True Power

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Luke 23:33-43

So, behold King Jesus. Crucified.  Hanging between two thieves as if he were a criminal.  A sign was over his head that read, “The King of the Jews”.  The Romans put it there to insult the Jewish people implying that a person they judged to be a blasphemer was actually their king, and also to remind them that this is what happens to all those who would challenge the authority of Rome; not that Jesus had done that.  The only authorities he had challenged were the religious leaders of his own people.  The Romans themselves had judged him innocent of any crime but crucified him anyway to avoid trouble among the Jews.  During the trials before both the Temple authorities and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, Jesus stayed mostly silent saying nothing in his defense.  They say in a relationship if you ever have to defend the quality of person that you are which should be obvious, then it’s not love.  All the charges against him were false.  He was innocent.  God’s people should have recognized that, but they didn’t.  They didn’t love him enough to see him for who he really is.

Jesus’ acts were obvious, done right out in the open.  They were wonderful acts of power that only God could do.  He healed people not just of colds and flus and fevers.  He restored sight to the blind, even those who had been born blind.  He restored mobility to paralytics.  He restored hearing to the deaf, voice to the mute.  He healed lepers and didn’t have any fear of touching them and so regarding them as people.  On several occasions he even raised the dead.  

Jesus had power over evil.  He cast out demons; even out of this one man who had more than 1,000 of them in him.  That’s as many as there were soldiers in a Roman legion.  That’s power over evil that only God has.  Interestingly, the demons knew he was the Son of God and shouted it out when he confronted them.  The religious authorities who should have recognized him, were not so forthcoming.  Instead, when Jesus held them accountable for their false teachings and spiritual abuse and for their abuse of power, they plotted to kill him.  

Jesus did a few other obvious God-things.  Twice he fed crowds of over 10,000 people with just a few loaves of bread and a few fish.  In the presence of his disciples, he literally walked on water and calmed a storm on the Sea of Galilee that was threatening to kill them.  Truly, only God can do that.

As a teacher, well, his teachings were a bit subversive with respect to the world and every kind of power in it.  He proclaimed the Gospel: “The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Turn around and get on board with this good thing that God is doing.”  As Jesus went about, he did the above-mentioned acts of power that made the presence of the Kingdom obvious.  He called people to follow him as students of him and his way of life, not as arms-bearing revolutionaries.  He taught nothing that was against the teachings of Moses and the Prophets.  Unconditional, self-denying love topped his list.  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind and love your neighbour as you love yourself.”  He taught his followers to be compassionate, merciful, non-judging, generous, hospitable, faithful morally upright, and…forgiving.  He taught his disciples that the greatest of them would be the one who serves them all and modelled this by washing their dirty, stinky, well-fungused feet before their last meal together.  He taught that “life” (true life, abundant life) is found in laying down one’s life for others, and in denying oneself, taking up one’s cross (there’s that pesky cross and they all knew what it meant), and following him in his way of hope, healing, and love.  

With respect to how his Kingdom would spread by means of those who followed him, Jesus told his followers not to bear a sword but to wish peace upon every house they entered.  He told them they would be persecuted because of him.  He told them that after he died, he himself would be with them always…always.  Moreover, God his Father would empower them by sending the Holy Spirit to dwell in them.  The Holy Spirit would tell them what to say and enable them to do the things that he did.  He told them to go into all the world and teach and invite people to take up his way.  He definitely told them to avoid wealth. (Sorry.  I know that’s not easy to hear.)  

With respect to the kingdoms of the world, never did Jesus call his followers to take up arms and overthrow governments or become the government.  Instead, he simply predicted that he would be killed by the powers that be, but that he would raise from the dead and go back to his Father.  And then after “awhile”, he would return and he would himself establish his throne.  They could expect the same treatment themselves for as the world hated him, so it would hate them.  Yet still, his followers must remain faithful, loyal to him and steadfast in living according to his way.  Until he returns, their, our, greatest form of power is prayer.  When he comes will he find faith, will he find his disciples faithfully praying and living his way.

