This Ole World Is Passing

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Mark 1:14-20; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31

A long time ago in a country not that far away a singer/songwriter by the name Bob Dylan wrote this little ditty about change:

Come gather ’round people wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide the chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

 

Dylan wrote The Times They Are a-Changing in the Fall of 1963 just before American President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  The song skyrocketed to popularity as the younger generation was rising up against the perceived crony-ism of the older, established generation.  They were crying out for civil rights, an end to the Vietnam War.  They wanted a world of peace, love, and understanding.  

The Times They Are a-Changing is now sixty years old and we just might want to ask has anything really changed.  The young people the song was meant to give voice to and to rally up, well, they were the front end of that demographic affectionately known as the Baby Boomers.  Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964 and are the largest and wealthiest demographic in North America today.  If you are between the of 62 and 80, well, “Hey, Boomer.”  Did the Boomers change the things they so idealistically set out to change?  I would answer that question by quoting Pete Townsend of classic Rock band The Who who in the last line of their iconic song “Won’t Get Fooled again” which is about Third World revolutions, he said, “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”  You hear the answer in the hurt and sarcasm of the voices of their children, the Gen X-ers, and their narcissistic grandchildren, the Millennials, when they affectionately say, “Thanks, Boomer.”  Their great grandchildren, Gen Z’s, are as tuned out as tuned out gets due to device addiction, devices which are handed out in public schools where the focus of their education is “Be all you can be”.  

As things stand today, the Climatic stability of this planet is in jeopardy.  It’s nearly impossible to get young people involved in government mostly because it involves “politics”.  Western democracies are facing a significant threat from populist authoritarian movements.  The press, the Media, is so agenda-ed on all sides that one can’t expect them to serve the prophetic purpose Dylan imagined it should.  But, the prophetic office is one that belongs to the church but let’s certainly not talk about what’s become of the church in the last 60 years (there’s brutal sarcasm in my voice for those who are reading rather than hearing this).  The times they were a-changing but nothing really changed.

Well, I guess if we’re going to eat Dylan for breakfast maybe we should take a look at the Apostle Paul who roughly 1,970 years ago, “the appointed time has grown short” and “the present form of this world is passing away”.  We could ask Paul what has changed and then come up with a myriad list of atrocities committed by the Church, the institution of which Paul could have and would have never imagined.  I can only answer that line of thinking by saying that if attacking a Church that has merited quite a bit of the attack is the way you want to go, you’ve missed the point.   

I apologize for jumping right into a Greek lesson, but the word for “appointed time” is an interesting one.  Jesus says, “The time (Kairos) is fulfilled; the Reigning of God is at hand”.  Paul writes, “The appointed time has grown short.”  That word for “time” there in Greek is kairos.  It is not the word for the tic-toc of time nor is it so much the word for meaning the times of the Old Testament of the times of the Middle Ages.  Kairos is different.  It means a decisive moment in time.  It’s a time for something specific to happen; a time in which the events of history have obviously come together in such a way that people need to rise to the occasion and do the right thing because the impact of the decisions made at this time will profoundly shape history from there on out. 

As an example, marriages can have kairos times, be they difficult times or good times but usually difficult, where spouses can say that the way we handle this moment, these weeks, these months, even years will make or break us.  We will either come out with a stronger relationship, a deeper friendship, or we’ll just set up boundaries we know not to cross.  That’s kairos – a period of time in which important decisions need to be made and proactive actions taken.

 With respect to God.  Kairos is a decisive period of time when people of faith need to get off their laurels and be faithful.  A period of time to stand up and be counted.  At the time Paul wrote this, he was expecting the imminent return of Jesus to establish the Reign of God which would put an end to the world as we do it.  So, he advised the Corinthians to put their allegiance to Jesus first, even before their marriages.  Quit grieving, Quit rejoicing.  Quit acting like possessions make any difference.  Quit being so businessy for the way this world works will soon not be the way this world works anymore.  The form, the rubric, of this world is passing away.  Obviously, Jesus hasn’t returned yet and life goes on.  We cannot act in such an abrupt way as Paul is prescribing here that would cause the world to end.  (To the reader that was meant to be humourous.)

