Honest Talk with God

Life Begins with Sabbath Rest

2012-01-26T08:07:00.000-08:00

In the reading I have done on Sabbath, I frequently came across an idea I had never considered. Several authors and Bible scholars made this same point. The idea is that creation points to the 7th day, the Sabbath. God wasn’t just making the heavens and the earth on a whim. God wasn’t in his eternal glory, bored, and he thought, “I know! I’ll create a universe.” There was more purpose to it, so the idea goes. Sabbath is a key.

Consider the movement in the creation account: day one, separate light from darkness. Day two, God created the sky (the “dome”). Day three, God makes dry land and plant life. Day four, the sun and moon were created. Day five, it was sea creatures and birds.

Now up to this point, God reflects on each act of creation. God saw that it was “good.” But, there is more to it on day five. On day five, God has direct interaction with the living beings He has made. “21 God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth”(Genesis 1:21-22). God spoke to his creation and gave them responsibility. The animals (sea animals and birds) were to be fruitful and multiple.

Things changed even more dramatically on the fifth day. God made land animals; then God’s masterpiece. 26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the [ak]sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the [al]sky and over every living thing that [am]moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:26-28).

God may have related to some animals through instruction, “be fruitful and multiply,” but it went much deeper with these he made in his image. Humans were also to be fruitful and multiply, which means procreation, and humans were to manage as God’s stewards. God blessed humans. That essentially communicates that God created conditions so that it would go well with human beings if they did things God’s way. Blessing is a component of covenant. Blessing means life is good.

Blessing also comes with responsibility. Humans were to fill and subdue the earth in a way that recognized the goodness of God’s creation and the wonder of God’s glory. When God saw all that was done and humans had the blessing and the commands God had given, God saw that it was better than good. It was “very good” (1:31).

Thus it appears that creation reaches its climax when men and women are made and given their divine marching orders to manage the earth. But this is only the sixth day and there are seven days. Creation is driven to the seventh day, the one day God “hallowed” (NRSV), or “made holy” (Genesis 2:3). When all the conditions were ready, by God’s creation, and God saw that the world was as He thought it should be, then God felt confident in rest. He could stop creating. He could leave humans in charge. He could rest and enjoy what He had made.

Sabbath is what God had in mind when God created. Creation leads to Sabbath. The first day of life, once created, for Humans was the seventh day, the Sabbath. Life for human beings began with Sabbath rest. In our keeping of Sabbath, can we recreate those Eden conditions where all we need is provided in fruit trees planted by God and streams that run as God directs them and there is no danger and nothing to fear? No!

Life in our time is full of pitfalls, some in nature, more in civilization. The fall of Adam and Eve and every human that has ever sinned has drawn away from God’s Sabbath intention. So what good today is Sabbath-keeping, if it simply amounts to a dim reminder of what was lost?

Sabbath-keeping remembers Eden, the perfection God created. Sabbath-keeping reminds us that God is good and God wants good for us. And Sabbath-keeping, when focused on Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit calls us forward. Our life (our human origins) did not simply begin with Sabbath rest. We have ahead of us an eternity in God’s new heaven and new earth. When we set time apart as Sabbath time, time for worship, community, and rest, we anticipate the eternal joy we will have in the unending presence of God. That eternity will be filled with love, togetherness, worship, feasting, and peace. What was at the beginning, the goal of creation, Sabbath, will be forever. So, in Sabbath-keeping, we remember, we look ahead, and we celebrate God.

Sabbath, Origins, and Eternity (Genesis 1:26-2:3)

2012-01-26T05:16:00.000-08:00

Abraham Joshua Heschel writes, “The sense of holiness in time is expressed in the manner in which the Sabbath is celebrated. … On that day … symbols are superfluous. The Sabbath itself is the symbol.”[i] Our church is in the middle of a 4-week examination of Sabbath, a Jewish idea. Of course Christianity is a descendant of Judaism, and Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. We as a church of mostly gentile Christ worshipers are seeking to understand how Sabbath-keeping should be done in our lives, where our worship is on Sunday, not the Sabbath day which is the seventh day, Saturday.

Are we supposed to keep Sabbath? If so why? And how are we to do it? I believe we are. Sabbath is command and more than command, it is gift. Heschel, one of the preeminent scholars of Sabbath believes it is holier as something given by God than ancient festivals, than law, than any other gift. “The Sabbath is all holiness,” he says.[ii] But don’t take his word for it, or mine.

Genesis 2:3: “God blessed the seventh day and [made it holy], because on that day God rested from all the work he had done in creation.” To that point, God had been intentional in his order and in the product as he made the world. He created all and with each act of creation Genesis says, “God saw that it was good.”

Then, God made human beings. Men and women were created in the image of God. Men and women were blessed and told to fill the earth through procreation and to subdue the earth as God’s regents on the earth. When God had made human beings and clearly blessed human beings then he was done. Once humans had been given their responsibility to manage God’s creation and enjoy God’s creation, then God saw that it was not just good, but “very good.”

Creation reached its climax on the seventh day. God had made such a perfect world; He did not need to do any more. There was nothing else to be created. God did not need to micromanage what had been made. All was right. The world was in a state of peace. Better still, the world was in a state of shalom. Creation reached its goal on the seventh day and God established the seventh day as a holy day.

Thus we see that Sabbath comes from God. Sabbath comes from the very beginning. And Sabbath is central in God’s vision for us, for creation. As far as we can tell, Jesus and the Apostle Paul both were Sabbath-observant Jews. Jesus did not reject Sabbath, only the abuse of it. Paul did not do away with Sabbath. He objected to the idea that Sabbath-keeping in accordance with the cumbersome rules Jesus opposed was more important for salvation than faith in Jesus. Paul did much of his most effective evangelizing on Sabbath days in the house of worship, the synagogue. God started Sabbath. Jesus, God in the flesh, kept Sabbath and taught the truth on Sabbath, and Paul shared Jesus on Sabbath.

In our own Sabbath observance, as we live our Christianity in a fast-paced, computer age, we see that whatever we do must honor God and seek Him. If we are thinking of ways we can keep Sabbath time, whether it is Saturday, Sunday, or another time, we must set aside a particular time to honor God in a unique, Sabbath way, and we must seek him and share the good news of His salvation.

Last week, in introducing this block of discussion on Sabbath, I said that Jesus gives us a new day, a new rhythm, and rest. Someone turned in to me a very wise note reminding me that God has always been merciful, and that from the very beginning God gave Sabbath rest as a gift. I appreciated that feedback immensely. Building on that, I must say that the New Testament God is not a kinder, gentler replacement for the harsh Old Testament God. God is God and always has been. First John chapter says God is love. God has always been love. In the Old Testament God’s hatred of sin is painfully clear. God hates sin just as much today, and sin is punished, in time in this life, and in eternity in Hell.

I do think Jesus brought something new in God coming in human flesh. I do think Jesus ushered in a new way of knowing God and being in relationship with God. But what I appreciate about what was written on the note was the suggestion that as much Jesus is new, Jesus is a return to the original. The new rhythm Jesus brings is the rhythm God originally intended for human beings in the creation.

Now, we’ve said Sabbath is from God, comes at the beginning, and for that reason is central in God’s vision for us and for creation, which belongs to Him and comes from Him. Because of the centrality of it, we must keep Sabbath and in doing so we must honor God, seek God, and share the good news of salvation. In looking a bit longer at Genesis 1 & 2, what can we learn about this gift of Sabbath rest that God has always intended for us to enjoy?

It is a day set apart, different from other days. I am in two of the small groups discussing Sabbath and I have posed the question, which you might think about now. As you grew up, if your family treated Sunday as Sabbath, then how was Sunday different? In some cases, people said other than attending church, Sunday was like any other day. In other families, Sunday was different. There were activities or prohibited activities that set Sunday apart.

In my own case, I remember, ironically, that when I was in high school, Sunday was the only day I worked. Monday through Friday was school and football. Saturday was church youth group activities. Sunday night was also church youth group. And Sundays from noon until 5, I was a bus boy at a restaurant. I had no Sabbath time. And my relationship with God suffered for that. I had a relationship with God, for sure. But it was not what it could have been because I wasn’t giving God all of me, and I wasn’t honoring God as I could if I had set time aside to do so.

Setting time apart for God is an act of faith. We admit that our activity doesn’t keep the universe going. God is the sustainer, not us. It is trust. We trust that if God could rest and things would be ok, then we can rest. To refuse to take Sabbath is ultimately hubris.

Well, our world is more complicated than when God created in the beginning. That was a simpler time. Please! God is bigger than all that is around us. God is more important the things that fill our lives.

In keeping a Sabbath that is focused on God – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – we experience the wholeness, the rest, the peace that in Hebrew is called Shalom and we have Shalom in a way that only can be known on Sabbath.

Thus in addition to practicing Sabbath so that God is honored, sought, and shared, our Sabbath must be unique. Whatever activities we pursue – worship, a walk in the woods, a special time of prayer, the simple enjoyment of nature – it should be unique, only done quite that way on Sabbath. Yes, we worship at other times, and we walk in the woods and pray and enjoy nature and slow our pace and light candles – we do all those things at many times during the week. But there should be a uniqueness that announces we are entering Sabbath time.

The notion of Sabbath, a time set apart that Christians celebrate with a focus on the Father, on Jesus, and in communion with the Holy Spirit, began in our origins. When we keep Sabbath we are directed to and prepared for our eternity. Sabbath is where Genesis 1 & 2 meets Revelation 21 & 22, the very beginning and very end of the Bible. Genesis describes the origin and Revelation, after the final victory of Jesus and final judgment of all describes the destination.

In Revelation 21-22, we read about the New Jerusalem and the New Heaven and New Earth where the perfect city is juxtaposed with the perfect garden and perfection in nature. It is where we are headed. Scholar Walter Bruegemann writes that Sabbath is the affirmation that God is at work to bring creation to His purpose and that Sabbath, and I would add the shalom we have in Christ when we keep Sabbath, is the goal of life.[iii] His comments are on Genesis 1, but they lead to the conclusion in Revelation 21-22.

The same directional arc of history is seen in Romans 8. Paul writes,

“The creations waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but of the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until know, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (v.19-23).

Paul is talking about freedom from sin.. He’s not talking about Sabbath.

The freedom he mentions was present on the original seventh day in Genesis 2 before sin came and that freedom, which like peace and love and blessing and wholeness is a part of Shalom, is where the redeemed in Jesus are headed in eternity. In Sabbath keeping we get a little glimpse of Heaven, what it might be like. Why? We are closer to God, and we relinquish control of our well-being to God; he determines our wellness.

Our Sabbath points to a life lived in good relationships. Meeting Jesus in Sabbath changes who we are in this world as we wait for our redemption. So our Sabbath-keeping must be communal, with others, and must anticipate where we are headed when our earthly life is up.

In Sabbath practices, we enjoy nature; we worship and pray; and we do it with other people. Slow-cooked meals for large group are a Sabbath possibility. Even if the group is small, a group is good. Sabbath is not a time for fasting or solitude. It is a time to honor God and seek and share God; it is a unique and we should approach it as such. No other time is what Sabbath time is: time for relationship – us with God and with one another. We won’t be alone in Heaven and we should not be alone on Sabbath. From our origins when God created, to life with Jesus, to life now, lived in the Holy Spirit, to eternity in the New Jerusalem, we are called God, and our best experience with God includes that which he makes holy, the Sabbath.

AMEN

[i]Heschel, The Sabbath (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1951), p.82

[ii]Ibid, p.82.

[iii]Bruegemann, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Genesis (John Knox Press, Atlanta), p.38.

What to Think about Israel? An Email from My Friend

2012-01-24T08:25:00.000-08:00

I received the following Email from my friend:

Rob,
Really need some insight and perspective ....
Concerning the modern day Israel and it's place in Biblical prophecy. I unfortunately have two very strict evangelical in-laws who believe ( I think falsely) in strict belief of the divine nature of the modern day Israel and modern Jews. My studies are conflict with their views. I am told I am in violation God's will because I do not agree with this and that anything said in a critical nature towards the actions and or concern for the state of Israel's "goodness" are met with rebukes and prayers to "turn from evil" from these "false beliefs".

The specific passage is Genesis 12:3: I will bless those that bless (Israel) and I will curse those that curse (Israel). (paraphrase) is routinely thrown in my face. What is your take on how so many Christian's interpret this to mean complete blind devotion to Israel, regardless of her actions, influence on and unfettered support by the US government to the modern state of Israel.

I understand what the old testament stories say about Israel, but it is my understanding that the new covenant makes all born again Christian's God's "chosen" people...that today, the Church is the new Israel. I seem to think that most of the truths in the Gospel should supercede anything in the OT...shouldn't they?

I have tried to cross reference in studies and found that in what I have read it is closest to what is said in Galatians 3:8. http://bible.cc/genesis/12-3.htm

But I also understand and have conflict with what my in-laws say as well, because it is taught so heavily in most modern churches and I have only recently changed my mind from this perspective. If you watch a lot of TV as they do, it is the dominant belief in that mainstream Christianity world. Even so, this later belief now causes an uncomfortable visceral reaction in me for some reason because I am more aware that the modern Israel Government does not practice anything resembling true Judaism that honors God. I cannot see how anyone who is not in God's will can be "blessed". IMO, modern Israel, like many nations, is a heathen nation. Totally secular and devoid of God. Not the Israel of the Bible who held strict adherence to Torah.

So anyway..I'm asking if you can give your perspective on what our role is to modern Israel. Let me be clear that I certainly believe we are to bless all men and Jews by loving them, and giving to one another, and anyone else who wishes to "Voluntarily" support Israel in a way they see fit. Key word.."Voluntarily". But I do not wish to be lumped in with "anti christ" to suggest that those that do not wish to have "force" used to do so are out of God's will.

Your thoughts?

T-----

And, my response:
I agree with you that modern Israel is not carrying on the responsibilities laid on Israel by God in Exodus and throughtout the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy). There are many passages in the prophets that talk about God withdrawing blessing if Israel fails to keep covenant, and I think Israel as a whole has failed to keep up its end of the covenant. I think the Apostle Paul calls Jews who reject Jesus as Messiah the "synagogue of Satan" (Rev. 2:9). In 2nd Peter, you see a pretty harsh invective against false teachers (2 Peter chapter 2), and those false teachers were possible Jews who insisted torah-observance was more important in salvation than Christ. So, the Old Testament warns against Israel failing to keep covenant and the New Testament warns strongly against Jews or anyone else rejecting Jesus.

Romans chapter 9-11 for many people are the definitive chapters on how Christians should view Israel. Unfortunately, there are countless opinions on how to read and apply Romans 9-11.

My take is Jesus is the Messiah and the Savior and salvation comes through him. In studying the gospel, I am not called, either by scripture or by the Holy Spirit to form an opinion on Israel. Israel's eternal fate and the eternal destiny of individual Jews is God's business. I would say the same thing about faithful people who are humble and earnestly, honestly seeking God but have either never heard of Jesus, have only been taught that Christians are enemies from America, or have been taught Christianity by abusive people. In those three scenarios, I think God has mercy for the humble who earnestly, honestly seek Him. I think the only way to Heaven is through Jesus. But I refuse to make definitive statements about the eternal destiny of people. I don't think it's my job to identify who goes to Hell. I think Hell is real, but God gets to say who goes there, not me.

My job is to love with the compassion that Jesus showed. Christians get caught up in talk of Israel or talk of AntiChrist (or abortion or other issues) because that's easier than dealing with the reality of their own sin and their own selfish attitudes.

Read Luke 13:1-5. People wanted Jesus to engage in theological speculation, but he wouldn't play that game. He told those who wanted to sit around and make definitive judgments that they needed to spend more time repenting of their own sins. I doubt that any scriptural proof I could offer will make much headway with your in-laws because their agenda is not faith. It is being right. They are sure they're on the side of those who go to Heaven. They're in the right. So they don't need to repent and they do not need to check their views, regardless of facts that might be presented. It's very much like politics which you follow a lot more closely than me.

The way for the humble, the legitimate truth seekers is faith. And faith requires equal attention paid to Scriptures and to the present, continuous voice of the Holy Spirit. To hear the Holy Spirit, we need to shut out the noise (especially of most TV preachers and much of what is in the media). We need to prayerfully quiet our minds and let God speak. I think in doing this, we hear the scriptures and what they have to say in our circumstances. But if what I think I am hearing doesn't jive with compassion, then it is most likely not from God.

Long answer, maybe not helpful. But, I am not overly concerned with Israel from an eschatological (= end times) standpoint. A bigger sadness is how many in Israel do not recognize the love of God revealed in Jesus. And much of that failure to recognize is due to the hatred express by people in Jesus' name (think Crusads, Pogroms, Holocaust). The biggest enemy of evangelism, from about 300AD to present, has been hatred expressed by people who claim to follow Jesus.

Pray for your in-laws. You never know when the Holy Spirit will grip a heart and make a person see as Jesus says. I am praying the Holy Spirit will do that to me today.

- Rob

Why Practice Sabbath? To Receive From Jesus (Matthew 11:28-30)

2012-01-22T17:49:00.000-08:00

People are busy, working hard, in some cases over-scheduled, and in most cases tired. God doesn’t intend this. Certainly God wants us to give our best. With God’s spirit empowering us, we can be more than we could on our own strength. In all our roles, we honor God by striving for excellence. But in our striving, God does not want us to wear ourselves out to the point that we are constantly in a states of exhaustion, reaching for a recovery that doesn’t seem to come before we have to give and give and give again. Our lives are not to be an endless strain.

We need rest as a regular part of life, and we need a new rhythm and a new understanding of time. In the language of the New Testament, there were two words that are both translated into English “time.” The Greek word ‘kronos,’can mean time, and so can the Greek work ‘kairos.’ ‘Kronos,’is measurable time, days, months, years. It is sequential. From ‘Kronos,’we get the English word ‘chronology.’ This is really how we most commonly think of time. ‘Kairos,’ means the appropriateness of time. In our worldview, when is a baby born? Is the baby born on the day the doctor declared to be the “due date?” No! The baby comes when it is time. We think of death the same way. Someone passes, and we say, well, it was his time.

Kronos measures time. I am just about 42 years old. My life is probably close to half-way over. Kairos identifies seasons. A man’s wife dies. They were married 45 years. He enters a season of grief. When Kairos and Kronos are talked about in sermons, usually kairos is seen as something holy. Jesus came to earth in the “fullness of time.” Kronos is seen as something more mundane. In our recognition that people are tired because life in 21st century America is frenetic and the pressure to succeed comes from all sides, we need to claim the holiness of kronos time. God is not only God of seasons and monumental moments. God is also God of today, this hour, this minute. God is not only God of Epiphany and Lent, and Easter and Pentecost. God is also God of Facebook and the calendar. We do not live at the mercy and pleasure of our schedules. We live at the mercy and pleasure of the living God.

What is more difficult, going without checking email and going along without texting, or going along without prayer? Which do we miss? How we answer, when answering honestly and not giving the churchy answer, reveals the rhythm of our lives. I think most of us need a new rhythm. Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book called The Sabbath writes, “There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusively and endlessly precious” (p.8).[i] As a response to the harried rat race lived by so many of us, the life-draining pace that we run that slowly kills us, Heschel presents the Sabbath. He says, “The Sabbath is entirely independent of the month. … Its date is not determined by any even in nature … but by the act of creation. … The meaning of Sabbath is to celebrate time. … Thus we try to become attuned to holiness in time” (p.10).

The baby is napping – and as all parents of young children know, those naps are crucial. The preschooler needs to be picked up from school. The 4thgrader has a dentist’s appointment. Mom has the flu. Dad has a meeting in another town. OK seriously, holiness time? Come on!

The truth is nothing we will say in sermons or in small groups will take away from the stress we all face. It chews at us and forces us to make decisions. That’s just life. But, even in life, real life, we can regularly enter the Sabbath which God gives. And doing so will change our lives, even the harried moments.

So we admit, yes, we’re tired. We admit, yes, God had given his people a gift – Sabbath rest. And we believe that in Christ we are God’s people. So then, how are we, as Christians, to understand holiness in time? How do we discover a new rhythm, one in which life is paced by regular Sabbath keeping? I think the beginning of the answer is found in the Gospel of Matthew, chapters 11-12, where Jesus gives three things. Everything in life for a Christ-follower is defined by Him; and everything in the Bible is read through the lens of the Gospel.

So it is with Jesus we start. He says, “To what will I compare this generation [meaning the people around him who refused to listen to his offer of salvation and forgiveness of sins]? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for your, and you did not dance’” (11:16-17a). Here was God in human flesh bringing new wine, good news, a new life in which people could be freed from sin and guided into a lasting, joy-filled relationship with God, and those around him utterly rejected the offer.

Jesus’coming was a divine declaration that time had changed! The time of God bringing wrath and punishment on the people for the nation’s sins had passed. Jesus brought a new day, a day of mercy and grace. Just pause and consider those qualities. How much do mercy and grace play into your daily interactions with people? On the other hand, at the workplace, in relationships, how often do you see retribution, petty jealousy, self-centeredness? Do we live our lives in the new day Jesus inaugurated, drinking the new wine he poured? Or do we remain in the state of fallen humanity, treating others as competitors to be beaten out? Are we fallen Cains killing the Abels alongside us, and being killed? Jesus brought in a new time.

Along with it, Jesus brought a new rhythm. In the new time, the gifts of God are just that, gifts God gave and gives to bless us. The people around Jesus took the gifts and warped them into a set of rules that beat men and women down into submission, completely defeated, unable to keep rules God never intended in the first place.

In Matthew 12, Jesus and his disciples were in a grain field. It was the Sabbath Day. The hungry disciples plucked the heads of grain and began to eat, but the act of plucking qualified as “work,” and the rules committee forbade such activity on God’s Sabbath! “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath” (12:2).

