Fumbling Pride

In the sermons this summer, we have been looking at the 8^th century BC prophet Hosea to hear the Word of the Lord.  However, last week, we took a break from Hosea to read 1 Timothy as we ordained new elders and thought about church leadership.

            Today, as we return to the fiery words of the prophet, a lonely voice for God amid a society turned away from God, I want to briefly think back to 1 Timothy and the idea of church.  The church is a family, and hopefully we are engaged participants in the life of this family. 

The church goers I have seen who receive the greatest blessing from church are those who develop deep, lifelong friendships with the people they worship alongside each Sunday.  In those relationships, we grow as disciples.  We serve together, giving our very best in terms of time, talent, and energy to the life of the church. 

As we serve in the church, we locate our lives within the church.  And we see each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.  In the church, we realize we are not of the world around us.  The church is not just one more institution in a society full of institutions competing individuals’ time and loyalty.  The church is the body of Christ in the world.  In the church, we know, we’re bound for and bound to the Kingdom of God. 

We’re not cut-off.  We stay fully engaged in the world, showing people love and grace.  We know we are sent by God to announce his rescue mission.  Jesus is the Savior.  The church is the gathering of his disciples.

In the 8^th century BC, the nation of Israel was meant to be a gathering of God worshipers.  The world would look to Israel, see God’s holiness, repent of sin, and come to Israel seeking God.  The problem is when the world looked to Israel, God’s holiness was not seen.  Israel lived as just one more kingdom vying for power, forming ill-fated alliances, and rising and falling based upon the deaths of common people who gave their lives on behalf of monarchs who didn’t want to dirty their own hands.

They went through the motions of worship, and at the same time, they aligned with nations that were utterly opposed to the ways of God.  It happens in our day and time too.  Famous pastors and supposedly Christian leaders align themselves with political figures who show open disregard for the ethics found in scripture.  Pastors today find themselves praised not for their forceful proclamation of the stories in the Bible, but for their words about this candidate or that one.  Many high profile Christians today have forfeited their witness as badly as kings and priests did in Hosea’s day.  Many churches today fail as courageous witnesses when their “gospel” is eerily similar to the platform of either of America’s major political parties.

We who are in Christ are called to be something else.  We are to be a light on the hill shining on something the world hasn’t seen – the city of God, a city unlike any on earth.  Israel was called to be holy.  So are we.  In Israel’s constant flirtation with other religions, in her exploitation of the needy, and in her repeated acts of fornication she was profane and she fumbled her responsibility to point the world to God. 

What does God think when His people try so hard to be worldly instead of faithful?  The opening of chapter 4 sets the table for God’s response: “Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel, for the Lord has an indictment against [you].”  Hosea then develops this theme of indictment. 

Chapter 5, verse 5: “Israel’s pride testifies against him.”  

Pride.  Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”  Most Americans claim to be Christian and most Christians says they believe what the Bible says.  If we believe it – Hosea 5:5 & Proverbs 16:18 – then we need to be careful about pride!  And yet pride in our country is expected of all Americans.  If you aren’t proud and don’t tear up during the National Anthem, you aren’t patriotic enough! 

But we say we believe the Bible and Hosea and Proverbs, two Biblical books, say pride indicts us and leads to destruction!  How do we reconcile this?

We feel the need to insist how much better America is than other places and other peoples, even when we haven’t visited other places and don’t know other peoples.  “They wish they were like us,” we say. “They wish they were here.”  Maybe some in other countries do; certainly not all.  What if we celebrated that America is strong and we love our country.  Would that be enough?  Do we have to puff out our chests and insist that “America is the most powerful nation in the world”? 

Is that so important? In the days of the Hosea, Assyria was the most powerful nation, and they were not in step with God’s vision for creation.  In the days of Jesus, the most powerful nation was Rome, and Rome glorified itself, not God.  I love America.  Every citizen should.  We should all contribute to the thriving of all people in America.  But Jesus, not America, should define us.  I pray for America to be blessed and God to be glorified.    

Of 8^th century BC Israel, Hosea said, “with their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him; he has withdrawn from them” (5:6).  Why?  God never turns back an earnest seeker.  Why would Hosea say God rejected Israel?  The people had circumcised bodies.  They sacrificed animals. They performed all the religious rites.  However, their hearts were indifferent to God.  They used God for their own purposes.  We are to submit our purposes to God’s will and then live by God’s command.  We are to be of use to God, not vice versa.