Kairos time is a period of time for people of faith to stand up and be faithful because faithful action during this time will affect the faith of others for generations. There have been several moments in the history of the church that have been kairos times.  The Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties, the abolition of slavery, the Reformation, to name a few.  These were times when the disciples of Jesus need to act and people like Rosa Parks did and things changed.  

Let me reframe Kairos time in a way not so literal as Paul did.  Jesus came in the midst of a kairos time bringing with him a kairos time.  The office of Roman Emperor was just over 20 years old when Jesus was born.  The known world was beginning to figure out what it was to bend the knee to one man and call him Lord and Saviour and Son of God.  The Roman Emperors promised peace and prosperity all the while enforcing their whims with the most powerful military the world had ever known.  The world we know would not be the world we know apart from the decisions made by these few powerful men and those surrounding them even though they lived 2,000 years ago.  Imperial Rome is still with us.  We might call it Democracy and have figured out how to limit the powers of want-to-be Emperors, but Western Culture is still Roman Culture.  Like the movie Groundhog Day, we are stuck reliving Rome.

Jesus came into that kairos time bringing with him a moment of decision for each person to make.  He was a Jew, one of those pesky people who wouldn’t bow the knee to any other god than their own God, the one true God.  As truly being the Son of God, Jesus stood in opposition to everything the Roman Emperor stood for.  The Spirit of God rested upon Jesus and empowered him.  Everywhere Jesus went he proclaimed good news to the poor.  He healed people.  He cast out demons.  He raised the dead.  He called people to love God and neighbour.  He called people to forgive each other.  He called people to act and react peaceably.  He called people to share their stuff.  Invited the rich to give to the poor.  He allowed himself to be “bothered” by children.  He regarded women as equal to men.  He listened.  He cared.  He prayed.  He knew the Scriptures and taught them.  He confronted religious hypocrisy.  He fed over 15,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish.  He calmed a storm.  He walked on water.  He was crucified for treason, but God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead in vindication starting a New Creation that will come to its fullness when this time is fulfilled and Jesus returns.

Jesus came proclaiming the Gospel.  Let me break it down for you, “The kairos is fulfilled.”  Humanity’s ability to rule itself and solve its problems on its own will never become anything more than a repeat of Imperial Rome.  If you want to know everything Man can be when Man sings “I did it my way”, Imperial Rome and its pathologies is as good as it gets.  The Kairos of Man is fulfilled.  Come to its end.  If humanity wants to move forward, then we truly have to take Jesus seriously.

Jesus the said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.”  This makes more sense if we say the reigning or ruling of God is upon us.  Everywhere Jesus went through everything he said and did the ruling of God manifested.  It continues today through those who follow him and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and love God and love neighbour unconditionally and even sacrificially.  

“Repent and believe the Gospel.”  The Greek word for repent literally means “Be with-minded.”  Be with-minded with God.  Think on the things of God not the things of Man.  Want the things of God rather than indulge the compulsions of Man.  Humanity has lived according to the lie that God is Almighty Power.  Jesus showed us the love of God when he died on the cross and was raised.  He did not inflict his power upon anyone in any kind of way that was not healing or freeing or empowering.  God’s power is sacrificial, unconditional love that respects persons and heals them.  It is not this survival of the fittest leading to domination by the fittest thing.  The Greek word for believe does not mean “I think these ideas to be true.”  It also goes beyond a simple matter of trusting God.  It is loyalty that arises from being befriended and loved; loyalty which we demonstrate by faithfulness.  To repent and believe the Gospel that the kairos is fulfilled and the Reign of God is at hand is to become a loyal disciple of Jesus.  It is to gather together with a group of Jesus’ friends to prayerfully hash out the question, “Who are you, Lord Jesus?”  He will show up where people gather in his Name in the fullness of the love of God in the power of the Holy Spirit to heal us and make us new.  

