COVID-19 Nativity

When, most recently, was a baby born in your family?  This year?  Maybe it was your cousin or grandchild?  Or, your own baby, your first!  How exciting!  Family gathers round, and everyone exclaims how beautiful the baby is.  One aunt, her words soaked in sentiment, swears the little tyke has “Grandpa’s eyes.”  It is a moment for gathering, good feelings, and family closeness.  

         Except not this year, not in 2020.  In 2020, we need to protect each other from the spread of the virus, so we don’t gather.  How many grandparents will meet their new grandchildren through Zoom calls?  A baby can’t participate in a Zoom call.  Babies are

meant to be held, cuddled, and tickled.  A baby’s smile produces a smile on the face of everyone in the room, even the crustiest old codger. There’s no “social distancing” with babies!

         Joseph and Mary were far from home the night their first baby was born.  Joseph knew the baby wasn’t “his.”  He didn’t sire this child, but he sure acted like a good dad.  An unfeeling Roman census required Joseph to take his pregnant wife to his ancestral home, Bethlehem, miles from his current home and family.  The ancient Israelite people were more socially connected than we are.  Family was everything.  To be forced to have a baby away from the support of family was very hard, very sad.  Joseph did what he had to do, and Jesus was born with only farm animals and later shepherds there to celebrate his arrival.

         Is it possible this is one more way God-in-the-flesh, God incarnate, identifies with the struggles we face? Even the day of his birth, Jesus was confronted by obstacles that made life difficult.  His birth that evokes happy praise songs in our worship services was a night fraught with danger, uncertainty, and isolation.  Yes, this babe who lies at the center of our Christmas truly can identify with the things that make life a struggle for us.

         As you worship this year, in your heart, reach out to Christ.  When you do, appreciate this. He understands you and He loves you.  It’s why He came and it’s why his Holy Spirit is with you now, no matter your circumstances.  None of us wants a COVID-19 Christmas, but Jesus will get us through it and even make it special.  He knows our struggles and He won’t leave to face those struggles alone. God is with us.  

Rejoice!  Even socially-distanced, rejoice, give thanks, and sing.

Advent, first Sunday - "When we Ask God to Change the World" (Isaiah 64:1-9)

 

watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo-Y_zN_bV4

November 29, 2020

            I don’t need to cite any examples.  I can just say, the year 2020 has been weird, unique, forgettable, and one we’ll always remembers.  Few people will look back on it fondly. 

            There’s no way to track this, but if there were, I wonder if we could measure how often people prayed in 2020, and if, as things got worse in the world, people’s prayers increased in intensity and frequency.  And, I wonder what that measurement would look like compared to other years.

            Every year, life falls apart for some people.  Pain – physical, emotional, financial, any kind of pain – spurs a desire for change. 

God, please bring some money.  I’m tired of wondering how to pay for groceries and rent.

God please help my body to respond to physical therapy.  My body hurts.  I want to be healthy again.

God please fills this hole in my heart.  The divorce has broken me.  I feel empty.  I don’t want to feel this way anymore.

When life is going great, we thank God and hope the good times will continue. Or, caught up in our happiness, we forget about God.  But those who hurt pray. Pain produces prayers – prayers for change.      

            If I had to guess, I’d say as we close out 2020, more people are praying for change than in other years at this same time.  We want things to be different, better.  We want life to open back up.  We want Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s.  We want parties and family.  We want change. 

            Isaiah 64 is a prayer for change.  Isaiah chapters 56-66 function as a unit.  Some experts refer to this as “3^rd Isaiah,” set after Israel has returned to the land from exile.  Imagine the awkwardness and uncertainty when that change we’ve prayed – reopening – comes.  Imagine life after the pandemic.  As much as we yearn for it, it will be fraught with economic uncertainty, questions about vaccines, and whether or not we can hug each other.  What will the new normal be?

            In Isaiah 56-66, the people had returned to the land.  But Jerusalem with rubble everywhere, the aftermath of the Babylonian destruction, sat depressed in varying stages of rebuilding.  The sin God’s people committed that led God to allow defeat and exile to happen lurked at the edges their consciousness.  Would they again disobey the Lord?  Would God punish as he had before? 

            Isaiah 64 is a prayer for change.  Maybe hearing that we think, Isaiah 64 provides the words we need to lift before the Lord.  This can be our prayer.  Be careful!  Better than careful, be mindful.  God hears our prayer and takes them seriously.  We should lift them up seriously.   

            Lord, I want to see unity in our land.

