"Contagious" (Holy 2:10-19)

 

watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE3Lmw8DDMM&t=2233s

Sunday, January 24, 2021

 

            Prior to 2020, an ongoing debate between my wife and me had to do with handwashing and the transmission of germs.  She is maniacal, no, not maniacal; committed!  That’s the right word, committed. Long before anyone ever said the words “COVID-19,” my wife Candy was committed to fighting germs.  In her world, “Good morning” is something you say after you’ve confirmed everyone has indeed washed their hands. 

            A year into the COVID-19 situation, she wins the debate.  We all need to be committed to hand-washing and stopping the spread of the virus, a contagion unlike anything we’ve ever seen.  Interestingly, the Biblical prophet Haggai deals with the issue of what can be caught and what cannot be caught.

            In chapter 1 Haggai established the necessity of rebuilding the Jerusalem temple that had been destroyed when exile began.  Haggai and Zechariah come along after the exile with the message that it is time once again for Israel to answer call to live as God’s people through whom God will reveal Himself to the world. 

            Recall the Torah, the law, specifically Leviticus 19:2. “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”  That law had not changed in 520 BC, Haggai’s day. Israel was once again called to be holy.  The first order of business was to rebuild the temple.  This work would signal to the people of Israel and the surrounding nations that worship was the central, organizing activity around which community life revolved.  Haggai’s prodding got the work started, but then what?  Once they completed the temple, what would daily life be like for God’s people after exile?

            This question confronts everyone who believes in Jesus and follows him as Lord.  When gentiles realize we are ‘in Christ’ we understand that we too are a part of the people of God.  The command “be holy” applies to the way we live.  Jesus says, in the Sermon on the Mount, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).  Also, in that sermon, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33).  Answering this divine call to holiness determines the direction of our lives.

            Is it possible?  Can we “be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect?”  Is it just a pipe dream to suppose we can be holy?  Haggai addresses this.  After he has inspired the people to overcome their fears and begin the temple work, he hints at what must be the foundation of life lived under God and in relationship with God.

            “Ask the priests,” he writes. “If one carries consecrated meat in the fold of one’s garment, and with the fold [of that garment then] touches bread, or stew, or wine, or oil, or any kind of food, does it become holy?  The priests answered, ‘no’ (2:12).”  We 21^st century American Christians take communion.  If you were to ask me, the professional religionist of this church, after a communion service, ‘Is everyone who ate today’s communion bread now sinless,’ I would answer, ‘no.’  I believe the bread shows that we are forgiven.  Jesus has taken on himself the death sin brings.  But, after we walk away from  the Lord’s Supper, we make mistakes again.  We have been forgiven.  We have not achieved holiness. Touching something holy doesn’t make us holy.  Holiness is not contagious. Sin is.

            Next, in verse 13 Haggai asks, “’If one who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches [you], do [you] become unclean?’ The priests answered, ‘Yes.’”  So, while holiness does not rub off, impurity does.  Paul makes this point in his first letter to the Corinthian church.  Quoting a Greek proverb, he writes, “Bad company ruins good morals” (15:33).  Who we hang out with, what we watch, and the websites we visit and games play affect how we think and how we see the world. 

Sin draws us in, so that we forget to consider the Lord as we live in the places of everyday life.  20^th century theologian James McClendon defined sin as refusal to walk the way of Jesus, ruptures in the community (which is a rejection of God’s rule), and reversion to a life apart from God.[i]  We refuse God’s way, reject God’s rule and relegate God to limited spaces.  God lives in the church building and we visit him on Sundays.  Maybe, God is awake and active when our family prays before a meal, or while we are on a mission trip, or volunteering for a ministry.  The rest of the time, God is quiet, sitting off to the side and ignored.  We would say, O yes, Jesus is Lord.  However, we’ve caught the contagion: sin! So, Jesus is a quiet Lord who doesn’t have authority in our day-to-day lives.  Grace and righteousness are condescendingly patted on the head and set on the shelf.  Other values rule.

If we can’t catch holiness, and defilement rubs off on us like wet mud clinging to our shoes, what is do be done?  How do we wash off the profane and clothe ourselves with Christ’s gospel?

In verses 16-17, Haggai, as he did in chapter 1, points out the farming failures the people struggled with prior to working on the temple.  And in verses 18-19, Haggai notes how much better they fared once they laid the foundation for that temple.  What thread ties it together?  God’s involvement; “I struck … the products of your toil with blight” says the Lord, when the temple was a pile of rubble.  And after the people obeyed the prophet and began the work?  Haggai issued God’s promise.  “From this day on I will bless you.”

Holiness cannot be caught, except when issued by God.  Impurities, defilement, sin, deviations cannot be washed off, except when the one doing the washing is God.  The divine call in Haggai is an act of God’s grace.  God invites the people once again to be His people.  They did not accomplish this, but working hard in response to His grace, they did rebuild the temple and re-establish the worshiping community.  They received God’s blessing. They lived as God’s active partners with God as the initiator.  When God initiates the relationship and we respond obediently, God makes us holy. 

Church, we cannot stop the pandemic.  We can live responsibly, limit our indoor gatherings, socially distance, and wash our hands.  We can pray.  We must do all these things.

Church, we are powerless to root sin out of the world; moreover, we will catch the corrosive effects of life lived apart from God.  We will feel God’s absence, when under the influence of people who have refused God’s way, rejected God’s rule, and reverted to a life apart from God.  The godless life defiles us.  But then we remember that the God who promised to be present in Haggai has come to us in the  flesh in Jesus. 

He modeled the perfect human life, loving selflessly, teaching God’s wisdom, fulfilling God’s law, and doling out grace.  In his death he defeated sin, and in his resurrection, he overcame death.  He calls us to himself and fills us with the Holy Spirit.  He makes us right.  Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:30, “Christ Jesus became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”

 We don’t catch holiness, we receive it.  We turn to Jesus, he removes all that dirties and ruins us, and gives us sparkling, heavenly robes.  He is righteous and covers us with his righteousness so that we may exist with one another in relationships of love and peace. 

In recent days, a lot of talk about hope has been tied to a new president and to the arrival of vaccines.  We hear people pinning their hopes to these things.  We know the only real hope for the world is Jesus, the holy, eternal one who makes us new.  His holiness covers us. He gives us life and we live in Him. 