Jesus was innocent.  He had done only good.  He truly was the King of the Jews, indeed the Lord of All Creation.  But he died on the cross.  The words spoken by him and by bystanders while he died are telling.  Among his last words were, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.”  Who does that?  Who pleads for the forgiveness of those wrongfully murdering them?  On the other hand, the people, common people and powerful people, soldier and thief alike mocked him saying, “He saved others.  Let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, the Chosen One…If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.”  

That Jesus didn’t act to save himself should raise some eyebrows.  By the mighty hand of God, by the power of God – the God who created, ordered, and sustains everything – Jesus had healed people, cast out demons, raised the dead, fed thousands, calmed a sea.  It could have been, “Jesus of Nazareth.  Come on down.  The Price is right.”  He would have obviously had the power to save himself…but he didn’t.  Jesus isn’t that kind of king.  The nature of his power isn’t like that.  In this world where political power is most often exhibited as SYA (save your own bottom) or CYA (cover your own bottom), Jesus would have fit right in if he had saved himself.  

Instead, Jesus chose the way of faithful obedience rather than self-assertion as Paul writes in the great Christ Hymn in Philippians: “Who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.  Therefore, God exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name given to Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

Basically, though Jesus was God he didn’t exploit that and come here and act like a god; the way we act like we are gods to ourselves.  He emptied himself, denied himself, humbled himself and did what was right in God’s eyes.  That’s what true power looks like.  True power is self-denying, unconditional, sacrificial love…not saving oneself, not looking out for only yourself and those like you, not seeking one’s own interests at the expense of others. 

Paul also writes about this love in 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter that we hear at just about every wedding: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.”

Paul prefaces the Christ hymn of Philippians in a way that pertains to us.  He says: “be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.  Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who…though he was…”.  

Let the same mind be in you, in us that was in Christ Jesus.  We have the same mind or mindedness of loving humility that Jesus has.  It came with the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and we discover and foster it in prayer and as we go about the difficult task of humbling ourselves to selflessly love the people God has placed in our lives extending out to everybody.

We live in a crazy, self-interested world.  You know, what starts wars?  Not religion, but rather it’s self-interested people who start wars.  Self-interest, selfishness destroys community, relationships, families, marriages, friendships.  In this self-interested world people are crying out for God to come fix it, but it seems like God isn’t showing up.  There will come a day God puts things to right, but, for now, where is God when this world needs him so much?  

It’s Christ the King Sunday.  The day we talk about how he reigns in this crazy world.  Honestly, on any given day these days it’s a hard topic to sell.  That there is no God would seem the more obvious.  But, you know, the problem is that we are looking for God to act in power, but we forget what true power is.  God is acting.  God truly is.  God’s reign is in effect wherever we find people are prayerfully and humbly acting in and according to the mind of Christ – humbly acting according to self-denying, unconditional, sacrificial love in whatever form that takes.  There in those acts the reign and power of God is manifest.  Whenever there is healing, reconciliation, restoration of relationships there is the reign of God.  Whenever we look past our own selves and try to understand where others are at and seek their good, there is the reign of God.  In this selfish world, acts of the true power, acts of love can and will look and feel like dying on a cross…but…let us not forget that death is not the final word in God’s Good Creation.  God’s final word is Jesus and his resurrection which will raise all of God’s Creation to new life.  Let us empty ourselves and love at all cost, for that is the path past death to resurrection and new life.  Choose the path less traveled. Amen.

 

More Than an Endgame Strategy

Luke 23:33-43; Colossians 1:11-20

In the world of the church, for the last untold number of centuries Christian faith has overwhelming been pitched as an endgame strategy to give a person eternal security.  The preoccupying question has been “How are you going to spend eternity?”  Are you going to bliss in Heaven or eternal torment in Hell?