            Lord, my body is broken.  I want to be healed.

            Lord, I fear catching a disease.  I want to know I am protected.

            Each is truly a legitimate prayer for change. I encourage these prayers.  Talk to God.  Take what matters in your life before the Lord.  No one loves you like God does.  God wants to hear from you.  God wants you to pay attention to Him.  God wants you to worship with energy, sing your heart out, and throw yourself fully into your worship, your Bible reading, your prayers, and thoughts.  I would go so far as to say God wants a relationship of intimacy with you.

            Make no mistake though.  God is still God.  Listen to the opening of the prayer in Isaiah 64.  “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that mountains would quake at your presence … so that nations would quake at your presence.”

            How often are the prayers we lift requests for life to go back to the way it was before COVID hit?  Or, if you life was kind of lousy and really hard before COVID, last year at this time, maybe you prayed for a good, prosperous, healthy, successful American life.  O Lord, I want the nice house, the best health insurance, the full kitchen cupboard, and a little extra to go on a nice vacation.  God loves home-owning, full-bellied affluent people; no question about it! 

Yet, think about it.  If you’re struggling and praying for your life to be like the person who appears to be struggling less – that’s not a prayer for change.  That’s a prayer for you to live on the good side of how things are in the world right now.  It is asking God to make it so we enjoy the best this life has to offer.  Isaiah 64 utters words at an entirely different level.

To pray this post-exilic prophet’s prayer is to seek change in the fabric of society, an absolute altering of the world as we know it.  Isn’t that what happens when “mountains quake?”  Forget COVID, forget Trump v. Biden, forget all the weirdness of 2020 we actually want to forget but cannot.  Isaiah asks for fire from heaven that makes the waters boil and the rulers tremble.  Do we want to pray that prayer?

What is God doing?  I have heard that question asked a lot this year.  What is God up to?  Setting aside the myopic narcissism in supposing that what happens in our little lives is any kind of indication of God’s intent or activity, it is a natural thing to wonder.  God, what’s going on here, and, where have you been?

Again, God invites us to ask.  If you take anything away from this sermon, take away the assurance that God welcomes your queries.  God wants to hear from you.  God wants to hear from all of us.  God wants to connect at the most seemingly insignificant details in our lives.  Just know the Isaiah 64 is also much bigger than what we can see. 

Verse 4 – “From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for Him” We bring all our prayers, concerns, worries, and hopes.  We lift it all to God in prayer.  Then, we wait on God with that question nibbling away at our faith.  God, what are you doing?

God will answer.  How we receive that answer will be colored by how approach God.  Isaiah approached in a spirit of repentance.  “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth” (v.6).  Isaiah stated the sinful condition of the people, and tries desperately to turn from that to the Holy God who despises sin and will not tolerate it. 

Isaiah recognizes that while it hurts to face in God with our sins dripping all over us like we’ve fallen into a muddy pond right before entering a formal ball, it is worse to turn away from God, and even worse than that to think God has turned away from us. 

Do we, as Isaiah did, see our own condition, our filth next to God’s pristine holiness?  I maintain that the problems of 2020 and in many cases the problems we face regardless of when we face them are magnified by our own shortsightedness, selfishness, and greed.  COVID is the not worst evil we’ve face in 2020; human sin is.  When we pray for change, will repentance be a part of it? 

Will we, as Isaiah did, say to God, “You are our Father; we are the clay, and you the potter”?  The potter gets to mold the make the clay as she pleases.  The clay doesn’t make suggestions.  Will we be clay in God’s hands?  Will we acknowledge our impurities alongside God’s perfection?  Will we say to God, make of me what you will?

Let’s bring together all that’s been raised as we take the prophet’s words and try in some fashion to raise them to God as our words. 

·       We want the world to change or at least our experience of it to change.

·       We agree that Isaiah was onto something in including repentance as a part of his prayer.  So, we also repent.  We name our own failures and shortcomings.  Having confessed, we turn away from sin and turn to God. 

·       We trust that God wants us to pray and hears our prayers.

·       We believe God can and will answer.

·       We wait.

We are left with the thought that we still aren’t quite sure of what God is doing in all this.  Take comfort.  Not knowing is included in the waiting.  Throughout the Bible God’s people have earnestly hoped God would act, then failed to recognize when God did act, because God’s response wasn’t what they expected.  Moses, Job, Daniel, Ezekiel, John the Baptist, Peter; they were surprised when God showed up, and in most cases, they were watching for him! 

