when that is definitely not the case.  Speaking from my experience and that of my friends in ministry, God sees to it that we experience probably a little bit more than our fair share of the real-life stuff so that we know what it’s like when you folks go through it and we can help.  On top of that, there are the ministry specific struggles that we get served up as well.  So, we can expect that Jacob too would face more than a fair share of struggles simply because he wears an unseeable target on his back called “God’s Promise” in a world that inexplicably turns from the One who in love made it.

Jacob struggled even before he was born.  He struggled in his mother’s womb with his twin brother Esau, who was the bigger twin.  The struggle affected his mother greatly.  Rebekah and Isaac were childless for twenty years and then like a miracle, there are twins in there and they are painfully.  She went to the family worship spot and prayed, “God, if this is the way motherhood is to be, then why am I here.”  The struggling made her dysphoric.  Dysphoria is when you can’t see past the struggle to the purpose.  So, God gave her a big picture response. “There are two nations in your womb and they will have to be separated.  One is stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.”  These two babies were the fathers of two nations that will not get along and will have to be separated.  And…all the birth order birthright stuff is going to complicate things.

And so, Jacob struggled with his brother Esau.  At the root of the problem is God’s promise.  If God had elected/chosen to fulfill the Promise through Esau who was born first, there likely would not have been a problem.  So also, if Jacob would have been born first, there likely would not have been a problem.  But the unspoken assumption here (mine at least) seems to be that they believed God’s promise to Abraham and then to Isaac would naturally pass to the firstborn son, Esau, along with the birthright, the bulk of the inheritance, and the father’s blessing.  But God chose Jacob and Jacob was born second.  So, there’s some tension here involving whether or not God’s Promise is tied to social conventions involving birth order.

 We know from what the Lord said to Rebekah that the Promise will go to Jacob, but this birth order presumption stands in the way.  Instead of just letting God make the promise to Jacob himself, there must be a way to get Jacob into the position of firstborn son.  As you recall, Jacob got Esau to sell him the birthright for a bowl of lentils.  But it seems that this transfer of birthright from Esau to Jacob was never divulged any further than the two of them and probably Rebekah.  Isaac still continues to regard Esau as the firstborn.  

A few years later, Isaac is quite aged and blind and fears he will soon die so he wants to bless Esau with a special blessing for his firstborn.  So, Rebekah concocts a scheme for Jacob to trick his father to give him the blessing, a blessing that for all shapes and purposes was rightfully his because Esau sold it to him for a bowl of lentils.  The trick works.  Isaac blesses Jacob instead of Esau.  Esau responds by saying, “Isn’t he rightly named Jacob (which means heel grabber or supplanter)?  For he has cheated me twice now.  He took my birthright, and look, now he has taken my blessing.”  

Cheating is an unfair accusation.  Esau didn’t seem to care about his birthright.  The Bible says he despised it.  He failed to tell his father Isaac that he had carelessly and disrespectfully sold it to Jacob for a bowl of beans.  The birthright was not something to be so trifled with.  Because Esau was too short-sighted and dimwitted to see past his own belly, Jacob really should have been the one to receive the blessing.  But apparently Esau never owned up to his father about selling his birthright.  Moreover, he was bigger and stronger than Jacob and likely would have pummeled Jacob if Jacob divulged it.  So, Jacob has to get his rightful blessing by means of trickery concocted by his mother.

Blessing stolen, Rebekah suspects that Esau will try to kill Jacob in order to get it all back.  The struggles of sibling rivalry thus turned deadly.  The only way she can think of to keep him safe is to send him back to where she came from under the auspices of finding a wife from amongst her brother’s people.  She gets Isaac to send him away by saying that she didn’t want him marrying any of those Canaanite women because they drove her crazy.  This was a backhanded jab at Esau because he had two Canaanite wives who actually made it a point to get on Rebekah’s nerves.  Esau hears Rebekah saying all this and decides to take off too but in the opposite direction.  He goes south to what we call Saudi Arabia to his half-uncle Ishmael and marries a couple of his daughters.

So, the struggle with Esau takes a hiatus with Jacob fleeing the land empty-handed to go to northern Syria under the auspices of finding a wife from among his uncle’s people.  On the way, God comes to Jacob in a dream and makes the promise to him.  God also promised that he would be with Jacob to watch over him and that he would bring him back to the land.  Jacob in turn makes a vow that if God does indeed bring him back to the land then Jacob would accept him as his God. 

