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.

  

Water for the Thirsty

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Exodus 17:1-7

A long time ago back when I was in seminary, my first wife and I decided we would like to graduate from campground camping and take a stab at backcountry camping.  This was something I had done plenty of times when I was young and in scouting, so it wasn’t a completely foreign experience to me.  But for my wife...well, she would have to trust me.  So, we acquired what extra gear we would need to backpack into a place and camp.  

For our first and only attempt, we chose a side-trail just off the Appalachian Trail in the George Washington National Forest in Virginia not far from where we were from.  The trail descended rather gently to level ground good for camping, but it was about a 1,600ft climb to come out with a waterfall along the way.  The trail book said that backcountry camping was permitted and most importantly there was water available but filtering was highly recommended.  What it didn’t say was that water may not be available year-round.  The topographical map pictured in the book had a clue that we weren’t privy to.  The line that indicated where the stream lay was not a continuous blue line but occasionally had dashes and dots meaning not a year-round source of water.  A bit of an oversight, you might have guessed.

We planned our trip – hike in on Saturday, stay overnight, and out on Sunday.  We packed up and headed for the hills.  When we got to the ranger station at the entrance to the Skyline Drive we learned that there was a complete fire ban which meant we couldn’t even use our cookstoves which meant no food so we decided to just go make a day hike out of it.  Thinking there would be water along the way we thought we would be ok with just a small water bottle between the two of us and the filter.  Off we went. It turned into a very hot day.  Our water ran out quickly as we descended into the bottom but we didn’t worry as there would be water in the bottom. We got to where the stream was supposed to be, but there was no stream to be found, just a dry bed.  There we were.  We had no water and a couple more hours of hiking in heat with a 1,600ft climb at the end.  

I was a runner accustomed to long runs on Saturday morning so my body was familiar with thirst.  But my wife…I was worried.  She wasn’t in any kind shape for what lay ahead.  As we got into the steep ascent alongside the non-existent waterfall, she was getting redder and redder.  We had to stop often with no choice but to soldier on.  I’m sure she was wondering if I had brought her out there to die.  It was well into late afternoon before we came off the trail and still had a bit of forestry service road to walk to get back to the car.  We met another hiker who after remarking that we weren’t looking too good, offered us some water.  We made it back to the car where we had water.  We never made another attempt at backcountry camping.  The marriage lasted five more years.

Thirst is dangerous business out in the wild.  It does not take long for dehydration and heat exhaustion to get life threatening.  I don’t think we were far from that point.  We should have picked a place we were familiar with for our first attempt at backcountry camping as a solo couple.  Some trust was destroyed that day.  

Looking here at Exodus, we could say it was a bit of an oversight on the part of Moses to lead the people out into the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula apparently without a plan for food and more importantly water.  One of the biggest gambits we can make is to assume that God will provide.  We like certainty, self-sufficiency, security and we admire people who can forge their way through life never owing anybody anything.  We want Frank Sinatra to come sing his anthem at our funerals.  If we’re thirsty, hungry or without a roof over our heads, then we presume that we have miscalculated, made some huge errors in judgement and can only blame ourselves or those whom we thought we could rely on.  

Such was the case with Moses and the Israelites.  The sparseness of the wilderness made it difficult for the Israelites to trust Moses, much less the God who had delivered them from slavery in Egypt.  For 400 years they had lived in Egypt.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had seemingly abandoned them to slavery there.  There’s no way to know for sure but it is highly likely they had forgotten the God of their fathers and given themselves over to Egyptian religion which was largely utilitarian in nature.  If you wanted crops to grow, children, safety, power there were sacrifices to be made to the particular gods who oversaw such things and nothing was guaranteed.  The gods were capricious and certainly did not love those annoying humans who were always wanting something from them.  

For Moses to claim that Yahweh, the God of their fathers, had heard their cries and for love for his people was delivering them from Pharaoh with a mighty hand, well, that was a bit much to chew and swallow.  And here they find themselves in the middle of nowhere with no water.  Four days is about the max a human can go without water.  They are about a couple hundred thousand in number.  I would think that Yahweh, the God of their fathers was appearing quite capricious to the Israelites and Moses looked like a short-sighted zealot.  They play the blame game.  “Have you brought us out of Egypt to kill us?”