Note, Jesus did not just ignore the complaint, and he did not trivialize it. This was an important moment for people then and for people now. I think Jesus gives us three things related to time. The first two we have mentioned. Jesus gives a new day. The second we see in this controversy over grain harvesting. Jesus gives a new rhythm. He did not get into the minutia. That’s work! No it’s not. It is too! Is not! Jesus does not play that game. He takes the conversation to a higher level. He says that God desires mercy more than sacrifice, and he lays the claim to be Lord (master) of the Sabbath (12:7, 8).

This argument with Pharisees happened as the disciples and the Pharisees and others were walking to the Synagogue for Sabbath worship. A disfigured man was there, and, the Pharisees still refused to dance to Jesus’ music. Still stinging from the argument over harvesting and his claim to be Lord, they saw an opportunity. In a blatant attempt to catch Jesus in Sabbath violation, the rule makers asked, “Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath.” In the old rhythm, we ask what are the rules and how do we keep them or how do we get around them. The second thing Jesus gives us related to time and the holiness of time is a new rhythm.

The man’s hand is completely withered. “Is it lawful to heal?” What a heartless thought! What a terrible thing to ask! Jesus said, it is lawful to do good, and healing someone who hurts is a good thing. In the new rhythm of Jesus, we seek the good. The key in all of this is Jesus. If the disciples are with the Lord of the Sabbath, they can do what he allows. He allowed them to fill their hungry bellies. If the injured man or the one with a broken heart comes to the Lord of the Sabbath and the Lord of the Sabbath heals, then healing was the right thing because the Lord of the Sabbath says doing good is better than doing nothing.

Jesus gives three things. He gives a new day. He gives a new rhythm, one that can only be felt when we are with Him, filled with His Holy Spirit.

The third gift is one for us to remember and live into as we spend 4 weeks talking Sabbath, and hopefully a lifetime keeping Sabbath. Lauren Winner,[ii]a divinity school professor, an Episcopalian, and a Jewish person who has put her complete trust in Jesus Christ points out that in recent years, a return to Sabbath keeping has come into fashion, but the new popularized Sabbath is a distortion.

Sabbath has experienced revived popularity because it is might contribute to productivity: the rested worker is more effective 6 days a week than the dog-tired worker that puts in seven. A second motivation people find in Sabbath is idolatry with self as the object of worship. Of course people wouldn’t say it that way. But consider how Sabbath is presented: take a day off; treat yourself; have a bubble bath; enjoy the spa. Nothing wrong with any of this, but it isn’t Sabbath. The object of honor and glory is not God, not when my form of worship is finding a way to make myself relaxed and feeling good. Nor is God being exalted when the purpose of my rest is to be a better me Monday through Friday. Again, this is not a critique of the relationship between work and rest and productivity. I simply reject the notion that Sabbath rest is truly Sabbath rest if it is done for the sake of optimal performance.

In fact, Sabbath is not about performance at all. Sabbath is not about relaxation per se. Sabbath is about God, and we Christians believe God was perfectly revealed in the incarnation, Jesus Christ. He gives a new day. He gives a new rhythm in which good is sought over rule keeping. And he give rest. “Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (11:28).

The new day, the new rhythm, the blessed rest from heavy, life-taking burdens is restrictive. It’s not for everyone, but only for those who come to Jesus. Of course, all are invited to come – Jew and Gentile, Sinner and Saint, you and me and the neighbor you cannot stand and the dictator who keeps his people under heel. All are invited to lay down their burdens, receive forgiveness of sin, and come to Jesus.

This happens in kairos, the appointed, appropriate time when a person first believes and gives her life to Christ. This is her time of salvation, the moment everything changes. Coming to Jesus also happens regularly in kronos time, when, week after week, no matter how we feel, everything else in life stops, including us, and we come to Him in worship and prayer. We give Him and our relationship with Him 100% attention and shut out all else.

In upcoming messages and small groups we will talk about specific ways Sabbath keeping can happen and we will mentions some ideas about what would not be good for Sabbath keeping. This morning though, I just want us to focus on three actions. (1) We come – uninterrupted and diligently locking out any distraction so that Jesus gets 100% of us. (2) He gives – He gives rest; if we are hungry he give permission to harvest grains; if we are hurting, he gives cures, healing. (1) We come. (2) He gives. And (3), we receive what He offers without trying to influence Him. Instead of trying to get what we want or what we think we need, we come open, we come broken, and we come tired. And Jesus gives out of His wisdom and love. Starting with that, we know God is in control and we aren’t, and that’s good thing. We are on the way to keeping Sabbath in appropriate time so that our relationship with God is right all the time. Everything falls in place. It doesn’t mean everything is perfect. It falls into place. As Jesus plays his flute, we dance in time, to his rhythm.

If you feel confused, simply relax your heart, and come to Jesus. Take His yoke upon you and learn from Him for He is gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your soul. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. Begin your Sabbath. Come to Him.

AMEN

[i]Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (New York, 1951).

[ii] Lauren Winner, Mudhouse Sabbath, p.6-7, 10-11.

Abundant Life

2012-01-22T17:44:00.000-08:00

Jesus said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

Do we believe it?Do we believe he was truly the son of God, God in human flesh? Do we believe he came? Do we believe we are among the “they” whom he promised abundant life? Do trust the abundance he offers?

I throw out this flurry of questions because life is full of stuff. Sometimes it is expensive stuff like the latest smart phone or electronic gadget. Sometimes it is a lot of stuff, like the numerous half flat yard-sale purchases basketballs in my garage. Sometimes our stuff has long since ceased meaning anything, but we chafe at the thought of throwing things out. We don’t consider the possibility that we might be fulfilled with less.

If it isn’t stuff, it is experience. We want to be thrilled. We want to be soothed. We want to be relaxed. We want to be stimulated. So gourmet chefs cook for us, chiropractors bend and contort us, acupuncturists stick us, pharmacists numb us, trainers work us, tour guides amuse and inform us, therapists listen to us, and (some) preachers talk (or yell) at us.

There is nothing wrong with experiences. Stuff is not inherently sinful. But sometimes people make choices like an object or a process or an activity is absolutely essential for the happiest possible life. Without the thing or the memory or the anticipation, we are less than we could be. Jesus gets tacked onto the life we want to live. He certainly is not the heart of life. He is relegated to a small part in the lives of so many who would identify themselves as His followers.

Jesus did not come to fit into our lives. He came to be the master of our lives, and He came, why? That we might have abundant life. He defines what abundance is. There is competition for definition. Other voices – temptation, our own sinful nature, the consumerism of our age, Satan – will try to tell us what abundance is. Who will we trust?

Here is Jesus, speaking in John 10.
7 So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.

Consider all that Jesus promises – pasture, abundance, salvation, relationship. Consider that work of the thieves and robbers: they deceive the sheep (we are the sheep). They steal, kill, and destroy. They flee when danger comes. Jesus lays his life down for us.

When considering Sabbath, turn off the TV (and PC and Smart Phone and IPOD, I-Pad, and I-Touch). Put your keys and wallet in the desk drawer to be left there. Ignore the phone when it rings.

Now, am I suggesting we sit and do nothing? Not exactly. I am suggesting that when we set aside time for Sabbath-keeping, whether it is a half-day or an entire day, we begin by asking Jesus to fill us. Ask Him to help us understand and receive the abundance He gives. A number of activities might open us to Him – walking; a laughter-filled family meal; an intimate meal with a spouse and intimacy following; throwing Frisbee on the lawn; gathering around the fireplace for time together; time in the garden. These are just examples, but for the most part, they are quiet and simple. The stimulus is limited because we want to make space for God.

Of course making space for God is not all there is to Sabbath, but it is all I’ll cover here. I think we would be wonderfully blessed if we emptied ourselves and simplified things during Sabbath. And once emptied and pared down, we ask Jesus to show us the abundance. I think we’ll be surprised and maybe overwhelmed with what He does. What He has to give is better than anything we can find, even on Google. Google has a ton of websites, but only Jesus gives abundant life. So carve out time for Sabbath, and seek His abundance, and trust Him enough to wait for it.

Good News of Great Joy

2012-01-22T17:38:00.000-08:00

Good News of Great Joy Several years ago, I was listening to a renowned preacher recount a story of an occasion in the waiting room at the dentist’s office. He saw someone he recognized, someone he believed to be a fellow preacher. This renowned pastor of a church of 1000’s was correct. This other person in the waiting room was also clergy, and he said he was excited because he thought they could“fellowship in the Lord.”

I don’t entirely know what he meant. I don’t know what “fellowship in the Lord” looks like while one is waiting for the dentist to drill away. But I think he wanted to share the joy of Jesus with a brother in Christ. But, then the famous pastor, in recounting the story, said, “I smelled a rat.”

I smelled a rat! What a thing to say, especially in reference to a colleague! The famous preacher meant that the other pastor was not in fact a true Christian. He had in mind what a follower of Jesus is and he felt this person who was clergy was not actually a Christ-follower. His description of someone who is a pastor, but in his estimation is not a Christian, is “rat.”

I don’t know if the famous pastor was correct or not. I don’t know if the person he met truly was a Christian or was not a true believer. What I know is this: people who don’t have Jesus are lost. Jesus did not call lost people “rats.” Rats are something to be exterminated with traps and poison. Jesus called lost people “sheep.” He said the shepherd (Jesus himself, John 10:11) leaves the 99 sheep (those already saved, Luke 15:4) in search of the lost one. Rats? O no, lost people are not rats, but those who desperately need the reality of Jesus in their lives. Jesus said, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7).

Christians are sometimes tempted to see those outside the church as lost sinners who have a fiery Hell ahead of them. We’re glad we get to go to heaven. Are we ever secretly satisfied that someone “out there” (outside our church walls) will get their just desserts in Hell someday? Or, are we so petrified of the horrors of Hell that we dread the fate of those separated from Jesus, especially our unsaved friends?

Sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, evangelism, is a calling for every Christian. To call the lost “rats” and to snicker at their demise is completely foreign to the Gospel. Jesus wept at the reality that people were alienated from God (Luke 19:41-44). He grieved over the condition of the souls of men and women.

We do well to share his grief, but that doesn’t mean evangelism (sharing Jesus) is a fear-based work that is done to save souls by the skin of their teeth. I don’t believe we are called to Hell-avoidance, fear-based evangelism. Yes, we grieve for people who don’t know Jesus, but at the same time, we rejoice in Him. We rejoice in our relationship with God in Jesus. And we rejoice in seeing others come to Know Jesus.

Joy is a word that should be tied to how we practice evangelism. “The will be more joy in heaven” over the salvation of the lost. The coming of Jesus was for the sake of the salvation of the world. The angel said the night of Christ’s birth,“I bring good news of great joy for all people” (Luke 2:10). When we share the gospel, it should be joyful work, not scary, uncomfortable, confrontational work we’d rather avoid.

In 2012, one of our emphases will be evangelism. But this isn’t the work of passing out tracts or accosting people and threatening them with Hell, telling them, turn or burn! This is joy-work. We will spend the year searching for that joy that heavenly joy that comes when a lost person is saved. In this search, I will write newsletter columns about “Evangelism as Joy-work.” As we go, I pray that you and I together will discover the joy of sharing Jesus.

Ecclesiastes 4 - Community

2012-01-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

God, You, and Me (Ecclesiastes 4:7-12), January 15, 2012

I had a pronounced sense of Christian community – maybe my first experience of Christian community as I understand it – in 1994. I went to visit my college roommate who was in his second year as a missionary in Bolivia. The flight was an overnight flight. I got off the plane exhausted, but it was time for church, so we went. My Spanish was awful. I didn’t understand a thing. Yet, I knew I could trust the words the congregation spoke and sang with full emotion and commitment to God. Because of the Holy Spirit, I was connected to those around me and I was allowed me to rest in the joy of Christian community and fellowship even though the words were mostly foreign to me.

An author/pastor, one I thoroughly trust, describes Ecclesiastes as a type of introduction to the New Testament. He says, Ecclesiastes “empties us of the inner noise that we [thought was] religion and the cluttered piety we [thought was] faith. [Ecclesiastes] throws out the accumulated religious junk and banishes fraud that has paraded as faith. Placing [the] well-orchestrated ‘no!’ [of Ecclesiastes] as a preference to the New Testament provides a pastoral clearing of the air of distractions.”[i] Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, telling the story of Jesus, and the rest of the New Testament, written in an Easter age, respond to the bleak “no!” of Ecclesiastes with the victorious “yes!” of resurrection.

With Ecclesiastes setting the stage for the good news of the coming of Jesus, Ecclesiastes 4 specifically introduces the necessity of community, like welcome and acceptance I felt in Bolivia. As is the case with Ecclesiastes throughout, the table is set in a negative light. “Again I saw vanity under the sun: the case of solitary individuals without sons or brothers; yet there is no end to all their toil, and their eyes are never satisfied with riches. ‘For whom am I toiling,’ they ask. ... This is also vanity and unhappy business” (4:7-8).

I immediately thought of the movie The Bucket List. Jack Nicholson portrays a wealthy business man who has cancer. In the hospital, going through chemo, he meets Morgan Freeman’s character, a blue-collar man, a mechanic. Freeman’s character also has cancer. The two couldn’t be more different, but they share a burden. They’re dying. So, they come up with the idea of the bucket list – things to do before one kicks the bucket.

After their adventures that range from sky-diving to driving race cars, they part, each going back to his own life. The mechanic returns to his wife and kids and grandkids. They enjoy a Thanksgiving-type feast. The colors of the scenes are in soft tones –browns, tans, orange, and golden. The characters are laughing richly, and sitting in theater, I felt the warmth. The wealthy business man is in his plush apartment. In one scene he has a couple of girls, probably not 25 years-old, attracted not to him but to his extravagances. As he ponders his life, he is filled with melancholy. In the background one of the girls says, “I don’t know what’s wrong. He’s usually so much fun.” In another scene, he’s alone. The colors, depicting his penthouse at night are black, gray, and dim. They scream cold, weary. He struggles to get the packaging open on the overly expensive meal he’s purchased. He’ll eat with only the company of the expensive things he’s bought to fill his life. The packaging finally rips open and spills out Broken, he is reduced to weeping, with no one there to wipe his tears. For whom am I toiling? This is also vanity. He could shout Ecclesiastes as his own life conclusion, “This is useless, a miserable way to live” (4:8, Good News Translation).

It makes me think of the man in Jesus’ parable. This rich man stored up his holdings and then acquired so much, he had to tear down his barns and build bigger ones. Right at the moment he would retire in wealth and ease, he died and someone else came along and enjoyed all he has saved (Luke 12:20). I also think of another of Jesus’ parables, also about a rich man. In this one, the rich man is condemned to Hell, and while it’s not explicitly stated that he is damned for being rich, the implication and only feasible conclusion is the man is separated from God because he didn’t share his riches with an extremely poor man. “In your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here [with Abraham] and you are in agony” (Luke 16:24).

In these parables, Jesus is not flatly condemning wealth. He had wealthy followers, and he benefited from their opulence. And that is the point – what are riches for? What is life for? Whatever God gives – material possessions, talent, a mind for science, experiences, musical ability, a servant’s heart – it is to be shared. Life is to be lived in community, in relationship to other people. God is a relational God. This doesn’t mean everyone has to be extroverted, has to be the life of the party. There is room for all personality-types in God’s family and one is not better than the other. Boisterous Peter has his place, but so too do those in the background, the quiet ones like Andrew and Phillip. We are made for relationship. Ecclesiastes condemns the notion of the lonely miser, the rich person who keeps to herself and refuses to let people into her life. We are made for community.

Ecclesiastes 4 is comprised of “better than”statements. “Two are better than one.” The preacher goes through the reasons for his advocacy of partnership. In business, two will accomplish more and have a better chance for a better yield or prophet. In travel, they help one another if injury happens or there is an accident. Two keep one another warm – this is a practical teaching which made sense on cold desert nights where there were no heated hotel rooms to welcome the road-weary sojourner. Two have each other’s backs if bandits attack. Clearly and two are better than one, and life is better when it is shared.

My first experience of community within the Christian family was a small evangelical Bolivian church. By worshipping God and welcoming me, they invited me, a gringo into their fellowship. In the singing and the exaltation of God, I was not “other.” I was one of them. But, I am wrong in saying that was my first time receiving the invitation to community. The first time, I was visiting a church in the rural farming country of the Lower Peninsula Michigan. I had been a ministry intern there that summer, the summer between my junior and senior year of college. I learned about ministry and about farming. Then at Christmas, I went back to visit. I didn’t know those people that well, but they welcomed me like a son. They even had Christmas presents. They made sure I was fully a part of their family gathering even though I was not a relation. In their eyes, I was their son, their brother, in Christ.

That was not the first time ... I remember my baptism in 1981. I was 11 and our family was Baptist, but all our extended family was Lutheran or Methodist. Up in the baptismal pool which felt very high up in the air to me at 11 years old, I could see the entire congregation of a couple 100 people. One entire row was full of Tennants, Galvins, and Biscombs – my people! I was surrounded by my church family. And the family in which I was raised had come, leaving their Lutheran and Methodist churches for one Sunday to come be a part: God’s people together to celebrate.

I experienced the community of saints before that in 1973, and I didn’t even know it. I was three, my dad was in the army, stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, and my mom was pregnant. The pregnancy was in grave danger. It would likely be a baby that had severe problems. The army doctors told my parents an abortion might be a good idea. My parents stopped talking to army doctors and started talking to army chaplains who prayed. My brother was born healthy and is fine today. The entire drama played out with my parents, thus me, surrounded by people who follow Jesus and put their trust in Him – the community of faith.

Two are better than one ... a three-fold chord is not easily broken. AMEN, shouts Jesus!

Even before I was born ... my parents met at Wayne State University in Detroit, and where? Did they meet in a night club? Did they meet at a dance? At protest rally of some sort? They met on the lawn of the Wesley Foundation. It was the mid 60’s. They were not experimenting with drugs. They were not exploring this new idea of“free love,” which was and is sex without responsibility or concern for the consequences. They went where Christian college students gathered to be together, the Wesley Foundation. They went because two are better than one, true relationship with God in Jesus Christ can only be had in community, and the craziness of the drug culture that so many people say defines the 1960’s is vanity, empty, useless, spitting into the wind.

A lot of people did not come from a Christian background. That's OK. I've shared bits of my story. Every one’s story is unique. One story is not better than another. I simply lay this out because I am grateful that my entire understanding of life, of reality, and of God is born in community, not my own, solitary experience. If someone tries to practice Christianity alone – just me and God – “For whom he is toiling” in his religious endeavors?

If one claims he doesn’t need church to follow Jesus, how can he follow Jesus’ two great commands – to love God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love neighbor as the self? Our love of God is seen in our love of one another and in our worship of Him. We cannot be who God wants us to be unless we are growing together. Just me and God – it doesn’t fit the picture of faith that we see in the New Testament.

The most known of Jesus' parables, the Prodigal Son, ended with a party. The story of Zaccheus the short tax collector turning from greed to discipleship ends with a grand dinner as Zacchaeus’ house. When Jesus called Matthew to leave his very prophet tax-collecting business and embrace the hard life of discipleship, Matthew celebrated by throwing a huge party.

Ecclesiastes shows the futility of a lonely life. The gospels show the joy of life lived with others – people to laugh with, cry with, and people that celebrate good the things of God together. In our church, we try to extend the New Testament parties into our time. We enjoy fellowship dinners whenever we have communion. Our small groups are intimate, inviting, and warm. Our Sunday morning includes together time in the hallway, with coffee, sometimes treats, and always laughter.

Some Sunday morning, when everything is over, just watch this room. I usually stand at the backdoor and shake hands with people as they leave. Most of the time, people don't leave. They stick around to talk, exchange hugs, and be together. One of the ways we please God is to enjoy one another. Just me and God - that's faith Jesus doesn't recognize. Following him, we follow him into a familt that is called church.more than half the group sticks around to talk, exchange hugs – just be together. I really believe one of things we do that is most pleasing to God is that we enjoy being together. Just me and God – that’s faith Jesus wouldn’t recognize. Following Him, we follow Him into a family that is called church.

Here’s what he said, some of Jesus’ final words before the arrest and crucifixion. This is from John’s Gospel.

John 15

9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.

John 17

1 After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed ...

13“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. 14 I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. 15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 Sanctify them by[d]the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19 For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. 20“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

With the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, we reject the solitarly life that shuts out others. Following Jesus' lead, we rejoice in the joy of shared life. He wasn't just punching tickets to Heaven. He was establishing a Kingdom. He is sending us to the lost, lonely, frustrated world around us. In God – Father, Son-Jesus, and Holy Spirit, we are saved, and we are called to invited others into the Kingdom, into fellowship, into the joy of Jesus; a joy only fully known when we are together. You, me and Jesus together – that works! That is the life we are called to live.

AMEN

i]Eugene Peterson, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work (1980), Wm. B, Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Mi, p,188.

Ecclesiastes 2

2012-01-16T07:46:00.000-08:00

Purpose and Joy (Ecclesiastes 2:1-17)

The word for the year at HillSong is “Joy.” In a few weeks, we will do a church-wide emphasis on Sabbath. All the sermons and all the small groups will for four weeks focus on Sabbath. One of the ends of the practice of Sabbath-keeping is a joy-filled life.

Another major point of concentration at HillSong in 2012 will be evangelism. We are going to preach about it, write about it, and practice it. I hope 90% of us begin living evangelistically. I hope Chapel Hill will know that people at HillSong love Jesus and love helping those outside the church come to faith in Jesus. Our evangelistic bent is only possible when we do evangelism in joy, filled with joy, and with a concern for the joy of the other person whether the other is a Christ-follower or not.