If humanity wants to be anything more than what it was under Imperial Rome, we each need to take Jesus seriously.  This kairos time that we are in is the same kairos time that humanity has been in.  You, the elder church stand as a testimony to the faithfulness of God, of God’s love for you as God has proven himself faithful to you time after time after time after time after time throughout the many years of your lives.  This is Truth.  This God who has been true to you is pouring his reign in love upon the world through Jesus by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.  Have the courage to share this truth with your children and grandchildren pointing to Jesus as the Way forward.  Teach don’t preach Jesus and his ways.  Be disciples who disciple.  To sound like Paul, in this kairos time, Jesus must become our primary loyalty, our primary devotion to him is the way forward for this world stuck in Rome.  Amen.

 

A Time For Decisive Faithfulness

 Mark 1:14-20; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31

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I started this sermon on Wednesday morning January 20, 2021 sitting in front of the television awaiting the swearing in of President Joseph R. Biden and Vice-President Kamala D. Harris.  I could not help but feel a sense of “the time is fulfilled, complete, come to an end; something new is upon us.”  And, “the appointed time has grown short”.  There’s another way of translating that.  It would go, “The appointed time has been wrapped up like a corpse.”  (Both these time references are from our readings, in case you didn’t read them.)  I reflected on how for the last four years I have been giving the now former President of the United States free rent to occupy space in my mind.  I couldn’t help it.  Open my computer, look at the news, and there he was.  Go out and meet people, it didn’t take long for him to become the topic of conversation.  There was just no escaping him. I think the reason he, the real estate mogul, ran for President was that he might have free rent to occupy space in our minds.  The space he got from me was not a good space for me.  As an American living abroad I daily felt shame, anger, disbelief, and disgust at the former President’s behaviour, his decisions, his lying.  I feel like I’ve been bullied.  I have that sense of traumatization that bullies leave us with that will take a while to get over.  Unfortunately, due to the following he has amassed he will continue to appear in our lives like the flashbacks of traumatic events that plague those who suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  But he’s gone now.  He’s not our neighbour anymore.  His time is over.  It’s time to heal.

I wonder what tomorrow and the next day, week, month, year will be like in a world with a United States once again behaving like an adult, like a responsible world citizen.  I’m cautious.  Being an adult myself, I know we don’t always make good decisions and it sadly becomes our children who suffer for it.  Just ask Greta Thunberg.  She’ll tell it like it is.  But at least I feel as if Uncle Joe and Sister Kamala are competent and listening.  It is now time for some very prudent and decisive action bent towards compassion and empathy.  This world, not just the U.S., needs a time of healing, a moment dedicated to healing, a moment that will shape the course of history.  

I apologize for jumping right into a Greek lesson, but the word for time that popped up in our Scripture readings is an interesting one.  Jesus says, “The time is fulfilled; the Reigning of God is at hand”.  Paul writes, “The appointed time has grown short.”  That word for “time” there in Greek is kairos.  It has different meaning than another word in Greek for time which sounds familiar to us, which is chronos.  We get our word chronology from that one.  Chronos is the tick-tock of time; the putting of things into chronological order kind of time.  Kairos is different.  It means a decisive moment in time.  It’s a time for something specific to happen; a time in which events have obviously come together in such a way that people need to rise to the occasion and do the right thing because the impact of the decisions made at this time will profoundly shape history. 

As an example, marriages can have kairos times, difficult times or good times, where spouses can say that the way we handle this moment, these weeks, these months, even years will make or break us.  We will either come out with a stronger relationship, a deeper friendship, or we’ll just set up boundaries we know not to cross.  That’s kairos – a period of time in which important decisions need to be made and proactive actions taken.

 With respect to God.  Kairos is a decisive period of time when people of faith need to get off their laurels and be faithful.  A period of time to stand up and be counted.  In First Corinthians Paul was expecting the imminent return of Jesus to establish the Reign of God which would put an end to the world as we do it.  So, he advises the Corinthians to put their allegiance to Jesus first, even before their marriage.  Quit grieving, Quit rejoicing.  Quit acting like possessions make any difference.  Quit being so damned political for the way this world works will soon not be the way this world works anymore.  