AMEN

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[i] McClendon, J. (1994), Systematic Theology: Vol. 2: Doctrine, Abingdon Press (Nashville), p.130-135.

Holiness

I just finished reading through Leviticus.  Some Christians see this Old Testament book as part of the Bible that go mostly unread.  Since Christ came, we don’t practice ritual sacrifice in worship. People would be appalled if upon entering the church they heard the pathetic sounds of cows and sheep about to fall under the priest’s knife.  No modern horror movie is bloodier or more macabre than worship in Israel in the day Leviticus was written.

            Most American Christians don’t observe kosher food laws.  And we don’t settle legal disputes according to the prescriptions in Leviticus.  What does this seemingly antiquated OT work have to say to Christians today?  It is part of the collect we call ‘word of God,’ Holy Spirit-inspired writings.

            It would be impossible to identify all the ways God speaks to our lives in the pages of Leviticus.  But here are a few thoughts to hold in mind.  First, Jesus did not overturn the truth and divine assertions we find in Leviticus.  Jesus doesn’t undo the word found there, or replace it.  He fulfills it.  All the hopes, dreams, and ideals intended in Levitical law reaches his fulfillment in life, teachings, and salvation of Jesus Christ. 

            Second, in Leviticus, we see the baseline truth upon which we build our faith.  Leviticus 18:5: “I am the Lord your God.  You shall keep my statutes and my ordinances; by doing so one shall live.”  What follows is a series of “You shall’s” relating to modesty, appropriate and inappropriate sexual expression, and religious fidelity.  The chapter ends with “I am the Lord your God.”  Then chapter 19 opens with “You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy” (v.2).  Throughout that chapter, the reason given for each command is this: “I am the Lord your God.”

            The instruction of 19:2, “be holy,” carries the same sense as Jesus’ injunction in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount.  “Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect” (5:48).  This underpins the promise of 1 Peter 2:9, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”  Our highest calling as followers of Jesus, the fulfiller of the Law, is holiness.

            Of course we may read through Leviticus and find some of the laws to be not to our liking.  Within the arc of the salvation that runs from Genesis to Revelation, much of the Old Testament practices are no longer normative for us as they were originally fixed in a culture different from modern cultures.  However, anytime history leads us to live in ways other than what is explicit in the Bible, we have to remain tethered to the call to holiness.  In our cultural practices, in our moral code, in our relationships, and in our ethics, we are called to be holy as our God is holy.  If we cannot support our life choices with easily seen Biblical precedents or principles, we need to change our life choices.  Yes, cultural expressions have changed throughout human history.  No, we cannot discard the divine call to holiness mandated in both testaments of the Bible.

            Thus each person must ask himself or herself, “Is the life I am living one that enables me to ‘lean in’ to God’s holiness?”  If it is not, I need to make different choices.  The standard is holiness.  If I why this is, God’s only answer is, “I am the Lord your God.”  No more need be said. 

I can probe the divine mind with my questions, and God would rather we be engaged, even in a tense engagement with Him, than we be automatons.  You or I can go to God with tears or with shouts or with shaking fists.  We can challenge God, rage at God, and rush at God with all our hottest, heaviest emotions.  God can take it and God will love us.  He may not answer all our questions, but God will always love us.  And whether or not we get the answers we seek, we are called to obedience and more strongly, we are called to holiness.  Why?  God is the Lord our God. 

As Christians wrestle with 21^st century cultural issues and shifting moralities, our baseline is the teaching expressed in Leviticus and perfected in Jesus.  We are to be holy as the Lord our God is holy.

Holiness: An Invitation to Cooperation

Leviticus 19

February 19, 2017

          Compliment or criticism? He’s holier than thou.  If you’re saying that about someone are you building him up?  It’s a critique.  Not a one of us would want to be called ‘holier than thou.’  Yet, I suggest that in our effort to see more of God and to know God better, in our lives, we must strive to be holy.

          One of my parenting tasks is to help my kids with grammar and writing homework, so I have to note something about this well-worn phrase, holier than thou.  The word ‘thou’ is archaic and it means you.  The word ‘holier’ is in a comparative form: holy, then the comparative ‘holier,’ and the superlative ‘holiest.’  Holier than thou is a phrase steeped in competition.  He’s not just holy.  He’s holier than you!

          No wonder it’s used as a put-down.  Holy becomes a synonym for ‘better.’  He’s holier than thou.  He’s better than you.  O no he’s not! ­ We think.  We never stop ponder what makes someone better than someone else.  We just resist the idea that one person is better at being a person than another person; we don’t like to think someone else is better at humanity than we are. 

          Holier than thou.  We say it out of the side of our mouths, a euphemism for cocky.  He’s so full himself, so holier than thou.  He thinks his stuff doesn’t stink.

          We’re so resistant to spiritual or moral comparisons, and yet much in our worldview is comparison-based.  We value competition.  Think about your own view.  Do you see the world through a cooperation-tinted lens or a competition-tinted lens?  In order for one to get ahead, does another necessarily fall behind?  Let that question settle.  Are you more prone to competition or to cooperation?  Let the question simmer as it pertains to how you move through life.

          Is it enough that the Tar Heels are having a really good basketball season?  Or, is it only truly successful if they are not only good, but better than Wake Forest?  Or N.C. State?  Or especially Duke?  Competition is admired in sports and it should be.  I want my favorite team to be highly competitive.  What I am asking us to consider is how this cooperation-competition dynamic spills over into life and into our thoughts about God and our own identity in Christ. 

          In the campaign of 2016, Donald Trump gave a specific compliment to Ted Cruz.  He said of Cruz, “He’s fighter.”  Later, Trump said the same thing of Hilary Clinton.  “I know this about her,” he said, “She’s a fighter.”  In both cases, he said it with admiration.  He appreciates that tough, competitive spirit.  So did Barak Obama.  So do most Americans.  Toughness; competitiveness; we see these as admirable qualities, except when we are dealing with holiness.

          Holiness is a title reserved for the pope.  To be extra reverent, we say ‘the holy Bible.’  But people, who are supposed to be competitive in all things, are suddenly expected to be humble and self-effacing when it comes to holiness.  The great irony is the Bible really doesn’t commend us to be great champions in sports or politics. 

From the Proverbs to the Parables, the Bible commends deference. Put others ahead of yourself.  Don’t brag.  Take the least significant place at the table.  These are paraphrases of actual teachings from scripture – the Bible we call “holy.”  In life, we are to put other ahead of ourselves.  We’re not told by God to be “winners.”  It’s strange that we say the Bible is authoritative in our lives.  But some things we highly value, toughness & competitiveness, are not Biblical values. 

