A Song for the Road (Psalm 23)

Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 22, 2017

            The 23^rd Psalm is commonly read at the funerals.  It might be the passage I have read more than any other in funeral and memorial services.  This makes sense.  It is an incredibly comforting poem and when people are grieving, they need comfort. 

            Psalm 23 is such a favorite that artists have used it as a part of their photos and paintings.  There is a serene nature scene; maybe a field of wildflowers; or the waves at twilight, when all the colors are soft, relaxing.  The words of the Psalm are gently superimposed over the idyllic picture, which is then framed and carefully arranged on the mantel.  An aura of calm falls over the room.

            There’s something quite beautiful about this.  Every time a guest in your homes pauses to take in that picture, they are reading scripture. 

            However, I think Psalm 23 has more power than as a comfort or as a decoration.  Those uses are fine, but it might time to get Psalm 23 off the mantel piece.  It has something to say to people when they are away from home; when they are on the move in the world.  It is time to turn to Psalm 23 in places other than the funeral parlor because it really speaks to people who are alive and facing life as it is in the world in which we live. 

            To say, “Life is a journey,” sounds cliché, but for followers of Jesus the journey is much more than a saying that goes on coffee mugs.  We have a mandate to spread out over the earth.  This mission is from God and dates back to the time of Noah.  Right after the flood and Noah and his family came off the ark onto dry ground, God promised to never again destroy the world in this way.  The next thing God says after this promise is “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1).  In order to fill the earth, we have to travel to every part of it and make our mark there.

            This mandate to spread over the earth is repeated by Jesus when he meets with his disciples after the resurrection.  The command to Noah was an act of re-creation.  Jesus inaugurates new creation.  He tells the disciples and this message is conveyed from them through the centuries of the church to us.  This is from Jesus to us.  “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

            Following Christ, we have a sense that we are headed somewhere and our movement has purpose.  This is true for people who spend their entire lives in the same small town as well as for people who live many different places in their lifetime.  Jesus declares we will be his witnesses.  We will give our testimony about who we know Jesus to be – Savior, Lord, Comforter, Guide, Leader.  We will share this testimony “as we go,” as we move through life.  This is for all Christians. 

            Psalm 23 is a word of encouragement for us as we go.  Note the promises and declarations and what these word imply.

            Because the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  Who says, “I shall not want?”  Or, “all my needs will be met;” who takes the creative initiative to put that phrase in a song about God?  That singer has a fear that his needs might not be met.  He has to look to God and declare his confidence in God’s provision.  Maybe you are in a life situation where your job provides the paycheck that provides the food, the shelter and clothing, the insurance – all of life’s needs.  But you also have needs only God can meet.  This is as true for the affluent as it is for those who struggle.  Do you believe will those specific needs?  Can God be trusted?  That’s the song’s declaration.  Because God guides me, all my needs will be met.[i] 

            The Lord is my shepherd.  I am terrified that I will be filled with emptiness, an unsatisfied hunger, but no, I rebuke that terror.  The Lord is my Shepherd.  I shall not want.

            He makes me lie down in green pastures.  I look around me, at my life, at the world.  I see dead places.  Aleppo, Syria; a humanitarian hunger crisis in South Sudan; reduction of help for the poor as policies change in our own government.  We see barrenness.  No!  God sees all God’s children.  He sees us and gives us rest in lush, green pastures. 

He leads me beside still waters and restores my soul.  Why do I need my soul restored?  Because I get so weary.  My own failures weigh on me.  My worries settle heavy on my shoulders and I stoop.  No.  God is with me and leads me to refreshing waters, lifting my burden off me.  God leads me on right paths.

Who sings this song people know so well, these words we hang on the wall in picture frames?  People who fear the looming darkness; people who feel the shadow of death as it swallows the light of life. 

We – followers of Jesus – encounter all these things: uncertainty, worry, threats, failures.  Following Jesus does not remove us from the life’s toughest obstacles and grayest days and longest nights.  We experience these depths, but when we are in Christ, we do not go through these trials alone.  The declaration of this Psalm is that the promise of God’s presence can be believed and will help us.  God can be trusted.  God is, as Jesus says in the Great Commission, with us always, everywhere, for our good.