Endgame is a chess term describing the last few exchanges in a game.  Usually you have just your king, one or two key pieces, and a pawn or two.  In the endgame, your king suddenly becomes a key player.  The king is relatively weak.  It can only move one space at a time.  Yet when used in tandem with a more powerful piece, it can prove instrumental in trapping your opponent’s king so that it cannot move without placing itself in jeopardy.   

In the Church, we owe this fascination with the endgame to the Medieval European Church.  The Dark Ages in Europe were precarious times fraught with plagues, wars, pandemic illiteracy, and toilsome work.  Tyrannical kings and emperors ruled lands.  In the Church, popes and bishops liked to act like tyrannical kings and emperors.  Life was short, difficult, and filled with anxiety and so people were preoccupied with what happened to them after death.

The Church in Medieval Europe grew powerful on preaching God to be an almighty Creator/Judge who created us to live a moral life and if we did our souls got to go on to eternal bliss in Heaven.  But due to Adam’s Fall passed to us through Original Sin, we fail miserably and so God punishes us with death and eternal torment in the fires of Hell.  Nobody is good enough to go to Heaven.  But, the Roman Catholics did teach that if you were a good Catholic you could go to Purgatory and perhaps from there work your way into Heaven.  Jesus, the Son of God incarnate, the Lord or Emperor of all Creation, came and showed us how to live.  If we live devoted to the Pope/Church, go to confession, and infuse ourselves with grace periodically by partaking of his body and blood at Holy Communion our chances of climbing the Ladder of Salvation into heaven improve greatly.  Yet, there was no ultimate assurance of one’s eternal security.   The Medieval Church’s endgame strategy was simply an imperial edict to kneel to the Pope the representative of Christ on earth or you will assuredly go to Hell.

  The Reformers, mainly Luther and Calvin (picking up on St. Anselm’s lead) came along and taught that the best endgame strategy is to give recognition and your whole-hearted trust and faithfulness to Jesus the king, the incarnate Son of God who sacrificed his life for you.  He satisfied God’s righteous demand for us to live moral lives and he also fulfilled the punishment of death for our inability to do so.  Have faith in Jesus and just like that thief crucified next to Jesus you are off to heaven and eternal bliss.  The proof of your eternal security lay not in yourself or your actions, but outside yourself in Jesus faithfulness unto death.  The assurance of one’s eternal salvation is the fact of the cross of Jesus Christ and who he is who died on it.  Jesus has done it all.

The problem with this endgame focused Gospel is that Jesus’ story doesn’t end with the cross and Jesus’ promise of being with him in Paradise.  As New Testament Scholar N.T. Wright rather humorously says, “Heaven is important, but it’s not the end of the world.”  He also likes to say, “There is life after life after death.”  We have to continue past Jesus death.  Jesus death on the cross is more than simply our endgame strategy for getting into heaven when we die.  Jesus died for our sins according to Scripture on a Friday afternoon but come Sunday morning he rose from the dead and physical reality has been ever changed.  A New Creation has begun.  N.T. Wright likes to say that on Easter morning when Jesus rose from the dead a shockwave went out through all creation that changed everything.  We now look forward not simply to disembodied after death with Jesus in “Paradise”, but more so to re-embodied life after life after death in a New Creation where sin, death, and evil are no more.  As Jesus rose bodily from the dead so will it be with us.

After Jesus rose from the dead he ascended into heaven and sits enthroned ruling from heaven on earth.  He and the Father sent the Holy Spirit upon those whom they have called to be followers of Jesus and have empowered them, the church, to be living evidence that a Resurrection, New Creation, sin and death and evil defeating shockwave has presently gone out through creation. 

Paul says the Father has “enabled” us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.”  Light is a profound metaphor.  We can’t see light, but light makes everything else able to be seen.  So, we can’t see Jesus, but he makes the things of God seen.  The speed of light is the only universal constant in the universe.  Such is Jesus.  The new life that he has wrought in us each is the visible light of that Resurrection shockwave.  The Father’s rescuing of us in our present lives from the power of darkness and transferring us into the kingdom of his Son is like saying we were spiralling towards utter annihilation into a black hole from which no light escapes but God reached in and rescued us and has transferred our very existence now into the sure and certain New Creation reign of Jesus in whom all things and powers were created and hold together. 