But you know what is?  We just read it in the holy Bible; but not just the Bible!  This is the Torah, the law on which the rest of scripture stands.  Here at the center of Torah we read this command, Leviticus 19:2.  “You shall be holy.  For I, the Lord your God am holy.” God did not say this to the Pope.  This is not an inner-trinity conversation, Father-God speaking to God-the-Son.  This is to every one of God’s people.  This is to you and me.  We must be holy, for the Lord our God is holy. 

A quick aside: this is not a wholesale rejection of competitiveness.  In your work, you may have to compete for grants.  Compete hard!  I want the scientists who get the grants to be scientists who worship HillSong.  Compete hard in the interview for the job.  Strive excellence in the things you do in life.  Strive to be an excellent parent, an outstanding friend, the best student you can be, a quality, trustworthy employee.  Be a leader in the workforce.  If you coach a basketball team, strive to win every game.  Compete in life. 

However, when it comes to our primary calling, the Bible is directing us to view life through a cooperative prism, not a competitive one.  We don’t need others to fail for us to succeed.  In fact, the Biblical picture of holiness painted in Leviticus 19 is inherently cooperative.  It’s not something we fight for.  We join with one another in a mutually beneficial effort for the good of society. 

Leviticus 19 appears to be a re-working of the 10 commandments.  There’s the insistence on Sabbath-observance.  There the prohibitions against coveting, lying, and stealing.  There’s the rejection of idolatry.  This is a helpful way of understanding Leviticus 19, but note this.  The emphasis here is on relationships with people.  Our obedience to God’s absolute command is seen in how we relate cooperatively with people.  Samuel Ballentine writes, “the importance of how one lives in relationships with others in the human community is equal to, if not even greater than, the requirement of [faithfulness] to God.  … Ethical behavior is not merely the necessary consequence of love for God; it is the fundamental prerequisite that establishes the authenticity of that love.”[i]

In other words, we know we are striving to obey God’s command to “be holy” when we cooperate with other people for their good according to the guidelines given in the Bible.  

Let’s go through it and see this cooperation woven throughout the commandments.

Leviticus 19:3, “You shall revere your mother and father.”  We know we are striving for holiness when we honor our parents.  And honoring our parents is a matter of cooperation within the family. 

Verse 4, “Do not turn to idols.”  In ancient cultures, idol worship involved looking at a statue, endowing that statue with qualities reserved for God, and then serving and worshiping the statue.  This practice was the root cause of the destruction of society.  When we give what belongs to God – our worship and devotion – to something that is not God, then our social orientation is so off kilter the damage ripples throughout society. 

In ancient times it was statues – literal idols.  Today, our idolatry is seen when we give the loyalty and the allegiance that is exclusively God’s to someone or something else: a political party, a value like consumerism or patriotism, or a country.  “Do not turn to idols,” Leviticus says.  God should be our center and our all-in-all. 

Verses 9-10: don’t harvest everything!  This made sense for the agricultural society in which these commands were originally given.  Land-owning farmers who worked hard to maximize the productivity of the land were told point-blank not to harvest everything.  Leave some of it for hungry people.  Cooperate with those people who don’t own land and might starve without your help.

In today’s contex, this command might be worded don’t hoard.  Don’t keep everything. Why not?

Remember the overarching command in verse 2 – “Be holy.”    The only reason God gives us is “I am the Lord,” and this phrase is repeated in verse 4, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 25, 28, 30, 31, 34, & 37.  In 2017, when we read Leviticus 19:9-10, it sounds like this.  “When you receive your paycheck, don’t keep it all.  Take some of that money and share it with someone who is struggling.  No, that person with whom you share it didn’t work for it.  You did it.  So why in the world should you share it?  What the heck?  Why?”

“I am the Lord.”  It’s the only reason given. 

To say one person is holier than another, as in ‘holier than thou’ makes no sense.  It’s an absurd notion.  Holiness is not comparative at all, when we understand it Biblically.  One cannot be holy as God commands us to be holy alone.  The only way we can obey this command of God is in relationships of cooperation with others.  We have to cooperate in our worship community to exalt God and only God.  Together we reject idolatry by rejecting idols.

Together we honor our parents.  This is true in our own families but also in our church family, where we honor those who are elders among us.  We honor them for the work they do in the life of the church today.  Our elderly are as active as anyone.  Second, we honor them for the wisdom they’ve acquired over years.  It’s a cooperative effort in which we all experience blessing.

Together we honor everyone in the community by recognizing that the paychecks our hard work produces are a means of cooperation.  When seen this way, we realize we aren’t giving to charity when we share our money so others can eat, be clothed, be educated, and have housing.  The sharing of money contributes to helping everyone in the community join God in holiness.

Verse 17 couldn’t be clearer.  “You shall not hate in our heart anyone of your kin.”  Based on the life and teaching of Jesus, we know our “kin” is the human family.  We are not to hate anyone, period.  That is followed up with something that might be familiar to New Testament readers.  Leviticus 19:18.  “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

We Christians are tempted to think of ourselves as New Testament people who no longer practice the system of worship described in Leviticus.  We don’t do animal sacrifice.  However, as New Testament people, we would readily submit to the authority of the books in the NT, including First Peter.  First Peter 2:9 says, to us, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”

That verse colors our reading of Leviticus 19.  No, we don’t undertake the sacrificial system of worship prescribed in Leviticus because Jesus was the sufficient sacrifice, once and for all.  Our worship involves singing praise to the one true God.  It does not involve sacrifices.  After the cross, that’s no longer necessary.  However, the values of Leviticus, especially the holiness commanded in chapter 19, are formative for anyone who would be a God-worshiper.

Leviticus 19:17 says, “You shall not hate anyone of your kin.” How do I accomplish “holiness?” 

How can I be holy as the Lord my God is holy? Don’t hate anybody and love your neighbor.  Who is my neighbor?  The person who needs my help.  Why would I love him?  God’s answer comes at the end of verse 18.  We do it because God says to us, “I am the Lord.”