            In the middle of the Psalm, the singer switches from praise about God, to praise to God.  “The Lord is my shepherd.  He leads me beside still waters.”  And then in verse 5, it is “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”  No longer does the singer talk about God, but rather to God.

            What’s more, notice what else is present in the midst of this Psalm of comfort.  The enemy!  If I didn’t talk about the Psalm, if I wasn’t setting this up, but just mentioned Psalm 23 among a group of seasoned church goers; and then, after mentioning it, asked what feelings the mention of the Psalm evoked, what might these lifelong Christians say?  “Psalm 23.”  What comes to mind?  Peaceful.  Comfort.  Well-being.  Rest. 

            Now, picture your enemy.  Who is in your mind’s eye?  A neighbor with whom you’ve had a property dispute?  It’s sad when that’s who comes to mind when we think of enemies, but it is true.  Some of our most consistently negative interactions are with neighbors; or family members; maybe an overbearing boss.  Maybe, your opponent is someone prejudiced against you.  It could be that “enemy” represents someone who tries to bully you.  I have even seen situtions where members of a church were opposed to each other.  When I say, ‘enemy,’ do you see someone related to you?

            Some people might say, ‘extremists,’ or ‘terrorists.’  I don’t think that’s realistic.  Do you realize how slim is the likelihood you’ll ever encounter a violent terrorist?  It’s highly, highly unlikely.  If I say, “picture your enemy,” and you have in mind a terrorist you saw on the news last night, then you’re dodging the question.  With whom do you have direct conflict?  Who do you believe has intentionally made your life hard?  When you picture that person, you don’t think, ‘peaceful.’  Comfort.  Well-being.  Rest.  You think, ‘I need to be on my guard.  My adversary is near.  It is not safe.’

            The Psalmist sings of a table, a meal, a banquet.  The feast can only come in a place and time of safety and yet in this song, our cherished 23^rd Psalm, the festive dinner is in the presence of our enemies.  You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. How can this be?  When God is present, the situation changes! 

            The light of our savior spills over erasing the shadows that threaten.  We are in want?  No, our shepherd provides.  The storm clouds rumble?  No, our Lord leads us beside calm waters and green pastures.  The darkness opens its bottomless chasm?  No, our God gives light and walks with us and we are on safe ground.  Our enemy is here!  To arms!  No.  Our Savior sets the table.  Not, ‘to arms,’ but rather, to supper!  And when we know our God through His coming – through Jesus, crucified and resurrected – then we see our enemy transformed.  We see ourselves transformed.  He who was the enemy has a new heart as do we.  That relationship, which was a battleground, now, in Christ, is part of the new creation.

            We can only enter life hoping for radical transformation when we live by faith and live in complete trust in God and dependence on God.  We commit to a life in which we are dependent and we trust that God will provide what we need.  God will make sure our bodily needs are met.  God will be the one who gives our lives meaning.  God, and not some other thing, will be our source of joy.  We believe we will have happiness because we trust that God is here and God is good and that is enough.

            Walter Brueggemann hits this point forcefully.  He’s writing about the relationship ancient Israel had with her land.  Israel only came into the land when God performed wonders to force Egypt to free the Israelite slaves.  Then God opened the Red Sea.  Then God gave the wandering Israelites the ability to take the land.

            Centuries later, Israel had forgotten God and God allowed the people to fall into exile in Babylon.  However, that would not last.  God would bring His people back to the land.  This time it happened when God touched the heart of the Persian monarch and he permitted the people to return. 