“O that you would tear open the heavens … so that mountains would quake and kings would tremble at your presence.”  O that you end the pandemic, quiet the political fighting, bring justice to the victims of injustice; God, come do something!  Will we watch for God’s response?  When it comes, will we see it?

Advent is a time of waiting.  To answer all the questions on the first Sunday would be to skip to the end of the story.  Instead, imagine, if God tore open the heavens and brought the changes you’ve prayed for, what would that look like and sound and feel like?  To seek God and ask God to act demands tremendous faith. 

How does the birth in the manger signal that God is at work in the world?  Here’s the homework.  Spend significant time contemplating how the coming of Christ changes the world at the end of crazy pandemic 2020.  How does the coming of Christ change your life?

AMEN

"Put the Rock Down" (Mark 11:20-25)

 

watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRSrSUQE9S8&t=2s

Sunday, November 15, 2020

 

            What can we contribute to the public good?    Ah, so many questions.  Who do I mean by ‘we?’  I mean the church – Hillside, a local congregation, and believers nationwide and worldwide, the community of faith.  What about, public good? By that I mean the people of the community – the public.  By ‘good,’ I mean conditions that enable as many as possible to thrive. 

‘Good’ would be a reduction in poverty and elimination of food and housing insecurity.  If people aren’t worried about eating or having a roof over their heads, they can concentrate their money, energy, and time on living an enriching life.

‘Good’ refers to relationships.  Everyone is fighting right now.  People fight about wearing masks or not wearing masks.  People condemn each other over politics.  In one family, a woman was on one side of the Biden-Trump divide, opposite her cousin.  Discouraged, she overlooked a lifetime of close family bonds and declared they have nothing in common but that their mothers were sisters.  In another case, two brothers, both over 60, refuse to talk to each because one called the other a ‘socialist.’  ‘Good’ is the repair of these fractured relationships.

Do ‘we’ – the church – have any responsibility for the ‘public good,’ for feeding the hungry, helping those who struggle, and bringing together those who have turn against each other?  Does God call us to be the voice of healing and hope? 

Yes.  In 2019, our elders and deacons adopted the slogan – “At Hillside, we follow Jesus, love others, and share hope.”  We know we are living into this motto when our actions as a church lift people from despair and draw them to Jesus.  Hence the question, what can we contribute to the public good?

We have a lot to contribute!  Love, eternal hope, joy, purpose.  This morning, we focus on forgiveness.  Forgiveness is not a uniquely Christian idea.  Other faiths teach forgiveness.  People who have no faith find it in themselves to offer it. The distinct Christian gift to the world is the message of Jesus.   

We can’t present a Christianity that doesn’t include forgiveness as a core value.  Expressing divine love is what we do.  They know we are Christians by our love.  What can we offer, to contribute to the public good?  Forgiveness!

Jesus tells his disciples, “When you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone; so [then] your father in heaven may also forgive you” (Mk 11:25).  He says this after having ridden, on Sunday, into Jerusalem on a donkey with admirers shouting “Hosanna.  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  From Monday to Thursday of that week, he will teach in the outer court of the temple.  It’s as if he is piling on the lessons, deflecting challenges, and sharing final instructions before he will die.  Could you or I focus knowing that heartbreaking betrayals and gruesome suffering and death lie immediately ahead?

On one of the trips to the city from where they stayed in the outlying village of Bethany, Jesus sees a fig tree with no ripe fruit on it; even though it is not the season for figs, he curses the tree.  It’s a prophetic act akin to Isaiah walking across the city barefoot and Ezekiel lying on his side for 300 days.  Prophets did odd things so their listeners would remember more vividly their message.  People didn’t just remember John the Baptist’s sermons; they remembered his coarse clothing, his diet of honey-covered bugs, and river baptism.  Cursing the fig tree caught the disciples’ attention.

When they walked that way the next day, Peter marveled that the tree had withered overnight (11:20-21).  Not batting an eye, Jesus says to Peter and the disciples, “Have faith in God.  Truly I tell you if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, it will come to pass.”  Jesus did not hate fig trees and he did not want to change Jerusalem’s topography.  He wanted his disciples, us included, to understand that prayer makes a difference.  God listens.  When we pray in faith, God’s power comes. 

Note the connections.  The fig tree represented the system of sacrificial worship.  Sin separates us from God and the sacrificial worship system could not overcome the damaging affects sin had on God’s relationship with human beings.  That system did not produce righteousness or salvation as its fruit.  It was fruitless, like the condemned tree.  Jesus later on makes a similar point when he talks about tearing down the temple.  When he says he will rebuild it, he’s talking about his resurrection.  The temple no longer produces the fruit of new life.  That can only be had through faith in him. 