Hosea 5:7 says that because the people dealt faithlessly with God, they bore illegitimate children.  What came from that faithless society was something other than the holiness God intends for us, God’s image bearers.  We also yield unholy, ungodly fruit when we live for our own desires without regard for God. 

Upon reading Hosea 5:7, “they have broken faith with the Lord … they have begotten alien children,” each one of us has to ask, ‘Have I broken faith with the Lord?’  ‘Is my life producing God’s holiness?’  Or, is my life profane?  This goes beyond morality.  A lot of people who have very little to do with Jesus live what appear to be moral lives.  But they are not lives submitted to Christ. 

The Apostle Paul captured this tension well in Galatians.  There he contrasts what our lives produce when we are motived by our own appetites and cravings verses what comes out of our lives when the Holy Spirit pours through us.  Galatians 5:

¹⁶ Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. ¹⁷ For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. ¹⁹ Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, ²⁰ idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, ²¹ envy,^[e] drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

²² By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. ²⁴ And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵ If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.

Apart from God, our lives issues forth profane words, ideas, and relationships, all utterly cut off from the holiness God commands for us.  God doesn’t like it.  God is more invested in us than we in Him.  The pain God experiences when we reject Him is greater than the hurt we feel apart from Him.  Hosea reveals how God reacts to our disobedience and disregard of Him. This is chapter 5, verses 12-14.

¹² Therefore I am like maggots to Ephraim,
    and like rottenness to the house of Judah.
¹³ When Ephraim saw his sickness,
    and Judah his wound,
then Ephraim went to Assyria,
    and sent to the great king.^[a]
But he is not able to cure you
    or heal your wound.
¹⁴ For I will be like a lion to Ephraim,
    and like a young lion to the house of Judah.
I myself will tear and go away;
    I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.

When you got up to come to church this morning, did you expect to hear God say, “I am like maggots and rottenness?”  Maggots swarm over piles of putrid, stinking mess.  God swarms the person who dares abandon him and turns away from him.  This nasty imagery is unappetizing, but to say less would dilute the message of the prophet. God is disgusted when people reject Him and His call, and Hosea wants his readers to feel that disgust.  God loves us.  When we swat that love back at God with the strength of a tennis pro’s forehand, God doesn’t go away.  God stays.  And then, we reek with the stench of God-rejecters. 

Hosea then shifts images, from maggots to the lion.  “I will tear,” God says.  God will ravage the faithless congregation that plays at worshiping Him all the while trying to please the culture around it.  Like prey in the wilderness, God chews us up when we turn from him.

We are to live within our American culture.  But, in that culture, we are to be salt, seasoning the culture with the flavor of Heaven.  Where our culture expects cutthroat competition, we are to offer cooperation with an eye toward the thriving of everyone.  Where our culture calls for vengeance in disputes, whether verbal or violent, as people of heaven we give forgiveness and mercy.  Where our culture exalts the mighty and powerful, we are to, as Colossians 3 says, “clothe [ourselves] with “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and love” (v.12, 14).

Those values differ greatly from the bravado and power-posturing so valued in our culture.  Compassion.  Kindness.  Humility.  Meekness.  Love.  We can’t aspire to live out these ideas unless we are filled with the Spirit of the risen Christ.  Oriented toward our culture we are turned away from God, and God ruins us and rips us apart. 

Hosea casts God in an active role – causing rot, tearing us in pieces; But, I think the best way to receive Hosea’s words, especially in light of all we know about Jesus, is as imagery.  We rip ourselves apart trying to divide our loyalty between personal success, political stances, and Jesus, and other things. 

The final verse of Hosea 5 sums up our situation.  God says

I will return again to my place
    until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face.
    In their distress they will beg my favor

All the ways Hosea displays the anger of God lead to the point where we come begging God for another chance.  And here’s the good news!  God gives that second chance, every time.

We are the church family.  We recognize the devastating effects of our sins.  Like Israel in Hosea’s day, we come to God on our knees.  There’s no pride, only humble confession.  When we see how bad life is apart from God and how far our sins have moved us away from God, then we turn to Him and ask forgiveness.  He gives it in abundance, gently, in love. We plead for a second change.  He gives it, over and over.  As we see in the life of Jesus, the core of the Gospel and over and over in the words of the prophet Hosea, God takes us back in love, cleans us up, and sets us up once again to live in joy as His people. 