Then came the clincher question, “Is the LORD among us or not?”  Had they not noticed that their God had plagued the Egyptians and delivered them from Pharaoh's army by parting the Red Sea.  They crossed on dry ground and Pharaoh's army got drowned.  They had been following a whirlwind cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  And yet, they couldn’t see past the life and death nature of their thirst.  Though God was obviously among them, they couldn’t see the obvious and so they complained against God and blamed the leadership.  The true question was not whether God was with them, he obviously was.  It was whether they were with God.  

So well, it’s the third Sunday in Lent.  Thirst, thirsting for God, is the traditional theme.  The Israelites were literally thirsty to the point of it being life threatening.  God provided the water and nobody died.  Yet, there are other times after this when some Israelites do die for complaining against God in times of crisis, specifically for longing to return to slavery in Egypt and to the gods of Egypt…which was apparently an easier life because it didn’t require so much actual faith from them.  It’s easier to believe God doesn’t care.  It’s easier to believe that God is capricious, unfeeling, and uninvolved.  It’s easier to believe that God has left us here to fend for ourselves…than to believe that God actually is with us, among us, in our midst; that God actually is involved in what is going on in our lives; that God actually does love us…especially when a crisis is involved.

We live in a culture that is having a crisis of faith.  The people who do polling on matters of faith and religious affiliation as well as the national census are telling us that the institution of Christianity in our culture, the Church we all grew up in and cherish, has been abandoned to the point of extinction.  Less than 10% of the Canadian population actively participates in the life of a congregation.  There are two statistical categories that are kind of catchy but so relevant, “Nones” and “Dones”.  The percentage of people with no religious affiliation, the "nones" is nearing 40% and many of them do not like the privilege that particularly Christianity has enjoyed in our culture particularly in the area of tax breaks, moral policing, and political influencing.  They really don’t like it when money they donate to things like hospice care gets used to pay a chaplain.  Then there are people who are “done” with the Church.  They may still have beliefs in or about Jesus but they got sick of church politics and the lack of social compassion and left.  They are done and are not coming back.  

All the while, there is a growing thirst that is at an epidemic level.  I’m not sure I can call it a thirst for God but it certainly has arisen in conjunction with the demise of Christianity in Canadian culture.  This thirst goes by the name of loneliness.  If we are to believe the results of mental health pollsters, almost 60% of our population is suffering loneliness or had a bout of it in the last year.  In the five years prior to Covid, the world of medicine announced that sitting all day was the new smoking.  To sit all day at a desk at a computer is as lethal as smoking nearly a pack a day.  Now in the wake of Covid, studies are showing that loneliness is the new smoking.  Lack of meaningful human contact takes its toll on us emotionally, physically, and spiritually.  Two social events have accompanied this rise in loneliness: the introduction of smartphones and social media and the demise of social institutions such as the church and civic organizations.  

For the senior citizens who make up the bulk of our congregations, who for the longest time made up the bulk of those who suffered loneliness in our culture, the church family is living water.  But for the younger crowd, most of them addicted to a device, with no religious affiliation and an inexplicable antipathy for anything Christian…well, we have to stand firm in trusting that the God who is with us is somehow with them as well and at the right time God will call up a Moses who smites the rock from which the living water will flow.  

Until then, it is gravely important that we who are imbibing of this water, that we love our literal neighbours.  More than half of the people we encounter in a day are dealing with the effects of loneliness.  They are thirsty.  Be that person on the trail who notices and give them a drink.  Amen.

 

The Faith of Abraham

Genesis 12:1-4; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

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As you may have guessed from the reading today this sermon is going to be about Abraham and his faithful response to God’s call.  I question the appropriateness of this kind of sermon for the congregations to which I preach.  The topic is more fitting for groups of younger people who are looking forward in life with career choices and starting a family etc. and encouraging them to seek out what God is calling them to.  I think for the congregations to which I minister it would be more context appropriate to preach on the story of Abraham and Sarah childless for decades then suddenly getting pregnant when he was 99 and she was in her late 80’s in fulfillment of God’s promise to make their descendants into a great nation.  With that passage I could preach that regardless of age, energy, health even, God still is involved in our lives taking us somewhere.  There’s always room for growth.