And to drive the point home, in Leviticus 19:34, God says, ‘you shall love the alien who resides among you as you love yourself.’  That’s it.  When we meet immigrants, people from other places, our first and only response to them must be as Christ-followers, people of God, a holy people.  It doesn’t matter where they are from.  It matters who we are.  Who are we?  We are a holy people (First Peter 2:9).  Because of that, what drives us is love.  We love the alien who travels to our home town.  Why?  God says, you do it because I am the Lord.

Every message this year at our church has been driven by a desire to know God.  From Leviticus 19, it is clear God wants us to know Him.  He loves us so much, he gives us guidance for every aspect of life.  God doesn’t want us confused.  God wants us to be assured of His love for us and our place in His Kingdom. 

This week, our task is to strive for holiness; not to be holier than thou, but rather to be holy alongside thou.  We do this and we will see God. 

Our starting point is love.  Who is hurting?  Who has deep need?  Who is the neighbor in our path we are called to stop and help?  There is so much noise in America right now, and most of it competitive in a damaging way that will leave us all defeated.  This week, let’s raise a different sound.  Let’s make some noise for cooperation – cooperation rooted in the holy love described in Leviticus and demonstrated in the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. 

Let’s go from here as holy witnesses who use everything we have to help people find their way into the Kingdom of God.

AMEN

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[i] S.Ballentine (2002), Interpretation: A Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Leviticus, John Knox Press (Louisville), p.161.

Because I am the Lord Your God (Leviticus 19:2)

Sunday, May 22, 2016

          God created the world.  This is basic belief of Christianity.  Yet, we live in a post-enlightenment world, which, among other things, means a lot of people have problems with this simple statement – God created the world.  While this might be assumed in Church, some simply don’t believe it. 

          Maybe you are one.  You hear it.  But you know that the statement comes from authority of the Bible.  The Bible, if read as an official record, only accounts for about 6000-10,000 years.  Physicists and biologists are quite certain the earth is 4.5 billion years old and the universe is 14 billion years old. 

          We know that science leads to technological breakthroughs.  We have seen the skyscrapers.  We hold in our phones all the knowledge of world.  Diseases are eradicated.  All these advances begin with science.  So we trust science, whatever we mean by ‘science.’  This path has so many turns, we’re not sure we can find our way out of this forest.  We trust science; science says the universe is billions of years old.  The Bible seems to say something else.  So we end up doubting the simple statement: God created the world. 

          Even in the church, where such a statement appears to be painfully obvious, our lives are lived in such a way that we don’t really believe it.  Oh, we say, yes of course, we believe God is creator.  But when you look at the choices we make – choices that indicate our values and our deepest held beliefs, do our choices reveal that in our hearts we believe God truly is God? 

          Or is something else God – the God to whom we give allegiance?  Is a certain lifestyle the god that we actually serve?  The successful, middle class lifestyle.  Is that god the one who dictates how we live?  Does a particular ideology hold more sway over us than the God described in the Bible?  The tolerance ideology, in which everyone must be affirmed, the self is the ultimate measure, and no one must ever be question, criticized, or asked to change.  Is that ideology calling the shots in how we think, choose, and live?  Examples abound.  Political movements, family dynamics, competing loyalties, personal appetites – all these forces vie to tell us who we are and how we are to live.

          We have spent five weeks counting today paying attention to another voice – the voice of the Holy Spirit.  God is telling us who we are and how we are to live.  God claims the authority to call us to a way of living.  I have over and over emphasized this.  It is not only pastors, prophets, professors, missionaries, theologians, and chaplains who get called.  Those religious specialists each have a unique calling, noted by titles like reverend, ‘father,’ and ‘doctor.’  These unique roles are important, but your role is important too.  We are, each one of us, called. 

          Why?  Because God is the Lord.

          Memorize the second half of Leviticus 19, verse 2.  Fix that portion of scripture on your mind.  Emblazon that half of a verse on your heart.  You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. 

Imagine this being said to you, the individual human.  You are created in the image of God.  Perhaps you hear this and have no earthly idea what it means.  One thing it means is God had something in mind when you were made.  God calls you to be holy.

          You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  Imagine this being said to the entire church family.  As a group, we are brought together for a purpose – God’s purpose.  Individuals and the church corporate are to be holy as God is holy.  We are called to this. 

Everything we have said over the past five weeks leads to this.  We have said we are called to fellowship at the Communion table in the Lord’s Supper and at the common table in meals.  We are called to be givers and receivers of hospitality. 

We are called to a story.  We understand our lives as stories that should be told.  We understand that the gospel comes to life when our stories intersect with and are woven into God’s story.  We are called by God to live the gospel story and to share it.

We are called to forgiveness.  The stinking pile that threatens the aromatic beauty of the Jesus way is sin. Sin clings, sin reeks, and sin sucks the life out of us.  But on the cross, Jesus has defeated sin completely and finally. So the threat is actually no threat.  We are fragranced with grace.  We are called to receive forgiveness and to give it.  We live as forgiven people, freed from sin.

Fourth, we are called to renewed humanity.  As we adjust to the idea of being forgiven and freed from sin, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit fills us.  At this point it is perfectly normal to assume that death is not part of our long-term future.  Yes, the world is still in sin.  No redemption is not complete.  But it is happening and complete restoration of God’s good creation is coming and we, in Christ, are part of it.  So even as our bodies die, we look forward to resurrection and life lived in healthy bodies that cannot be injured or killed, and this life is lived in good relationships, right relationship with God and with others.

My certainty that all of us are called to fellowship, story, forgiveness, and renewal comes from God – my understanding of who God is. 

I earlier urged us to commit the latter half of Leviticus 19:2 to memory. You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  Now, we look to the setting.  Where and when did God say this and to whom did God say this?  At the beginning of verse 2, where God instructs Moses: “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel.”  He’s addressing the entire nation gathered at the foot of the mountain in the Sinai wilderness after they have fled Egypt.  There are words in the Bible that are only for priests.  This verse is not among them.  Who did God tell “be holy”?  Everyone.

Who was this ‘everyone?’  Israel had been a nation of slaves under the heel of a cruel taskmaster.  The Egyptian Pharaoh in the book of Genesis is kind to Joseph and his brothers, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

By the time we turn the page to Exodus, the second book of the Bible, the kind Pharaoh has died.  Joseph and his 11 brothers have sired numerous sons and daughters who in turn each became parents of large families.  The next generation did the same and so on, so that what began as a family is at the beginning of Exodus a growing nation.  The new Pharaoh has forgotten the relationship with Joseph.  This new despot feels threatened by this burgeoning population and enslaves them. 