You may wish to challenge me on this and say that due to the shear evidence that this world is very messed up, Jesus doesn’t seem to be reigning on earth and how can we the church be evidence of New Creation when the Church has been such a key player over the centuries in everything that’s wrong on Earth.  I will say yes.  Within myself, I, even I, have the propensity to be a stubborn, bone-headed jerk powerless over my propensity to hurt and disappoint those closest to me.  And the church as an institution, whenever it has tried to act on usurped imperial power it has sinned greatly. 

Nevertheless, whenever an addict suddenly loses his compulsion to use or an alcoholic his compulsion to drink; whenever the hearts of sworn enemies begin to soften and they begin to work towards reconciliation; whenever abusers suddenly begin to see themselves for what they are and begin to seek help; whenever victims suddenly find themselves empowered to heal and forgive; whenever broken families suddenly begin to see the elephants in the room and find themselves striving to deal and heal New Creation is showing up.

The nature of the kingdom is the nature of the king.  Jesus did not come with imperial power to impose his will upon the world.  On the cross we see the true nature of the king; love that is demonstrated in weakness, vulnerability, forgiveness, and dying for others.  Yet, this love in all its apparent futility confronts this old creation’s worst enemies of sin, death, and evil, and defeats them, even Old Scratch himself.  Jesus and the Father have poured their love into our hearts by giving us their Spirit who makes us able to consciously in lay our self-mindedness aside and in love for others be weak, vulnerable, and forgiving.  Jesus is king.  We are his kingdom.  Whenever someone is in Christ, there is New Creation.  May that New Creation Shockwave shock the socks off of us.  Amen.

Let's Take Jesus' Ministry out of Our Boxes

Text: Jeremiah 23:1-6; Luke 23:33-43; Colossians 1:11-23

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:16, “We are the temple of the living God.” The Trinity comes to dwell in us – his own, his church - in the midst of our fellowship, indeed in each of us. The Triune God of grace, the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit lives in us by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ (his presence with us, his favour poured upon us, his acting on our behalf for our good) in the communion of the Holy Spirit due to the love of the Father. We, the church, have got to get a handle on that. If we don’t have God right as the Triune God of grace and what he has done for his creation in, through, and as Jesus Christ, what we are as congregations will be something other than the church of Jesus Christ. God is the communion of the personal, relational love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who so powerful that he can raise the dead, so powerful he created and holds the whole universe together, and so powerful that he can and will put it to rights.

Humanity, on the other hand, bears within itself in its relational way of being a very marred image of the Trinity. Yet, in us, the church, the Trinity is restoring his image within humanity through the reconciling work of the one true Shepherd, Jesus Christ in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in the power of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father. As the fullness of the loving communion of the Trinity dwells in Jesus in his relationship with the Father in the Holy Spirit, so also his fullness dwells in us as we are his body sharing in his relationship with the Father by the communioning work of the Holy Spirit.

           Sharing in Jesus' fullness of God the Trinity (his relationship with the Father in the Holy Spirit) exhibits itself in and through us as we share in Jesus' ministry of reconciling the world to the Father in the Holy Spirit. His ministry is relational which means people oriented and geared at real needs and healing in all its forms. Jesus' ministry is not programs for this and activities for that which we pay staff to come and do for us. It is each of us entering into real relationships with people in authentic, self-giving, self-sharing, and unconditionally loving ways. Jesus ministry is the ministration of God’s love for each of us personally, a love marked by the way of the cross. This means we must enter into the lives of others through our own weakness and do so sacrificially at our own cost expecting nothing in return.