Kairos time is a period of time for people of faith to stand up and be faithful because faithful action during this time will affect the faith of others for generations.  I’m reminded of an old Jewish scribe named Eleazer who lived about 160 years before Jesus.  At that time, Israel was occupied by the Greeks.  The head Greek in the area was Antiochus IV Epiphanes or Antiochus IV the Enlightenment (or Enlightened or Enlightener.  His ego was beyond exaggerated).  Antiochus wanted the people that he conquered and ruled to become Greek in culture and faith.  Well. the Jews regarded Greek culture as being a bit randy and had their own God, thank you, and so they did not do well with Antiochus IV Epiphanes.  The Jews’ refusal to worship any other God but their own eventually came to a head when Antiochus IV Epiphanes put a statue of Zeus in the Temple where the Ark of the Covenant stood and sacrificed a pig to it and demanded the Jews worship it.  A revolt ensued, the Maccabean Revolt.  Hanukkah originated from that revolt.  As far as what became of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, he died a painful, disgusting, and humiliating death; some would say the God of the Jews smote him. 

One year during the Festival of Dionysius, the most randy of the Greek festivals, Antiochus started forcing Jews to eat pork at the threat of flogging or worse.  He had an old scribe Eleazer who was 90 years old brought before him and told him to eat the pork.  Eleazer refused.  His soldiers shoved it in Eleazer’s mouth and he spit it out.  Antiochus then had the 90-year-old Eleazer flogged and brought back before him and privately offered Eleazer the option to eat some other form of meat and pretend it to be pork.  This would at least allow Antiochus to appear to have broken the old man’s faith.  Again, Eleazer refused and so Antiochus had him flogged to death – a 90-year-old man. 

Eleazer didn’t stand silent through it all.  His speech to Antiochus was a remarkable statement of “kairos” faith.  After Antiochus made him the offer to eat some other kind of meat, Eleazer said: “Such pretense is not worthy of our time of life, for many of the young might suppose that Eleazer in his ninetieth year had gone over to an alien religion, and through my pretense, for the sake of living a brief moment longer, they would be led astray because of me, while I defile and disgrace my old age.  Even if for the present I would avoid the punishment of mortals, yet whether I live or die I will not escape the hands of the Almighty.  Therefore, by bravely giving up my life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age and leave to the young a noble example of how to die a good death willingly and nobly for the revered and holy laws” (2 Mac. 6:24-28).

There is something to be said for those people who are in their elder years and continue to stand faithful, who continue to be involved in a congregation and who share their faith with the younger generation even though it seems like a royal waste of time.  In this day and age when “the truth” is such a disputed matter, the wisdom encapsulated by the continued faith and faithfulness of the elder generation is a clear indicator of what Truth really is.  When a 78-year-old Joe Biden (and I realize 78 is the new 58) takes the Oath of Office and says “and so help me God” and says it knowing what it is to have had God’s help in his darkest moments, in his kairos times, and actually want God’s help; that speaks volumes to a nation whose younger generations do not know what it is to bow their heads in prayer to a God who actually cares or sing “Amazing Grace” from the heart but have rather devoted their lives as per the example they’ve been shown to the idols of Wealth, Consumerism, Celebrity, Amusement, Politicians, Power, Sex, Technology…all those Greek gods that still persist yet with another name…and of course the unholy trinity of “me, myself, and I”.  There can be no Truth found when God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not sought.

We are at a kairos time, a moment that calls for drastic action.  As Paul wrote: “The kairos – the appointed moment to act decisively – is growing short.”  We are about to wrap the shroud around it and bury it.  The time is right now for us the people of planet Earth, particularly those who are in power to make the decisions and enact the legislation that will protect the climate, end racism, end sexism, end nationalism, end poverty, end corruption in governments and court systems and do it in the midst of a pandemic that demands immediate action or people will needlessly suffer and die.  We are at a kairos time that is coming to an end and if the appropriate decisions are not made and the appropriate actions not taken the consequence will be grave. 