In both Egyptian slavery and Babylonian exile, the people desperately wanted to return to the land, but that could only happen by an act of God.  We can only hope God will act if we trust God.  Many of the people then and now stopped doing that.  Brueggemann writes, “God’s people always want to settle for something short of promises, because promises being fulfilled remind Israel how vulnerable it is, how exposed it is, and how precarious it all is.  Promiseless existence is safer.  The Bible knows promises are always kept in the midst of threats.”[ii]

When we take Psalm 23 off the mantel and out of the frame and see it as a song of promise then we find ourselves in the exact position of ancient Israel.  We are vulnerable to heartbreak.  We can lose our faith if life gets too hard.  We are exposed to evil because sin has run amuck in the world.  Our lives are precarious and it seems awfully risky to bank on the idea that 2000 years ago a Jewish peasant really was God in the flesh, defeated death by dying, and brings hope because he rose from death and promised we will too.  Furthermore, he promised that he would be with us in the form of an ever-present Spirit that opens the way for each one of us to have a personal relationship with God. 

That’s all crazy.  That’s what ungirds our life, gives us hope, inspires our songs, and fills us with happiness and joy?  Seriously?  Yes, because it is true.  Israel was on a pilgrimage to the land and we are on a pilgrimage too.  In this season of Lent, in worship we journey toward the cross.  This is a journey of worship.  We walk with Jesus to his destiny and our salvation.

In our life beyond Lent, we are sent out to bear witness, and we’re sent everywhere.  Every place we go, every grocery story, friend’s kitchen table, bar stool, plane ride, unfamiliar hotel, and distant shore is for us the “ends of the earth.”  In these places we tell the story of the ages.  Jesus is Lord.  His coming is the coming of the Kingdom of God. And, people have life in his name, abundant life.  But even in this scattering to Jerusalem, to all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth where we give our testimony, even in this “going out” we have a destination. 

We are headed to dwell in the house of the Lord our whole life long.  In resurrection, our lives have no end. 

As we move toward this destination, we hit bumps in the road.  Our feet get snagged.  We lose our way.  But when it gets hard, when we think we can’t go on, when we lose confidence in our own stories, and when we are ready to completely give up, God is with us.  This song, Psalm 23 is a reminder that God goes before us, God walks with us, and God holds us in His hands.  When things on the journey get tough, Psalm 23 is our song for the road. 

AMEN

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[i] The observations in these paragraphs come from Craig Broyles (1999), New International Bible Commentary: Psalms, vol. 11 Hendrikson Publishers (Peabody, MA), p.123.

[ii] Walter Brueggemann (1977), The Land, Fortress Press (Philadelphia), p.68.

God, the Good Shepherd

God, The Good Shepherd (Ezekiel 34:11-16)

            I have mentioned this before, but I bring it up again because I continue to find the question tricky.  What is God’s job?  Steven Colbert posed the question to his guest, a Catholic clergyman, and the priest responded, “God’s job is to sustain the universe.”  I thought it was brilliant. 

            It though a very general way of answering the question, and general works in the setting of a talk show, especially a comedy show like the Colbert Report.  But when you and I are living our very real, day-to-day lives, what answer to that question will help us?  What knowledge of God will inspire us to push ourselves through the challenges we face?  What reality about God will carry us when we can push ourselves no farther?  The specifics of the priest’s general observation that God is the great Sustainer are varied and go in countless directions.  We find one thread of God’s sustenance, God’s upholding of everything, in these words of the Prophet Ezekiel which we have read.

            To get to this, I look to another passage, one familiar to some readers, Psalm 23, and I compare Psalm 23 to opening verses of Ezekiel 34.  In Psalm 23, between the years 1000 and 930 BC,[i] David who was a shepherd sang about the ways God took care of him in the midst of trying circumstances.  God often, not always, but very often works through people.  This includes God working through his chosen people Israel.  Ezekiel 34 opens with prophetic condemnation of Israel’s leaders who failed to lead the nation to trust in God’s provision in the face of difficult times. 

            Ezekiel fires off his prophecy.  “You shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves!  Should not the shepherds feed the sheep?  You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep.  You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them” (34:2-4).

            Ezekiel speaks 400 years after David wrote his shepherd poems in the wilderness of Israel.  David could not see what would become of the nation.  It is quite possible that when he first imagined the words that eventually became what we now call the 23^rd Psalm, he did not even know he would become Israel’s king.  Surely the poem went through many versions in his own singing of it.  Verses 5-6 make more sense from the lips of a king than a shepherd.  But however removed, David was from Ezekiel and even more from us, there is a constant that draws him and the prophet and you and me together.  God is watching over us with a big picture perspective that takes into account the experience of every human being simultaneously.   At the same time, God is with each person individually.