To give an example and since the mayor of Toronto has brought substance abuse and addiction to the fore lately, Alcoholics Anonymous discovered long ago that no doctor, preacher, friend, spouse, counselor, etc., can get through to an alcoholic as effectively as another alcoholic in recovery who is willing to once again share his own humiliating story. A common feeling and thought pattern that comes along with the mental illness and chronic disease that alcoholism is is a profound indeed shame-filled awareness of “nobody knows what its like to be as unlovable as me.” What an alcoholic finds in Alcoholics Anonymous is an unconditionally loving community of people who know damn well how that feels but are getting better, healing and who have by an act of God had the compulsion to drink taken away. Outside of AA alcoholics will be perpetually stigmatized, but in AA alcoholics are always welcomed in the hopes that they will find/be given sobriety. The Trinity is powerfully and visibly at work in AA. I can think of no better example of how the church should be in and amongst humanity.

Similarly, we who know the healing love of God in Jesus Christ because he has built a loving, healing relationship with us by bringing us into himself through the presence and work of the Holy Spirit are to go to those who suffer our same, common human weakness and share his ministry with them. Indeed, let Jesus minister to them through us. Jesus ministry is his presence with us in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit bestowing care to each of us by which he then compels us to love one another as he has loved us so that he then continues his ministry beyond us through us. This is the communion of the Holy Spirit. I would dare say if the life of a congregation is not marked by this ministry of Christ’s cross–bearing love so that it reflects the Triune life of God, it is not the church. Any organization can give money and do things to help the poor and so forth. We, the church, on the other exist to get to the heart of the brokenness of all people. As AA exists to get to the particular brokenness of still suffering alcoholics, so we disciples of Jesus Christ, the bearers of his ministry, are here to be the unconditionally loving community where any person can find welcome and healing in the new humanity that the Trinity has wrought in, through, and as Jesus Christ.

Christ’s ministry has a purpose. Michael Jinkins Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Austin Theological Seminary in Texas defines ministry like this: “the purpose of our common ministry is the transformation of persons into the likeness of Jesus Christ whom humanity crucified and God raised from the dead.” The transformation of persons into the image of Christ Jesus as exhibited in his life and death is what our shared ministry in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is all about. We do this transformational ministry by building one another up in love, speaking the truth to one another in love, worshipping with one another, praying with one another, even simply just sharing a cup of tea with one another yet meeting one another in our weaknesses, rather than our strengths. This transformation of our very being happens in the context of our relationships, which includes our relationship with God, and it comes about as we learn by the Spirit’s prompting to choose to be compassionate with each other until it becomes our nature.

Learning to love one another is the cross we all must bare. In the face of all brokenness from the depths of our own weakness we must choose to love as Christ loves us. He gave up his strength and became weak not only for us but with us. So must we and so also he is still with us. Carrying this cross of sharing and bearing our weaknesses with one another will put to death in us all those things that are contrary to God’s nature and we will find ourselves raised to a newness of life that we know can only come from the Trinity. We are not here to cater to the insecurities of one another or to avoid conflict at all cost. That’s not love. Rather, we are to augment each others giftedness and to expose each others flaws and to help each other past them. We are here to bear one another’s burdens. It hurts when our flaws get exposed yet this is exactly what happens in the life of the church as we learn to love one another. The cross is our standard and unfortunately it is typically the case that we want to judge each other according to it rather than examine ourselves.

To ensure that this transformative ministry occurs in the church (and indeed this learning to love one another is most certainly what the reign of Christ looks like), to ensure his ministry in the church Christ calls forth shepherds in the church. In the Presbyterian church we call them elders and ministers (not pastors. There is only one Pastor.). Everything one would expect from a minister is the shared responsibility of the elders and ministers. The nature and task of church leadership is to bestow Christ’s care upon the people. The Hebrew word in Jeremiah’s text which is translated as “bestow care on” very well suits the concept of being personally present with God’s flock at the point of their needs, needs judged according to cross. As Jesus Christ is our Pastor and his reign over us is his compelling us to love one another as he loves us according to the cross, so church leadership is to live his ministry, his reign, before and for his people. They are here to listen, to pray, to bear with us our burdens, and to see to it that the transformative work of the Holy Spirit is happening in us. Church leaders are here to ensure that we are carrying the cross. Never ever should a minister and church leadership be seen as the CEO and Board of Directors of an institution. To sound archaic, let that idea of church leadership be anathema.