We encounter this story of God’s call to Abraham differently in our later years than when we are young.  The older we get the more we tend to look back on our lives. Looking back, we are more apt to be asking “Did I do what God called me to do?  Did I go where God was sending me?”  To avoid being presumptive, I’ll speak for myself.  I’m 60 and I’m a minister.  I’ve got four major life events coming up.  When to and where to retire, what to do in retirement, preparing for when I won’t be able to care for myself, and death and all within the realization that at any point death could make any or all of those events into moot points.  And in the midst of all that, continuing to be the best father I can be.

Reflecting on Abraham’s story I can’t help but look back over the last 40-odd years from when I first sensed the call.  Being a minister, I’m reasonably sure I’ve thus far gone where the Lord has sent me and done what he sent me to do as best as I could do it.  I have avoided to the best of my ability the Frank Sinatra “I did it my way” approach to life.  I learned at age 19 that life lived my way wasn’t something I could pull off nor was it worth the pain, and so I said “Jesus, I’m yours.”  Ever since, God has been faithful.  He’s made a home for me everywhere I went among good, solid, caring, kind people who’ve been a blessing to me and me, a blessing to them.  Life has still been life.  There have been hurts along the way, but Jesus himself has been with me and I’ve done my best to handle the hurts and setbacks as faithful to Jesus and the others involved as I could discern what is the faithful thing to do.  

Looking back over the last 40 years I have learned God is faithful.  I just need to listen, go, and live, and not worry.  As the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8:28 God truly does work all things for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.  I would add to Paul, even when the feathers have hit the fan and even when it’s “my own damn fault”, to add a little Jimmy Buffet.  I’ve learned it is better to be loyal and to serve than to simply look out for myself, trying to make a name for myself, getting for myself, increasing myself.  It is better to be a blessing than, quite literally, a curse.

  Well, I guess I should deal with this passage a bit.  God called Abraham by telling him “Go!” I like the way this command is written and sounds in the Hebrew language.  It’s a command, the imperative form for the verb “to go” in Hebrew is “Lek” and there’s a prepositional phrase tacked on to it: leKah – le meaning “for” and Kah meaning “you yourself” in the sense of being to one’s advantage.  All together it’s “Lek-leKah” meaning “Go! For what’s best for you.”  It’s like if you’re laying in bed awake at night and hear a voice say “Lek-leKah”, you better get up and get on with it because it’s going to be good.”

And notice this isn’t a conditional statement where God is saying “If you go, I will bless you.”  I’m very inclined here to say that Abraham did not have a choice here.  What God wanted Abraham to do was going to happen.  I learned from years of marriage that if your spouse says “I need you to (I don’t know) LISTEN!”, you listen because if you fail to, the fabric of spacetime begins to disintegrate.  So it is when God speaks.  Like on the first day of creation in Genesis God spoke to the primordial chaos of darkness and water saying “Let there be light.”  Then, there was light.  God would have made it so that Abraham and his descendants made it to that land to become that great nation and be a blessing.

Something else to note here, Abraham was in essence just going with the flow.  He was the oldest of three sons of a man named Terah.  They lived in a place called Ur which was where the Euphrates River ran into the Persian Gulf in what is Kuwait today.  As a family they packed up and became part of a huge migration of people traveling up the Euphrates River to Syria and then heading down through Israel to Egypt.  Terah had them stop in northern Syria to settle.  God’s call to Abraham was that he needed to go further.  Against the social convention that the oldest son stayed close to the father to take over the family when the father died, Abraham went against his family and moved a little further down the line to what God had in mind for him.  He went through Israel down to Egypt then turned around and came back to Israel to settle.  All along the way God blessed him and his family and he was a blessing to the nations around him.  Abraham was not out to make a name for himself.  God did that for him and he was well respected.  Abraham just wanted what God wanted for him.  