After teaching about mountain-moving prayer, he connects forgiving others with receiving forgiveness from God.  Of course, God’s forgiveness is not conditional.  God doesn’t forgive us if we forgive each other.  Jesus hung on the cross abandoned by his followers and berated by his despisers.  No one repented as he suffered.  His death, for everyone, was God’s definitive declaration of love for humanity.

The reason Jesus ties forgiving each other to the forgiveness that comes from God and to the replacement of temple-worship with the worship of Jesus is the posture of receiving.  Every time you or I forgive each other, it’s a sign we have received God’s forgiveness.  We don’t just talk about it.  We stand as new creations, forgiven being.  God’s grace takes affect when we receive it.  Standing as forgiven ones, we cannot withhold forgiveness. We are not able. 

The corollary holds as well.  When we withhold forgiveness, it’s a sign we have not received the forgiveness Jesus achieved on the cross and freely offers to all.  It’s there, but we can’t believe it or we are too locked in our shame.  For some reason, we cannot gain release from our own sins.  We can’t allow ourselves to receive the forgiveness God lovingly gives.  So, we can’t forgive others.  We are bound, chained, by our sin and the sins of others.

  Jesus is the truth that sets us free.  We share Him with the hurting world around us.  Why does polarization win?  Why let partisan division claim the day?  Why does animosity, revenge, and discord get the last word?  We tell of God’s forgiveness.  We model it, and in doing so, we step into freedom. 

Those who accept our invitation and turn to Jesus also take the first step to freedom.  Freedom spreads through the church, and out to the world.  It is not easy.

Immaculee Ilibagiza survived the Rwandan genocide of the 1990’s.[i]  She and several other Tutsi women crammed into the bathroom of a man who hid them from Hutu neighbors determined to wipe out all Tutsis.  The conditions were unimaginable, yet, she and the others survived many months in the impossibly cramped quarters.  Immaculees’ parents and most of her siblings were massacred. 

Survival was only part of the miracle.  The bigger part came in Immaculee’s determination to find it in herself to forgive the Hutus, including her family’s killers.  In order for her to reclaim her own humanity, she had to see the humanity in these who had performed such evil.  By God’s grace, she claimed freedom by forgiving those who took everything from her. 

Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa touches on this in his work The Book of Forgiving, written with his daughter Mpho.  South Africa, for over a century, existed in a system of Apartheid as evil as slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration here in the United States.  Blacks in South Africa, the majority, had no rights, and lived in extreme poverty, as servants to the whites who held the money, guns, and power.

When revolution came in the 1990’s, it could have been deadly for the white minority.  But the black citizenry, following the example and lead of people like Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela, committed to forgiving and moving forward together.

Tutu proposed an exercise for the reader of his book.  First, select a stone and remember where you found it.  Then, one morning, carry it, the entire morning, never setting it down for any reason.  Do this for six hours.  That stone is the pain you are holding, the wrongs done to you that still have you in their insidious grip.  Oh, to put that stone down.  Oh, to be free from that pain, the loss, and injustice. 

Let it go.  Forgive.  There will be time for justice if that’s called for.  An abused wife should not just forgive the abuser, stay with him to endure more beatings.  The robbery victim should hope to get back what was taken.  The criminal must be prosecuted.  That’s all another conversation; an important one, but another one.

In terms of forgiveness, release the offender as Jesus releases you.  Set the rock down.  Open your arms in embrace.  This is emotional work, psychological work, and soul work.  But, think of that rock – the way it weighs you down and impedes your progress in life.  Look to the cross where Jesus bleeds out the death brought about by your sins.  Receive his forgiveness and extend it to someone.

Think of someone who’s deeply hurt and angered you through this election season.  You think you’re taking the Christian position.  He thinks the same thing.  You’re frustrated by his politics and he by yours.  Set that rock down. 

This is one of our offerings to the world, church.  It’s the way of grace and it’s sorely needed.   Let love win.  Walk in freedom.  Forgive and invite your neighbor to walk in freedom with you.

AMEN

---

[i] I. Iligabiza (2006), Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.