            We just read Ezekiel’s condemnation of the leaders of the Israel, the king and the leaders in the temple.  In summation, they neglected the needy of society as they used their privilege to advance their own wealth and well-being.  There can be no more damning words of someone with privilege than to say they who already have everything take what little the poor have.  They who are strong load the backs of the lower class with taxes, high prices, endless work on back-breaking tasks.  This can apply in numerous ways in countless situations, but the principle is someone in power using that power to exploit someone without power.  Think of what’s happening in Hong Kong right now, or the imposed conformity in North Korea of the past 65 years.

            In Ezekiel’s day, God’s nation, the people of Israel in the southern Kingdom of Judah, had survived intact during the terrifying Assyrian empire.  Then, a new power arose, Babylon.  With Egypt to her east and Babylon advancing, why did Judah fail to stand?  Ezekiel’s prophecy, time and time again, declares that the exile imposed by Babylon was permitted by God not because of Babylon’s might but because of Israel and Judah’s sin.  In chapter 34, Ezekiel specifically cites the leaders of Israel for failing to care for the nation. 

            In contrast to their self-serving, heavy-handed leadership, David tells of how God does thing.  The leaders scattered Israel and did not seek the lost.  They left the lost out in the cold to whatever hazards the wilds would present.  David said that God as a shepherd led him to green pastures and still waters.  When all David had in the wilderness to rely upon were his wits, his staff, and prayer, he never felt safer.  He could feel that he was in God’s hands.  There was no lion or enemy warrior that could pose a credible threat.  God held him.

            It was not always easy.  He says in the Psalm, “I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”  But he does not stop there.  He does not die in that shadow.  He walks through and without fear because God is with him.  This is the extent of faith that David declares.  He’s not trying to teach it.  He does not offer four steps so that if you follow these you too can have a David-type faith.  He simply sings.  I walk through the valley … and I fear no evil.  Nothing could happen that was scarier or mightier or as powerful as the God who held him.

            In verse 4, Ezekiel rattles off a succession of specific failures.  “You did not strengthen, you did not heal, you did not bind wounded limbs, you did not gather the distracted, you did not seek the lost.”  Leadership comes with responsibility which is magnified 100 fold when your leadership is in God’s name.  In God’s name leaders are to point people to God.  Those falling under Ezekiel’s condemnation may indeed have spoken God’s name and recited temple prayers and led sacrifices in worship and done it all quite eloquently.  But their actions involved gathering all the food, property and money for themselves.  When they came across the broken, the broke them even more.

            David saw God in the Shepherd’s role do the opposite.  He said of God, “He restores my soul.  He leads me in paths of righteousness.”  He restores my soul.  Because of this, David could conclude him poem by saying, “Goodness and mercy will follow me and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

            The God who protected David in this way was still in business 400 years later.  When Ezekiel blurted out his seething invectives, it was not God’s way of stomping Israel into the grave.  God had not stopped being the good shepherd.  All the divine anger leading up to Ezekiel 34, anger at Judah and at foreign nations that deal in exploitation and injustice, came to a head in Ezekiel 34:11.  God’s demand for justice would not blot out God’s mercy. 

            As I again read the promise that comes in these verses take this to heart.  Just as the good shepherd of Psalm 23 was still a good shepherd 100’s of years later for Ezekiel, that same good shepherd came to walk in the skin of the sheep when God became a human himself in Jesus of Nazareth.  The God of David and of Ezekiel, the God who walk the dusty roads of Nazareth in human skin and died on a Roman cross, is as much a good shepherd today as God ever was.  Ezekiel spoke and wrote his prophecy at the beginning of the 6^th century BC.  The words, breathed into his heart by the Holy Spirit, still speak today.