What role do we people of faith have in this kairos time?  Well, Jesus came in the midst of a kairos time bringing with him a kairos time.  The office of Roman Emperor was just over 20 years old when Jesus was born.  The known world was beginning to figure out what it was to bend the knee to one man and call him Lord and Saviour and Son of God.  The Roman Emperors promised peace and prosperity all the while enforcing their whims with the most powerful military the world had ever known.  The world we know would not be the world we know apart from the decisions made by these few powerful men and those surrounding them even though they lived 2,000 years ago.  Imperial Rome is still with us.  We might call it Democracy and have figured out how to limit the powers of want-to-be Emperors, but Western Culture is still Roman Culture.  Like the movie Groundhog Day, we are stuck reliving Rome.

Jesus came into that kairos time bringing with him a moment of decision for each person to make.  He was a Jew, one of those pesky people who wouldn’t bow the knee to any other god than their own God, the one true God.  As truly being the Son of God, Jesus stood in opposition to everything the Roman Emperor stood for.  The Spirit of God rested upon Jesus and empowered him.  Everywhere Jesus went he proclaimed good news to the poor.  He healed people.  He cast out demons.  He raised the dead.  He called people to love God and neighbour.  He called people to forgive each other.  He called people to act peaceably.  He called people to share their stuff.  Invited the rich to give to the poor.  He allowed himself to be “bothered” by children.  He regarded women as equal to men.  He listened.  He cared.  He prayed.  He knew the Scriptures and taught them.  He confronted religious hypocrisy.  He fed over 15,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish.  He calmed a storm.  He walked on water.  He was crucified for treason, but God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead in vindication starting a New Creation that will come to its fullness when this time is fulfilled and Jesus returns.

Jesus came proclaiming the Gospel.  Let me break it down for you, “The kairos is fulfilled.”  Humanity’s ability to rule itself and solve its problems will never become anything more than a repeat of Imperial Rome.  If you want to know everything Man can be when Man sings “I did it my way”, Imperial Rome and its pathologies is as good as it gets.  The Kairos of Man is fulfilled.  Come to its end.  If humanity wants to move forward, then we truly have to take Jesus seriously.

“The Kingdom of God is at hand.”  This makes more sense if we say the reigning or ruling of God is upon us.  Everywhere Jesus went through everything he said and did, the ruling of God manifested.  It continues today through those who follow him and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and love God and love neighbour. 

“Repent and believe the Gospel.”  The Greek word for repent literally means “Be with-minded.”  Be with-minded with God.  Think on the things of God not the things of Man.  Want the things of God rather than indulge the compulsions of Man.  Man has lived according to the lie that God is Almighty Power.  Jesus, rather, has showed us the love of God, the true power of God, when he died on the cross and was raised.  He did not inflict his power upon anyone in any kind of way that was not healing or freeing or empowering.  God’s power is sacrificial, unconditional love that respects persons and heals them.  It is not this survival of the fittest leading to domination by the fittest thing.  The Greek word for believe does not mean “I think these ideas to be true.”  It also goes beyond a simple matter of trusting God.  It is loyalty that arises from love; loyalty which we demonstrate  by faithfulness.  To repent and believe the Gospel that the kairos is fulfilled and the Reign of God is at hand is to become a loyal disciple of Jesus.  It is to gather together with a group of friends to prayerfully hash out the question, “Who are you, Lord Jesus?”  He will show up where people gather in his Name in the fullness of the love of God in the power of the Holy Spirit to heal us and make new us.  

If humanity wants to be anything more than what it was under Imperial Rome, we each need to take Jesus seriously.  This kairos time that we are in is the same kairos time that humanity has been in.  You, the elder church stand as a testimony to the faithfulness of God, of God’s love for you as God has proven himself faithful to you time after time after time after time after time throughout the many years of your lives.  This is Truth.  This God who has been true to you is pouring his reign in love upon the world through Jesus by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.  Have the courage to share this truth with your children and grandchildren pointing to Jesus as the Way forward.  Teach not preach Jesus and his ways.  Be disciples who disciple.  In this kairos time, Jesus must become our primary loyalty, our primary devotion for he is the way forward for this world stuck in Rome.  Amen.