“The Church we need to Be” (Ephesians 4:1-16)

 

watch here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXhGVDNJKTQ

Sunday, November 15, 2020

 

            What is church supposed to do or supposed to be?  There are so many ways this question could be answered!  There are enough books about church to fill libraries.  You might come to church for a specific reason.  Maybe it’s vague.  You couldn’t say why, exactly.  Either way, you’re here or watching on Facebook or YouTube.  “Church is” [blank].  You could answer, give your view, whatever your view is.

            Then, we go to the next person one row over, or someone right there with you, someone in your own family, and their answer isn’t identical to yours. Whether you’re a lifelong church attendee, seminary-trained, or an unbeliever who rarely darkens the church’s door, you could give your own thoughts.  “Church is … .”

            This message is not about church, but it is valuable to think what church is supposed to be.  This message is not about church, racial strife, the election, or the pandemic.  We have preached, prayed, and talked about those topics for months.  The Spirit and the scripture lead us to this realization: no matter what is happening in our lives or in the world, we must constantly grow in Christ. 

            The New Testament book of Ephesians is the place to turn for insight into what it means to grow in Christ, and understand what the church is supposed to do and be.  Ephesians 4, teaches a beautiful idea that sadly, has been terribly misused in sermons and discourses by many well-intentioned pastors, including me.  Speak the truth in love, Ephesians 4:16.

Pastors, eager to condemn humble church goers in their sin, have leaned on this phrase as they harangue Sunday morning crowds with condemnation.  Are you in the wrong marriage or the wrong kind of marriage?  I’ll let you know and do so with force.  Pastor, how could you step on their toes so roughly?  ‘I was speaking the truth in love.’  Have you made a lifetime of mistakes?  Have you voted the wrong way?  Have you spent your money in the wrong way?  Is there some category into which I can fit you and thus objectify you?  Pastor, lighten up.  I can’t.  ‘I must speak the truth in love.’ 

Don’t get me wrong.  We must all speak the truth in love, pastors, Christians, Christ followers, all of us.  That doesn’t mean we have carte blanche to hammer people and expect them to come crawling and weeping to the cross in repentance.  If people come to Jesus on their knees, it ought to be because they have been convicted in the heart by the Holy Spirit, not bullied by a persuasive, fiery preacher.  “Speak the truth” in love is not code for “Hit’em hard!  Drop truth bombs on ‘em.  Make ‘em squirm.”  That’s not what ‘speak the truth in love’ means. 

Christians and especially pastors must deal with sin truthfully, forcefully, and most importantly Biblically.  But, here’s a truth bomb, from this same chapter, Ephesians 4, verse 2.  We are called to “bear with one another in love” with patience, humility, and gentleness.   Gentleness!  However energetically we want to confront people with truth, we must also heed the Biblical call to gentleness. 

Philippians 4:5, “Let your gentleness be known to everyone.”  Galatians 5:23: along with kindness and generosity, gentleness is listed as fruit of the spirit; gentleness is produced when the Spirit is at work in the church.  And in 1 Corinthians 4:21, Paul asks the church, “What would you prefer?  Am I to come to you with a stick, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?”  The next time you’re sensing in yourself the need to “speak the truth in love,” pause; take a breath.  And remember the New Testament mandates gentleness.  If speaking the truth in love is not using the Bible to throttle people, then, what does it mean?

We’ve referred to Ephesians 4:2, bearing with one another in love, with humility, gentleness, and patience.  This sentiment leads into a dramatic call to unity.  Of course, this unity is not American unity or unity in any nationality.  It’s unity among the people who make up the body of Christ, the people of the church.  Unity is an ultimate value in Christ.

Listen to Ephesians 4:4-6.  “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.”  This echoes the prayer of Jesus at the last supper recorded in John 17 (v.23).  Jesus asks God the Father to help his disciples and the subsequent generations of churches birthed from their witness worldwide to be one.  He prays that our unity as brothers and sister in Him will be as tight as the unity in the Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit.  Unity – based on who Jesus is and who we are in him, is an ultimate value. 

Ephesians goes on to talk about spiritual gifts, but the list here, is different than the spiritual gift lists found in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 in that, all the gifts listed here are leadership related: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.  More important than reciting a list is grasping what these church leaders are for.  Verse 12: they are “to equip the saints [worshipers] for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ.”