Also in 2012, we will continue to preach and develop our philosophy of ministry. Our community is a safe place where we meet God and are transformed by the encounter, made new as it were. Then, newly born in Christ, we are sent out in His name. That’s HillSong –Safe/New/Sent. It’s safe to come wounded and move from wounding and pain to joy and refreshment because Jesus understands our pain and meets us in it. It’s safe to go out, sent by Him, not because the world out there is safe but because he goes with us. Our coming and our going is in joy.I cannot wait for Lent and Easter.

We’ll spend a lot of time in the New Testament book of Hebrews. I am truly looking forward to many ministries we’ll have. But the point is not to shout about all the cool things they’re doing at HillSong. The point is that our efforts help people – you and me and all who come – know God, and enter God’s joy.

Last year we began with this verse, John 1:12, “To all who received him [Jesus] ... he gave the power to become children of God.” The greatest blessing children of God have is not happiness. Happiness comes and goes. Watching the Sugar bowl, I was happy when Michigan won. That happiness lasted 12 hours or so. The blessing visited upon children of God is joy – a joy that never ends. Children of God have rough moments; I had a few this weeks. But even dark days do not erase the joy that we have – it lasts. Joy from God in Jesus Christ outlasts all other feelings, losses, and disappointments. This year, 2012 at HillSong church, the word is joy.

So why the heck are we beginning with three messages from the most forlorn depressing book in scripture, Ecclesiastes? One of the ways I try to approach studying a book of the Bible whether it is Genesis or Psalms or Amos, or Matthew, Romans, or Revelation is imagination. I pretend that this book, whatever book we’re studying, is the only Bible I have. So if the study is on the prophet Jeremiah, I read Jeremiah as if all I will ever learn about God comes from Jeremiah. It’s just an exercise and in due course I read Jeremiah in relation to other books of the Bible. Ultimately it has to fit the big story.

Ecclesiastes is one book where I do not do that exercise, at least not for long. Depression hangs over Ecclesiastes. It is captured well in The Message. As you know there are many English versions of scripture. I usually read The New Revised Standard Version, which has strengths and weaknesses. I am going to read a bit the same passage from The Message because it vividly depicts what the Speaker is saying in Ecclesiastes.

I said to myself, "Let's go for it—experiment with pleasure, have a good time!" But there was nothing to it, nothing but smoke. What do I think of the fun-filled life? Insane! Inane! My verdict on the pursuit of happiness? Who needs it? With the help of a bottle of wine and all the wisdom I could muster, I tried my level best to penetrate the absurdity of life. Then I took a good look at everything I'd done, looked at all the sweat and hard work. But when I looked, I saw nothing but smoke. Smoke and spitting into the wind. There was nothing to any of it. Nothing. 12-14 And then I took a hard look at what's smart and what's stupid. What's left to do after you've been king? That's a hard act to follow. You just do what you can, and that's it. But I did see that it's better to be smart than stupid, just as light is better than darkness. Even so, though the smart ones see where they're going and the stupid ones grope in the dark, they're all the same in the end. One fate for all—and that's it. 15-16 When I realized that my fate's the same as the fool's, I had to ask myself, "So why bother being wise?" It's all smoke, nothing but smoke. The smart and the stupid both disappear out of sight. In a day or two they're both forgotten. Yes, both the smart and the stupid die, and that's it. 17 I hate life. As far as I can see, what happens on earth is a bad business. It's smoke—and spitting into the wind.

Please, if you’re going to spend much time in Ecclesiastes, have a thumb in the Gospels, the portions about resurrection. Ecclesiastes is scripture, words inspired by God. But, I think Ecclesiastes is only good news when it is held up as a contrast. By itself, Ecclesiastes shows a crucial truth. The pleasures of life cannot bring lasting joy.

The speaker says, “I will test pleasure.” So, he tries drinking. Obviously someone of means, he can probably import exotic wines and liquors few people would ever taste, but it all leads to the same place. Drink enough and you’re drunk. The cheap stuff whinos drink by bottles covered by paper sacks gets the same result. Get drunk enough, and a nasty hangover follows. Get drunk enough often enough and then you can’t stop. No, wine didn’t work.

The speaker says, “I bought male and female slaves. I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, and many concubines.” This person had no morals and no restrictions. Slaves and concubines – it’s offensive and dehumanizing. How can this be the Bible. Be careful!

We must be careful when reading scripture lest we miss the fact that it is a mirror, especially the brutal passages like Ecclesiastes 2. How many millions in American secretly spend hours destroying their lives on porn-sites? Is it any less dehumanizing because it’s done in the secret of a room that’s completely dark save for the pictures on the computer monitor? Those pictures are of real people – people made in the image of God. Millions of people, millions of church goers, millions of supposed Christ-followers stare at the people in those pictures who are naked, some one’s daughter, for the sake of a thrill. We aren’t better than the speaker in Ecclesiastes. We are the speaker in Ecclesiastes.

He spoke of alcohol, of business, of sex. He saw other people as vehicles, objects that existed to give him pleasure. In the end, what words did he use to describe his pursuit? Different translations render it differently – meaningless, vanity, useless. In The Message the pursuit of pleasure through carnal stimulations is likened to spitting in the wind. Who lives this way? Who thinks this leads to happiness? Based on the number of people in recovery programs and based on the sales of antidepressants and based on divorce statistics and suicide rates, millions of 21st century Americans –our friends, our neighbors, our family members, us. Ecclesiastes wasn’t written by King Solomon or some super wise person in 5th century BC writing in Solomon’s name. Ecclesiastes was written by someone late last year who chased happiness over and over and over and finally discovered it’s a futile pursuit. Meaningless, useless, vanity – the word I think fits is empty.

As we step into 2012, we come to the chilling reality that so much of what fills our time and occupies us in the end leaves us empty. We cannot stop there! We as a community of people who believe that it is a historical reality that Jesus rose from the grave must say more. We believe the resurrection has meaning and implications, so when we dive into the despairing emptiness of Ecclesiastes which is just a depiction of the despairing emptiness of the lives of the people all around us, we have to respond. As church, we have to respond. As Christ-followers, we have to say more!

Our response is the with-God life. Simply put, the with-God life is one where God is involved in everything. The way we get with God is to put our faith in Jesus. We acknowledge our sinfulness and his love and forgiveness and his deity. His death on the cross covers our sins, and we acknowledge and believe it and say it. We ask His Holy Spirit to enter our hearts, and we give him our lives. How does this negate the emptiness? All roads of pleasure seeking, when pleasure seeking ignores and occurs in human terms without regard for others, lead to emptiness and death. How does life with God in Jesus Christ lead somewhere else?

It is eternal. Paul, writing about this life in 1stCorinthians 15, talks about immortality and imperishability, and he mocks the emptiness. “Where O death is your sting?” By going all-in with Jesus, our sinful selves die with him, but we join him in the resurrection, and one resurrected cannot die again. Life with Jesus begins when we receive Him and put our faith in Him, and it never ends even when our bodies die.

Furthermore, it is a joy-filled life.Some Christians act like following Jesus is all work, all drudgery, and they try to root out anything that might be fun or winsome or spontaneous. That would just stink. That’s an eternity of sober doldrums, unlike the actual promises of Jesus. He said, “I have said thing these things [about being connected to him] so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.” Recall Heather’s message on Ecclesiastes last week. She told of the pain of a mother whose 18-year-old son died. What could be a greater tragedy?

And yet, in that story, Heather said, quoting C.S. Lewis,“God speaks through laughter but shouts through pain.” And the truth is, we might miss his voice in the laughter if we never heard him shout. Again, neither I nor, Lewis, nor the preacher in Ecclesiastes is saying that God causes painful times – but that he allows us to dwell in them for a season with the purpose of experiencing His greater joy!

Our response to the Preacher’s mournful emptiness in Ecclesiastes is not a yawn-producing, staid Christianity that conforms to a simplistic formula we’d read on an outdated Bible tract. Our response is a faith in a living God who came as a man who experienced real pain, but turned it to resurrection, exchanging ashes for beauty. Our response is faith in that man, Jesus, which leads us into the with-Godlife.

The with-God life takes over every element of our lives; our parenting, our work (be it marketing, teaching, garbage collecting, nursing, or whatever); our play (at the restaurant, watching the game, enjoying our friends and our children). In all arenas, we live with God, living in the joy of Jesus.

This morning, Amy Brown refuses the bleakness of the Ecclesiastes Preacher’s vision. She refuses emptiness and instead responds to God’s call by coming to be ordained into deacon service. Being a deacon is not glamorous. It is night-time meetings, crunching budget numbers, discussing how to maintain our building so that the building can be used by God; it is getting down in the dirt to pull weeds so that the property that is used by God is a beautiful maintained, orderly place. Her simple, “Yes, I’ll serve,” is a “No, I won’t satisfy myself with meaningless things that do not satisfy.” To serve in the community of faith is a step toward purpose and joy.

We all respond with a resounding no to the Speaker’s vanity. We won’t buy into our culture’s sensual attempts at pleasure any more than we would stand in the face a gale force wind and spit. No, not us. We respond to the cries of “Vanity, all is vanity,” by saying it is not vanity when we gather and raise our voices in songs of praise to God. Our worship is joined by angels and untold heavenly beings. With unseen spiritual forces lifting us we declare God’s goodness, God’s love, God’s beauty, and God’s amazing grace.

Service, worship, and so many other things that we do as a people who believe in Jesus –it all comes together to paint another picture, an alternative. The Speaker-Preacher of Ecclesiastes was true and appropriate in bemoaning the emptiness of temporal solutions to human longing. We are equally right in saying in Jesus, there is full, lasting, perfect satisfaction for all who wonder, all who hurt, and all who know how broken then are.

We declare the with-God Gospel alternative to death, and finally, we make it our purpose to draw others in because we know so many people who think happiness is in the bottom of a bottle of Miller Genuine Draught; we weekly talk to friends who are sure happiness will come when the enormous, high-definition, 3D television is hooked to the wall and the stereo surround sound. We can too easily list people we love who are certain all will be right in their lives once they go on that beach vacation.

Empty! And this is people we know and love. We want them to be full, like we are full when we worship, when we service, when we gather in Jesus’ name. We want to share the truth that life is not made up of a few thrills and a lot of grief. True life comes in the joy of Jesus that transcends; the joy that transforms our grief.

No, it is not vanity. It is joy, in Jesus’ Name.

AMEN

Christmas Day Sermon

2012-01-16T07:34:00.001-08:00

For the Christmas Day message, I am going to share my heart as a pastor, as a person, as a Christ-follower in a very personal way. Often in sermons, I criticize much of 21stcentury upper middle class American life. I criticize the patriotism that sees America as more favored than other people. God loves Koreans, Chinese, Libyans, Mexicans, and everyone else as much as Americans. I criticize American consumerism. We buy too much stuff; consume too high a percentage of the world’s resources. American consumerism and materialism is sinfully unjust. In these ways and others, I am critical.

And yet, I love America. I love being an American. I am fortunate enough to travel overseas, and when I do, I go as a representative of the United States. I do so proudly. I feel a sense of mission; it’s like one of the things I must do in an international airport is represent America well. I don’t always succeed. But it is in my mind.

I especially love American Christmas. I know many of my critiques are especially on display at Christmas time. I heard and radio announcer who was doing a read for a jewelry store say, “Whether you are spending $50 or $50,000 ...” and I didn’t another word. $50,000 for a Christmas gift?? Insane! I say that, I love this morning, coming from the bedroom to the Christmas tree and seeing that Santa has come. I love it.

I love coming to the church and singing these hymns, true worship songs that put the birth of Jesus into story set to music. I love Christmas parties. We had several school Thanksgiving and Christmas events for our boys. I love Christmas lights on people’s homes. Our family drives around night after night to see how the town is lit up, acknowledging that this time of year is special. I wouldn’t trade Christmas in North Carolina in the United States for anything.

What I have discovered this year at Christmas is that all the preaching I have done in my time at HillSong has come back to me. Every spiritual challenge has been thrown upon me in this festive time of feasts, time off from work and school, hustle and bustle, and holiday cheer.

I have repeatedly said we can honor God and worship Him and represent Him in the world by doing our normal tasks with excellence. A simple example is a baker who is also a passionately devoted follower of Jesus honors God by baking good bread. His work is an offering. Similarly in our relationships, we strive for excellence. I want to be a great husband and dad, friend and neighbor for the sake of glorifying God. That has been a wonderfully difficult and rewarding challenge and I am acutely aware of how better I need to be –especially as a husband and dad and pastor.

Another mantra of mine, from this pulpit, is that we are called by Jesus himself to share the good news of salvation and forgiveness of sins. All Christians are called to tell about Jesus. Just a couple of weeks ago, UNC student came in asking what she would need to do to be baptized. As she and I walked through the building, I talked about forgiveness and new life in Christ. It was awesome, but, I don’t do enough of that. I have to improve in answering Jesus’ call to evangelism.

Beyond evangelism and beyond praising God by doing the daily thing of work and personal life with excellence, there other ways my own preaching has come back to me this Christmas. But I won’t go into more detail because the important thing is not for you to hear my confession. The important thing is that upon hearing my own story, you get serious about your own relationship with God. Where do you need to improve?

Do you know why I have become so aware of all I have mentioned? I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about evangelism every Christmas. Each year at this time, I don’t pause and think, “Rob, are you practicing what you preach?” This year though, I can’t think of much else. It is intensified in the joy I feel when I am getting things right and in my disappointment when I fail miserably. Why this year I am so concerned about becoming a better Christ-follower?

It’s the scripture – Psalm 97. The Psalms are the worship book in scripture, so this Advent, as a church, we’ve been praying the Psalms as a worshiping body and hopefully as individuals. Psalm 97 is one of the enthronement Psalms. Most Psalms are laments or praises. Some are categorized as Royal Psalms. The smallest category is the enthronement Psalm. Enthronement Psalms are sung only to God, acknowledging God. The Royal Psalms apply to Jesus, but originally they also applied to Israelite Kings. Enthronement Psalms are only for, to, and about God. When we sing an Enthronement Psalm with Jesus in mind, we’re saying Jesus is God.

We’re also saying Jesus is king, an un-American idea. I began my confession this morning saying how much I love the American Christmas traditions in which I have been raised. When Christmas comes around, I am flooded by happy memories.

As a follower of Jesus, I cannot think of his birth and think of carols and nativity scenes. Those things are wonderful, but the birth of Jesus is first and foremost the story of God come to earth. The eternal one stepped out of the limitless beauty of Heaven and the unbound power and majesty of divinity. God stepped out of godhood and into the fragile, perilous form of a human baby. God put on humanity in its rawest forms.

What did the wise men say when they came to see the baby Jesus? “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews” (Mt. 2:2)? They said “King of the Jews,” but they, Persians, knew this king was a king beyond Israel. They dropped everything in their lives because they knew from gazing at the star and studying the ancient Hebrew texts that this king was like no other. Yes, he was a Jew. Yes, they were Persians living in what today we call Iran. It did not matter. They would drop everything and come to him because was not just a king, but the king.

Today, we know how the story went from there. Jesus grew into a man who embraced children when more respectable people would say, “children should be seen and not heard.” Jesus was a teacher who paused to listen to and heal blind roadside beggars when more important people said the beggars should be silent. Jesus was a revolutionary who defeated evil itself by dying on a cross. And he was and is a King who rules with the power of love instead of the power of the sword or gun.

The way we Americans became a nation was by throwing off the yoke of king in a bloody revolution. We declared ourselves independent, fought, and today have a representative democracy. The idea of a king in America today is absurd.

Yet, in reading Psalm 97, I have felt more than ever, that the birth of Jesus, the season of Christmas, is a reminded that I am first and foremost a child of God. Being an American comes after that. As a child of God, born again in Jesus Christ, I am called to take on the yoke of a king.

My work as a writer of sermons and visitor to hospitals and spiritual counselor and church administrator is to be done at the pleasure of the king. My life as a husband, a dad, a son, a brother, a neighbor, a sports fan, a Carolinian – it is to be lived at the pleasure of the king. At any point, should the king command a change, it is to be made. At any point, should the king interrupt my daily life, I welcome the interruption. At all points, I am mindful that God is always present and I am always to love others as He has loved me and to act as he would have me act.

Of course, I am telling you my intent. There are moments when I succeed. In many others, I come up short. The UNC student I mentioned earlier who came in confessed to some pretty significant sins as she and I walked through the building. Right at the moment she was pouring her heart out, we were in this room, and I was able to point up to the cross and explain that Jesus covers our sins and we are forgiven. Right now, as I tell you my intent to live every moment of life in service to the king and I acknowledge how frequently I come up short, I turn myself to the cross. I am reminded that I am washed in grace.

I am also aware of what Jesus said. A moment ago, I recalled that America threw off the yoke of a king. As Christ-followers we take on the yoke of King Jesus. Do you know what a yoke is? It is a large, heavy wooden brace that connect two oxen together. Then the farmer can come behind and drive the oxen wherever he wants them to go. When we take on the yoke of Jesus, we are enslaved to God. We go wherever King Jesus directs us.

The good news is Jesus said, “Come to me all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”(Mt. 11:28-30). The heavy yoke laid on oxen means heavy work is ahead. The yoke of King Jesus brings rest and revives the soul.

It’s a paradox. The more love we give, the more we have. The more we die to self and give ourselves to Christ, the more life we have. And the closing verses of Psalm 97 become our Christmas confession and our everyday reality.

“Light dawns for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name” (97:11-12)!

The call I have felt to be a better dad and to be better in evangelism and to do it all for the sake of bringing glory to God is invitation to take on Jesus’ easy yoke and light burden. It is the reality that my life is lived in absolute slavery with Jesus as my master, and at the same time there is no freedom like the freedom one has when yoked with Him. To do more is to have more rest. It cannot be understood except by those who know the baby in the manger is the eternal King of all Kings.

Christmas is His day. Every day is His. I am thankful for what a blessing it is to know that, and I am thankful God has, this year, called me to live in that reality.

AMEN

Great Expectations (Psalm 85:7-8)

2011-12-05T05:35:00.000-08:00

Sunday, December 4, 2011 - 2^nd Sunday of Advent

I came up to the home. A serious task was before me. We Christ-followers walk along side one another. We don’t bail out when things get messy in someone’s life. We step into the messes. The person who owned the home I was entering was helping someone make it through a difficult time. I was there to help, to represent the church, and to pray.

Upon entering, I almost forgot why I had come. The home was beautiful. Thinking about it now and thinking about the reality that I live in a home where three children are constantly spilling things and getting things out and not putting things back, and I realize I am extremely impressed by cleanliness. I love my own home more than any other, but I can easily be wowed by something as a simple as an uncluttered room.

But this was more than tidiness. This home was clean, neat, and artfully decorated for the season. The reds, the greens, the thematic Christmas tree; it was beautiful and inviting. I was there because the homeowner and I were joining with someone to help her through painful times. I wish I could have gone back because that home just sung come on in, sit down, and relax a while.

Thinking about brought to mind other welcoming spaces. I recalled recently driving by a showroom and seeing through the enormous windows the large leather chairs. I thought, “What a nice room. I want to go in there and lounge.” Of course the people who arranged that room wanted me to do just that. And if I gave into that impulse and entered, what would they discuss with me as I relaxed in there comfortable space? They would try to get me to buy a car. It is a show room.

I’ve also been impressed with the welcoming, warm environment I have experienced in certain banks. Come on in. Sit a while. And let us hold your money. We’ll pay you, a small bit of interest. Or, if you need some money, you can borrow it. You’ll end up paying us a lot of interest.

Of course not all welcome spaces are intended to sell us a product or a service. Sure, the car showroom wants to sell cars and the bank wants to lend money – nothing wrong there. It’s ok and even pleasing if they create an atmosphere as they go about their business. But, the decorative homeowner is not trying to sell or convince. She’s inviting us. With her painstaking attention to detail in her home’s décor, with her bright smile, and with her offer of hot coffee and cookies, she’s saying, “Come in and experience our family and let us experience you.”

On Sunday mornings, we strive to create welcome space. From our greeters at the door to the friendliness people have at the coffee pot to the way our elders and members embrace one another and welcome new comers, we are saying “Welcome.” With our welcome comes something very specific.

We don’t sell anything. At the offering time, you can give money. That’s between you and God. I think a person’s life is blessed when he or she gives because he’s acknowledging that God is master of everything – even the checkbook. But, no one who comes is required to give. We’re happy you are here and not paying attention to what you do at the offering time. We aren’t here to sell.

We are not here to have you experience us. You will experience HillSong, but the glorification of HillSong is not our purpose. Nor is fellowship our purpose. Coming, especially on a day when we take communion and share a meal, you’ll have plenty of wonderful fellowship. But fellowship is not why we are here.

No, we create this welcome space so that people might come together in the name of Jesus Christ and pray to God and worship God. That’s why we are here. So come.

Come and worship. Come and pray. Within this house, come to the very specific welcome spot, the Lord’s Supper table. Come with your sin and leave it here. Come to receive – receive forgiveness and salvation and new life. Come.

This is probably easier said than done. We’re too accustomed to people trying to sell us things or trying to get us do thing or join things or pledge our loyalty or our time. From volunteers to sales persons to the government collecting taxes to political parties seeking votes – for forever and a day people come to us to get something from us. Is it truly possible that we can come to church and there are no strings attached? Nothing is required of us?

Is it really possible for us to believe that when we pray something might actually happen? Life is too bumpy, too full of users who want to use us, and too uncertain. Our age is too empirical, too scientific; no, we can’t trust in prayer or in the God who is the object of prayer. Can we?

Clearly church goers do – at some level. Thousands and millions would not come in each Sunday, would not get baptized, would not take the bread and cup if we didn’t think there was something to it. Somewhere deep inside, we believe or at least give mental assent to the idea that in this welcome place, we can pray, God does hear, and God acts in response to us.