Who is this ‘everyone’ of Leviticus 19?  They are a people who were powerless to do anything other than Pharaoh’s bidding until Moses, under the power of God, freed them.  So, they went from slaves to wandering homeless people.  Now, if I said, “Word association,” and I hollered out “holy,” would you immediately think words like “slave,” “homeless,” “beaten,” “powerless,” and “downtrodden?”  These words describe the Israel gathered at the mountain in Leviticus 19.  God looked at these desperate wanders and said, You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  Holiness is imparted by God on the most unlikely of people. 

In his book Desiring the Kingdom, a guide for me throughout this series, James K.A. Smith says, “Gathering [for worship] indicates that Christians are called from the world, from their homes, from their families, to be constituted into a community capable of praising God. … [Here, we are] a new people gathered from the nations to remind the world that we are in fact one people.  Gathering … is a foretaste of the unity of the communion of the saints.”[i]

When we realize that we are who we are because by coming here we have answered a call from God and it is only possible for us to be here because God called us then it makes perfect sense.  Of course the people God calls “holy” are those who transitioned from defeated slavery to wandering homelessness.  The mighty of that era were the Egyptians.  By the time the Israelites stood at the mountain hearing God tell them to be holy those mighty Egyptians were fish food at the bottom of the Red Sea. 

Why?  Because the Lord God is Holy.

Because might or weakness by human standards is all the same – nothing in the light of God.

Because today nothing has changed.  The mighty today, 21^st century Pharaohs and power brokers, and the lowest of the low today, slaves and homeless, are all the same – nothing in the light of God.

However, this is not a sermon about how we are nothing.  This is not some sweaty preachers’ spit strewn soliloquy about the wretchedness of our condition.  This is an invitation to us to listen and hear.  God calls the wandering Israelites to be holy as God is holy.  God calls the Syrian refugee who is a Christian and is without home to be holy as God is holy. 

God calls the frustrated American who can’t shake his confusion.  He doesn’t know who he is supposed to be in a society where it appears that morality changes daily.  He doesn’t know what’s right and wrong because what was wrong yesterday is acceptable today.  And that American tries to take it all in and be faithful to God and he’s frustrated.  God calls the man of faith, drowning in confused frustration.  To him, God says, be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  You are holy because I am the Lord.

So we are called.  How then do we answer?  Hint: the answer is not found in whether we believe the earth is billions of years old or 10,000.  For the record, I believe Genesis and I believe the account scientists offer for the age of the earth and the development of life on the earth.  How can I say that?  Because I believe God when he says in Leviticus that He is the Lord. 

As Lord, God rules over all arenas of life.  God rules as we make personal choices.  God rules as physicists and biologists do their research, conduct their experiments, and draw conclusions from the results.  God rules when my family is at home at night and no one else is around.  No one knows your family when you go, the porch light is turned off and the shades drawn.  But God does and God is lord there too.  In light of HB2, I’ll say this: God is even Lord in the bathroom and in the chambers of the legislature where laws are drawn up. 

Gathered with Israel there at the mountain, we hear what they hear.  We are called as they were.  To us God says, “You shall be holy, as I, the Lord your God, am holy.” In practical terms, it means God comes first in all our thinking.  God influences every choice we make.  The rest of Leviticus 19 elaborates on life lived in holiness.  Some of the material was essential in 1200 BC and is irrelevant in 21^st century America.  Some of it speaks as loudly then as now.  Verse 18 – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  That teaching was on the books from the beginning.  In his life, Jesus demonstrated how to live it out.  In all the teachings, we are completely submitted to God’s rule.

This means we are completely apart from the values of the world around us.  It’s tough because most of us want to be accepted by our peers and neighbors.  We want to fit in.  Holiness is not an intentional move to be odd, but it is a declaration that we don’t care about fitting in.  We follow the Holy Spirit’s promptings and if that means going against the grain of society, then we do so. 

Pushing against the social currents as a way of living out holiness can be quite radical.  We may protest unjust laws; we may take up the cause of the victim and in facing get hit ourselves; we may change our lives completely in order to live out God’s love and God’s justice.  However, we can also push against the grain in small ways in our daily lives.  If these small attempts to live as God’s called people became a way of life, gradually we come to realize that we can hear God’s voice when we need to and we understand the world differently than people who don’t know Him. 

I was a senior in our high school church youth group, which was large.  Thirty of us where on the trip to Disney World.  I remember as an underclassman how hard it was for me to crack into the social cliques.  I had experiences of feeling rejected.  So on that trip, I looked our group and looked for the 6^th graders that seemed to have no friends.  My efforts were clumsy.  Some of those young ones didn’t know how to react when the youth group president grabbed and said, “You’re not going to be sad and lonely left out today.  You’re hanging out with us.”  I am sure I had a bit of hero-complex.  But residing in me deeper than that was a sense that in Christ all should welcomed and love.  Holiness is to be set apart, but everyone is invited and in fact called to this state of set-apartness. 

Over the years I have tried to become more delicate in my attempts to invite others into the holiness of God.  Those who know me well know that blunt, blowhard 18-year-old still lurks within.  And whatever warts were on you before you began to be transformed by Christ may still linger. Even so, find those small ways in which you can step to the God who invites and bring others along with you.  In the rhythms of your daily life, submit to God’s rule and extend God’s love and welcome.  The more God has authority in all areas of life, the more we live in the holiness to which we are called. 

And the more we live as called people, the less we are products of the fallen world around us and the more we are witnesses that show world a better, God’s way, the way of forgiveness, welcome, family, and eternal life.

AMEN

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[i] Desiring the Kingdom, p.161.

Comforted and Strengthened (2 Thessalonians 2:1-17)

          I was around 30 or so and had been a senior pastor for just a few years.  One of the elderly women in our church died and I had preached her funeral.  Her family appreciated the way things went.  So they called me a few months later.  One of her distant relatives, someone who did not have a pastor, was in a coma.  They were considering taking him off life support but they wanted to talk to me first. 

Something occurred to me this week as I remember that time 15 years ago.  It did not occur to me then, but it struck me this past week.  The man was young – only 48.  I was not so dense at age 30 that I thought 48 was “old.”  I was not foolish to think, ‘OK, he lived a good life.’ But it didn’t register with me that 48 is young.  I am now 45 years old.  Forty-eight seems young now.  He was 48 and his wife had to make the agonizing decision to take him off life support and sit with him as he died.  She wanted a pastor present.  She hoped I could offer meaning and make sense of what was taking place. 