¹¹ For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.¹² As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. ¹³ I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. ¹⁴ I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. ¹⁵ I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. ¹⁶ I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

            In Jesus, God has extended the invitation originally given to Israel.  All who come to Jesus acknowledging sin and complete need for God’s forgiveness and leadership will be received, forgiven, made new, and adopted as a son or daughter of God.  Jesus welcomes every person who comes in genuine repentance and sorrow for sin by.

            Once we are we in Christ, we are his church, and much of the work God does in the world today is done through the church.  We are not in the same position as the leaders of Israel in Ezekiel’s day.  The world is clearly a different place.  But we do have a calling to tell the world about Jesus, to invite the world into God’s Kingdom, and to show God’s goodness by using all our talents to do things God promises in  Ezekiel’s prophecy. 

            God says, “I will seek, I will rescue, I will bring my people together, I will feed them with good pasture.  I will bind up the wounded and heal the sick.  I will give justice, peace, and rest.”  We are beneficiaries.  As we have received these things from God, we are made new and then we are called to do these very things – seek, rescue, feed, heal.  We are commissioned by the word and empowered by the Spirit to be bringers of justice, peace, and rest.   

What’s God job?  God does many things.  Included is God’s provision.  This is no denial that we go through tough times and followers will face trials and difficulties, but never alone.  The good shepherd never leaves us alone. 

            This is a special day for our church. Today we enter into partnership with Pastor Lucio Moreno and Iglesia del Amor de Dios (the Love-of-God Church).  HillSong joins our efforts to other English-speaking congregations throughout our town and area in pointing the world toward the Good Shepherd God.  And Iglesia del Amor de Dios under Pastor Moreno’s leadership will join with us and with the other Spanish-speaking churches around to point the world toward our loving God.

            With God working through us, people will be drawn from the dangers of the wilderness of sin, disappointment, grief and loss into his love.  And together, in Spanish and English, we can truly say.

La bondad y el amor me seguirán
  todos los días de mi vida;
y en la casa del Señor

  habitaré para siempre.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us
All the days of our lives;
And we will dwell in the house of the Lord
Forever.

AMEN

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[i] Gottwald, Norman (1985).  The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, p.601-602.

Gospel of Invitation

Sunday, May 26, 2013

            Battles; archangels fighting satanic hordes; wrath poured out like bowls of wine that is blood that runs through the streets and floods the world; four horsemen bringing economic collapse, war, disease, and death; this is Revelation.

            No more weeping or loss or sorrow or grief; all pain is gone and replaced by joy and love and peace; a Heavenly city; free, limitless access to the river of the water of life; a welcome into the city, where we look God in the eye and receive His smile, and eat from the tree of life; this also is Revelation. 

            We have come to our final Sunday in this wonderful, awesome, ominous, joyous book.  If we overdo it with the adjectives they lose some punch.  The end is Revelation 22, the final chapter.  It closes not only this most unusual book, but the entire Bible.  It is the final word in what we call holy writing.  I wonder what the final word is.  I wonder … what am I to take from it?

            See, I am coming soon.  Three times -  verses 7, 12, and 20; Jesus says he is coming.  Cool.  But soon?  This was written in 96AD.  I don’t know about soon.  I know the Bible says a day and 1000 years are the same to God (2 Peter 3:8).  From God’s view, words like ‘soon,’ might be irrelevant.  From my view, well, I would not use the word ‘soon.’ 

            I am though convinced that Jesus lived, was God in the flesh, rose from death, and is coming again.  I believe every bit of that quite literally.  In these final verses in Revelation, Jesus is Alpha and Omega, first and last, beginning and end.  Bible writers and anyone in antiquity would only write such things about God.  Hence, Jesus is God.  When he comes, and I believe He will, that will be good for all who put their trust in Him whether it is in my life time or later.

            These closing words assert his coming.  But what’s this in verse 15?  Heaven and Earth have joined.  The New Jerusalem is the holy city, the bride readied for Christ, the home of all who have ever put faith in him.  It comes.  We are invited.  But, verse 15 says, “Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”  At the heart of all this good news, evil outliers seem to lurk beyond the city walls.  What gives?  Why is ugliness and evil mentioned in proximity to all this good?  I don’t understand.