The faith of Abraham, or rather the faithfulness for there’s no such thing as faith without faithfulness – the faithfulness of Abraham was to listen, go, and live and God would work things to the good.  God is faithful.  God blessed him and made him to be a blessing.  Being a blessing is found in being loyal and serving God and others.  Loyalty and serving is what love is.  There is no such thing as love if it is not expressed daily in fidelity and putting oneself aside to serve.  It’s when people, ourselves included, get selfish that things go bad.  Wars are not caused by religions or ideologies.  They’re caused by selfish idiots deluding people with religion and ideology so that the selfish can get power and wealth for themselves.  Marriages don’t fall apart because a couple was expressing their love for one another through loyalty and serving one another, i.e., being a blessing to each other.  They fall apart because somebody got selfish.

To end up where I started with speaking about how the story of Abraham’s call is heard differently by us depending on our age, whether we are young and starting out, in midlife re-evaluating, or elderly and looking back the question of blessing applies to us all.  If you’re young and looking forward, strive to be a blessing and make choices about work and marriage and family that will help you be that.  In the middle of life and re-evaluating, same thing except you may have some amends to make for when you chose poorly.  Elderly and looking back, same thing but don’t let looking back consume the responsibility you still have to be a blessing.  Age robs us of darn near everything.  Don’t let pain and grief narrow your vision down to seeing only your own suffering.  God has not abandoned you.  Continue to be a blessing.  Amen.

Hiding from the Seeker

Genesis 2:16-17, 3:1-9

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I am the youngest of four.  I was also the youngest in the neighbourhood we lived in until I was 7.  Back then if you can imagine it, all the kids in the neighbourhood would go outside and play together all day.  That proved problematic for me.  I don’t know why it is but when you are the youngest among the kids, it seems you have a sign on your back that says “Pick on me.”  That, of course, did happen to me both from my siblings and the other kids in the neighbourhood.  It has its effect.  

I remember the first time I prayed something that wasn’t like bedtime prayers.  I was five.  I had been up the street playing a game of Red Rover with my siblings and the rest of the neighbourhood kids.  They started making fun of me which resulted in me running home in tears.  They just kept on playing as if nothing ever happened.  At home there wasn’t anybody around to comfort me.  I don’t know where the parents were.  So, I stood in the living room looking out the window and for some reason I prayed, “God, what’s wrong with me that other kids don’t want to play with me?”  There was no still small voice or wave of peaceful assurance or sense of God being present.  God was predictably silent.  But, a month or two later a boy my age moved in across the street and we became best friends until well after high school.  You could say God delivered me from having to go play with older kids if I was going to play with somebody.  I also find it remarkable that at five years old I was turning to God for answers.

Looking back on that day, the answer to that question is obvious, “There’s nothing wrong with you per say, Randy.  You’re likable and lovable.  Kids can be mean.  There’s a reason for that.  It’s a sickness everyone has called Sin.  Even adults suffer from it.  Try your best not to be mean too.”  But, I was too young and the bullying happened too often for me to hear anything from God so I kept believing there was something wrong with me that people don’t want to play with me and that false belief persisted most of my life.  It was part of the “Stinkin’ Thinkin’” that fed alcoholism in me years ago.

Well, a couple months after that little boy moved in across the street, I decided I was going to exact some revenge on my siblings and it was devious.  While they and my parents were all elsewhere around the house doing their thing, I went and got the stapler and took the stables out of it and then I stealthily worked them into the cushions of the living room couch.  My plan was that at least one of my siblings would sit on the couch and get a healthy dose of staples in the bum.  They wouldn’t know I did it because I was going to hide in plain sight over at my new best friend’s house.  One of them would get staple-bum and I would just lie and say, “It wasn’t me. I was at Ronnie’s.”  They would believe me because I was the good kid. 

Well, my buddy and I were playing in his room when the knock came at his door.  It was my sister Jan and she said, “Mom says to please send Randy home.” There was no reason given, but I knew what it was.  My devious plan which I hadn’t even divulged to Ronnie was figured out.  Fortunately, it didn’t result in me getting a sore bum.  I just had to remove all the staples which had done a lot of damage to the upholstery on a very nice all but brand-new couch that we had gotten from the Grand Piano Furniture Store.  Then, I had to go to my room for a couple of hours, and I couldn’t go to Ronnie’s for a few days.  