Unity is the responsibility of everyone in the church.  We who have been called to leadership are tasked with encouraging, teaching, inspiring, training, cajoling, and prompting church members into living into their callings according to their gifts, experiences, personalities, and opportunities.  Ephesians 4:13 sets the scope of church life.  We leaders are to equip Christians “until all of us come to unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of the God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” 

Obviously, we’re talking about lifelong work.  I have not attained the full stature of Christ.  Too many times in my own life, I yield to my short temper and sharp tongue instead of speaking and acting as Jesus would in my place.  Because I fail to be gentle, I need daily forgiveness, countless second chances to love rightly and lead well and encourage others.  I, broken as I am, stand as one of the pastors appointed to train all in the church to come to unity, grow in faith, and finally reach the full stature of Christ.  I need to constantly improve in acting as Jesus would in my place and helping others do the same.  All leaders have this call to train the saints – elders, deacons, church officers; all leaders.

Ephesians 4:14 notes why this matters so much.  The world around us, cut off from God’s promises and indifferent to God’s ways, as it is, will tempt us in 1000 ways to live as if God didn’t matter.  The world respects, self-promotion, and sneers at self-sacrifice.  Thus, verse 14, “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, [or] by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.” Advertising aimed at selling you a product you don’t need in order to live into an image that’s not true; political posturing to get you to vote for a candidate who says he’s looking out for your best interests, but really isn’t; temptations from friend and peers to do things you know you shouldn’t but do them for the sake of social status; a thousand ways we are taken by lies and deceptions.  As we grow in Christ, we are responsible for keeping our eyes on Christ and resisting temptations and turning back false teaching. 

So the teaching, speak the truth in love, rooted in unity, is an imperative from God to us, showing us how to live out our faith.  Commitment to unity and resistance to unchristian speech, belief, and practice, join together in this word.

Consider the entirety of verse 15.  “Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into Christ.”  Verse 16 then ties it all together.  This Christ, in whom we must grow, joins and knits the entire body – the church – together by every “ligament.”  Each ligament is someone in the church.  Everyone is equipped and [when working properly] “promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”

            The message then is growth.  In our individual lives we grow in Christ.  Through study and worship, through devotional practices and mission and ministry participation, we grow.  We grow as we learn to see the world from Christ’s perspective.  His values become ours.  Our reactions to things – elections, pandemics, neighbors who offend us – our reactions are determined by Christ, not our emotions. 

            The message is growth.  Collectively we make up the body of Christ.  As the church grows in love, service, hospitality, and vibrant worship and inclusiveness, we more and more reflect the image of Christ.  The watching world looks to us, see Christ, and is drawn to Him.  We’d love for that to mean growth in the number of people in our church, but our commitment is to grow in holiness and love.

            Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.  He is the embodiment of perfect love. Every person needs relationship with him.  Every single one needs the forgiveness received through belief in his death and resurrection.  When we reflect Jesus, teach Jesus, and love as he loves, then we are speaking truth.  The closer we get to Jesus, the more unified we are.  We know the church is where we meet Jesus.  Church.  We know that’s what we need.  And we know that’s who we need to be.

AMEN

"The Gospel for Losers" (Job 40-41)

 

Watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo4GZ-LGCPU&t=1131s

Why?  I found myself asking that question, the "why question," Tuesday as I watched the reporting from polling locations across America.  Why can’t this election be ended simply, quickly, and peacefully?  Why can’t we be united?  Can’t this be easy? 

Rarely is the race for the presidency in America this close.  Leading up to election day there was talk of voter suppression, threats of lawsuits, and great anxiety.  If you’re one of the smart ones, you didn’t even watch.  But for the millions of us who did watch, this election had all we needed to stay miserable.

Supporters of President Trump went to bed feeling good Tuesday night, while those backing his challenger, Joe Biden, may have had trouble sleeping.  On Wednesday, more votes were counted, and it became apparent, that this race had not been decided.  The red and blue maps on the news websites tilted, ever so slightly, toward Biden. The roles of hopefully optimistic or dread were reversed.

I suppose in countries run by dictators where democracy is a myth, they might chuckle at how fragile we Americans are.  For us, 2020 has been a topsy-turvy year. Our election did enough to push both sides to their wits’ end. Why is it like this? 

Why!  Usually, there’s no satisfactory answer to “why.”  So, in the face of the unanswerable, the book of Job is the place to go.  Job was the subject of a wager we cannot fathom.  God dared the Satan, the Accuser, to consider Job’s righteousness.  Satan – a title, not a name – challenged God right back.  Job’s is only good because you have blessed him.  So, God allows Satan to destroy all of Job’s wealth, kill all 10 of Job’s children, and inflict hideous, oozing sores all over Job’s body.  All of it is done so that God can have the satisfaction of seeing Job remain righteous, obedient, and faithful.