 

 

Seeing through Resurrected Eyes

Text: 1 Corinthians 7:29-31

            I think we all know that suddenly discovering that one’s time is short has a very profound effect on a person.  It certainly did with my father when he began his struggle with cancer.   I remember a few months before my he died he came up with a quote which I think sums it all up.  We were driving around looking at the countryside and he made the comment, “You never know how beautiful a tree is until you’ve seen it through a dying man’s eyes.”  When you know that your time is short you truly do begin to see life from a whole new perspective.

            This way of looking at life, a dying man’s perspective I’ll call it, is in my estimation a healthy way to approach life.  You see, we’re all terminal and its a basic fact of life that we will not be settled in this life until we come to grips with the fact that sooner or later we’re going to die.  Acceptance of that fact forces a person to come to grips with what is really important in life.  It makes you value your time and prioritize what you do with it.  There’s a sense of urgency to get the important things done.  It stings you with the joy of gratitude for each day you still have but also with the pain of regret as you reflect on the things you have done and the things you have left undone and the things you’ve said and left unsaid. Can things be mended with the people you have treated badly or been hurt by. 

Eventually we must all come to the point in our lives when we begin to see the world through dying man’s eyes.  This new perspective can come upon us at any age preferably sooner than later and preferably without having been told we have a terminal illness or anything like that.  If we are to be given the grace of contentment in this life sooner or later we will come through an anxious part of our lives to a point where we accept the life that we’ve been given and how we’ve lived it.  We find the strength to forgive ourselves and others, and we just get ready to face the rest of our days with a profound sense of gratitude.  That’s seeing the world through a dying man’s eyes.  It comes upon us when we are not expecting it.  It is, I believe, a gift from God for we cannot come to this point on our own.

That in mind, let’s turn to our passage in 1 Corinthians.  Here the Apostle Paul writes about how we should live our lives knowing that the time is short. God has put a time limit on his creation as it is in its present state of by oppressed by the futility of sin and death.  The end of this broken world is drawing near and the Trinity is going to make all things new.  Knowing this should cause us to begin to value our time and our use of it differently but not so much in the same way that we would seeing the world through a dying man’s eyes.  That’s stopping a bit short of the full meaning of where Paul is taking us with talk of time being short for present form of this world is passing away.  Things are different now that God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit raised Jesus the Son from the dead. The power of re-Creation, of New Creation, Creation being healed from Sin and freed from Death and Evil, the power – the love of God in Jesus Christ – is changing this world starting with us, the ones who are being made new in union with Jesus in his now resurrected humanity by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  We, in Christ, see the world through the resurrected man’s eyes.  We see it in its created beauty.  But we also see it in its state of futility.  Yet, we also see it knowing that the day is coming when it will be set free from this futility just as we know we ourselves are for the power of that New Day is dawning on us now as a foretaste of what’s to come and, indeed, the evidence of it.

Reflecting on Paul’s life, the New Day dawned on him when he met Jesus, our resurrected and ascended Lord, while on the road to Damascus on his way to round up Christians to bring them back to Jerusalem to be tried by the Temple authorities for blasphemy.  Jesus met him in a bright light and called him by name confronted Paul as to why he was persecuting him. Jesus said, “Saul.  Saul.  Why are you persecuting me?”  Paul answered, “Who are you, Lord?”  “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.”  Who…are…you…Lord?  Paul’s confession there – his calling Jesus Lord – was the same as calling Jesus the LORD God of Israel.  Paul’s being able to do that was evidence that he, Paul standing there blinded by the light, had been thusly made alive, called, a chosen instrument of Jesus who would suffer much for him.  No one can call Jesus Lord except by the power of the Holy Spirit.  In that bright light, in that personal confrontation with Jesus Paul stepped into the New Creation and knew Jesus to be the LORD of it.