I can’t say that my mother was over the top angry.  It was “Why Randy, would you do such a thing.  You’re usually such a good kid.”  It disappointed her.  I’d have fathered that she just be angry.  But in this moment of uncharacteristic behaviour on my part, she was bewildered, disappointed, and scared.  She didn’t know where I was at.  If you’ve been a parent, then you’ve had those kinds of disappointing and scary moments with respect to your children and not knowing where they are at.

Well, looking here at Genesis and Adam and Eve I could go on for hours on this story.  It helps that we don’t get bogged down in whether this historically happened or not.  The real power in it is how brutally accurate it is in describing how we humans are.  In our inner world we have these things called core values, what we know is right and what is wrong.  We will betray these core values and there are characteristic patterns of behaviour that we go through when we set about betraying those values mostly it's rationalizing, self-justifying, and we finish up with blaming.  We deceive ourselves in order to betray ourselves.  When we betray those values we break trust with and hurt ourselves and others and God.  

When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they didn’t suddenly gain the ability of knowing right from wrong.  That had been spelled out already when God told Adam what tree not to partake of.  What they gained is the knowledge of good and evil.  That’s when it seems good to do evil and evil to do good.  They’re mixed in together.  Have you ever had it happen that when all things are considered the best thing to do is the evil thing so that good can result?  Assassination and war can appear good when you’ve got to get rid of a cruel tyrant.  Have you ever done the right thing and all it did was hurt people?  

This story says that there is something wrong with us.  What’s wrong with us is that we twist the truth, concoct false narratives, and accept misinformation as fact so that we can rationalize our way into doing what we know in our cores to be wrong.  We deceive ourselves into believing that what we know to be wrong is actually good for us and we wind up betraying ourselves and others.  We then hide behind our rationalizations and self-justifications to keep from having to accept responsibility for our actions.  Like back at my childhood, the kids who bullied me were just having fun, right?  I thought the staples were a fair means to justice.  And, that’s just kids being kids.  We don’t outgrow it when we become adults.  We just get better at it…especially the hiding ourselves because we feel that there’s something wrong with us…and you know what?  There is!...and we die from it.

Well, this story isn’t just about us.  Notice how God is.  God doesn’t appear as an omnipotent Judge here.  He doesn’t show up knowing exactly where Adam and Eve are at and what they had done so that he could exact a verdict of “Die and go to Hell!”  Oddly, God doesn’t seem to know what’s happened.  God’s just strolling in the Garden in the cool of the day looking to catch up with his Beloved ones to hear what they had discovered that day in the Garden amongst the trees.  But God can’t find Adam and Eve.  They’ve hidden themselves from him because they are ashamed of their nakedness.  The trees of the Garden which were supposed to be discovery places are suddenly hiding places.  The Seeker can’t find his Beloved Ones, the apple of his eye, the crown of his creation.  Like my mother, God doesn’t know where they are at.  So, God asks, history’s most powerful rhetorical question, “Where are you?”

And so it is with each of us, “Where are you?”  What rationalizations, self-justifications are we deceiving ourselves with so that we can betray ourselves and God and one another.  What tree are you hiding behind?  Come out from behind it.  Your Beloved is seeking you.  Amen.

 

Entering the Cloud of Jesus Praying

Luke 9:28-36

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Atop the Blue Ridge Mountains not far from where I grew up in Waynesboro, Virginia there is a tourist attraction known as Humpback Rocks.  It is a rather large outcropping of rocks that delivers a spectacular view of the Shenandoah Valley.  The climb up is one of the steepest and most strenuous one-mile hikes you will come across, but it’s worth it.  If you get out on the edge of the rocks, you can have that Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Titanic “King of the World” sensation.  Unfortunately, since my 20’s I have found being out on the edge of anything just a little too terrifying.  If you fall off, it’s about a fifty or more-foot drop just to get into the tree tops below.  It’s a place you need to be careful, but the view is worth it.  It’s “good”.