At that point, Satan, the Accuser, steps out of the scene, never to return.  When Job and his three friends begin discussing this troubling turn in the course of his life, the issue is no longer God’s pride in Job’s righteousness.  Job and the friends don’t know of the conversations between God and Satan.  As chapter 3 begins, the focus shifts to the debate around unjust suffering.  Why would this happen? 

            Job wanted the pain to end, to go away.  If that could not happen, then he wanted justification.  Convinced that the only reason he agonized as he did was that God caused it or allowed it to happen, Job wanted God to answer for this. 

            Suffering, something each of us have endured, or at some point will endure, stands as the problem.  We want to remove it, but we can’t.  So, we want justice or at least answers.  Job’s friends, using a variety of arguments but always ending at the same spot, claimed without any evidence that his suffering was tied to sins he had committed.  It had to be his fault.  They were his true friends and knew him to be a righteous man who diligently worshiped God and atoned for his sins.  They knew Job, but their theology of retribution insisted that suffering is a punishment from God.  They didn’t have a category for unjust suffering. 

            Job knew he was innocent of the kinds of sins theology typically listed as provocations for such pain.  He knew his claims of innocence were outside the realm of conventional thinking.  Yet he doggedly insisted he was right.  He was innocent.  He wanted answers.  He demanded that God give those answers. 

            Did God give answers?  Do you remember the story of Job, a book unlike anything other in the Bible, a story set outside of normal time?  We don’t know when Job was written.  No mention is made of Israel.  Yet as far removed as this story is, it speaks.  The story of Job is our story.  Terrible things happen and only God can explain it.  In Job, does He do that?  Does God give Job what’s he’s asked for?

            In chapters 3-31, God is utterly silent as Job and his three friends debate his guilt, theology, ethics, and justice.  In chapters 32-37, a younger man, Elihu upbraids Job’s three friends for their failure to convince Job of his sin.  Then, for six chapters, he tries to convince Job using similar arguments.  Through it all, the arguments, Elihu’s monologues, and the waiting, God is silent.

            Finally in chapter 38, the heavens rumble.  The three friends and Elihu exit stage right.  Job, with his open sores oozing puss, sits silent and still to face God alone, as God speaks out of the whirlwind.  The question hangs in the air.  Will God give the Job the answers he has defiantly demanded? Will God tell Job why this has happened?

            No!   God begins, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?  Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me” (38:2-3).  If Job wants to put God on trial, fine!  Job will be the witness who has to testify under God’ interrogation.  Except it doesn’t go like that.  Instead,  God takes Job on a tour through the cosmos and the animal kingdom.

            Job thinks he has asked fundamental questions about the justice of the universe.  God shows Job, not only does he, Job, not know what he’s talking about.  He has no idea what is happening behind the scenes.  God has created this world with intimate, loving care.  We are caught up in the outcome of this past Tuesday’s election, and rightfully so.  Job was obsessed with his pain, loss, and suffering, and even more rightfully so.  God does not diminish our concerns or deep seeded anxieties.  God did not dismiss Job’s pain or longing for resolution.  God did show Job and us that there’s more going on than we know, and he – God – truly does have the world in His hands.

            In chapters 40 and 41, God gives extended discourses on the largest land animal, Behemoth, and the most-feared sea animal, Leviathan.  Both are of a mystical quality.  It is fruitless to try to identify an actual animal with these mythological creatures. Some commentators believe Behemoth indicated an elephant or hippopotamus.  The Hebrew word means “powerful creature.” Power and might. 

Some supporters of Donald Trump like him because he projects power.  He doesn’t do it with flowery eloquence.  He’s brash, abrupt, and loud.  His admirers say he “tells it like it is.”  They raucously shout their support at his rallies and feel that some of that power rubs off on them.  God’s depiction of Behemoth shows that we don’t even know what power is.

God tells Job, “I made [this great animal] just as I made you” (40:15).  We fear the Behemoth as we should, but God can approaches the mighty animal.  This beast of legend is one of God’s great acts of creation (40:19).  We are, not surprisingly, captivated by our times, but God is above time, outside of time, the maker of time, and beyond time – our times, times past, the future.  We can take comfort in seeing that God is the sustainer.  God has the world in his hands.  In the short term, we feel uncertainty, but God does not share our apprehensions.  God has not lost control.  The God who toys with his great creation – behemoth – watches over us knowing everything we are going through.  God is with us. 