After Paul met Jesus raised from death on the road to Damascus he began to see the world and the worth of his time differently.  Yet not from the perspective of a man who was going to die soon, but rather through the eyes of a man who had died and been born from above in Christ Jesus by the power of Holy Spirit.  Therefore, living life now was living his life in Christ, for Christ, through Christ, by Christ because Jesus Christ was living in him.  The life of Christ lived in faithfulness according to the way of the cross was his new orientation.  His new striving.  Paul says as much in Galatians writing, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

For Paul, life can only now be found and lived in striving for Christ and coming to know the transforming power of Jesus’ resurrection.  He writes in Philippians, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as manure, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through the faithfulness of Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith with the result that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”  Jesus Christ is the beginning and the end of the new humanity that is in him.  It is in his resurrected life that we now find our new life.  The old life and everything in it needs to be left behind.  The Trinity did not create a new religion called Christianity by what he did in, through, and as Jesus Christ.  He created a new humanity, new human being that will effect all creation for life as Adam, the old humanity, did for death.

The way Paul and many of the very first Christians came to understand life was that we are dead to the old life and all its social institutions for it is nothing more than the fallen, broken, futile life of Adam that culminates in death.  Now, because we are made alive through Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and his Spirit lives in each of us uniting us to his new human being we must become missionary vessels of the new life, the kingdom of God that lives in each of us.  They began to prioritize their time and their actions around spreading the Word of what God had done and is going to do for all creation by raising Jesus from the dead.  They announced this new reality and lived accordingly by creating communities where all people – slave, free, Jew, Gentile, white, black, yellow, brown, male, female – were welcome, loved as family, and treated with honour. 

Everyone was a missionary, an ambassador for Christ, and that task took precedence over all others.  The old life was gone.  As Paul wrote in our passage today, if you are married live as though you are not married.  If you are a widow do not complicate your mission by seeking another spouse.  If you are not yet married, stay unmarried.  He goes on with his extreme sounding views. If you are saddened by the loss of the people you love, put it behind you.  You can not let that keep you from Christ’s work.  If you’ve found happiness in this life, put it behind you and get on to the suffering struggles of a missionary for Christ.  If you have wealth, leave it behind.  If you conduct a business, leave it behind.  In Christ’s kingdom the only priority that a follower of Christ can have is announcing the coming of this Creation’s one true Lord of creation.

 That’s a pretty radical way of approaching life.  But it is Christ’s call to each of us whom he has called to be his followers.  We must put our lives behind us and take up our crosses and follow him in his new resurrected life.  But how do we do this for we just can’t pick up and leave everything behind, can we?

Well, Paul gives a bit of an answer to that question a few verses earlier.  He writes: “Let each of you lead the life that that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you” (v. 17).  And a little further down the page: “Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called” (v. 20).  If every Christian literally left home and job and everything behind to become traveling missionaries for Christ, there would have been some serious social upheaval.  It would be even worse today if all the people of the world who call themselves Christians literally left everything behind to do mission trips all the time.  The gist of Paul’s advice to them and it is advice that we must also take to heart is that we are all missionaries or ambassadors for Christ right where we are at – at home, at work, among our neighbours.  That is God’s way of reaching out to everyone. 

Each of you is a missionary for Christ.  If you are a parent, live the life of Christ before your children and teach them the faith.  If you are a student, live the life of Christ before your friends.  Live the life of Christ before your neighbors.  If you own a business, let Jesus use that business to be a vehicle of Kingdom of God justice and equity rather than simply some way to make you rich.  Live the life of Christ before your employees and co-workers.  Don’t be gaudy or offensive about it or act like you’ve been brainwashed by Jesus.  Most people just find that offensive.  But, most people don’t mind if you let them know you’re praying for them when they have troubles.  Most people don’t mind an occasional invitation to church.  Most people don’t mind that if while you’re talking to them that you mention you happened to enjoy church last Sunday.  Most people don’t mind if you ask their opinions on matters of faith that you don’t quite understand yourself.  Having faith in Jesus Christ is nothing to be ashamed of.  Be his missionaries wherever you are at.  Amen.