I don’t know if I was of any help to her.  She was not part of our church family, so I did not see her after I preached her husband’s funeral.  Often people will turn to pastors, even people who have never been in church, when questions of mortality and ultimate meaning arise and they have no resources to answer such questions. 

The two questions facing us are (1) what bad news or misfortune hits with such devastation that we find ourselves at such a loss and so disoriented or overwhelmed that it would indeed be a crisis?  What losses in life knock us flat on our backs?  Your answer will be different than the person a few rows behind or even the person sitting next to you.  Maybe some of us have been through such a devastating crisis are in the middle of one. 

Syrian refugees are in the midst of life-changing events and indeed a life and death struggle.  In our own community, families locked in poverty face agonizing decisions that could render them homeless and maybe even tear their families apart.  And even families who are in relatively safe communities and have financial means, are middle class or higher, face personal crises that potentially bring suffering and loss.  What is the danger you face or I face?  That is the first question.

The second is what resources do you or I have to stand as the looming shadow of the approaching threat grows and threatens to swallow us?  What do we have that enables us not only to survive the threat, but to thrive in the face of it?  Jesus did not just promise he would get us through, help us survive.  He offered more.  He offers abundant life.  When faced with the death of a loved one at too young an age or the myriad struggles that come with poverty or the trail of tears refugees must walk or some other crisis, what gets us through and helps us joyfully thrive even in dark times?

We approach 2 Thessalonians 2 through these questions because of the first two verses.  We beg you brothers and sisters … do not be quickly alarmed as if the day of the Lord has already come (paraphrase).  The Thessalonian Church members accepted that persecution would come.  They would suffer because they chose to follow Jesus.  That was the course they had chosen.  That was not their crisis.  The letter does not specifically identify the source of the persecution.  It could have come from many corners.  Whatever the source, there were enemies opposing the preaching of Jesus in Thessalonica. 

The crisis came in continued speculation and confusion about when the risen Jesus would return, bring history to an end, judge the word, and usher in the Kingdom of God.  Even though this question had been directly addressed in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 5, confusion and concern over it persisted.  In fact, the people were very alarmed.  Their faith was beginning to crack not because of persecution but because of doubt.  Did Jesus come and did they miss it? 

Our crisis is not theirs but in our church as in their church, doubt comes when we get blindsided by some major problem threatens the vibrant relationship we have with God, and robs us of the joy we have in Christ.  The promise to that ancient church remains for us preserved in this letter. 

We see the specific issue for the Thessalonians beginning in verse 3.  Before the Day of the Lord comes, there will be a rebellion led by the lawless one.  This lawless one is called the beast in the book of Revelation.  In 1^st and 2^nd John, the term used is antichrist.  That term, ‘antichrist,’ is only recorded in two books in the Bible – 1^st John and 2^nd John.  Lawless one, beast, and antichrist – do these terms refer to specific individuals?  Are they each ways of identifying the same individual?

James Efird who taught at Duke Divinity School points out that because Paul did not specifically identify this person it is futile to try to do so.[i]  Paul felt the lawless one would be active soon, within a decade of his writing.  And, the Roman Emperor Domitian would have fit the bill as his persecution of Christians in the last decade of the first century AD did make things hard for Christians.  Abraham Mallherbe believes Paul was not identifying a specific enemy of God but rather had in mind an end-times “personification of lawlessness, the ultimate representative of those in whom lawlessness comes to expression.”[ii]

We could fill in names.  Hitler was the antichrist, the lawless one.  Osama Bin Laden is who Paul meant.  Or maybe today, the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the one.  When he’s off the seen another enemy of humanity will come along.  The point is evil is in the world right now.

God has already won the final battle.  That happened when Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world and then rose from the grave.  Those two events are inseparable.  Taken together, we see what God has won – our freedom from death and sin.  There is no final battle coming. 

However, the news of the victory has not yet made it throughout the world.  So for the time being, we live as people who have the Holy Spirit, are saved, born again, and are called to be heralds announcing the life people can have in Christ.  We have this truth and the mission to which we are called in the midst of a world where there is pain and suffering.  Evil has been defeated but not yet sentenced to eternal death.  In this interim period between resurrection and second coming, we live in the tension of the eternal power of God and the present reality of evil, suffering, and death. 

The Lawless One of 2 Thessalonians 2 represents the reality that evil is in the world.  We have to live within that reality.  This chapter falls in with a style of writing called apocalyptic.  This style uses fantastic images as an artistic way of describing God’s activity within human history.  Many reader mistakenly see in apocalyptic writing a script or a forecast of the end times.  It doesn’t actually work that way.  The book of Daniel, Matthew 24 & 25, and the book of Revelation are examples of apocalyptic writings.  In each case, the thing to catch is the promise of God described in poetic images.

Again, Professor Efird on the lawless one in 2 Thessalonians: “given the symbolic nature of apocalyptic thinking, it is possible that Paul did not have anyone or anything in mind as this “man of lawlessness.”  It appears that he speaks again in traditional symbolic imagery to describe a scene he does not know how to depict with specifics.  Paul always realized, as some others have not, that the future belongs to God and will be worked out by God.”[iii]

The urging in 2 Thessalonians is that the church not be shaken by rumors or lies or threats.  Whomever or whatever power opposes God and injures God’s people will wilt before the force of Jesus.  Verse 8, “The Lord Jesus will destroy [the lawless one] with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming.”

Of course this promise raises a more immediate concern.  It is wonderful to think that one day Jesus will come and conquer evil and death will no longer threaten nor will anything else.  We can count on that.  But what about between then and now?  Remember, we began with two questions: (1) what crises threaten us?  And (2) what helps faces these threats?  So, we say, great!  One day Jesus will come and defeat evil.  But what about today?  How do we live under threats to world security and safety, the threat of disease and death, and the specter of destructive behaviors and relationships that fall apart and leave us defeated and heartbroken? 

I have not mentioned Satan, this morning.  Verse 9 says the lawless one and Satan are affiliated with each and they use “all power, signs, lying wonders, and every kind of wicked deception” in the destruction of the lives of men and women.  Satan’s works are made manifest in antichrists and lawless men and women.  We don’t see the devil, but forces of evil are real and active.  We see the results of their malevolence when we fall prey to temptation and step off the path of discipleship and onto the way that leads away from God.