Faith becomes vibrant and God is actually seen and known when that deep, latent, sleeping faith awakens and claws its way out from deep inside. It fights its way to the surface. The faith that believes that God is real and answers prayer becomes a more powerful force the bombardment of materialistic advertising noise the hits with blitzkrieg force throughout the year and intensifies from November to year’s end. Our belief in God rises above the noise, and we dare believe that God is going to do the amazing among us here and now.

Craig Broyles, a professor of religious studies, sees a conversion taking place in Psalm 85.[i] It’s odd to think of it that way because the Psalm comes from the Jews who were the Chosen People. Conversion typically means a radical change, like a democrat becoming a republican, or an Israeli embracing Islam. If someone is already a Jew, what kind of conversion would he undergo? In the first three verses, the singer in the Psalm tells of times past when God restored his favorable people through forgiveness and mercy. God has already shown the willingness to do this. The next four verses though, beg God to do it again. “Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us” (v.4).

The conversion is the change from an assumed faith to a chosen, claimed faith. One is chosen because she’s Jewish. Broyles suggests that this Psalm calls for one who is of the chosen people by birth to actually make the life commitment to follow God, worship God, and put all their trust in God. Verse 8, “The Lord God will … speak peace … to those who turn to him in their hearts.”

The same conversion is needed by people who have spoken the language of Christianity and even experienced earlier seasons of life-changing faith, but now only hear the noise; the noise of bad news; the noise of purchase, buy, put on layaway, buy on credit; the noise of instant gratification. We are Christians who need to convert so that we become pray-ers who believe in prayer and rely on it; and Christ-followers who follow wherever He leads.

We’ve talked about welcoming space and said that church is a welcoming space that invites us to pray. This leads to an observation from Dennis Tucker of Truett Theological Seminary.[ii] He sees Psalm 85 create pastoral space for us so we can inhabit the second Sunday of Advent. I see it too. The singer of the Psalm goes through a progression. Following his lead, we go through this progression, and the noise starts to fade and our faith starts to rise. Because of what have believed, however weak our belief might have been at the beginning and weaker still in hard times, and because of who God is, the noise recedes and we come to trust that we can truly pray with great expectations.

Already we’ve seen the Psalmist acknowledge God’s past mercy, and then beg for more mercy. He does what we are here to do. In the midst of worship, he prays. Verse 7 – “Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.” He absolutely, without doubt and without shrinking his faith so it will fit his culture’s dictated worldview, he prays and then expects that he will see God’s salvation. “Show us.”

So, we pray, “God, show us.”

Then, “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak” (v.8a). This is Advent. We read the word together, as a community of faith. We believe it. We pray it. We wait, expecting God to act, and we know He will. Jesus was born in a manger. Jesus did rise from death. The Holy Spirit did come. The prophet Habakkuk, “I will stand at my watchpost. I will keep watch to see what God will say to me” (Hab. 2:1). That’s us. We believe God when he says, “My word [will go out] from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish its purpose” (Isaiah 55:11).

We pray, God show us your steadfast love. We wait saying expectantly, “Lord, let us hear what you, Lord God, will say.”

Finally, in our waiting, we know as the singer of the Psalm, God will respond. Even in Advent, we are Easter morning children, resurrection people. We no that no matter how bleak life might look, the Son has risen. Jesus is alive and in him we have life. We can pray the Psalmist’s words, only we have knowledge the Psalmist did not have.

“O God show us.”

“Let us wait and hear.”

Verse 8, second stanza, “For he will speak peace to his people; to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.”

We come into this welcome space, roughed up by life. Here, prompted by the Psalmist who sung the song of Psalm 85, we are invited to inhabit Advent, the time when we wait believing God will truly come in the person of Jesus. Our waiting is full of great expectations simply because we know who God is and what God has done. There may be wars about in the world and turmoil in the hearts of many who come to church for worship. But together, as we pray together, we experience conversion that leads us to see God as the true bringer of peace who can be trusted. “Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him” (v.85a).

I know there are listeners here who feel a shout of AMEN in their spirits at hearing this. This family of believers includes many who have followed Jesus and prayed with expectation for a long time, most of their lives. Others here, might not be so sure. You know the Christian story and you’ve had good feelings in church before. Still, that conversion hasn’t happened, not to the point that you can hear the Holy Spirit. There’s still too much noise of the world in your hears and you think maybe everything said this morning is just spiritual bluster without foundation or true substance. I commend your hesitancy, your skepticism.

This is a welcome place and you are invited. In a moment, Heather will lead us in the Lord’s Supper. As we worship in song, as we take the bread and cup, enter into prayer, even if you are full of doubt. Even if you think I am full of baloney and just kidding myself. Don’t trust me. Look at Psalm 85. Make verses 7-8 your very own.

Come, pray.

In your own heart, straining to hear God above the noise, say, “Show me your Love, O Lord. I will wait. Let me hear what God the Lord will speak.”

AMEN

[i] C. Broyles (1999), New International Biblical Commentary: Psalms (Vol 11), Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, MA, p.345.

[ii] D. Tucker, commentary on the working preacher website, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=12/4/2011&tab=5

2011-11-28T02:55:00.001-08:00

1^st Sunday of Advent

Psalm 80

Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

⁷Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

¹⁹Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

The deficit-reduction supercommittee, stuck in a partisan deadlock, faces an almost certain collapse—raising the threat of disruptive military spending cuts and a resurgent public anger at Congress as it struggles with the basic tasks of governance. Barring an unlikely, last-second breakthrough, the committee is expected to announce Monday that it failed to reach its mandated goal of writing a bipartisan bill to reduce deficits over the next 10 years by at least $1.2 trillion. That expected failure injects a greater uncertainty into the nation's political and economic landscape heading into a volatile election year.

That’s from the Wall Street Journal’s online edition, and I only vaguely understand it. I am a citizen and a voter. The Congress talked about in the article is comprised of senators and representatives who serve because enough of us voted them in. Yet, they cannot agree that it is bad that our nation is in debt and has deficits that are unfathomable – $1.2 trillion. Do you know how many zeroes that is?

What I don’t get is the connection; how does the deficit touch me personally, my spending, my bills, my work …

I don’t understand that, but there is someone I do understand. I understand the guy who is up at night, kept awake by questions. He made ‘X income’ in 2008. And it was enough. He and his wife and their preschooler went on a nice beach vacation. They bought Christmas presents for extended family members. They saved for retirement. They paid all their bills. They did not miss a meal. They did not have to dig into savings to do all they wanted to do. They did not have to talk about his wife going back to work just to make ends meet.

The next year, insurance went up. His town added a local tax. Rising fuel costs made every purchase more expensive – heat, gasoline, groceries. And his wife got pregnant. His income stayed the same.

The next year it all repeated. The baby was healthy, thank you God. But, he needed major surgery. So added the story were some medical costs and missed work time. And the income stayed the same. They did save money by skipping the beach and toning it down on the Christmas shopping.

Now it’s 2011, and the income this year is the same – rising expenses, same income. He’s got additional medical issues. His wife is pregnant again. And he wonders … Life is so much more expensive now, and more tiring. We do not have more money. He wonders … last year, we had to dig into savings, just a bit. What’s next?

Author-pastor Eugene Peterson knows the church response to this man. There is only one answer to be found when the people of God gather in the name of Jesus Christ. Sure we do financial management classes. Yes, we have the Helping Hands ministry that gives out money to help when it is needed and we have the money to give. Yes, these ministries and others have their place. But for the man sitting awake at 2 in the morning, wondering, there is but one answer from church. Other places offer other solutions, and church gives more than just this answer, but everything church stands for stands on this one answer. We pray. [i]

We are praying people. The man and the family I described are not suffering – they have not missed a meal or went a week without heat or sold a car and got on with just one. But, he lays awake wondering if significant economic change is just around the corner for his family. And he wonders, if that change is coming, what will it mean? He doesn’t know it, but his forlorn, uncertain, silent heart’s whisper what’s next is a prayer; an Advent prayer.

I feel this pray as I read Psalm 80, a Psalm which does all Psalms do – give us words for prayer. We pray the Psalm no matter what we’re going through. So our friend with the wife and the two young kids sits and wonders and we ponder the circumstances of our lives, and we sit and wonder.

What’s next?

¹Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth

²before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up your might, and come to save us!

³Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

Restore us? What does restoration look like in my life or in yours? Does the man finally get a raise so that he has more money for the higher insurance and the rising cost of live and the mounting medical bills? Maybe that happens, but that’s not the prayer. From what’s next to Restore us O God – this is not about money or creature comforts. We don’t understand this prayer if we think it is answered because we can afford that beach vacation this year.

Restore us, O God. An Advent prayer. Why? When this prayer is answered, we know it is well in our lives and we see God’s face shining. We know we are saved. Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

I can know the guy who has to stretch his dollar because he has the same amount as always, but prices have gone up. He’s not suffering, but his life style is affected. Anxiety gnaws at the edges of his soul.

I hurt for the person sitting across the aisle from him, the one who has been hit harder. She’s lost her job. That was two years ago. One hundred resume submissions, 90 ignored, 5 rejections by email, 5 after a brief interview, and she can see the bottom of her checking account. It’s not completely empty. A little money is left. But she can see the bottom and she’s scared. I hurt for her acknowledging that I don’t know what it is like to be her.

She comes to church and hears calls for offerings and mission trips to other countries and fundraisers for the youth group. Wait a minute, now! She has so much to offer – time, talent, love. Two years ago, she would have been first to sign up. Two years ago she would have paid the way for a teenager to go to Mission Serve. She is as alive in the church and in the Spirit as ever, but does it mean she has to be less involved.

And how does her pain injure her, but also us. When one of us hurts, we all hurt.

She used to love this season. Now, she turns on November radio and after hearing the latest pop star sing “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,” she hears the reminder of all the sales at the mall. She’s got a list of people she loves, people’s she’d like to surprise on Christmas morning. Does this mean she can’t participate in Christmas, not like before?

I don’t think it means that, but right this second, we aren’t talking about Christmas as much as we are talking about worship and church, God and pain and people in pain. What is there for this dear woman, this saint of God, who’s been cut off at the knees by unemployment she didn’t deserve and did not see coming?

From time to time, we offer personal finance coaching. Generous folks here will help people when help is needed. These and other ministries are good, but lots of places not called “church” do the same thing. We are called to pray and we turn to the Psalms so we can know what to say when we pray.

The man we’ve been talking about, who is us, prayed Psalm 80. This unemployed woman we are talking about – she is us. What do we do? What do we pray? She needs to go deeper in Psalm 80. She needs a little more and the prayer is there and the answer that worked for him works for her.

⁷Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

He cried out to God, she to God, the God of hosts. In the Message this is rendered God of the Angel Armies. In the NIV, God, the Almighty. For him it’s anxiety, for her fear, and so she needs more of God. The Psalmist’s prayer which is hers and yours and mine, is reminder that this God is not just any god, but the Almighty before whom all beings in the heavens will bow down. What are the specifics of the salvation God of hosts gives to her? I don’t know! But we trust that it is enough that his face shines and we see it.

Until 2008, I had not seen it, not like this. Any pastor who has more then one month on the job has taken the phone call. Someone is in terrible difficult financial straights, and he swallows his dignity and pride, and he calls. Can the church help with this month’s light bill? He’s a hard working man, ashamed that it’s come to this. What else can he do? To whom else can he turn? We do as much as we can for as many we can while still functioning as the church we believe God has called us to be.

But in 2008, that type of call, which previously might have come in 3 times a month shot up in number. We’ve received 5 times and 6 times as many, so many that we now have a standard, much-practiced procedure for responding. Again, we pray with the callers; we offer as much compassion as we can; we invite everyone to church – people coming for help; people coming to the church to sell us office products; students who rent parking spaces. Through the wise oversight of our helping hands team, we give money to help people.

Every pastor I’ve talked to, and I am pretty tight with 20-30 pastors in North Carolina/Virginia/South Caroline, has experienced the same uptick in this type of activity. In a down economy, those already in poverty have a rough go, and many who were just barely above the classification “poor” find themselves further and further behind. They sink into financial crisis. I have never been in that situation. I don’t know what it is like. I do know God calls – the body of Christ, the church - to respond with the love Jesus shows.

There are many things we can do. We can protect the dignity of all who come through our doors recognizing and declaring that we are all sinners made new by Jesus. We can, as we spend time out and about in town, treat people with great respect and approach others with a posture of humility and love and grace and deference. We can open our doors and open our hearts, and we must.

Ultimately, we are the church and the church prays. I can’t tell the my friend who battles the burden of poverty how to pray. I can’t say what will happen when he prays. What we do is come together, walk to the Psalms together, join arms with one another, pray together, and pray expectantly, truly believing God is going to do something.

The man with the shrinking income prayed Psalm 80, praying to God. The unemployed woman went deeper in Psalm 80. She needs more of God, and she discovered that the deeper into our hearts that we go and the deeper into the Psalms that we pray, the more of God is found. She prayed to God, the Lord of Hosts, the Almighty. Now, the poor need more still and so they go to the well prayer and go deeper, again with Psalm 80 providing the words for the What’s next prayer.

¹⁷But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself.

¹⁸Then we will never turn back from you; give us life, and we will call on your name.

¹⁹Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

We pray to God, the God who is over the angels, the heavenly host; he is also Lord, master of all creation. We pray desperate prayers for the brother or sister in Christ who is sinking in poverty. Will the shining face of God be enough? We can’t say until we have prayed Psalms from the depths of our being.

We do know one thing, as we worship together on the first Sunday of Advent, a time of expectation, waiting on the coming of God. We do know this. The Psalmist prayed without have any idea of the specifics of God’s salvation. The Psalmist said, “Restore us, O Lord God.” God came, a baby in a manger, a carpenter in Nazareth, a prophet killed on a cross, God in human flesh. For all people, to all people, out of love for all people, God came.

For better or for worse, hopeful with much joy and not too much pain, we’ll participate in American Christmas this year. We’ll participate in church Christmas. Now though, today, as God’s gathered people, we pray. “O God, restore us.” “O God of hosts, restore us.” “O Lord God of hosts, restores us.” We pray not knowing exactly what restoration looks like. But even not knowing, we pray, and we put arms around one another, and we pray together. And we do know that the God who hears our prayers came and will come again.

AMEN

[i] E. Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (Grand Rapids, MI, 1992), chapter 3, p.73-115.

"Seeking the Best Thing” (Matthew 26:59-66)

2011-11-21T07:27:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Christian author Eugene Peterson has written many books and is perhaps best known for his translation/interpretation of the entire Bible. His work is extremely popular and many of you use it. It is called The Message.

As tremendously talented as he is at Greek and Hebrew and at the craft of writing, Peterson started out as a pastor, and still views himself primarily as a pastor. In the 1960’s his denomination, the Presbyterians, sent him to start up a new church in Maryland. What was then farm country is now DC-Baltimore urban sprawl. The denomination demonstrated vision in predicting a population boom. That boom happened, and Peterson’s church grew to be a strong, thriving, lasting congregation.

But the process of building it was spiritually draining on Eugene Peterson. He longed to help people know God and walk with God throughout their lives. The longer he was at the work of church planting, the less appealing church growth was for Peterson, because church growth involved numbers – number of baptisms, number of new members, number of dollars tithed. He celebrated when a person was born again, truly saved in a new found faith in Jesus Christ. He sensed though that his denomination was more interested in the numbers saved than the individual stories of actual people meeting God. He felt that this work of Church-planting and church growth was reflective of business models and success was determined the way businesses determine success. He wanted to be someone who cared for and grew souls. He felt the denomination wanted him to grow the Presbyterian brand of American Christianity.

He also thought the denomination did not care how he was doing personally. Part of his work was to file a report every month. The first page was statistics. How many calls had he made (this was church planting and he needed to bring people together to form a new congregation)? What was the worship attendance? The second page was to be devoted to Peterson’s personal, spiritual journey as he planted this church. He came to believe that the denominational leaders were only looking for measurable results. So they only read the first page of his report and ignored the subsequent which were much more personal and to Peterson more important.

To test his theory, that he was being ignored, Peterson got creative. In the next report, he filled out the numbers as he did each month. But on the personal reporting page, he wrote in detail about a long, slow slide into depression. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t pray, and had no zeal for his calling. He thought maybe he should consider quitting. Could they recommend a counselor? No response. Of course, this wasn’t true, but he wanted to test the leaders, and they failed the test.

So, he took it up a notch. The next month, he turned the reporting as usual, and then wrote on the second page his personal report. Again imagined, he developed a drinking problem. The congregation graciously ignored it, but one Sunday, one of the elders actually had to complete the sermon. So he felt he needed treatment. What did the denomination recommend? No response.

The next month, he fell into an affair. He was counseling a woman in an abusive marriage, but they ended up together, in one of the church pews. They were discovered by the ladies who came into arrange the flowers for Sunday morning. He thought that was it, but apparently in that community, swingers were admired. The next Sunday, attendance doubled.

It got to be great fun for Peterson and his wife, imagining new shocking things to write that his overseers never read because all they wanted was to see that the church was growing, people were being baptized, money was tithed, and the numbers were up. He wrote in another report that one very unorthodox scholar believed there was a psychedelic mushroom cult in 1^st Palestine and Jesus was a part of it and He, Peterson, was going to introduce this drug-use as a part of the church’s worship. And he was changing the liturgy to fit the sex-crazed, drug-addicted culture in which he ministered. Never did he get any response.

The time came to meet with the denominational leaders in New York City. The church plant was successful and the church would now be on its own. The council thanked Peterson for his good work and faithful reporting. He thanked them for all the resources they provided including his paycheck. Then he asked why they had never read any of the personal reports. They assured him they had, but they were caught. He asked why they never sent recommendations when he was in trouble with alcohol. He asked why they didn’t recommend a therapist when he was depressed. On and on, and they had no answer, and they were shocked upon first hearing of the stories of sex and shrooms. Peterson writes, “Their faces were blank, and then confused – followed by a splendid vaudeville slapstick of buck-passing and excuse-making.”[i]

The leaders of the denomination got what they sought – a successful church in a growing area. Were they seeking the right thing? They completely missed a human being, a story, albeit a fictional story. Were they looking for the right thing? Are we?

I always say 30 was the most important birthday of my life because I stopped trying to be “cool,” and realized I never was “cool,” and never would be. It wasn’t really about my coolness one was or another. I started really liking myself, not in a arrogant or narcissistic way, but in a healthy way.

However, at 10 years old, I got it into my mind that I wanted to be cool and that meant I had to be friends with certain people. My real best friends, Michael and Doug, were too familiar to be cool enough. I don’t know why, but I thought Earl was the coolest kid in our class. So when we had sprinting races in gym class, Earl asked me to let him keep pace. I was about the fastest sprinter in that class, which, when you think about it is pretty cool. But I couldn’t see that through my Earl-envy. Earl asked me to ease up and I did because, it’s Earl. I finished in fourth place, not first. The phys-ed teacher chewed me out. He knew I was fast and he knew I was placating my “cool friend.” He didn’t like me jeopardizing my potential for the sake of popularity.

Later, Doug, my real friend, was coming for a sleepover. I convinced him and my mom that we had to invite Earl. So, Doug and I went with Earl to Earl’s house so he could get his sleeping bag. My mom was crystal clear. Earl lived on the other side of Rochester Road. She said, “Don’t cross that road. Wait at the road for Earl to get his stuff and then the three of you walk back.”

As soon as were out of sight of my house, I said, “Hey, we’re going to Earl’s.” Doug said, “Your mom said not to cross Rochester.” But Earl lived on the other side and Earl was cool and I wanted to be cool. That’s what I was looking for! My mom certainly wasn’t cool. And Doug’s coolness factor was in doubt because he wanted to listen to my mom, not Earl.

So we broke the rules and went to Earl’s house and starting walking back and everything was fine until, just on the wrong side of Rochester, we were surrounded by Larry Padget’s gang. Larry was going to have some fun, bullying me around and there wasn’t much I could do about it. Larry took his time in this cruel tormenting game. Right about the time he was going to move from petty taunting to the rearrangement of my face, my dad rode up on bike to see why were taking so long.

He ran Larry’s gang off. Then he told me I had to go confess my disobedience. I wish he had just killed me on the spot. I swear when my mom got that yard stick, it sounded like a light saber being opened. And I learned that Earl wasn’t so “cool,” and being “cool” wasn’t so great.

It took another 20 years before I finally understood – I had been seeking the wrong thing. I didn’t like myself because I tried to live up to false ideal, idols I had created. I was a mostly happy person, but I didn’t find deep inner joy, joy that comes in good and bad times, until I stopped trying to advance myself and started looking to something else as the deepest longing of my life.

I’ll get to that, but I don’t want to jump ahead. What is it we long for? What do we seek? Success that can be measured and show me to be more successful than my cousin or my Father or the guy who was my nemesis in high school? Does my own joy depend on me being better than someone else? What do we seek? To be the best church around – not just a community of faith, but one that is better in some measurable way than other communities of faith? What are we looking for, longing for?

Jesus miraculously cured a man on the Sabbath day, and as he did, he declared himself to be greater than the temple (Mt. 12:6). Upon hearing this “the Pharisees went out and plotted against him, how they might destroy him” (12:14). Later, after entering Jerusalem, with Jesus’ popularity at a fever pitch, the leaders in the temple cannot stand it. “The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to put Him to death, because they were afraid of the people” (Luke 22:2). And finally, with Jesus arrested, betrayed by Judas and dragged in chains to the home of the high priest, “The chief priests and the whole council were looking for false testimony against Jesus” (Mt. 22:59).