            I am reminded of the most favored of all Psalms, Psalm 23.  The Lord is my Shepherd.  I shall not want for anything.  And the Psalm continues with the poet lying down in green pastures and being refreshed from clean waters and walking in paths of righteousness.  Ahh, this Psalm is a breath of fresh air. 

            And yet …

            I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …  .  Why is death in the middle of the most wonderful Psalm, Psalm 23?

            You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies …  .  Why are enemies in my favorite Psalm and why am I eating with them? 

A tension runs through scripture that is unavoidable from the very first word to the very last chapter.  When God created the heavens and the earth, Genesis 1:1, the earth was a formless void and the breath of God hovered over the waters.  Primordial chaos was under God’s control but it was there. 

            God brought Adam and Eve into being – autonomous, creatures with free will, created to choose relationship with God.  And they did choose to love God, except for the lapse when they chose to disobey and eat forbidden fruit.  In Eden there is sin, the God of perfect love has enemies even  in Psalm 23, and in the Heaven-talk that closes out Revelation, sorcerers, fornicators, and murderers have a presence. 

            Thus, the warning.  John has written Revelation so that the church, and by the evangelistic work of the church then the world would hear it.  This is not secret knowledge that only the initiated can access.  “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book,” says chapter 22, verse 10.  This is to be opened and read and heard and heeded.  It is salvation, God come to live with us, and it is Heaven-talk, but, with a warning.

            “To everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if [they] add to the words [here], God will” impose plagues on that person.  “If anyone takes away from the words of this book of prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life and the holy city.” 

            Why is the warning so crucial?  The promises written in Revelation have not yet come about.  We read it and anticipate Heaven, but we read in a time where the sorcerers and fornicators and murderers lurk not only outside the city.  Sometimes, in our time, they sneak into the church.  Sometimes the evil grabs a hold of us.  The warning evil doers that God sees.  God is Lord of the church and also of the world including the darkest places in the world. 

            That phrase “sorcerers, fornicators, murderers,” is a way  of referring to all who rebel against God and eat the forbidden fruit and sin in word, in thought, in deed, and in the heart.  We’re all, in one way or another, “sorcerers, fornicators, and murderers.”  This points to every one of us.  But we have been washed in the blood of Christ, freed from sin by his forgiveness.  We are admitted to the Holy City because we have put our trust in Jesus.  The warning sits in the midst of the God talk because we serve Jesus in world full of people who have not submitted to him.  As long as the end has not yet come, evil is here.  In Revelation, the author, John had to name that evil.  He had to remind his readers how vulnerable they were.  They might even become evil.

            The very end of Revelation is the very best news, but there is bad in the midst of the good.  The flipside is also true.  In the darkest places, good shines.  John was imprisoned because he followed Jesus.  Last week, we talked about an American man who right now is imprisoned in North Korea.  He is a Christian.  I have a friend who evangelizes in a country that is governed by Muslim extremists.  Her activities, sharing Jesus with those who do not know him as savior, could get her arrested or killed.

            Yes, in the process of talking about salvation in Revelation, John also mentions those outside the city, those who have not accepted what Jesus gives.  John gives mention to people who reject the Lord; the bad in the good.

            Revelation stands as a testimony of the good news of Jesus Christ proclaimed in the middle of a world gone bad because of sin.  Whatever evil rains down, we who follow Jesus understand it a little more than secular-minded people.  We have a sense of the root cause of suffering that atheists don’t have.  When someone, unprovoked shoots up a school or a crowded theater, at the core, the issue is sin.  When a husband beats his wife, the heart of the matter is sin.  War; famine; the plague of deaths that come about when people drink and drive or text and drive; sin is a condition that blankets humanity with pain. 

            That is why I thank God for missionaries.  I thank God for people who come to church, who pray, and who try to do the right thing.  I thank God for people who love.  I thank God for those attempting in countless creative ways to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The light of the Kingdom of God shines even in the midst of the darkness enveloping a fallen world. 