I’ve been up on Humpback a couple of times on rainy-ish days when the clouds are blowing by.  It’s awesome to watch a cloud coming at you, billowing its way along the ridges, engulfing everything along the way and then…it engulfs you.  I have been up there when you couldn’t see but a few feet in front of you.  If you’re not familiar with the rocks, you’re best to just sit right down and wait it out.  In those fogged-out moments it is not “good” on Humpback.  It’s terrifying.  

I think of those experiences on Humpback when I read this story of the Transfiguration.  Peter, James, and John go up on a mountain with Jesus to pray and it’s good.  But then comes the cloud and they find themselves engulfed by it.  It’s terrifying.  Yet in their case, it’s not the fog that terrifies them.  It’s that they have found themselves in the presence of God.  What shall we say about that?

Well to start, what we have here in this story of the Transfiguration is one of those rare moments in the Gospels when God fully reveals himself and to the consternation of many, God reveals himself as Trinity.  There’s Jesus the Son, the voice of God the Father, and the Holy Spirit showing up as the terrifying cloud.  Something similar happened at Jesus’ baptism when he began his ministry.  Jesus, the Son was in the water.  God the Father spoke from heaven.  The Holy Spirit came on him like a dove.  That was the beginning of his ministry and now it happens again this time as Jesus begins his journey to the cross.

Well, I’m going to apologize to you for what I’m about to do next.  I’m going to get a little theologically heavy on you and talk about the Trinity and what prayer is.  To do that it’s best we don’t start by trying to do the math: you know, 3-in-1, 1-in-3.  It’s better to think of Trinity as the relationship in love of the persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  They are three persons who are in a relationship of mutually giving, unconditional love and this relationship of love is what they each are in themselves.  It’s like me saying “What makes me “Me” is all the significant relationships I’ve had in life.”  Sure, I’m uniquely me, but I am not “me” without those significant and formative relationships.  As persons, we aren’t islands to ourselves.  We are persons in relationships.  The Father isn’t the Father without the Son and the Spirit, nor the Son without the Father and the Spirit, nor the Spirit without the Father and the Son.

 Since Trinity is this eternal relationship of love, we must note that communication is always happening between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  In essence, this is prayer.  We ask what does a Triune God in all eternity do in his very self?  Well, God talks among himself…God prays.  God in God’s self as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is always praying.  The book of Hebrews says that Jesus is ever-standing before the Father in the Spirit praying interceding on our behalf which also implies that the Father in the Spirit is always listening and answering.  Jesus is always praying for us and the Father is always listening and answering for us and the Spirit carries it out.  

Now here’s one more to wrap your head around.  The Holy Spirit due to his abiding in us and bonding us to Jesus the Son, he brings us as God’s beloved children into that eternal praying of the Son to the Father and the Father’s hearing and answering his beloved Son.  The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit is always in us praying and when we don’t know what to pray, especially when we are deeply hurting and cannot put words to it, the Holy Spirit is in us praying with sighs too deep for words.  Our praying is participating in the praying that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit does within Godself.

I bet you never thought of prayer that way.  We are inclined to think of prayer as our talking at God from a vast distance and God from a distance hearing and maybe from a distance answering at us.  But the truth is, prayer is our participating in the communication that goes on within the Trinity in such a way that by the work of the Holy Spirit our prayers become Jesus’ prayers and his ours.  When we pray Jesus is in us and us in Jesus.

Well, your theological moment is done, but let me make use of that basic thought about prayer – that prayer is our participation in Jesus’ own praying in the midst of the life of God the Trinity – let me use that to set the stage for what is going on here in Luke.  You see, what we have here in Luke’s account of the Transfiguration is a moment when certain of the disciples entered into the “cloud” of Jesus’ praying.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell this story of the Transfiguration, but Luke tells it from a different perspective.  He is the only one to put the Transfiguration into the context of prayer.  It happens while Jesus is praying and his disciples are attempting to pray with him.  