If Behemoth calls to mind the terrors of great land animals, Leviathan evokes shudders in the deepest parts of one’s soul.  The ancients feared the oceans, only able to imagine their depths and the wonders and horrors within those depths.  Leviathan is the great sea-serpent lurking, waiting to swallow up men, ships, swimmers, everything.  One writer I read even believes Leviathan is Satan, the great evil mentioned in Revelation 12:9, God’s ancient foe.  Indeed, the description in Job 41:12-24 sounds like a dragon from ancient lore even including the scales and the breathing of fire (41:19-21).  Verse 25: “When [Leviathan] raises itself up the gods are afraid.”

Yes, the gods are afraid, but not the one true God.  With the one true God, Leviathan makes a covenant, to be God’s servant forever (41:4).  Leviathan the mighty, terror to all human beings, is happy to be God’s pet (v.5).  I appreciate the commentator linking Leviathan to the Satan.  It’s an intriguing interpretation, but one I reject.   Leviathan, like Behemoth, exists to humble human beings with its power, ferocity, and mystique.  Yet before God, the Leviathan bows because the animal remembers what we have forgotten.  God is Lord supreme, ruler of all.

Reciting this divine resume to Job, God reminds Job of who he – God is; He also reminds Job of who Job is.  Hopefully upon entering this story, we remember who we are.  The world is God’s.  We are small.  We get anxious, mystified, and disappointed.  We lose.  This week, at different points, we quite possibly all felt like losers!  That’s okay!  The Gospel is for losers. 

God didn’t have to listen to all Job’s complaints or give Job this grand display out of the whirlwind, but God did, out of love for Job.  God loves us just as much.  God knows the fears we carry. 

As we consider our lives and take stock of our feelings, especially as we come out of this post-election haze, consider this.  Consider setting your sights on God.  Look to the stars and see God’s handiwork.  Looks to the animals and the natural word, and see what a caring artist God is.  Look and know that the world has not gotten away from God.  He loves us.  He loves you as an individual.  He is here.  Does he tell us why things are the way they are?  Sometimes.  Sometimes he does he not.  Sometimes, he just says, “I am here.”  And that is enough.

AMEN

 

Work out Your Salvation

 

The Apostle Paul writes, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:11-12).  Paul knew salvation was a gift from God, not something the diligent believer could achieve through works.  However, once the gift was received, Paul also knew, as we need to understand, that it does take great effort to live as a saved person.  Following Jesus is free in the sense that he welcomes all without qualification.  Free?  Yes.  Cheap?  No.  Following Jesus requires to give our all in developing as disciples.

In the verses immediately preceding Paul’s ‘work out your own salvation,’ the apostle tells of Jesus ‘emptying himself and taking the form of a slave.’  Why did Jesus give up so much and suffer so much?  He did that you and I might be saved.  He took the death our sin brings on himself.  He put in the ultimate effort, and he expects us to give everything to be his followers.

Consider Jesus’ words in Luke 14.  “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even life itself cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”  Jesus’ call is a far cry from the effortless mandate to just “believe” issued in so many churches.  We ignore our master’s own words when we present Christianity as something simple and something that doesn’t require anything of us. 

Of course, by “hate” Jesus actually meant prioritize.  He loved his own mother and provided for her as he hung dying on the cross (John 19:26).  Sets of brothers were among the disciples.  Jesus did not despise family relations.  But loyalty to family (or to any human institution) had to come below the top priority: loyalty to Jesus.  When these causes conflicted with each other, Jesus did commit to God’s mission for him over and against his own blood relations’ objections (Mark 3:31-35).  Follow him as his disciple is the primary life calling for all believers, above any vocation or familial role.

Hence, living a life of faith requires much of us.  We must work out our relationship with God through prayer, worship, study, service, and an intentional effort at refining our attitudes so that we see the world and see people as God does.  We have to stay determined, carrying our crosses.  We give ourselves to discipleship.

Under the specter of the society-disrupting COVID-19 pandemic, many of us have put faithful living (and other things) on the shelf.  We’ve become physically, relationally, and spiritually lazy and inert.  It’s time to get up and get working!  We can follow Jesus with determination and safely socially distance.  And we must.  Enduring the political strife and working through the minefield of racial tensions requires that we keep our eyes on Jesus and act out of His values and His priorities.  We can only be ready to live as Jesus followers during turbulent times if we commit to growing in our faith. 

Thus, the best way to live in our times is base our outlook on who Jesus is.  We do this by growing in our knowledge of who Jesus is.  We grow in our knowledge by working on our faith.  So, my fellow disciples, get to work!