I believe that small churches are truly privileged with respect to Jesus' ministry. I say privileged because their size helps them to resemble more clearly the church of the New Testament...yet, with a basic difference which too often can become fatal. The early church was house based rather than church building based. Early on, the church was basically a few households getting together in someone’s house to worship, pray, study, and share the Lord’s Supper. It wasn’t until the 300’s AD that church buildings began to appear and that was because Emperor Constantine made it legal to be a Christian and saw
Christianity as beneficial to holding the empire together. It would not be a stretch to say the church moved into church buildings so that we could have a temple just like all the other religions. We are apparently reluctant to think of our fellowship and our very selves as being God's temple.

In hindsight and in my opinion as a soapbox historian, moving the church from homes into church buildings wasn’t a good idea. Inevitably, the more institutionalized the church became the more religious and superstitious things became. I would even go on to say, (and this according to my tailgate expertise on the subject,) that our associating the church with buildings makes it easy for us to separate the Trinity from our daily lives, from our homes, from the fellowship of families; away from the people and rather way off somewhere. Then we begin to believe that we need the special boxes which we now call “our church” to meet with God. Inside these special boxes, the Christian “faith” tends to be simply the Christian “religion”. Inside the boxes we turn what should be a living faith, a life-trust in a personally present God among a transforming fellowship of believing friends, into being a system of religious rites and rules owned by a priesthood; a system where faith actually becomes magic. A priesthood pontificating rules and administering rites is a far cry from the ministry of “bestowing care upon” the flock of God’s pasture. The history of Christianity demonstrates well that when the ministry becomes a priesthood dealing in rules and rituals, that’s when the flock begins to get destroyed and scattered and God’s own sheep get driven away.

Jeremiah mentions God’s pasture. God’s pasture is the Kingdom of God and it is everywhere Jesus Christ is. It is Jesus’ personal ministry to each of us, among us, and through us into the world. I could be accused of being overly simplistic here but I surmise that one of the beliefs that hinder congregations from being living revelations of the Kingdom of God where there is peace and healing in the presence of God is that we believe the pasture is inside the building rather than out there in our homes, our jobs, the neighbourhood, the marketplace, indeed, in the whole universe. The Apostles in the early church took the Good News to temple courtyards and marketplaces, indeed house to house, and there proclaimed that God has created a new reality that was evident in the midst of their fellowship in which everyone was welcome, a new way of being human ordered according to the way of the cross. Jesus Christ has reconciled this whole creation to the Triune God and especially humanity, estranged as we are. It is the work of the church not to get people in its doors to get a confession of faith out of them so that the institution of the church will continue, but rather to go out into the streets and announce the Good News that the Kingdom of God has come near so that people can know what God is up to and believe and have hope and turn and be transformed. It is to take the transformational ministry of Jesus Christ to all people by sharing how Jesus made himself weak for us to be with us and heal us in our weakness. It is to meet others in their weakness by taking the humiliating step of saying “I am weak too, but Jesus is changing me. Come and see.”

God has made peace with us to heal us and out of this new reality he is causing a sprout of righteousness, of peace, of true justice to begin to grow here on earth and guess what? It’s here. He’s here. He pours his heavenly reign upon us and enables us to be a fellowship which echoes the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a fellowship which strives to be a blessing to the world, that strives for peace and justice and righteousness in this world full of fear and dismay. We are the temple of the living God. We carry a remarkable hope in our midst. Let’s not keep it behind the walls. Let's take the ministry out of our boxes. Amen.