This takes different forms in each person’s life.  Evil is extraordinarily individual.  What tempts you has no allure for me.  What leads me into sin wouldn’t be snare for you at all.  In the promises of this passage, what help do have that enables us to repel these threats and live an abundant life in Christ?  What assurance do we have for today?

In 2 Thessalonians 1:3-5, we see the potentially redemptive character of persecution and the concomitant suffering.  As we endure and keep our eyes on God, we receive his blessing and direct the attention of our persecutors to Him.  Paul prays for God’s grace for the church.  Today people in the church pray for each other and God answers with encouragement and transformation.  God’s Holy Spirit is with us.  It is God himself with us that gets us through our trials.  Through our suffering, God can actually work for good.  I don’t believe God causes suffering, but I do believe God works in it.

In 2 Thessalonians 2, that same Holy Spirit is said to sanctify us.  Just as the forces of evil conspire to tempt us into causing our ruin, the Holy Spirit God is at work in us, making more God-like.  Sanctification is a fancy word that means we become holy.  And as the closing verses the chapter reaffirm, this is not something we accomplish but a work God does in us.  We are told, “stand firm and hold fast to the tradition of faith,” but immediately after that instruction we see that our Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father both comfort and strengthen us (from 2:15-17).  The fullness of God – each person of the Trinity - stands by us with the Spirit makes us more like God and less prone to sin, and the Son and Father comfort us so that our suffering is muted and our blessing multiplied and strengthens so we can stay faithful when tempted and tested.

What temptation do you face or what trial are you suffering through at this moment in your life?  Whatever the answer, we have a promise.  God is with us in it.  With our focus on him, even trials will become the grounds on which our faith is honed and enlarged and we find ourselves in the joy of the Lord instead of the clutches of the enemy. 

May our Lord Jesus Christ … carry us into every good work and word.

AMEN

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[i] J. Efird (2006), Left Behind: What the Bible Really Says about the End Times, Smith & Helwys (Macon, GA), p.51

[ii] A. Malherbe (2000), First and Second Thessaloians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Doubleday (New York), p.431-432.

[iii] Efird, p.51.

The Holiness of God

Sunday, November 9, 2014

          Not to get ahead of ourselves, but Christmas is in sight.  The core story is the birth Jesus, the Messiah, and Jesus is God in human flesh.  We celebrate how close we can be to God.  In Jesus, God can be touched.  We believe His Holy Spirit resides with us, among us, and in us.  We don’t touch the Holy Spirit the way we touch a table or a podium.  But a central belief in our faith and life in Christ is that in the Spirit, Jesus is real, present, active, and felt.  We feel the Spirit in a way that we feel nothing else.  In Advent we celebrate the coming of Christ, anticipate the second coming of Christ, and rejoice in the closeness of God. 

          Before we get there, I invite you to pause with me and ponder the distance of God.  “Otherness” is a better way of saying it.  However much we know of God in our life of faith, I believe there is far more we have not seen or experienced.  Not only is God bigger than us, God is bigger than we can comprehend. 

          In our journey through the fall season and through Ezekiel, the importance of holiness becomes obvious.  Ezekiel 34-37 and 40-48 discuss God’s gathering of God’s people, the return from exile, the command to rebuild the temple, and the declaration that life for all people begins in Jerusalem among the Jews and flows out from there.  It is this way because God has said so and reality proceeds as it does according to God’s intentions. 

We find these strange chapters, Ezekiel 38 & 39 stuck in the middle of this story of reclamation and restoration.  The prophet tells of a Northern threat – Gog.  Who is Gog?  Commentators offer numerous opinions, all based on speculation.  No doubt this speculation comes from the minds of experts who have dedicated their lives to Old Testament study.  Still, their conclusions about Gog are incomplete. 

God leads Gog to Israel (38:2), only to be defeated by Israel and obliterated (38:3ff).  Why?  God’s answer is straightforward and if you went through Ezekiel and highlighted this phrase, every page would have bright yellow streaks.  God does what God does with Gog so that everyone will know, as God says, “That I am the Lord.”  God to Israel, God to the nations, God to us: This is happening so that you will know that I am the Lord.

I must insert here that Ezekiel does not say every event in history happened at God’s initiative.  Some ancients thought that.  Jesus dispels such superstition (Luke 13:1-5).  The holocaust did not happen so we would know God is the Lord.  The Rwandan genocide was not Heaven’s declaration of God’s divinity and sovereignty.  Sometimes the worst, most unthinkable tragedies come about and the only real answer we can offer is sin has run amok and wrought suffering on the world.  However, in no way does sin undermine the authority, majesty or purpose of God. 

Our text for this morning, Ezekiel 39, adds to our consideration of the holiness and grandeur of God.  Previously God allowed Babylon to take Israel into exile as a punishment, a reminder to God’s own people that God is the Lord and they must live by God’s commands.  Now, nearing the end of the prophet’s story, God restores Israel.  Just as the exile demonstrated God’s Lordship to Israel, the return to the land, the rebuilding of the temple, and the restoration of life under the Law of Moses testifies to God’s sovereignty before the entire world.  God declares through Israel, He has “displayed [His] holiness in the sight of many nations.  Then [all] shall know that [God] is the Lord” (39:27-28).  It all happens at God’s initiative, according to God’s design.

Can this God be known?  To say God is holy is to say we aren’t.  Our sin, our potential to sin – this separates us from God in a way we cannot overcome.  God can step from where God is to where we are, but the power to cross the gap from holy to profane, from holy to banal and mundane, is a power only God has.  We can seek God.  Our search only ends in success when God, seeing us earnestly reach to Him, decides to allow Himself to be found.  Holiness means we cannot reach God.  It also means we are overcome by God’s holy light unless God holds back and only reveals as much as we can take.  Some writers say when God took on human flesh in Jesus it was God “condescending” coming to us so God would be approachable.  But that only works if God decides to do it.

Even knowing all we know about Jesus, the otherness, the unreachable reality in God continues to be.  Many here have been in church for a long time and have called themselves Christians for decades.  Is there a temptation to be so comfortable with the nearness of Jesus and the familiarity of the gospel, we lose sight of the terrifying holiness of God?  Singing “What a friend we have in Jesus,” is it possible to be too comfortable?  Does Jesus become a buddy?  Do we forget the God we meet in Jesus appeared to Job in whirlwind and reduced him to repentance for sins he did not even know he committed? 