The group that condemned Jesus the night of his arrest, the night before the crucifixion was a diverse bunch. Pharisees on the council concerned themselves with the pure practice of Torah religion. Men of the book and of the law, they could not believe God would send a Messiah who did the things Jesus did, befriending tax collectors, violating the intricacies of Sabbath law for the sake of blessing wounded people, and showing mercy to Gentiles. The Sadducees on the council clashed with Jesus over the theology of resurrection. They also chafed at Jesus’ unapologetic critique of their hypocritical approach to religious leadership. And the chief priest himself, contended with Jesus because Jesus claimed authority over the temple and thus over the interpretation of and practice of faith in Israel. Furthermore, the chief priests and temple elders feared Jesus’ bold preaching would eventually rile up the Roman overlords and perhaps Rome would react against all Jews, not just those of the Jesus sect. For these reasons and many, many more, these disparate groups who were usually at odds with one another all came together seeking the same thing – the death of Jesus.

Normally these religious leaders weren’t murderers. How could their inner longings become so distorted that they actually felt this solution, one that is ultimate and unchangeable, was the right one? They most certainly would have depicted themselves as the heroes if they had written the history of Jerusalem in 30AD. How do good people become villains?

How does righteousness become corrupted to the point that we who consider ourselves faithful come to produce evil? Doesn’t it start when we long for something less than the very best thing?

The Presbyterians weren’t wrong to want to have a thriving, growing church in Western Maryland. But at the cost of neglecting the souls who were transformed in those churches and neglecting the lives of the pastors they sent to oversee those churches …

I wasn’t wrong to want to be friends with Earl. I was wrong to use Earl to make think of myself as cool. It’s a mistake I repeated too many times in my teenage years and into my 20’s.

Religious leaders aren’t wrong to seek out the pure practice of faith in worship and daily living. Religion scholars are not in the wrong when they strive mightily for the right understanding of scripture. But when preachers and priests and theologians and scholars get so caught up in their own rightness that they miss the presence of God when they are the very ones who ought to be pointing out the presence of God …

What are we longing for?

“In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem” (Mt. 2:1). These were Magi from Persia, and they knew Judaism well. In 6^th century BC, many Jews were forced into slavery in Babylon (modern day Iraq) and Persia (modern day Iran). When Cyrus permitted Nehemiah to rebuild Jerusalem, thousands of Jews returned, but just as many remained for they had lives there. They lived in harmony with the Persians. The Magi took a special interest in these Hebrews.

In this era, unlike today, science and religious knowledge worked hand-in-hand to discover truth. These Magi studied the stars as well as the prophecies of many ancient religions. So when God spoke the birth of Jesus through natural phenomenon, a star, they were the ones to notice. They knew this was of God – the God of the Jews.

Assuming the King of the Jews would want to see prophecy fulfilled as much they, gentiles, they went to Herod “asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage’” (2:2). We have come to pay him homage.

They came to worship. They longed to bow before the God who produced this wondrous star. I believe these Iranians – that what Persians are – unique people in history discovered in themselves the longing God puts in all of us, the longing to worship Him. Many people replace that longing by seeking popularity, success, power, knowledge, satisfaction in romantic love or career or relationships; we cannot be fulfilled until those things are all set beneath this one thing – the deep desire the pay homage to God.

Departing from Herod’s palace in Jerusalem, the Magi

set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. ¹¹On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

AMEN

[i] E. Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (Grand Rapids, MI, 1992), p.79.

Is Jesus who We Want Him to Be? (Matthew 26:47-50; John 3:25-30)

2011-11-14T13:29:00.000-08:00

Is Jesus who We Want Him to Be? (Matthew 26:47-50; John 3:25-30)

Matthew 26:47-50

⁴⁷While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived; with him was a large crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. ⁴⁸Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him.” ⁴⁹At once he came up to Jesus and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him. ⁵⁰Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you are here to do.” Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and arrested him.

Why did Judas Iscariot do that? He was paid 30 coins to hand Jesus over to the chief priests. Thirty coins, a paltry sum! Why, did he really betray Jesus?

Each gospel was written at least 30 years after the resurrection. The story was burned into the memory of the core members of the early church before it was written and circulated, and in that story, Judas was the betrayer and nothing more. Whatever good he did in his life was forgotten. This is clear in the way the Gospel writers portray him. He’s always listed as Judas who betrayed Jesus. Didn’t they all flee? Didn’t Peter deny? Didn’t Thomas doubt? Judas is singled out by Gospel writers for special blame, cast as one of the villains of the story by the storytellers. Are they being fair?

There’s always more to the story. Matthew 10 says Jesus sent out his 12 disciples in pairs and he gave them the power to cast out demons and miraculously heal diseases. Jesus endowed the disciples with the power of the Spirit – all 12 of them. That includes Judas. Knowing Judas as he did, Jesus still blessed him and trusted him as he did the others on this miracle-working mission. Along with the other disciples, Judas was able, on that specific mission, to do the very things that Jesus did. It would have been appropriate to refer to him as the Apostle Judas.

We don’t ever see him that way, though, do we? He’s the betrayer, not the apostle. Apostle Peter, Apostle Paul, Apostle John – it just rolls off the tongue. But Apostle Judas? No, that’s not how he’s remembered.

Judas Iscariot – he’s the crook among the disciples. On top of all the gospel authors telling their stories with him as a turncoat from the very first mention of his name, John’s gospel adds to the negative light cast on this unfortunate person. A woman came and anointed Jesus with costly perfume. All the gospel writers report that the disciples criticized the woman and criticized Jesus for receiving her lavish, impractical offering. Only in John’s Gospel is Judas specified as the vocal critic who is all too willing to challenge Jesus.

From John 12

⁴But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ⁵“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” ⁶(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) ⁷Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. ⁸You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” ⁹

The narrator’s editorial comments make it clear that Judas is a hopelessly fallen character from the outset and throughout in the story of Jesus. We’re all sinners. Each New Testament book and especially the Gospels make that clear. Each human being, each reader, each one of us, has sin sticking to us, and our only hope is forgiveness and salvation that we receive as a free gift of God given in the person of his Son, God in the flesh, Jesus, the Messiah. That’s crystal clear. What is equally clear is we have hope because of Jesus. But somehow, because of his specific sin, Judas did not.

So, we can distance ourselves from Judas. I commit my sins and you commit yours, but we weren’t the ones who betrayed Christ. We aren’t that bad, are we?

I have to go back to that moment in the Garden of Gethsemane. Judas led a band of armed ruffians. He called out the title of highest respect, ‘Rabbi,’ and gave the display of honor so appreciated in the Middle East, the kiss. Why? Why did Judas betray Jesus?

Maybe it really was for 30 pieces of silver. John’s Gospel says he was greedy and had his hand in the till. He wouldn’t be the first person involved in a revival movement that was stained with greed and financial corruption. Sadly, the pages of Christianity Today magazine and other media outlets are often reporting on Christian leaders who fall from grace because they cheated the church, took money that wasn’t theirs. And there are many who don’t steal money, but are simply paid exorbitant salaries and after some time come to think they worth the six figure incomes they receive. At 22 years old, when I first said I wanted to go into vocational ministry and believed I was being called to be a pastor; two different pastors gave the same advice, not knowing what the other had said. Watch out for women and money. I thought it was strange, unspiritual advice, definitely not what I expected. Now, 20 years later, I know why they said it. Sexual temptation and greed are things that destroy followers of Jesus Christ. Maybe we try to read too much Judas’ motives for betrayal. Maybe it was a simple a case of old fashioned greed – 30 coins for the life of Jesus.

Maybe it was more than that. Maybe Judas believed what the Gospel of John tells us he said. Maybe he was, sort of, concerned about the needy. Maybe Judas was a pragmatist who saw 300 denarii worth of coins wasted on perfume that was poured over Jesus, and the excess truly irritated him. He might have stolen some of that money, but he also might have truly given a lot of it to help poorer people. Human beings are that twisted and torn. Made in the image of God, we can show great compassion. And in the next moment, fallen sinners in the heritage of Adam and Eve, we turn around and hurt others. Maybe Judas, blind to his own sin and also blind to who Jesus really was, was annoyed at the generous worship shown by the woman who anointed Jesus.

We could speculate further. In Matthew 10, when Jesus sends out his 12 on the mission of miraculous healing and exorcism, Judas is paired with Simon the Zealot. The Zealots were a revolutionary group that wanted to take up arms and drive Rome out of Israel with military force. Maybe Judas was also a Zealot or at least sympathetic to their cause. Maybe he turned Jesus into the authorities because he thought his action would provoke a violent uprising. I am certain Judas did not know Jesus would be crucified. I am positive that in his own mind, he wasn’t sending Jesus to death. I am not clear on Judas’ motive, but I am sure he was surprised by how things turned out.

Whatever his motive, Jesus wasn’t who Judas wanted him to be. Judas did not truly see Jesus as master worthy of complete respect and loyalty, or else he would not have stolen from him. Judas did not accept Jesus as Lord, or else he would not have objected to worship of him and in fact he would have joined in the adoration of Jesus as Peter and the women disciples expressed at different times. Judas did not trust Jesus as leader or trust that Jesus knew what was best, or else he would not have betrayed him. He would not have tried to force Jesus’ hand. Whatever drove Judas; Jesus was not who Judas wanted him to be.

Who do we want Jesus to be? Personal Lord and Savior! No, Jesus is not my personal Lord. Jesus is not mine at all, or yours. I am his. He is the possessor and we the possessions. He is the master and we the servants. Jesus is not our personal god to turn to when we need him. He’s Lord of the universe and our story must conform to His. He is not to be fit into our lives where it works for us. We are to be fully committed to Him.

Who do we want Jesus to be? The one who answers our prayers? Yes, but also no. Yes, we are to pray without ceasing, in all circumstances. Yes, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are interested in the most intimate and small details of our lives. Yes, Jesus answers our prayers. Yes, we are to take all things to him in prayer. Yes! Yes! Yes! However, Jesus is not the divine wish-come-true, the one who gives whatever we want. Jesus is not a catalogue. In prayer, we seek God’s will. There has to be more to our prayer life than simply asking for things. And when we ask for things, we have to be prepared for what God gives. When we ask to have the thorn removed from our side, we have to be prepared to hear as Paul did, “My grace is sufficient.” And we have to accept that, as Paul did, thorn and all. When we ask that this cup be taken from us, we have to be prepared to drink it as Jesus did. He didn’t want to be crucified, and he asked God for a way out. But he finished that prayer saying, “Not my will be yours be done.”

Who do we want Jesus to be? The one who makes us right and others wrong? We’re with Jesus and the world isn’t or “they” aren’t. Is that how we see it? The Muslims, the Communists, the Fascists, the Liberals, the Occupiers, the Tea Partiers … who would we “they” are? Jesus is for us, and against them. Jesus is the one who justifies us as we live for ourselves. Is that how we see it? Be careful! Bible scholars universally identify Pharisees as the conservatives and the scripture experts. In the world of the New Testament, the Pharisees were the Biblical fundamentalists, and Jesus was constantly refuting them, challenging them, and offering an alternative to the way they said one should live. Yes, it is true, Jesus justifies us, but on his terms not ours. Too many Christians create their own picture of the good life and then slap Jesus’ name on it like a bumper sticker. With the “Jesus tag,” they justify a materialistic, self-serving, hypocritical life. If that’s how we see Jesus, we need to go back again and read the depictions of judgment in the New Testament and also the conditions for which one falls under judgment. Matthew 25 and Luke 16 are good starting points.

Who do we want Jesus to be? Personal Savior? Buddy? Prayer answerer? Label to justify the lives we’ve decided to live? Whatever else we might say about Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus, we can know this. Jesus wasn’t who Judas wanted him to be because Jesus doesn’t conform to man’s expectations. Not Judas’ expectations or the Pharisees’. Not your expectations or mine. He won’t be who the world says he should be or who the church says he should be. I think the issue with Judas has to do with conformity. We might not each do what Judas did, but do we conform to Jesus’ ways or do we want Jesus to conform to our expectations?

In another New Testament person, John the Baptist, we find another posture to be taken toward Jesus. It comes up in a conversation between John and his disciples, who perceived that Jesus was competing with John for followers. Note how John sees it when his most faithful followers show concern over Jesus’ rising popularity.

From the Gospel of John, 3:26-30

²⁶They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” ²⁷John answered, “No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. ²⁸You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.’ ²⁹He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. ³⁰He must increase, but I must decrease.”

In what situation would we say that our own decrease actually makes us happy, fulfilled? In America today, the most popular sport, by far, is professional football. And the most admired people in the NFL are those who seen as ultra-competitive. Commentators speak in admiring tones when the describe the coach or player is so pathologically competitive that he wants to win at any and everything – checkers, ping pong, everything! He wants to win at all costs. He’s obsessed with winning. We love our NFL and we put on a pedestal the greatest winners.

Now here comes John the Baptist saying Jesus must increase, but I must decrease. John doesn’t care if the Lions beat the Bears next week. John is happy with his own decline for the sake of Jesus’ exaltation. Put more simply, John wants people to forget about him and turn to Jesus. He couldn’t be any clearer about that.

John gets what he wants. His life comes to an end when, after languishing in Herod’s prison, he is beheaded. Everyone who puts Jesus first and dies to self in order to glorify does not die a martyr’s death, but everyone who claims to be a passionately devoted follower of Jesus has to be ready to do just that.

It is a matter of how we approach Jesus. Do we come to him hoping he will be who we want him to be? Or do we come as broken sinners? Do we come seeing him as a loving God who welcomes us with open arms and offers complete forgiveness? In approaching that way, do we have the humility to die to self that we might be made new? Not “a new, improved, better me” that we hear about on diet ads and in self-help books; do we come with such complete surrender that Jesus takes over our lives and we are made new?

Judas died a horrible, lonely death. He was forgotten by all except to be remembered as a betrayer. At the judgment, he will, to his own horror, see openly what he failed to see in his time with Jesus. John also died a horrible, lonely death, but before he did, in this life, he saw the ascension of Jesus, and his joy was made complete. At the final judgment, he will come and see what he already testified to in his life – the love and the reign of Jesus. Then, John will hear these words. “Well done good and faithful one. Enter into the joy of your master.”

May we let go of roles we’d like Jesus to fulfill. May we instead be given eyes to see who Jesus is and when we see Him, may we give ourselves to Him in total surrender.

AMEN

Your Feedback; I want to hear from you

2011-10-31T10:34:00.000-07:00

I appreciate all of you who read the blog. Lately I have mostly been posting the manuscripts from my Sunday sermons. With our family's adjustments to adopting our new daughter, and we responsibilities at church, I haven't had as much time for new posts as I'd like.

However, as November comes, I am feeling a fresh wind in my spirit. I'd love to write more.

So ...

What would you like me to talk about? I am grateful for people who take time to read the blog and I hope it is encouraging for you. My readers come from Netherlands, Russia, India, Slovenia, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, as well as many other places. Shoot me a comment. Let me know where you are from and what concerns or interests you the most, and I'll try to offer my views and my thoughts on what scripture has to say about what is on your mind. I bet whatever topic it is that you bring will be relevant to many other readers. Just comment on this post to get a conversation started.

When the Unexpected Happens (Matthew 27:16-22, 32)

2011-10-31T08:19:00.000-07:00

It was before we had kids, a Friday. Candy I went to a fast food chicken place near our home, Popeye’s. A group of women in the long line in front of us were talking away, carrying on. I don’t remember if I made a comment, or how it happened, but before I knew it, we were in their conversation. That’s when the river of time began to flow and all Candy and I could do was ride with the current.

The women discovered that I was a pastor. We discovered they were all wives of the head coach and assistant coaches of the local high school football team. It was just across the main road. They were buying the pre-game meal for the coaches. They invited us to come to the game with them.

OK.

Once there, they got word to the coaches that a pastor was sitting with them. Candy and I thought of ourselves not as pastor and pastor’s wife, but as a happy couple out on a cheap date. Without knowing it, we were caught up in something God was doing. After the game, one of the parents of one of the players asked if I would come down and lead both teams in prayer. It seems that the previous night, in the JV game between the same two teams, a player sustained a spinal chord injury. So, I did what was requested. I found myself, for the first time since playing over decade prior, on the field. This time, I was in the role of pastor leading young men, shaken up by recent events, in prayer. And, the team asked me twice to come back and lead them in pre-game devotions.

How did all of that happen? Candy and I willingly engaged in conversation with strangers, they extended an invitation out of spontaneous kindness, and we responded. God stepped in from there.

That won’t happen to you. It won’t happen to me again. Some of what took place occurred because of my official role in church, but much of it just happened. That’s the way unexpected experiences come. They just happen. Maybe something takes place in your life because you are a mom or because you are over 55 or because you work at a University or because you are shopping for batteries; whatever the causal event, the unexpected pops, well, unexpectedly! Then what?

He was in prison and deserved to be there. His name was Jesus Barabbas, and the gospel writer Matthew called him a ‘notorious prisoner’ (27:16). Commentaries say that Greek word was used to describe bands of thieves who would hide out in rural areas. They attacked processions of Romans, so in a sense, they were political rebels. However, they also robbed Israelites who traveled the remote roads. In those instances, they were common thugs, feared by all.

This one, Jesus Barabbas, was caught and scheduled to be executed by the merciless Roman Governor Pontius Pilate. Resigned to his fate, he bided his time, undoubtedly engaging in gambling and fistfights with the other inmates in the hellhole that was Pilate’s prison. Some dreamed of being freed.

Pilate, as a way of controlling the Jews through gaining their favor, would give amnesty to one criminal every year at Passover. He would invite the crowd to shout out the name of one destined for a crucifixion. Whichever criminal had his name shouted loudest was freed. It was a twisted game, one more way the Roman overlords manipulated the conquered peoples they ruled. No one among those incarcerated could honestly hope to the one freed. Still, some dared to dreamed about it.

But, Barabbas was as Matthew said, notorious; feared by soldier and peasant alike. He had to know his name would never be called. When the guards summoned him, he had to expect that it was his time for death. Did he pray for a quick death? Did he tremble, the savage killer now struck with fear at the miserable execution that awaited him? He had seen plenty of crosses. He knew what was coming. What did the notorious one think when he was released? How in the world did the crowd call his name?

Surely, Barabbas would eventually learn that Pilate limited the choices for amnesty to him and the controversial miracle worker, that other Jesus, the Galilean they said was the Messiah. Barabbas surely knew that that Jesus didn’t kill people. He healed them. Surely Barabbas knew that that Jesus wasn’t really guilty of a horrible crime; it’s possible he hadn’t done anything at all. He was arrested for political reasons. Now, he would be nailed to the cross that had been reserved for the notorious bandit.

This was unexpected. What would Barabbas do now?

I was at my former church when the call came in. Someone in the neighborhood had died. A lot of people who came to Washington DC for government jobs in the 40’s and 50’s lived in that neighborhood of duplexes in Arlington, VA. The decades passed and that community was flooded first by Vietnamese boat people, then by refugees from the civil war in El Salvador, then by people fleeing political unrest in Ethiopia, and genocide in Sudan. It was a complete hodgepodge.

Those post-WW II governments workers who flocked to the DC area from Western Pennsylvania, Maryland, Western Virginia, and Tennessee were mostly retired when I moved there in 1997. They were aging as the community changed. And one family of one of the old residents called because their mother had died. They wanted to donate her furniture to the church, which we would then give the furniture to needy families.

We set that up, and the day came to transport the pieces of furniture back to our church parking lot. As I recall, I was moving a coffee table that we were going to use in the church building in one of the classrooms. It was so close to the house, I could just carry the light coffee table the two blocks back to our building. As I did, a taxi cab sort of pulled up beside me and rolled down the window. The driver, a woman, asked what I was doing with all this furniture? Could she have some?

Sure! But a lot of it was back at the church. We met over there and loaded a few things into her car. She had her 23-year-old daughter with her. The young woman and I started talking and it was quickly clear that she needed two things very badly, a Bible and a job. It just so happened that we needed someone to answer the phones during the day and put together our newsletter.

As an aside, I do not recommend that churches fill important staff positions haphazardly. When we hired her, Jessica was not even a believer. She was seeker. I don’t recommend hiring unbelievers or seekers onto the church staff. Employees of the church should be followers of Jesus Christ. But this was a special case. I knew God was in this. I couldn’t identify specifically how God was in this, but God was definitely in this. I was terribly conflicted. We gave her a Bible, and we hired 23-year-old Jessica as our church secretary.

Then, she started coming to church for worship on Sundays. Then, she joined the church choir. And she formed friendships in our church. Next, she started bringing her family, her sisters and nieces and nephews to church with her. Finally, she gave her heart to Jesus and was baptized. And through my five years, here at HillSong, away from there, I have kept in touch with her through Facebook, and she had stayed connected with the church.

How did it happen? I did not expect for someone in the neighborhood to donate furniture. But we said, sure, we’d get it to people who could use it. I did not expect one of those people to request a Bible. I don’t know if this would surprise you, but in the churches I have served, we probably get 50 people who request financial assistance for every 1 that asks for a Bible or asks for prayer. But she did ask for Bible and she really did want it and she really did read it and take seriously what it says.

What do we do when the unexpected comes?

Simon came to Jerusalem for Passover. Many commentators believe this Simon was in fact Hebrew and had migrated to Cyrene which was in Egypt. He was part of the Jewish Diaspora. There were Jews all over the Mediterranean world and as far south as Arabia and as far east as present-day India. They made pilgrimage to the city of David annually so they could celebrate Passover at the temple. Simon was African and was also Jewish. He may have been a Diaspora Jew or he may have been a dark-skinned African person who converted to Judaism, a proselyte. Either way, he was in Jerusalem to worship not to get mixed up with the Romans.

But it was 33AD. It was the toxic, combustible climate of an occupied country that included people who had dreams of God’s intervention and some were willing to provoke violence to spur God on a bit. Roman soldiers were everywhere, and poor Simon got caught in the crowd when they moved to execute a rebel.

Did Simon even know who Jesus was? There was talk of all kinds of would be Messiahs. Jesus, after having undergone the vicious Roman flogging which some men did not survive must have been a sorry sight. Bloodied. Beaten. Mocked. Now he had to carry this heavy beam on his shoulders to Golgotha, just outside the city. There, he would be nailed to it; the Son of God, killed for the sins of the world.