So, we have Jesus heading up the mountain to pray.  Peter, James, and John are with him and as he begins to pray, of course they begin to fall asleep.  Prayer would not be prayer if we didn’t have a good nap.  Do I hear an amen?  Oddly, they manage to stay awake and suddenly they find themselves engulfed in the “goodness” of pure light.  Jesus’ face has changed and his clothes have become dazzling white.  Jesus, glorified, unveiled before them in his relationship with the Father in the Spirit.  

Then, they see two more people with Jesus, Moses and Elijah who are themselves no strangers to talking with God on the mountaintop.  On Mt. Sinai, Moses heard the voice of the LORD and received the Commandments.  Moses was also a great mediator.  Up on the mountain he talked the LORD out of destroying the Israelites for their idolatry in the Golden Calf incident and convinced God not to abandon his people but to continue on with them; and not just from afar, but present with them dwelling in their midst in the tabernacle, and leading them as a whirlwind by day and a pillar of fire by night.  Moses intercedes for God’s people, so does Jesus for us his beloved sisters and brothers.

Elijah also had a Mt. Sinai experience. On Mt. Sinai he, the greatest of the prophets excepting John the Baptist, heard the “still small voice of the Lord” while hiding there in a cave.  Elijah was on the run, afraid for his life for he had slaughtered the prophets of Baal and offended the very wicked King Ahab.  Elijah thought he was the only faithful person left in Israel, but by that still small voice God assured him he was not the only one and told him to go back to Israel for there were 7,000 still faithful waiting for him.  Likewise, Jesus was the only truly faithful one and yet he would die a death akin to the one that Ahab threatened Elijah with and yet be raised and ascend into heaven from where we await his return.  In a way, Elijah’s presence here is the still small voice of assurance from the Father to Jesus that though the cross lay ahead, he will live.

Peter, James, and John find this experience of praying with Jesus to be “good".  Peter’s remarks about its goodness reminds me of the Creation story and God saying at the end of each day of Creation “good”.  There is something “Creation-y” in the order of New Creation going on here in this experience of being with Jesus in his praying.  

Well, the moment is good and they want it to go on forever but reality sets in, if I might say it that way.  We could say that Peter, James, and John were suddenly awakened from a dream-like state and confronted with God in God’s very self.  The cloud of the Holy Spirit overshadows them. Things become darkened as they enter into the cloud.  Their feelings of “good” turn to outright terror.  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”  Then, God the Father speaks to them just as he spoke to Moses and to Elijah.  “This is my Son, my Chosen One.  Listen to him.”  And…and there’s silence.  It’s time to go to Jerusalem.  They kept this one to themselves.

This moment leaves us with having to balance the goodness of being with Jesus in his praying with the daunting task of actually listening to him and doing what he says.  In the cloud of Jesus praying, we discover that God is with us and experience the “good-ness” of his living and life-giving presence, the Holy Spirit, with us.  In the cloud of Jesus praying, we discover that Jesus is praying for us, that he is praying for things to work together for the good for us.  It is in the cloud of Jesus praying that we meet Moses, so to speak, where we are awakened to our idolatry and discover “forgiveness”.  It is in the cloud of Jesus praying that we, like Elijah, hear the still small voice of assurance, that God knows our faithfulness and has a plan for us.  This is especially “good” when we feel alone and even abandoned in our faithfulness.  In the cloud of Jesus praying, we find the strength and direction to go on with Jesus’ ministry, his mission for us.

Being with Jesus in his praying is very good but…we still have to listen to him and do what he says.  Jesus tells us we have to deny ourselves and pick up our crosses and follow him.  He tells us we have to love and pray for our enemies.  He tells us we have to forgive rather than hold grudges.  He tells us we have to love one another as he has loved us…unselfishly, without condition…to name a few.  These are difficult things to do and not only to do but to have them become who we are at the very root of who we are.  Impossible tasks if we were simply left to them, but here’s your word of grace for the day.  As prayer is our participation in the Trinity’s life of prayer, the more time we spend in prayer the more God’s nature just naturally rubs off on us and we become more able to listen to Jesus and do what he says.  Entering the cloud of Jesus praying is where and how we become more like him, where his “Me” shapes the “me” we each were made to be. Amen.