            Bad mentioned in the description of the good word; and, a good witness of the Kingdom of God in the middle of the bad produced by sin that has filled the world.  This is Revelation.  So what is the final word?

            “See, I am coming soon.”

            “The Sprit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’  Let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’  Let everyone who is thirsty come.  Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.”

            “Amen.  Come Lord Jesus;” the meaning of “Maranatha.” 

            The final word is invitation.  To be Christian is to be inviting and to invite.  I had not thought about this before.  An exercise I do quite often is to try to finish the following sentence.  “Essentially, the Gospel is …” and I finish that thought.

            The Gospel is forgiveness.  The Gospel is love.  The Gospel is life.  The Gospel is welcome.  These are each true and much could be said about each word.  The last one, ‘the Gospel is welcome’ has become an important focus for us, a community of Jesus-followers in a pass-through kind of place.  Some people live in Chapel Hill 20 or 40 years, but many others, visiting students or researchers come for just a few years.  Some are just here for a semester.  Our church wants to be a church for those who are only in town for a while.

            Of course we are a home and a family for people who spend their entire lives in Chapel Hill.  All the hospital visits and pot luck suppers and small group meetings create context for us to share life together.  And a unique element of our character as a community is the way we have developed as a safe place for people to come, come as they are, meet Jesus here, walk away transformed by his love.  For this reason, we have given much thought to the idea of the Gospel as welcome.

            Now, having spent time in Revelation and especially looking at the final chapter we know that to welcome, we have to add the Gospel of Invitation.  This word jumps out at us.  “Come!”  It is repeated over and over.  Jesus, come, the world is bad and we need you.  World, come, step out of the evil of your own sins. Come, step out of your pain and be washed in the blood of Christ.  Receive his forgiveness and come, step into new life. 

            Living out the gospel as welcome, we joyfully receive all who come to us.  It is a ministry of readiness and it requires preparation and prayer.  We intentionally do all sorts of things from stationing greeters at the front door, to repeatedly re-emphasizing how important it is for everyone to open their hearts on Sunday mornings, to structuring our worship in such a way that we hope will be easy for new comers to join.  We work at being ready to welcome all who come.

            The Gospel as invitation demands that we go out and seek the world, the lost, our neighbors, strangers.  And it does not have to begin with “I invite you to church.  I invite you to receive Jesus.”  Your work of invitation might begin there.

            Or, it might begin with, “I invite you over to my house for tea and good conversation.”  That step may need to be repeated 100 times over the years, before the time is right to invite the neighbor to a conversation about faith.”  We pray toward that faith invitation.  It matters.  In all relationships, even with people in the church, we look for when it is time to invite one another to go deeper with Jesus.    And we intentionally live in a spirit of invitation.

            This is new to me.  I have read and reread Revelation, over and over.  I have swallowed this word, “Come.”  Nourished by God’s invitation to me, I have invited the Lord to come.  Maranatha.  Come Lord Jesus.

            Only this week, in reading again and listening again, have I come to realize how crucial invitation.  It must be en essential aspect of a disciple’s character. 

            Ever eager to debate, Bible scholars wrangle over the last word, verse 21.  “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints.”  Sounds like a simple benediction.  But in some ancient manuscripts, the phrase is “The Grace of the Lord Jesus be with all.”  And it is does not include the word “saints.”  Which is the better understanding?  I don’t think the conclusive answer comes from grammar, but from the church’s practice.

            The earliest Jesus followers learned directly from him that crippled people who are considered cursed by God because of their ailments are actually welcomed.  People like shepherds whose profession actually renders them unclean are invited to follow Jesus.  Even non-Jews can be with Jesus.  In other words, theological and missional practice show how Revelation is to end. 

            “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all” – all people everywhere.  People will only know if they are told the gospel.  They will only listen to the telling of the gospel if they want to and they will only want to if they are invited.  

            Wow.  God, thank you for showing me how to live in relation to others and thank you for showing me this in the pages of Revelation.  Father God, you ended with this.  I will try to live it out in my life.

AMEN