Simon did not know this crucifixion would lead to the salvation of humankind. But then, that’s the thing about the unknown and the unexpected. We don’t know what God is doing behind the scenes. All Simon knew is he couldn’t avoid involvement. The Roman soldiers compelled him to carry the cross the weakened Jesus could not bear. The disciples had fled and were in hiding. But here was Simon, unexpectedly and perhaps unwittingly, standing on the precipice of history.

The Bible doesn’t give further explanation related to Barabbas or to Simon of Cyrene. Church tradition lists Simon among the thousands saved at Pentecost. Did that happen? And Barabbas, the other Jesus, the one whose life was spared when the priests convinced the crowd to call for the death of Jesus of Nazareth, what of the “notorious criminal?” What became of the bandit and the bystander?

More importantly, what happens in the unexpected moments and events of our lives? I deplore the phrase “all things happen for a reason,” especially when it is said in relation to an illness or a death. I hate it because people don’t attempt to discover the reason. All things happen for a reason. People say it because they don’t know what else to say when bad things happen or tragedy strikes or the unexpected comes.

Instead of passing off the unwanted and unexpected with All things happen for a reason, passionately devoted followers of Jesus Christ respond in faith. We earnestly seek the leading of the Holy Spirit. There may or may not be an unseen, divine reason for our experiences. Either way, God sees all things and God, omnipresent as God is, sees us in the places of our lives. God is with us in what we go through.

We know about being stewards with our money, resources, and time. We also need to practice stewardship in our experiences, even those we did not see coming. Is what I am going through an opportunity to share my faith or invite someone to church or practice kindness or love someone with the love of Jesus or aid someone who is in great distress or learn something about God that I didn’t know before that will affect me going forward or trust God in a way I not trusted God before?

In the week and month that is coming, the unexpected will happen in your life and mine. When it does, seek God in it. Represent Jesus and share his love. Think and act as one who is full of the Holy Spirit so that the unexpected is not an unwelcome surprise. Rather it is a divine appointment in which we are part of the story of God saving the world.

AMEN

Real Power (Matthew 27:15-23; 14:1-12)

2011-10-23T06:58:00.000-07:00

She was very close to great power, that lady. Living in Jerusalem in AD 33, she did not hold an official office. But, like so many wily women of history, lack of official status did not diminish her voice. The chief priest in the temple, the visiting dignitary from another nation, and the Roman legionnaire needed permission to approach Governor Pontius Pilate. Yet, when he, the Roman ruler in the region, sat on his judgment seat, she could and did walk right up and offer her opinion. I am talking Pilate’s wife. She goes unnamed in Matthew’s gospel. In all of scripture, she is only mentioned in one verse. Yet, what this peripheral character says and when she says it is poignant.

A mob dragged Jesus in the middle of the night to the house of the high priest. The questioning was intense. Jesus was tired, physically beaten, and confronted with witnesses whose testimonies contradicted each other. In both form and content this highly irregular trial was from the start a miscarriage of justice. But the high priest asked, “Are you the Christ, the Son of God” (26:63)? He was not asking if Jesus had claimed divinity. The prominent different Jewish groups expected a Messiah, but not God incarnated.

“Are you the Christ, the Messiah?” Jesus said, “You have said so. From now on you will see the Son of Man [Jesus here by saying son of man claims to be the Messiah anticipated in the book of Daniel] seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (27:64). Everyone in the crowded room understood Jesus to be saying the same thing – not only did he claim to be the Messiah. He said he was God. Only God comes on the clouds of Heaven.

They rendered a death sentence for blasphemy. Jesus was taunted and abused by the temple police (26:68). Already he had been betrayed by Judas Iscariot, abandoned by the other disciples, and denied by Peter. “I do not know the man,” Peter shouted. Previously Peter had declared Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of the Living God (16:16). Now he sang a different tune.

Jesus was alone, seemingly without power or hope. But his questioners also had a problem. They decided Jesus must die, but they lacked the authority to carry out a death sentence. As religious leaders they held considerable political power, but like all 1^st century Mediterranean cities, Jerusalem was under the governance of Rome. Rome had to proclaim the death sentence. The council had to turn to the Governor Pilate to carry out execution of Jesus.

So they drag him, chained before the governor. Jesus had probably gone without sleep the whole night. He had endured an intense interrogation along with humiliating, painful abuse. Now, aching and exhausted, he stood before the intimidating, shimmering splendor of Rome.

Pilate went straight to the point. “Are you the king of the Jews” (27:11)? If Jesus says, “Yes,” then he is rebelling against the Emperor, a capital offense.

“Are you the king of the Jews?”

Jesus looked at Pilate and said, “You say so.” What’s the governor supposed to do with this? He didn’t say “No,” but it wasn’t exactly “Yes,” either.

While Pilate interrogated Jesus, the agitating Jewish religious leaders gathered a crowd, people already on edge because of Rome and because of the various rebel groups and because it was Passover. With the political climate in Jerusalem, it was not overly difficult to rile up a mob to call for Jesus’ death. If their case wasn’t strong enough, and it wasn’t, they could manipulate Pilate into an execution for the sake of keeping the peace.

He played right into their hands. “Don’t you hear the accusations they make against you” (v.13)? Matthew tells us Jesus did not even answer a single question. Pilate’s anxiety rising. Pilate, the mighty Roman, ruler of this city, is losing control of the situation and maybe of himself. Jesus calmly stays silent.

Pilate tries to turn the tables on the leaders by calling for amnesty, but only for one criminal. He could free the known violent murderer called Barabbas. Or he could free meek, beaten, harmless Jesus. The crowd called for freedom for Barabbas and death to Jesus.

As this is happening, message comes from Pilate’s wife of all people. She’s supportive enough to be with him in this city. She could have remained in the comfortable governor’s palace in Caesarea Philippi. She could have waited for Pilate there. Jerusalem was obviously a city under duress, and brought particular stress to Roman nobility. Yet, out of support for Pilate, she came.

He did not think she was there to insert herself right into the middle of a testy situation, but that’s exactly what she did. She told her husband, “Have nothing to do with that innocent man for I suffered a great deal because of a dream about him” (v.19).

I don’t know if she regularly told Pilate how to govern based on her dreams. If she did, I don’t know if Pilate shrugged her off or paid serious attention. I think Matthew includes this verse, telling of the concerns of Pilate’s wife, because it was irregular and because it was significant.

My guess is God was giving Pilate a chance to avoid putting to death an innocent man who happened to be the Messiah and also happened to be the Son of God. This was God saying to Pilate through his wife, “You can prevent this. You have the power. Now show the courage to use it.” That’s my guess. Pilate was given a chance to listen to God and cooperate with God, but he balked.

Pilate declared himself clean. In a grand fashion, he washed his hands before the crowd, washing off responsibility for the death of Jesus. He said, “I am innocent of this man’s blood” (27:24). Those in the crowd responded, “His blood be on us and on our children” (27:25). Throughout history, the church has foolishly used these verses in Matthew 27 to blame the death of Jesus on the Jews. Such idiocy ignores that Jesus was Jewish as were his disciples. Pilate could wash his hands 100 times, but Jesus still hung on a Roman Cross, erected under his, Pilate’s authority. And ultimately the sins of all humanity including us here today caused the death of Jesus on the cross.

Pilate’s wife was close to power. She could approach him in the midst of tense negotiations and she did just that. She told Pilate to get out of the mess. She didn’t say her dream was a vision from God. All she knew was that the bloodied man who looked so small was in fact innocent. Roman governors killed innocent people for political expediency. It happened all the time and she knew it. But in this case, she told her husband not to do it and he didn’t listen.

We meet another woman who lived close to power in Matthew 14 where Matthew gives the background of King Herod’s animosity toward and curiosity about Jesus. Herod was the Jew the Romans propped up as King. He had to do all his Roman overlords commanded, but he could exert force on his fellow Jews and he did so to advance his own wealth and to keep his people under heel.

One very loud and popular Jew was the zealous prophet John the Baptist. John lived an ascetic life and preached fiery sermons in which he called out unethical behavior. John said the Messiah was coming, the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit.

A favorite target of John’s sermons was Herod. Herod had married the wife of his half brother. Her name was Herodias. According to Jewish law, this marriage of Herod and Herodias was a violation. The strong-arming and manipulation Herod exerted to get his wishes, and his general disregard for God’s ways put him right in the locust-eating preacher’s crosshairs. John hammered Herod and Herodias repeatedly.

She got sick of hearing her sins publically called out. Herod did too, so John was arrested. Herod had that kind of marginal but also arbitrary power. He could blatantly bypass correct procedure and imprison someone. No Jewish courts could challenge him. He was supported by Roman muscle.

John wallowed in Herod’s prison for a while. Herodias would have put him to death upon his arrest, but Herod’s feelings were far more uncertain than his vengeful wife’s. He hated that John condemned him, but he also sensed the power in John’s words. Much like the sensitivity Pilate’s wife showed in responding to her dream about Jesus, Herod was sensitive to the spiritual power in John. Herod locked John up in prison, but then went and sat with him and listened to him for hours on end (Mark 6:19-21).

Things changed at Herod’s birthday party. Herodias knew her husband was given to drunkenness and lust. After he had imbibed and was feeling jovial, she had her daughter, probably a teenager, dance a seductive dance, and the smitten, sodden puppet king smiled and promised the young beauty anything she might desire. Her mother was in her ear the whole time. She told the girl to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

Herod was trapped. In front of the crowd, he had made a spectacle of promising the girl her heart’s wishes. Herod feared John’s spiritual power, and he feared the masses that admired John. But Herod had to save face. So, he, the supposed king, gave into the forces of his wife’s manipulations and his own unthinking promises. John was beheaded simply because Herodias effortlessly manipulated her husband.

Two women – the wife of Pilate and Herodias, the wife of Herod; both lived in close proximity to power, the power over people’s lives. Both spoke up in highly charged situations. One, sensing a power beyond herself or her husband, said, leave that man alone. He’s innocent and you need to get out of this.

The other, ignoring the presence of God in the heart of God’s prophet John and instead listening to her own thirst for revenge also spoke up. Using the power of her husband’s cravings, she manipulated him and he followed her will. In the end, John the Baptist and Jesus were both executed and in the story of their deaths, two peripheral characters were significant in the story.

God allowed these events which included the death of his prophet and the death of his son. God could have intervened at any point, but God allowed this sin and cruelty because God was speaking through John and through Jesus. God spoke a power that surpasses what we might think of as power.

Both John and Jesus spoke unwavering truth. They told the truth about sin, about humanity, and about how humans are saved from the death sin brings. Both men, in their lives, their actions, and their sermons pointed to Jesus as the means of salvation from sin. Human authorities – the Pharisees, the Elders, the Romans, Herod, Pilate – none of these could save a person from sin. All of these were guilty of sin. Jesus and John both spoke this truth and in the truth there is immense power.

Because they spoke the truth and lived the truth, they had to deal with the consequences wrought by men who hid behind lies. This is a second element of the power wielded by John and by Jesus. They were willing to sacrifice, even sacrifice their very lives. Truth-telling and willingness to sacrifice are the transcendent forms of power in this story.

This truth is set on the table we call the Lord’s Supper table. Everyone who dines at this table is a hell bound sinner whose only hope for life is the grace of God. That includes you, me, everyone. Like Herodias, we manipulate power. Like the wife of Pilate, we try to run away from it. And, like Herod and Pilate, we put up the mirage of power, but then in cowardly fashion, we just go with the flow and allow the circumstances to dictate our ethic and our actions. In short, we are sinners and are thus not invited by God to His table – except …

We are invited when we submit to the power of Jesus – his truth, his sacrifice. We acknowledge our sins and receive forgiveness. We open our hearts and submit our lives to him. We receive salvation and are born again.

Today, as we share the bread and the cup of the Lord’s Supper table, we reflect on the mistakes of Pilate’s wife and especially Herodias, the wife of Herod. Their errors were sins related to misunderstanding of God’s power and abuse of human power. We think of our own sins related to power – whether the fear of power, or the abuse of it.

We also praise God for God’s power expressed in truth and in the sacrifice of our Savior Jesus Christ. We receive the forgiveness he gives and we sit at His table knowing that with the salvation he gives, we will one day sit at God’s eternal, Heavenly banquet table.

AMEN

More and More of God (Exodus 33:12-23)

2011-10-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

A spark … something deep within my heart. It’s God. The Holy Spirit of God has spoken. I know God is real and loves me. Because of what Jesus has done on the cross, the penalty for my sins has been paid. The Holy Spirit is at work in me. I am forgiven. I am born again; a new creation.

I tell my church-going friend who introduces me to her pastor. We all agree that my experience with God is real. I have been saved from by Jesus. Do I want to be baptized by immersion and thus publically announce my faith and become a member of the church? Yes, I do.

The day arrives. I come to church. My story of coming to Jesus is read to the congregation. I am baptized. The people applaud my second birth, the work of Christ in my life. I sing the worship songs as one who knows Jesus, a son of God. I am a new believer!

Now what? This is the first day of your new life. Now what?

When we come to faith in Jesus, we are rescued from slavery to sin.

Israel was a new community – called out of bitter slavery in Egypt. Israel was completely under Pharaoh’s heel. Powerless. God overwhelmed Pharaoh and freed his people.

We are baptized. As new believers we become members of the community of faith, the church.

Israel also came out of water, the Red Sea, which led to death for their Egyptian pursuers, but life for them. God saved Israel and then God commissioned Israel as his people and gave them the law to show who He is, what sin is, and who they were to be as the people of God, the worshipers of Jehovah.

They’re saved. They have the law. They need to know what we need to know. Then what?

Israel was to be a separate people, different from all other peoples around them. They were not to worship nature gods, fertility goes, or weather gods. They were to let go of all superstitions and look to the only true God and live in holiness. God put a special calling on His people.

It was too much. They fell into crisis, a disaster of their own making. God clearly distinguished himself from the idols and man-made gods of the ancient near east, but as soon as Israel found themselves of waiting on God, they couldn’t sustain their faith. They created the golden calf and in this sin of idolatry, they found out some things.

They found out God sees them even when they didn’t see Him. And they found out that God takes sin with deadly seriousness. If they would rebel, God would respond with holy anger. What is the nation to do? How can they follow such a terrifying God?

Moses became Israel’s mediator who talked to God on behalf of the people. They were paralyzed by the crisis of their sin and God’s wrathful response. Moses stepped in and showed what is next for the people of God. Moses talked to God, and God listened. The more Moses realized that this mighty God would pay attention to a human, a small, flawed man, the more Moses talked. And the relationship deepened.

Israel went from conversion to crisis to conversation (Moses conversing with God on behalf of the nation). When the moment of salvation happened for Israel and they stood on the far side of the Red Sea. Newly saved, they were right where we are today. They sang songs extolling God’s virtue. They celebrated God’s victory and proclaimed their faith him. They committed themselves to God’s ways.

We clap our hands with joy at the baptisms and celebrate the work of God in the lives of these who have announced their faith. We sing our songs of faith with joy and great energy. We commit our lives to God’s ways. We not only celebrate with these who have been baptized. We who have been believers for a long time are also reminded of our joy and our commitment to the Lord and of the day we were baptized.

Israel moved from that salvation moment into terrible crisis, and then from crisis into something deeper, an actual relationship with God.

As we see our own faith story on this baptism and draw parallels with Israel’s call into relationship with God, not all connections are direct. Israel went from salvation to crisis to new relationship. Crisis is not always immediate after baptism, and we don’t predict it. Part of what makes crisis of faith a crisis is the unpredictability of it. It does come.

Jesus said it would. Trials come. Through our own mistakes, as happened with Israel in Exodus, or through something that happens to us, we all face dark days. I think one of the ways for new believers of for veteran disciples to be ready when trials, persecution, and crises of faith visits is to constantly work on growing in our relationship with God. And again we turn to the Israelite community and the relationship of God and Moses.

In Exodus 33, God said to Israel, “I will not go up among you.” (verse 2). The the Sovereign of the universe was so angry, so flustered with the sin of the people, He distanced himself.

I think God takes our sin as seriously as he did Israel’s. God does not like it when do the wrong thing whether we sin with our eyes, our words, our thoughts, or our bodies. He’s as holy today as He was 3000 years ago. God has always given grace – even in the Old Testament. God has always been wrathful – even in the New Testament. God forgives and God punishes.

God pulled back from Israel in Exodus 33. “I will not go up among you.” At the same time, God drew near to Moses. Verse 11 says, “The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face as one speaks to a friend.” Moses was unique in history and no one will ever be like Moses or be Spirit-filled as Moses was. Not me, not you, not the Pope, not anyone.

However, though we can’t know what Moses knew or be who Moses was, we are promised the Holy Spirit. The Spirit does not visit each person in the same way, but each who has put trust in Christ will receive the Spirit. The Spirit will come on us and fill us. This is a crucial part of the new life in Christ that’s come to these who were baptized today and to all who have been baptized. Our speaking with God may not be “face to face,” but because of the Spirit, we don’t need a mediator. We don’t need a Moses to speak to God for us while we wait at the foot of the mountain. You don’t need the preacher to speak to God on your behalf. We are invited into a relationship, a spiritual relationship with God.

In relationship with God, how did Moses proceed?

He said to God, “Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may find favor in your sight” (v.13). Moses asks for favor, and his credentials for asking is that he’s already found favor. He also asks to know God’s ways. Through the previous 10 chapters God has shown his ways. Was Moses getting a little loopy in that the thin mountain air? What was he asking?

He talked about favor with God. Next, he asked God to go with Israel. But, isn’t God already with them? As we read earlier, God did say, “I will not go up among you, or I would consume you the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” Instead God promised that an angel of God would go before the people. Apparently that was not enough for Moses. He knew what God said, but he wanted something different. He wanted God, not God’s angel.

And God gave in! “My presence will go with you,” said God (v.14). “I will do the very thing you have asked” (v.17). In this conversation, I am struck by the smallness of Moses and the magnitude of God. Moses has nothing to stand on, nowhere to go, no escape, no other option. It was him and God and he just kept digging, asking for more.

When God said, “I will do the very think you have asked,” Moses responded, “Show me your glory, I pray.” Moses had audibly heard God’s voice. Moses felt the mountain shake when God thundered. Moses had held the tablets that God inscribed. But he wanted more. He wanted to see God with his eyes.

This is where we want to be as baptized people, ones born-again, new creations, adopted sons and daughters of God, worshipers of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whether we made our commitment to Jesus in the past year or decades ago, this must continue and be a constant. Like Moses, we yearn for more and more of God. We want to see God’s face.

The desire for God leads people to passion-filled participation the worship service of the gathered church. The desire for God leads people to deep, full-involved worship in solitude, in the quiet prayer closet or the walk in the woods, a retreat into nature, or the quiet prayers lifted while one drives down the highway. The desire for God leads a disciple to commit to serve God on mission trips; in service projects; spontaneously in everyday life as opportunities arise. The desire for God drives a believer to scripture, to scour God’s words and drink God’s truth. We live out our faith the way we do out of desire for God. We might not always name it that way, but underneath our sense of calling, underneath those “mountain-top experiences” that happen on retreats, and underneath the passions in us we can’t quite understand except to know they drive us on – underneath all that we would define as compelling and as spiritual – underneath it all is in us a deep longing to know God.

My prayer for each one of us here is that we will in the highs and lows of life, pursue God and desire of God. In some seasons we thirst to know all we can about Jesus and to hear him speak in the depths of our hearts; these are seasons of learning. In another season we seek experiences with the Holy Spirit. We receive the power of the Spirit and the comfort of the Spirit; these are seasons of new insights and new experiences. In yet another season you are in awe-struck worship at the throne of the mighty Heavenly Father; these are seasons of wonder. Or, as we go through times of great pain, wounded, we fall into the tender arms of that same one we call Mighty; seasons of trust. There are seasons of growth, of endurance, and quiet seasons where it seems not much is happening but we remain faithful as God is always faithful. Following the example of Moses, one of the great pioneers and archetypes of faith in scripture, all of life is spent seeking more and more of God.

When seeking God becomes the essence of life, we are blessed beyond measure. We begin living the existence we will have in the afterlife, eternity in the Kingdom of Heaven. We begin understanding Heaven now as we pursue God with a worshiper’s loving heart.

As we seek more of God, we have to be ready to hear God say “no” sometimes.

Moses asked for so much. God kept saying yes. Then Moses asked to see God’s glory, and God said, “You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (v.20). It seems odd because we heard earlier that the Lord spokes to Moses face to face as one speaks with a friend. How can that be true if one dies upon seeing God’s face? I think the answer lies in who God is. God can come to us in a relationship of love and spiritual intimacy, but even in that closeness, we don’t see all of God. God is so great, to see all of God would consume us. We’d just be gone.

So we ask God for it all and then we joyously receive however much God decides to give us.

If, like Elijah, we get a quiet whisper, that is enough. If, like John of Patmos, we are given a spectacular vision, we receive it as John did. If like the disciples and Paul and James, we see the resurrected, glorified Jesus, we rejoice. And if, like Moses, we see God’s after glow, his retreating glory, then we shine. His light is reflected from our faces so that others look to us and see Him.

As we near the end of our time of worship and come to the conclusion of six weeks spent in the book of Exodus, we reflect on what it means to be called the people of God. That’s what Israel was. And that’s what we are – baptized people, people who put complete faith in Jesus Christ, and people who are because of Jesus sons and daughters of God. As the people of God, we are always to be seeking our Father, living for His glory.

AMEN

Sleep

2011-10-16T06:18:00.000-07:00

Wonderful day at my house yesterday - my parents were in from out of town along with my sister. And my aunt and uncle came over. So it was the five them, plus the five of us (three kids, wife, me). And throw in a neighbor who comes over.