  When Jacob reaches the land of his mother’s people, we are dupped into thinking his struggles are over.  In a storybook match made in heaven fashion he meets Rachel (his cousin) and it’s love at first.  He makes an agreement with his uncle Laban to work seven years for Rachel’s hand in marriage.  Seven years fly by.  The wedding goes down, but his uncle sends Rachel’s older sister Leah into the tent of consummation and for some reason Jacob does not realize that she’s not Rachel until morning and of course the consummating had happened.  Jacob has words with Laban about this trickery and they agree that for seven more years of work he could have Rachel as his wife after the week of wedding celebrations for Leah had ended.  Thus begins Jacob’s family struggles particularly with his father-in-law.  And also, his wives are two sisters and he also has their two servant girls as concubines and there’s a lot of competition over who can have the most babies and who can have Jacob when.  It’s nice to be wanted.

After the next seven years, Jacob and Laban work a deal that Jacob would continue to shepherd Laban’s flocks for another seven in exchange for receiving all the spotted and striped sheep that are born.  Laban had not been anything other than a contentious and dishonest father-in-law who kept changing Jacob’s terms of employment.  So, Jacob decided to get his due by means of some hinky magic.  He believed that if he put the branch of a popular tree into the watering hole, the spotted and striped rams would service the flock while the white one’s watched.  And surprisingly, it works.  Jacob's spotted and striped flock multiplied exponentially while Laban’s white-wooled flock dwindled to nothing.  Laban got very angry and made some accusations.

Jacob’s struggle with Laban culminated with Jacob having to flee for his life with his wives and children and wealth of livestock.  Laban pursued and would have killed him had not God appeared to Laban in a dream and warned him to keep his hands off.  Jacob and Laban made a peace pact and parted ways promising not to encroach upon each other.

And this brings us back to Jacob’s struggles with Esau.  It’s been twenty years.  Isaac and Rebekah are remarkably still alive.  Esau hears that Jacob is coming and gathers 400 men to go and meet him.  Jacob hears that Esau is coming with 400 men and he’s a little Verängstigt wie Scheiße.  Jacob decides to appease Esau by sending his sheep as a gift for Esau in smaller flocks to encounter as he draws near.  He pretty much gives Esau all he has.  He sends his wives and children across the River Jabbok with his remaining servants while he stays put for a night by himself.  Jabbok means to empty.  Jacob emptied himself there.

During the night he finds himself wrestling with someone he cannot identify.  All night long they go at it and the stranger cannot prevail.  As daybreak nears, the stranger decides to end the fight with a form of a Master Ninja death Touch.  He touched Jacob’s hip and dislocated it.  Jacob is now a broken and completely vulnerable man but he will not let go.  The stranger says “Let go of me.”  Jacob says “not until you bless me.”  “What’s your name?” the stranger asks.  “Jacob,” he answers.  Jacob means “Heel grabber” or “Usurper” or “Supplanter.  The stranger answers, “You shall no longer be called Heel Grabber.  You are Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.”  

In that moment as a new day dawned on the banks of the River to Empty, Jacob, having emptied himself of everything (that’s a Christ metaphor if I’ve seen one) Jacob became Israel – the Heel Grabbing supplanter, the younger, weaker twin who was destined to be served by the older, became the one who had struggled with God’s promise on his life, with God himself and faithfully prevailed.  While he worked for his father-in-law, Jacob became greater while Laban decreased.  Jacob let God fulfill his promise to him instead of going off on his own way.  He came back to his father’s house no longer a supplanter but now a prevailer worthy of bearing the Promise. 

So, what’s the takeaway?  It is through staying faithful among the struggles of our lives that God shapes us into the people we are to be.  Thus, in order for us to be the persons God wants us to be we will have to struggle.  The faithful life is not this “Bless me. Bless me. Make me wealthy so that I can live the easy life” kind of thing that TV preachers promise you, if you give them money.  The faithful way is the Jesus way, the self-emptying way, emptying ourselves of our grievances, of what we think we deserve, of our need to be in the right or to be vindicated, and especially of any sort of need we have to win over others.  And rather, seek the way of reconciliation, of generosity, of forgiveness.  Jacob did not prevail until he stood on the shore of Jabbok having emptied himself of everything, with a broken hip, refusing to let go of God until God blessed him with a new name.  Jacob limped away from there saying he had seen the face of God and lived.  

I hope you can catch a glimpse of the poetic beauty in this wrestling match.  I certainly can’t do it justice.  In the sufferings, the strugglings of our lives we are in fact wrestling with God as we strive to cling to him in fidelity with everything we got.  We strive for what God wants for us which is to bear the image of Jesus in this very hurting and hurtful world.  Facing our struggles faithfully, clinging to God, will cause them to take on purpose.  Suffering that otherwise seems pointless and undeserved takes on the purpose of shaping us more into the image of Christ.  Amen.