Job said, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.  … Now my eyes see you.  Therefore I despise myself in dust and ashes” (Job 42:3b, 6).  Theologians have for decades debated about what he was really saying there because as readers of Job know, he suffered unjustly.  Maybe it is as simple as this.  When a human sees God, it is too much. 

I came across a testimony from a young artist, Christian Platt.  You can look him up if you want to know more about him.  As I share his thoughts, contemplate your own God thoughts, especially your questions and doubts.

I’ve wrestled for years with a Christian faith that focuses on personal salvation, on many levels, some of which I’m still excavating. First, the emphasis on individual salvation always seemed ironically selfish for a faith that seemed otherwise to be about putting yourself second to others. I also struggled with the idea that Christianity is about getting a certain set of beliefs right, articulating them before a group of peers through a statement of faith and then you were official. Is it really so rote? So didactic? So…human?

All my life, I’ve heard stories of people who felt utterly transformed by their faith proclamation, or at the moment of baptism, in the throngs of prayer or during some particularly stirring worship service. They spoke of these feelings for which I longed. I wanted the mountaintop experience, after which I would never be the same. I wanted to be turned inside-out by God, illuminated by the Holy Spirit with a fire that never subsided. I wanted to feel what all these other Christians claimed to be feeling.

I’ve been to literally thousands of worship services in my life. I’ve been back and forth through the Bible, taken communion more than a thousand times, was baptized, sang the songs, said the prayers, and yes, I’ve had moments when I felt as if God was so close I could nearly reach out and touch whatever it was that I sensed. But that inevitably faded, usually sooner rather than later.

What I was left with was a longing, a tugging, a hunger for something I could never quite name

No matter how much I pray, worship, serve, write or struggle, the longing is still there.

It was like trying to capture a cloud in my hand, only to open it again and find nothing was there. Was this a cruel game? A bad joke? Was I just doing it wrong?

[He refers to an author who calls this longing for transcendence a “gap.”  He continues. 

What if the “Gap” itself is God? What if it’s already right there, within each of us, pulling at us, regardless of where we spend our Sunday mornings, how we pray, or even if we pray?

I have considered this drive, the persistent hunger, the insatiable longing, as a tragic flaw of my own human condition, a failure of my lifelong pursuit of a stronger faith. But now, I’m coming to believe that the only real peace to be found is in accepting that, ironically, there is no peace. The hunger is its own gift, and not a sign of lack or deficit in the least. It is the still, small voice that stirs persistently, opening our eyes to something new, something more.[i]

I read the Beatitudes, Matthew chapters 5, 6 & 7, and I cannot say with this seeker that there is no peace.  Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness; they will be filled.  Blessed are the peacemakers.  They will be called children of God” (5:6, 9).  Jesus assures that God satisfies, but the artist Christian Platt is not yet satisfied though he is happy with the longing God has placed in him.  He accepts that God is so Holy Other that the best he can have is his search.

Another perspective on this comes from a Jewish man, Les Berman, a radiologist in South Africa.  This doctor grew up in the Hebrew Scriptures amazed by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses and Joshua.  He wanted to know God with the same intimacy enjoyed by these patriarchs of the faith.  But no matter how he searched, the God of Abraham was distant.  He tried to double his efforts in religious practice and study of the word, but God was as far from him as ever.  He was frustrated.

Then he surprised himself.  He went to a Baptist church and heard a Christian, not even a Jewish Christian, teach on Ezekiel 38-39.  He was stunned that he could meet God in the teaching of his scripture from a gentile.  He heard the Gospel and found what he had longed for in Jesus.  I often say Jesus is the fulfillment of the promises we read in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.  For this Jewish doctor, this was literally the case.[ii] 

The bohemian urban artist found purpose in seeking the unreachable reality of God, knowing his quest will always be just out of reach.  The faithful Jewish doctor could not understand the holiness of God until he saw God in Jesus.  The exiled community experienced God’s wrath and God’s salvation.  In Ezekiel, God tells his people, “I will give [a] new heart and put a new spirit within them.  I will remove the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.”  Paul reiterates this truth in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

In your life, where does faith in God make complete sense?  Where or in what way is it utterly clear that God’s holiness is something you cannot comprehend, attain, and even contemplate?  When God’s awesomeness – and this is truly the correct usage of “awesomeness” – overwhelm you?  I one more story.

Many years ago, I knew a man whose life was a mess.  His wife’s mental disorder left his home in shambles.  He made enough money that he would probably be called working poor.  He could pay the mortgage and had food, but he could not buy new clothes.  He always looked like he had borrowed what he wearing from a homeless guy.  He had some kind of skin condition so shaving was painful.  But he couldn’t grow a full beard.  He worked third shift, 11PM-7AM.  He was always tired.  The guy’s life was a struggle.

But it all transformed on Sundays when he stepped across the threshold and entered the community of the worshiping body of Christ.  When he came into church on Sunday, he stormed in.  It was as if his clothing was on fire, and the only source of water was inside the church building.  Get out of the way because he was there to worship. 

In that gathering he sang his lungs out, praising God with everything that was in him.  He sang off key; he sang tunes different than the song we were actually singing.  And he sang much louder than anyone.  There were times I cringed.  But I never said, “Hey, could you turn it down.”  I never said it because I realized this man saw something.  Every Sunday, he saw the holiness of God.  Now, I thank God for that off-key hymn singing because as I look back I realize it was a witness.  Every worship service for him was resurrection.  It was the highlight of the week, but more than that it was a statement that because of God, the difficulties of his own life would pass, but his life would be eternal.  His unbound joy pointed to God’s holiness. 

The exiled community’s final note was a homecoming God instituted because God’s holiness demanded it.  God is a God of salvation.  The name ‘Yeshua,’ Jesus, means ‘salvation.’  It is in God’s nature to raise us to life, to make us new, and to keep us in His embrace forever.  God said, “I will never again hide my face” (Ezekiel 39:29).  With Job, we know the face of God is to be feared, but not because it is awful.  We fear because God is holy and we are not.  With Jesus, we are made holy so when God promises to never again hide his face, it is the best news we can have. 

No matter who you are, you are invited into the embrace of the Holy God.

AMEN

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[i] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christianpiatt/2012/11/longing-for-the-unreachable-god/

[ii] http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/havurah/v01-n03/drberman