We ate delicious chicken pot pie a church member had given for pastor-appreciation month. We had a massive kickball game in the backyard (which is really too small for such a game). Then we ate moist, rich brownies my wife Candy made. Brownies with vanilla ice cream mmmm ....

It was, admittedly, a lot of excitement and stimulus for our 2-year-old daughter who's only been home from Ethiopia since June. We're still pretty protective about her, limiting her exposure to people and experiences. Yesterday was a lot for her. As was the previous day.

That day, a Friday, after school, a throng of neighborhood children gathered in and around one neighbor's yard. There must have been 20 or more kids. Several games were going - tag, some sort of war game, lawn mowing (the toddlers with plastic mowers). The ages ranged from 2 (my daughter and another two-year-old) all the way up to one high school freshman. It was great fun.

Those two maddeningly fun days accumulated dizzying over stimulus for our dear daughter. Last night, Saturday night, she could not fall asleep. Normally, she falls asleep in the stroller with me pushing, and it typically takes 10-20 minutes. Last night, I had to push her around in the dark for almost 55 minutes (a nice 3-mile walk for me). She finally conked out and we put her in bed.

I went out to watch my beloved Detroit Tigers get knocked out of the playoffs by Texas, an ugly 15-5 game (not ugly if you're a Rangers fan). I got home and got ready to get into bed around 11:15PM. I was not yet asleep when she popped away and would not go back to sleep.

Midnight ... 1AM ... 2:30.

It did not matter if I was with her or if Candy was with her. She preferred Candy, but she insisted on being awake. If either of us tried to lay her down or walk her or do any of the techniques to get her to sleep, she screamed, wailed, protested, and did it all very loudly. That girl has power with her lungs. It was enough to wake her 9-year-old brother and he was fuming mad. Miraculously, the 4-year-old brother slept through it.

Finally at 5 AM - yes - she and we were still awake at 5 AM (I put her in the van to see if taking her for a drive would get her to sleep). It worked. Thankfully, we got the 9-year-old back to sleep around 1 or 2AM. But, mommy, daddy, and baby girl were up most of the night, mommy and daddy, the entire night.

And today, as senior pastor, I get to baptize 4 people and preach the sermon.

Sin (Exodus 32:1-14)

2011-10-10T05:44:00.000-07:00

It was just a white lie. You needed some extra time off, so you made up a little story that isn’t really true, but your boss doesn’t know that. Your co-workers won’t even miss you. You did good work that morning. What’s one afternoon away? No one is really affected. It’s a small thing. No big deal. Everybody makes up excuses that aren’t entirely true. You did nothing, really. So why do you keep thinking of it, now a week later? Why won’t it leave you alone?

What leads to sin? Frustration? Disappointment? Fear of mystery or fear of the unknown? Seduction? A sense of entitlement? Could we go on and on citing endless examples that lead people to miss the mark, do the opposite of what we know God wants for us and expects of us? Yes.

How quickly does my mouth utter a harsh, unloving word – me sinning against my neighbor? Whoops! The sin – it’s just out there. How easily does it happen, a church made up of good-hearted people, day-by-day, month-by-month, and before you know it years go by. All the while the church ignores the call of God to love the poor in its community, and gradually gets used to ignoring the call of God as if God wasn’t there.

Wait a minute, we say! It’s great if we do works of compassion or wonderful ministries of one kind or another, but it’s not a sin if we don’t! Really? Read Luke 16:19-31. Read Matthew 25:31-46. When we fail to answer the call of God, we commit the sin of omission. Our sin is not murder or theft or idolatry; rather it is failing to do what God clearly wants us to do, and often the sin of omission is committed by a community, not just an individual. The passages I mentioned, Luke 16 and Matthew 25, make it plain that this type of sin, not doing what God wants us to do, has grave consequences.

All sin has grave eternal consequences. Big sin and small sin. Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.” There’s more to that verse, but for the moment we focus on the first half. Sin is death, eternal death. Cruelty to friends or peers, lying, cheating, immoral sexual activity, sins of omission as we’ve described, abusive language, haughtiness, and a thousand other sins we commit and sinful attitudes we harbor in our hearts as individuals and as a group lead to our death. We can’t blithely ignore our part in communities (churches, industries, nations) that sin against God. Sin leads to death. Sin, such as the creation of and worship of idols, which Israel found out.

There they were, oblivious to the reality that God saw all they were doing – God always sees us. They thought Moses was long gone. The were not sure of themselves or of God or of anything. In their anxiety, in their uncertainty, and in the waiting, they took matters into their own hands. They decided to take up work that belonged God, and the dictated the terms of worship in a way that was direct violation of the commandments they had pledged to obey.

So there they were with the golden god of their own creation. Ignoring God, forgetting God, tired of waiting on God’s man Moses, they partied with their golden statue, their man-made god. In Egypt, under Pharaoh’s whip, they pathetically cried out, and God responded with deliverance. In the desert, starving and dying of thirst, they complained, and God provided bread and meat and water.

Now, at the foot of the mountain, waiting, they run out patience and lose interest in the God who saved and fed and strengthened.

Moses showed up. His “anger burned hot” (32:19). He smashed the tablets containing the 10 commandments. He ground the golden calf into a fine powder, poured it in water, and made the Israelites drink it. He put swords in the hands of the Levites and had them kill 3000 of their fellow Israelites because loyalty and faithfulness to God is even more important than brotherhood. “Go through the camp … kill your brother, your friend, your neighbor” Moses said.

Reading that, I thought of Jesus who said.

I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it (Matthew 10:35-37).

He does not say these things because he’s anti-family. Jesus’ words throughout the gospels show that he understands the importance and strength of family bonds, and he kept his own relationship with his mother Mary right to the end. His intent in these harsh words – “I have come to set a man against his father” - is to dictate where our first loyalty must be. What he says only makes sense if he is God.

Moses’ actions, killing and making people drink gold dust, only make sense if he is God’s man and the people have committed sins so heinous that they have offended God. It’s just a golden calf; it’s just a theological error and bad worship practice. Don’t we sometimes make mistakes in worship? Is it that bad?

Exodus 20 – Moses gives the 10 commandments, commandments that declare God’s sovereignty and might and right to rule over these people. Exodus 24 – “The people answered Moses with one voice, and said, ‘All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.’” It’s not just a golden calf or little sin or a simple error in worship practice. It is a people undoing all that God has done on their behalf. God wasn’t enslaved by Pharaoh. God wasn’t hungry in the wilderness. The rugged desert declared his glory. All of creation is “good.” God made it. The salvation of Israel from Egypt was not something God needed. The people needed God, not the other way around. Their exodus was God’s way of again creating – creating a people for himself. This was God’s statement – I am your God, you are my people.

The people’s decision to create their own god for worship was also a statement. They would undo God’s work of salvation. They would reject God’s declaration of authority. They would deny God’s sovereignty over them. God said to wait. They got tired of waiting and weren’t going to wait any more. Every time we sin, small or large, we reject God’s work of creating us as his people; we reject God’s ways, and the redemption Jesus accomplished for us on the cross. Really? Our sins are that significant?

Really! In all arenas of life, every little corner of my life and your life, we either live God’s way – in our attitudes, words, thoughts, actions, and relationships; or we don’t. It is God’s way, or we are living in sin.

The people broke the second commandment – you will have no idols – because they didn’t accept the first commandment where God says, “I am the Lord.” They they wanted to be sovereign. We do it all the time.

We reject God’s authority in our lives, go our own way, and suffer the consequences. Sin with words leads to broken relationships. Sin through violence leads to more violence. When we sin by neglecting of the needy, we perpetuate the brokenness of the world. We drink gold dust and we die because sin has consequences. My sins hurt me and others. The sins of others hurt them and me.

What’s left?

The Bible is God’s story. Sin messes up God’s story. If we stay in sin, God kicks us out of his story. Other than removing sinners like us from the story, does sin impact God in any other way?

⁷The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; ⁸they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!< ⁹The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. ¹⁰Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”

Exodus 32 presents the resolution for human sin, but to understand and hear the good news in this passage, we need to agree to something. My intent is to hear this as it is written, without appealing and contesting any major theological positions. My belief is that the best news we can hear is this: no matter how awful we are, God hears our prayers and answers our prayers.

Did God know what we would pray before we prayed it? I am not even attempting to answer that question. Did God know in advance that Israel would create a golden calf? Does God know right now that this week, I will sin against my wife with my words, and I will sin against God and my community by neglecting a good work of compassion God calls me to do? I have no problem if you say, “Yes, absolutely, God knows!” I am not calling into question your salvation if you aren’t so sure. I readily admit, I am not certain of what God knows and doesn’t know.

I am confident that Exodus is the word of God and what I read there brings me hope in spite of the fact that I am a sinner. I say not because Exodus is about me. It isn’t. I say that because Exodus is about God and what it says about God is still true about God and is true in relation to all people. God is a responsive God, and God responds to sins and to sinners. We’ve already discussed the response to sin. People drank gold dust and got killed. What about God’s response to sinners? It begins with the sinner right there with Him, Moses.

Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? ¹²Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. ¹³Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’“

God listened to Moses. This narrative is not presented as if the golden calf incident was a part of God’s original plan. It reads like the people thwarted what God had in mind. It’s like God made a discovery. “I’ve seen this people, how stiff-necked they are” he said in verse 9. God had plans for a people who be his own, but he discovers that he doesn’t like them, sinners that they are.

That’s easy enough to fix. He’ll wipe them out and start over. He’s done it before. Remember Noah, and the flood. It’s a familiar approach except that there’s no guarantee that the new people, descendants of Moses, would be any better. Not only that; Moses is not interested in being the new Noah.

It’s astounding to speak of God “discovering” what the people are like, stiff-necked. It’s even more unexpected and possible unpalatable to think that Moses had to talk God out of killing the people. But that’s exactly how this reads. Moses appeals to God’s heart, to God’s reputation, and to God’s promises. And God listens. Just stop there. I don’t care if you think God knew what he was going to do all along, or if you think God was surprised by the people’s rebellion and surprised by Moses’ chutzpah. I don’t know what God know. But I trust Exodus, and Exodus says God listened to Moses. This isn’t about Moses; it’s about God.

When the people were slaving under Egyptian overlords and they cried, God listened. When they hunger and cried, God listened and fed them. When Moses begged God not to kill them for their sin, God listened. Throughout the book of Judges, the people fall into enemies after they have sinned, and then they cry out. No matter how grotesquely they sin, when they cry out, God listens. That’s the redemptive part of the story – in Israel and in my life and yours.

There are painful consequences when we sin. The relationship with God is damaged. But we stay connected, through prayer, confession, & repentance. We stay connected to God and God listens.

Exodus 32:14: “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

That’s the New Revised Standard Version. The Holman Standard Christian Bible is virtually the same. If you prefer, here is the Kingdom James Version: “And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.”

You can wrestle with the disturbing idea that God has to repent or that God might bring evil. I won’t solve those problems this morning. Neither will I pretend they aren’t in the text because they clearly are. For me, struggling with my sins, hope comes in the knowledge that God allows a change, even of his own mind. The story I am living, a story of sin and the failure to overcome it doesn’t have to be the final story. God has an alternative in mind.

The change God proposes, from annihilation to re-creation is ultimately seen in the coming of God in human flesh, Jesus, the bringer of a new covenant, the one who gives new wine. In Him, we are new creations. Before Him, we confess our sins, turn from them, and declare allegiance to Him even as we receive the forgiveness he offers. On the cross, He takes the death for our sins on himself. We die in sin, and with him are raised to new life – new creations in Christ. Because of Jesus, we read not a portion of Romans 6:23, but all of that verse, the Gospel in a single sentence.

²³For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Sin is real and has consequences on us and on the relationship with God. But God never stops loving us. When we cry out to him from our sin, he responds in love. As terrible as little white lies and golden calves and mean words and all the others sins the book are, God still hears us, responds to us, and loves us. Due to His grace, we have life.

AMEN

Waiting for God (Exodus 32:1-14)

2011-10-03T05:16:00.000-07:00

(I preached this sermon three years ago at my church, and was tempted to preach it again. But then I sat down and thought about who all was present then and is still here now, and I decided, I'll redo this one when this lectionary text rolls back around in 2014.)

Have you every stood in line and watched the rollercoaster as it slowly climbs the big hill before going over into the abyss. The line you’re in while waiting for your turn creeps along as slowly as a steamy, tired July afternoon. First there’s boredom. Time passes. As you get closer; thoughts race through your mind. It seems that the hill is higher than it was at a distance. It takes about a day to get through that line. It’s just long enough for you to realize you want to be anywhere but on that rollercoaster. But you can’t back out – what weenie you would be. So, you face the executioner with much less courage than you’re showing. He fastens your safety bar over you and you and the 13-year-old behind you who is screaming bloody murder even though the ride has barely begun and everyone else gets buckled and begins the ascent. This is when time stops. You creep along, higher, and higher. You see the rest of the amusement park as it gets smaller and smaller below you. Creeping higher and higher, you enter the cloud bank. O when will we get over the summit, crash down to earth, die and be done with it. Higher, … oh … we’ve reached the top. The car up at the front goes over. It disappears. And then the next; only two more to our car. The next one disappears over the great expanse. When will this end. Could this go any slower?

What’s it like to wait for something?

In little baseball, I would look at the batting order taped to the fence. One, two, three … going down … ah nine – Tennant. Forever and day and a number of innings that seemed mathematically impossible went by. It was plenty of time to size up the opposing pitcher. It’s hard to believe a 12-year-old could be 7 ½ feet tall and throw a baseball 150mph. You’d think Sports Illustrated would have discovered him. I was unnerved when they had a ready made hole in the ground to bury the kids he hit in the head with one his frequent wild pitches. Up they go, and down. He seems to be getting faster and bigger. “Tennant you’re on deck.” O S---- (nope, can’t say that in church). Why does this bat feel like it weighs 40 lbs? And what’s that racket – oh, just my knees. Finally, the kid ahead of me strikes out. It seemed like three pitches would take less time. But, now, I am standing there staring at Nolan Ryan and I remember I insulted this kid in science class and he told me I’d get mine on the ball field, right below the chin. Does he recognize me in this helmet? When is he going to throw the ball? I can’t move a muscle. I am petrified.

What’s it like to wait for something?

What’s it like to be in a holding pattern? In basic training, we went to the reception station where we picked up uniforms, shined our boots, marched in formation and heard stories of how bad it was going to be when we went “down range.” They were going to introduce us to new experiences of pain. And we couldn’t wait to get there, and get it over with. But we had to wait. Worse. The hospital waiting room – waiting for the report from the surgeon. Success or failure? Will his face tell? Oh, how longer must we wait?

What’s it like to wait for something? What’s it like to go from childhood to old age in slavery, waiting for God to send a deliverer? The descendants of Jacob’s 12 sons whom we meet in the book of Genesis, the 1^st book in the Bible, settled in Egypt. Those 12 families multiplied the way families do and prospered economically in Egypt. A couple of generations passed and the large family grew to be a small, rich nation. There was no waiting.

When all is good, we don’t wait for things. We’re caught up in success, joy, and prosperity. But, the new Pharaoh was not caught up in anything. He was Egyptian and he had no thought for Hebrew opulence. He took the small country, the people descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God’s chosen people. Pharaoh took their riches, and enslaved them and worked them in brutal conditions. All they could do was cry out to God and wait. How long oh Lord? This is the anguished cry of faith.

They found out how long, when God sent a deliverer – Moses. This stuttering, second brother performed mighty works of God including the parting of the ocean, and they weren’t waiting any more. They were moving. They followed him through the Red Sea. They followed him into the Sinai wilderness. They were on the go, headed to the Promised Land!

But you know what? Even when we’re moving, we can find ourselves waiting. After the thrilling victories, the bizarre wonders of the plagues and the spectacle of God’s parting of the sea, what came next was a whole lot of walking. Put down the left foot and then the right. Repeat. Haven’t we done this 10,000 times? Is today any different than yesterday? Nope. More walking. The nation of God’s chosen people became an eight-year-old on a long car trip. “Are we there yet?” What’s worse than slowly plodding along with countless miles ahead? Coming to a full stop with countless miles ahead. The interstate becomes a parking lot.

Moses said, “OK everybody, you wait here. I am going up on the mountain to talk to God, and I’ll come back down and tell you what he said.” Moses went up on the mountain. There were flashes of lightning and bellowing thunder. Nobody in Israel’s camp was bored. Nobody was waiting. Everyone was terrified. Then Moses came back, his face aglow, and there were important ceremonies. Some of the other leaders got to get closer to God. Everyone heard as Moses read the 10 commandments and everyone pledged to obey all the Lord had said. Then Moses went back up to get more instruction from the Lord. The cloud of the Lord’s presence covered the mountain. It was like a devouring fire. Oh no, no one was bored. No one felt the monotony of waiting. This was awesome and spectacular. How many people in history have seen something like this? They would be happy to stay down and wait and hear what Moses had to say. And that’s what they did. They sat at the foot of the mountain and waited. And waited. And Moses was gone for 40 days. Over a month, they waited.

What’s it like to wait for something?

Let’s leave Israel there at the foot of the mountain for a moment. They’re not doing anything anyway. They’re just waiting. They’ve done that before. We all have. Let’s talk about God.

When he put Adam in the Garden, he did so out of creative love. God was creating and admiring what he made. He made the ocean and saw that it was good. He made the plants and animals – oh, it was good! Then God said, “Let’s make human kind in our image.” That, my friends, was described by God as very good. Creative Love!

Then God invited the man he had made to join him in creation. God created the animals, and had Adam name them. Adam could make no claims about anything. He was a created being. Yet God invited him into a partnership. This was collaborative love. God includes people in His plan.

God also considers our needs. He saw that Adam was lonely. Adam had animals under his leadership. He had untainted fellowship with God. But he needed more, so God took his rib, and gave a partner. God, out his compassionate love for the man, created woman. Creative Love; collaborative love; compassionate love. Even after Adam and Eve sinned, God made a way for them. Even after their son Cain killed their son Abel, God protected him. Even after every human being turned away, except Noah and his family, God preserved the human race. Can God be defined, contained, captured, or summed up with a few words? I don’t know. Can love be defined, contained, captured, or summed up? Any love story will include some bumps and some pain. Any story of God is a love story because God is love. In his relationship with us, we ignore Him, reject Him, and turn from Him. He hurts because he loves us and sees how our sins bring us suffering.

Don’t miss the fact that in His love, God gets very angry. He did send the flood that wiped out life on earth. Following the story through Genesis and Exodus, we see numerous examples of how severe God’s punishment can be. God is harsh enough that we would fear Him and judge Him to be cruel. We must though remember that His anger is connected to and related to His love. From Eden to the flood to the tower of Babel to the Sinai wilderness and the traveling, waiting Israelites, God displays passionate love for people.

Speaking of those Israelites, let’s get back to them because they got tired of waiting. Moses must have gotten too close to God and died. Something happened. It had been 40 days. They were not going to wait anymore. Their impatience awakened in them just enough boldness to confront Moses’ weak-willed second in command, Aaron. He had no defense against the rush of the mob action. “We don’t know what’s happened to Moses. So, you make a god for us.”

Does that make any sense to you? The people did not have the educational framework to interpret their situation in scientific or logical terms. I don’t know that we do today. Our best and brightest logicians and physicists will be hard pressed to explain the whole Red Sea miracle. So, rational thought was not a resource. They had been slaves. They were led out of bondage by a poorly-spoken miracle worker. They walked through an ocean that conveniently parted for them and then swallowed their pursuers. Now, they were at a standstill in the desert waiting for the aforementioned mumbling Moses on whom they were completely dependant. And he had been gone for over a month.

If logic wouldn’t work – and it wouldn’t – they would turn to religion. But it had to be a religion of their own making. They had tried faith. In faith they followed Moses. In faith they committed to obey all the word he said God had given him up on the mountain. In faith, they were now here waiting. Just waiting. No more! They didn’t know about reason or scientific advancements, and faith had failed them. So, they’d create religion based on whatever god Aaron created for them.

His wellspring of creativity was dry and shallow. He collected everyone’s gold and fashioned a calf that looked remarkably like Egypt’s sacred bull and Canaan’s fertility gods. Thick as he was Aaron provided ample confirmations of his dimwittedness. Later on when Moses would confront him about being the point man in this direct violation of the first two of the Ten Commandments, his well-crafted excuse was “I dropped the gold in the fire and this calf popped out.” The people wrested control of their fate away from God and set up Aaron to be their fall guy because it was so obvious that he was a nincompoop.

Then the people partied!

Do you remember what we said about God? God is a passionately devoted lover of His people. When he gave the 10 commandments and led Moses to share them with the leaders and the people, food was also provided.[i] There is similar language used to describe this golden calf party. The people didn’t have a golden statue. They had the word of God. And they were invited to look at God. They were invited have dinner with God. It’s right there in Exodus 24. “They saw God. Under his feet was something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. God did not lay his hands on the chief men of the people of Israel. They [saw] God and they ate and drank.”[ii] Fast forward ahead to the motley crew intimidating poor Aaron; they too ate and drank, but the verbs indicate a self-indulgent party. Previously, they ate and looked upon the face God. The meal was a holy experience; an act of worship. This time, staring at their statue of a baby cow, they were partying and celebrating their own ingenuity. No science; no faith; they would live with a religion of their own making that they could fully control.

Every love story includes some heartbreak. God was giving this law as a gift of his love, so His people whom he cherished would have peace, order, and prosperity. At the same time he was raging with righteous anger because he saw everything they did. God loves us too much to ignore us. He doesn’t always intercede the way we want Him to or when we want Him to. But, he always sees us. He’s always aware of our lives and interested in our lives. God broke off his dictation to Moses. His fury was piqued.

“Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; ⁸they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt![iii]

Analysts make much of God’s pronouns. He calls Israel “your” people indicating that Moses is their leader. Why would God be so wishy-washy? When he recruited Moses for this job, he called Israel “My people.” Now, they’ve messed up, and they are Moses’ people. It’s like when a mom is fed up with her rambunctious, head-strong boy, she says to her husband, “Do you know what your son did today?” It’s not ‘our’ son; when he’s naughty, he’s ‘yours;’ when he’s adorable, he’s ‘ours,’ or maybe even ‘mine.’ God called Israel Moses’ people. He said, ‘I have seen how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation” (32:9-10).

Moses didn’t like that plan. It was a repeat of how God re-created when his people were mired in sin in the days of Noah. He started over with Noah’s family. Moses did not want to be this generation’s progenitor. He, if I may say it plainly, sets God straight.

“O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? ¹²Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. ¹³Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’“

What’s more out of bounds, arguing with God, or winning the argument? First, Moses reminds God that these are God’s people. They do not belong to Moses. Once he’s got the pronouns straight, Moses reminds God of Egypt. Because of course, God is terribly concerned about what the Egyptians think of him. His divine reputation is at stake and Moses doesn’t want to hear any Egyptian gloating and he knows God doesn’t want that either. Third, Moses reminds God that he made a promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He’s got to keep his word. He is after all, God! How could God forget all of this? It’s a good thing Moses was there. He functioned as God’s personal assistant.

This all sounds inane, but it has been the fodder of Bible commentators for ages on end. Some think God was testing Moses to see if he would stand in the gap. God all along knew what he was going to do, but he wanted to see if Moses would speak on behalf of the people. Other scholars paint a picture of a capricious, diabolical God who intended evil until the real hero of the story, Moses interceded. There are theories beyond that.

This is a troubling narrative. If God is all-knowing, why did he need Moses to remind him of things? If God is the same yesterday, today, and forever – immutable as the theologians say – why does it say in Exodus 32:14 that he repented and changed his plans based on Moses’ impassioned argument? I hope you won’t be too frustrated when I state that I do not know those answers. Often, I read the Bible, pause, think, wonder, pray, and close it unsure of the answers to all my questions. This story would be for me one of those cases.

Even with that confession that I can’t answer all of the questions of the Golden Calf narrative, I do walk away with some conclusions. First, a big part of our faith is waiting. What we do while we wait, reveals what kind of faith we have. God’s people had been through a number of disorienting ordeals. But, they had also seen the evidence of God like few people in history. They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was in control, that God heard their prayers, and that God loved them. They knew it, but it wasn’t enough. They wanted to dictate the terms of the relationship. Fed up with waiting, they broke the very first two rules God gave. If they were trying to force God’s hand, it worked. He did not destroy them as he said he wanted to do. But, he punished them severely. Many did die. The rest had to eat the golden calf. It was ground into dust and they were forced to consume it.

One of the lesser known figures in the New Testament is an old, righteous man named Simeon. His story is told in Luke 2:25-25. The Holy Spirit revealed to Simeon that he would not die until he saw the Messiah with his own eyes. When Mary and Joseph brought their little boy Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to be blessed, the Spirit nudged old Simeon and said now is the time. He never questioned that the salvation of Israel was this little baby he held in his arms. Through tear-filled eyes, he said, “Master now you are dismissing your servant in peace … for my eyes have seen your salvation” (Luke 2:29-30a). After Jesus rose from the grave, and ascended to Heaven, the disciples huddled together in Jerusalem and waited. For 40 days, they waited – the same amount time the Israelites waited at the foot of the mountain. However, the disciples didn’t create a golden calf, they prayed. And after 40 days, at Pentecost, they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

A second conclusion I walk away with after reading of Moses and God and the golden calf is that God cannot be contained, explained, or controlled. God is real dynamic, unpredictable, relational, passionate, and interested in us. God knows what’s going on in our lives. Just as we are waiting for Him to step in, He’s waiting for us to invite him. He wants us to turn our attention off ourselves and toward Him.

Look at the two activities that took place in periods of waiting. Those who followed Moses saw more miracles and more spectacle than anyone before or since. It didn’t produce faith. Instead of trusting God they, decided to displace God. God responded with harsh punishment because His loving heart for them had been rejected. The disciples in the same period of waiting prayed and worshipped. God responded with a violent rush of wind that filled them with the Holy Spirit and empowered them to share the gospel and establish the first churches in history. God loves us and responds to us. That’s the kind of God He is.

This leads to a third conclusion. What we do, how we spend our waiting time, has an impact on the life we have with God. Those who grow in faith through prayer and worship in times of uncertainty will be filled with the love God. Those who dismiss God and turn away and reject Him fall are punished. I think most of the time he simply lets us suffer the consequence of his absence and our own mistakes. What if God had done nothing with the Israelites when they made that calf? They would have been overrun by Egypt or enslaved by one of the other powerful nomadic that dominated Sinai. As rough as their discipline seems, when it ended, they were still God’s people headed to the Promised Land. I believe the reason it went that way is as angry as God was, he still loved them.

He loves us. Sometimes in our walk, we have to wait upon the Lord. The period of waiting is our opportunity to worship, pray, and grow. When we take that opportunity we are ready for whatever God has next. Even as we wait, He sees, He loves, and He plans grand things for us. Together, in faith and trust, let us wait upon the Lord.

AMEN

[i] This is found in Exodus 24.

[ii] Exodus 24:10-11.

[iii] Exodus 32:7-8.

The One True God of our Lives (Exodus 20:1-21)

2011-10-03T05:12:00.000-07:00

I bet someone here who could name all 10 commandments. I bet most could name over half. Did you know if you were Catholic, your list would be slightly different? And if you were Jewish, it would also be just a bit different? Evangelicals basically proceed out of the Protestant tradition and the Protestant listing of the 10 is what dominates in the United States. I am not sure how the different varieties of Orthodox Christianity list the commandments. All of the lists come from Exodus 20. All the lists contain the same material. Nothing is left out or changed. The various points of emphasis are based on theology.

My preference is the Jewish listing. What we call the “Old Testament” is the Hebrew Bible. This is Jewish scripture which we have inherited. In Christ we are adopted into the family of God, the elect, the Chosen People. By being born again through faith in Jesus, we become the people of God.

With gratitude and humility, we receive the Hebrew Scriptures and submit ourselves to those scriptures because they are the word of God. Jews read Exodus 20 and they see 10 commandments. But for them the second commandment is “You shall have no other Gods before me,” and “You shall not make for yourself an idol.” That’s all one commandment. For us one is “You shall have no other gods,” and two is “You shall not make for yourself an idol.” What’s the first commandment for the Jews, when they read Exodus?

“I am the Lord your God.” That’s where it starts. But that’s not a commandment. It’s just a statement. No, it’s not just a statement. It is the most important statement in the Bible. Though it is not written in the imperative, it has determining power. It says who the people are. They, we, are God’s, God’s personal possession. That one statement, “I am the Lord your God,” declares what we are about, how we live, and who we are.

We are who we are because of who God is. “I am the Lord your God.” Everything in the 10 commandments and in deed in the Bible proceeds from this. Have you ever thought of the way the 10 Commandments center on God’s identity? Through the commandments and the circumstances in which they were given, God shapes his people. UCC Pastor Kathryn Matthew Huey says,

Every once in a while, the Ten Commandments provoke a measure of controversy in our public life: not about whether we actually obey them and keep them at the heart of our life together, or how they might change the way we live if we observed them. That would be an excellent controversy. No, our national argument tends to be about their display, engraved (ironically) in stone and practically worshipped not for their content but for the message they are assumed to convey, that we are a nation under God, specifically, in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The prominent display of these commandments serves to remind people in other faiths, and atheists as well, about who "we" are, whenever "they" walk into public buildings, regardless of the separation of church and state that protects all of us, however futilely, from religious wars of one kind or another. And yet, we are apparently the ones who need to be reminded of who we are and what it means to live faithfully, for "in recent polls of the American public," Gene Tucker observes, "although the majority affirmed that the Bible is in some way the word of God, only a small percentage could name as many as four of the Ten Commandments" (Preaching through the Christian Year A). If we don't even know what they are, how can we obey them?[i]

As I said, I think we would do a lot better than naming 4, but the commandments are not something to be listed. The commands are to be obeyed. They are not warnings – a list of behaviors to avoid, but guidelines for life to be lived proactively. Opposite each prohibition, what’s a positive action I can take?

The commandments are not artwork to be displayed on courthouses. Art can be a medium to communicate the word, but the commandments are more than an art subject. The 10 commandments are not an object we own, not something for our use. They don’t belong to us and are not about us.

The 10 commandments are about God. God had to come down to get to the mountain top, and the mountain was encased in smoke. God descended and summoned Moses, and Moses would go up –only Moses. God’s presence was holy; humanity’s sin, from Adam and Eve forward dirtied the very good creation, the ones made in God’s image. God’s holiness would obliterate any sin-soiled human, so God had to control the conditions in which humans would approach.

The holiness and otherness of God is so daunting, at the end of the reciting of the 10 commandments, the people were traumatized by fear. They told Moses, “You speak to us and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” They would not sing the words from the hymn, “And he walks with me and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own.” There’s a danger that our emphasis on personal relationship with God in evangelical Christianity has gone so far, we lose a sense of the holiness of God.

One of the most ancient forms of Christianity is Ethiopian Orthodoxy – it predates the Catholic Church and its development is independent both of Catholicism and of Eastern Orthodoxy. In the Ethiopian Orthodox church, the sense of the holy is so great that they don’t want average worshipers to read the scripture. Only the priest handle something as sacred as God’s holy word.

I think that’s an error in the other direction. New Testament Christianity believes, if at all possible, laypersons should be literate and should be in the practice of reading scripture. Every one of us should read the Bible. Today, more and more Ethiopians are becoming literate and the evangelical church is on the rise there.

One young Ethiopian woman who has switched from Orthodoxy to an evangelical practice of Christianity has felt a certain reduction of God. She tells Christianity Today magazine that many of her evangelical friends treat God as a buddy. She feels they would do well to have that sense of reverence and holy fear of God that is so prominent in Orthodox practice.[ii]

Are we supposed to be in an intimate spiritual relationship of love with God? Yes, the New Testament shows this and it is also seen in the Old. Are we supposed to reverently fear God? Again, yes, and both testaments show this as well. To properly appreciate the 10 commandments, in our thought they must go from object used by us to gift of God given to us; a gift that fills us with awe and wonder. The commandments are about God.

OK, we know what they are about, but what do the Commandments do? Well, they don’t do anything. They’re a list of rules written on a stone tablet and we read them so we know what not to do. Wrong!! The 10 commandments are God’s gift of grace that form us as a community, as the people of God. Just as in our understanding the commandments must shift from cultural object to reminder of God’s awesome presence, the commandments must also shift from rules list to defining dynamic. We have to think about the commandments differently. We have to see them with fresh eyes. The Commandments are a statement, but not just a legal statement. Through the commandments God shapes our character.

Sometimes popular Bible teachers talk about how to apply the Bible to your life or my life or anyone’s life. The intent in this thinking is always good and I have many times said similar type things. The person speaking wants Christians to read scripture and have scripture be an active, powerful voice in our lives. But just as there is a danger in getting too cozy in our relationship with God through Jesus Christ, there is a danger in too easily forcing scripture into my story.

Oh … I need some grace. Let me get a concordance and look up ‘grace.’ Ah, here’s something in the Gospel of Matthew about grace. Oh, wow! Paul’s letters are filled with grace. Let me check out book titles. Oooh! This says there’s grace in Genesis and in Proverbs. By the time someone finishes this little exercise, he has a notebook page full of Bible references. He reads through them all and is filled with grace and feels good. It’s not an altogether terrible practice. God loves us and feels good when we feel good. But, most of the passages on grace (or trust or love or any other topic) are set in the midst of a story that if full of sin, loss, judgment, and pain. When we hopscotch through the Bible and only land on the verses we like and skip over the messy parts, we don’t get the full force of the living word of God. The Bible becomes a tool for our use.

But, the Bible is not a tool – it is a double-edged sword. When we stop using it and instead submit ourselves to it, we get cut. As Jesus said, we are pruned (John 15). The parts of ourselves that draw us away from God’s holiness are painfully cut off. Jesus says we lose ourselves for his sake and only when we lose our lives are we saved (Matthew 10:39; 16:25; Luke 9:24).

The 10 commandments are not tools at our disposal that we can use when needed. The 10 commandments are there – a centerpiece in God’s word, and we are to submit our lives to this word, to these commands, to the God who gave them and constantly speaks His eternal truth through them. We must not consider what we are to do with the commandments. We consider, as we read and reread and reread and pray over the commandments, what is God doing in us? What is God creating in us? What new creations are we becoming as God continuously works in us?

Immediately, in the first two commandments, we acknowledge God is master of our values. He’s the only God. He cannot be represented by an idol. An icon might help understand aspects of the true God. Remember icons are windows we look through so we see God. Icons are not worshipped but rather are items to help us see the one we worship. What matters most to a disciple of Jesus Christ? That might be answered in different ways depending on the circumstance, but God is always the one who determines our values. Family, children, job, bank account – these things don’t determine our values. If they do, our faith is flawed and change is needed. The first two commandments reveal God as master over our values. As he says, He is the Lord. We belong to Him.

The last seven commandments about parents and about ethical behavior (including stealing, lying, murdering, coveting) – the last seven show that God is master over our relationships. How do I approach my marriage? How do live in community with my neighbor? How do I view possessions, mine and others’? God determines the answers.

Finally, the command about Sabbath reveals that God is master over time – my time and all time. In 2012, we will do an entire sermons series about Sabbath; during that series, all the small groups in the church will focus on Sabbath time.

In all this value-determination that comes from the commandments, we see God is master: master over our values, our relationship, and out time. Sometimes, in theological debates, people talk about the sovereignty of God. What do you mean when you say God is sovereign? What do I mean when I say it? How mad will you get if I say something that threatens your definition of God’ sovereignty?

Rather than wasting time, fighting over definitions and defending definitions, why don’t we pause and read Exodus 20:2? God says to us, “I am the Lord your God!’ Here’s the big question: how is God’s sovereignty seen in my life? In our church’s communal life? In us as we live day-to-day in the community of Chapel Hill-Carrboro, Hillsboro-Durham? Do our lives point to God as master of everything?

In submitting our lives to the commandments, two things take place.

God does the unpredictable – we don’t know exactly how it will go. We just trust His leadership. He works in us, in our lives, in the world around us, and we follow his lead and trust Him. We see God at work – that’s the first effect of submitting.

Second, those around us who do not submit or are not really religious as all see how we live, and they see a life of individuals in a community that is submitted to God as God is revealed in Jesus Christ.

So our submission to the commandments and to God’s complete leading opens us that God may work in us, and our submissions of ourselves turns our lives into a witness that points to the one true God who is at work in the world.

The good news of all this is that God, whom the Israelites so feared (and their fear was entirely justified) is a God who gives good things. In fact, the life lived in full submission to God is far more blessed, far more fulfilled, far richer spiritually and emotionally, than the life lived for self-satisfaction. The one who lives under God’s sovereignty, in appropriate awe of who God is – that person truly lives. Moreover, that person has a deep understanding of Jesus and that understanding continually grows. That person is already seeing the eternity we enter at the resurrection and final judgment.

In the end, what does this ultimately mean for you and me in our daily lives? We have to know the commandments and submit our lives to them. We creatively conform so that do not murder becomes pray for enemies. Do not steal and do not covet becomes love the neighbor as I do myself. Do worship idols and revere the name of God and honor Sabbath becomes recognition that God is master of everything and our lives are lived under His mastery as we understand it in the leading of the Holy Spirit, in the Word and in the teaching and life of the church.

A final question: are there areas of life we want to control? Do we have places in our lives we don’t want to share with God because we don’t want to change the ways we know God will demand that we change? Do we have aspects of our lives we’re not ready to put into God’s hands?

The whole message is God is the Lord, and the 10 Commandments show that, and we are to submit our lives fully to these commands and fully to God. If we have things we’re holding on to – relationships, jobs, personal practices – things we have not submitted to God, then he isn’t Lord of our lives. He is Lord, but we aren’t acknowledging that. We’re quietly, dangerously rebelling.

So the question is would we in a time of quiet prayer, honestly admit, I’ve got things I haven’t given over to God. Submitting my life to God doesn’t mean I quit my job or dump my girlfriend or stop listening to certain music. It means I am willing to if God, the master, tells me to. Will we, in a time of quiet prayer, examine life and name those things we haven’t handed over to God? Once we’ve named them, we will ask God to take those things into His control today?

We will have quiet meditation as the musicians come. A time of silence for each of us to examine our hearts. This is a moment for honesty between you and God – complete honesty. Name the things, the habits or addictions, the pastimes, the relationships – name it all. Name what you are controlling and not giving to God. As we bow in silent prayer, name it. Then, submit that thing to God.

Maybe coming to the front and praying on the steps and looking to the cross will help. Consider the love of Jesus, and give all of life to the Lord. Consider how great life is in God’s hands. I’ll be here and Heather & Jonathan in the back. We here in case it might help to pray with someone. You can come and we’ll pray together. Whether you come or do your business with God right where you are, don’t let the moment pass. Ask God to be Lord of all of your life. In this moment, give yourself to Him completely.

AMEN

[i] From the UCC lectionary website - http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/october-2-2011.html

[ii] Matthew D. LaPlante, Christianity Today, September 2011, p.17-19.

Review of "The Walk" by Shaun Alexander

2011-09-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

The Walk (Shaun Alexander)

Book review by Rob Tennant, September 23, 2011

I enjoyed The Walk by former NFL running back Shaun Alexander for several reasons. Alexander writes as a Christian who played football, not as a football player whose religion happens to be Christianity. That’s extremely important. Often high profile athletes (or actors or politicians) give lip service to faith. On the award stand, they “thank Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.” But nothing in their words beyond a pithy thanks reveals that faith has any influence on their life.

One NFL star talks about his faith in Jesus, but a few years ago, he was found guilty of obstruction of justice in a murder case. He never referenced his faith in his public comments about the experience.

Another superstar football player said in an interview with a national sports magazine that his top priority in life was to make Jesus his Lord. But then, he listed all his other priorities – to be a record-setting running back; to win several Super Bowls; to be remembered among the all-time greats. He went into considerable depth describing how he would achieve these goals. He gave no elaboration on what he would to do make Jesus his Lord, the Lord of his life. I have seen him in subsequent interviews and he never misses an opportunity to expound on his football acumen. He rarely, if ever, discusses what he says is his top priority – the acknowledge Jesus as Lord.

These are a few of hundreds of examples of athletes and other famous people who mention “Jesus” but do not display in anyway that I can see a life of faith. Shaun Alexander’s book The Walk is a book about true faith by someone who happens to have played football.

I am an avid football fan who enjoyed watching Alexander, especially the year he played in the Super Bowl. I love sports-books, especially when they are well written. In that spirit, I wish Alexander would have given more locker room or on-the-field vignettes. However, in light of what I wrote in the previous paragraphs, I salute Alexander for staying on topic – living the life of a disciple of Jesus. Or as he wisely puts it, God is not out to make “you a success at anything other than a success at hearing His voice, knowing His name, and doing His will” (p.214).

That sentence from the concluding paragraph is another reason I admire Alexander’s approach. So many people, who have made it big, go to great lengths to say that God gave them their success and that if their fans/readers/followers believe as they believed, they too can be successful. Alexander realizes he has lived a unique life, and God is not going to make everyone a starting running back at the University of Alabama, or an NFL probowler or a millionaire athlete. Alexander’s writing shows a faith that runs deeper than such shallow spirituality. Shaun Alexander is not calling people to prosperity that is worldly, but not Biblical. He’s calling people to true faith and truly faithful living.

I would happily recommend Alexander’s book to young people, teens or young adults, or to people who are football fans and who are new to Christian faith. But, my recommendation would come with a couple of caveats.

First, I look at the categories of “the walk” Alexander lays out. He cites five steps and these come in progression: the Unbeliever, the Believer, the Example, the Teacher, and the Imparter. I have not seen this succession of steps in the Christian life worded in this way. I want to know more about where this comes from. The way Alexander writes, it seems to simply come out of his own experience with the church, with pastors, in his own Bible reading, and his own relationship with the Holy Spirit. Those are completely valid sources, and I don’t dismiss them in the least. But, I wish Alexander would have given more specifics in where his schematic comes from. How did he arrive (besides experience) at this system for following Jesus? A theology or faith practice that is solely based on experience is shaky because it is so subjective.

Perhaps Alexander’s writing does have a foundation beyond his own life experiences. I wonder as he writes about the Imparter if this is the case. I have not used that term, and I wonder if it is based in a denominational tradition I am unfamiliar with. If so, Alexander would have done the reader a great favor in expounding on where the term “imparter” comes from so that the reader go do further reading.

A second caveat to my positive review of The Walk has to do with those examples in the book where Alexander shares that he feels God has given him, at special times, supernatural perception or even a heeling touch. I don’t doubt the veracity of those incidents. I believe miracles occur today, and some people are gifted by the Holy Spirit to do unexplainable things. Shaun Alexander may well be one of those people. But it sure would have been helpful if he had give references that give the basis of his beliefs about the Holy Spirit and heeling touch and divinely inspired knowledge. I understand what he’s saying. But, besides his own ideas, where does this come from.

My base criticism of The Walk is that it is poorly referenced. There’s no real research offered. Shaun Alexander isn’t writing his own biography. He’s writing a persuasive piece – inviting readers to consider a life that he feels would be a tremendous blessing. I happen to agree with all he has written. But I think if I were not already a believer, I would not be convinced. There has to be more than simply Shaun lived, it works, so you (reader) should live this life too. As a testimony of genuine faith, The Walk is excellent. As a witness of the joy and power of Christianity, The Walk is inspiring. As a persuasive piece that would positively impact readers predisposed to disagree, The Walk is lacking.

"I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review."