Decide what you want. Pray for the world.  Pray for the nation.   Pray for your town.  Pray for your church.  Pray for your own life.  Set your mind and heart on the love God has for you. 

AMEN

Once Far off ... Brought Near by the Blood of Christ (Eph. 2:13)

Sunday, October 5, 2017

            Two Satursdays ago, I took a shovel to a weed patch.  Hiding under that invasive overgrowth is good dirt, ripe for a garden.  But the green blanket of nuisance is covering it, so I took to digging.  Forty-five minutes later, good dirt smiled through and said to me, “Fill me with your seeds.  Flowers.  Vegetables.  Greens.  Let beautiful and delicious things grow here.”  I dragged three cans full of weeds to the curb for pick-up, went in the house, cleaned up, and began folding the mountain of clean laundry that needed to be put away.

            The weeding wasn’t done.  I was just done weeding.  I picked it back up yesterday. I got more done but still wasn’t finished.  Again, I went inside to fold Laundry with college football on in the background.  Fold the laundry.  Put it away.  Rinse.  Repeat. It’s a lot of work to maintain a home.  It’s good work.  A blessing.  But still, a lot of work.

            “We are no longer strangers and aliens,” Ephesians 2:19.  We are no longer cut off from God or the people of God.  The verse continues, “We are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”  I mentioned three weeks ago that we would talk about HillSong as “the household of God.”  Our aim is to maintain this household so that all who come feel welcomed and feel at home here. 

            However, after setting that goal, I did a message about grace.  And then last week’s message was about how the Christian view of reality is more hopeful than any other.  In essence, that too is a message about grace.  Why so much emphasis on grace when the end in mind is to build up the household of God? I think people are scared of God; scared of what it will mean for them to be too close to God. 

            The question for reflection in your bulletin is “what, specifically, makes it hard for you to draw near to God?”  It’s unhelpful to be generic with this question. 

What make it hard to draw near to God? I ask.  Sin, you say.

That neuters the question.  You say, well sin is what cuts people off from God, so the answer must be sin.  It’s logical.

Yes, I respond, but which sin? 

Drinking to excess? 

Abusing power? 

Living in paralyzed fear when God calls us to bold faith? 

Living in affluence surrounded by need when God calls us to extravagant generosity? 

By saying “sin is what prevents anyone from coming close to God,” we avoid naming our individual, specific sins that prevent us from drawing near to God.  Church goers love condemning sin in general and especially love damning sins that don’t tempt them.  We don’t like it so much when talk of sin turns to our sins and thus to confession.  We have to confess things we have done, sins we have committed that hurt people and serve to separate us from a relationship of closeness and trust with God. 

Verse 13 says, “You who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”  I have seen people sit in the sanctuary as far back as possible during worship.  If we moved the back wall 15 further back, they’d be grateful.  Because up front is where the communion table is; up front is where the baptismal pool sits.  The big cross high up on the wall is up front.  That’s too close to God.  That’s terrifying. 

Why is it hard to draw near to God?  Before we can begin doing our part to maintain the household God has constructed in Christ at work in the hearts of people, before we can live as God has invited us to live, we have accept God’s invitation to come close.    That means we have to be honest with ourselves and about ourselves.  We’re sinners.

Twelve step programs get this right.  Hi, my name is Rob, and I am an alcoholic, or, I am an addict.  Stark honesty is essential.  What would church be like if every week, we began by going person by person, beginning our worship in raw confession.  Hi my name is Rob and I am sinner.  I am saved by grace, but though the Holy Spirit of God lives in me, still this week, I have sinned against God and against people.  How different would church be if instead of worrying about our “Sunday best” we live in confessional honesty?  We cannot draw near to God unless we do that.  If we do that God draws us into a bear hug of forgiveness and love.  Verse 13 says, “We’re brought near by the blood of Christ.”  That blood was shed for the forgiveness of sins.  Sins are covered and forgiveness received as we confess, as we come to God with our full selves, as we are.

What comes between us and drawing close to God?  Fear of standing before the Holy One exposed in our sin. 

Another question that must be faced as we prepare to join our hearts with one another and live in the house God built as the household of God is this.  What new thing is God doing?

            Hear the language in Ephesians 2.  “At one time you … were called the uncircumcision.”  “Remember that at that time you were without Christ … having no hope and without God in the world.”  The view from Ephesians is that to be without God is to be without hope.  Those addressed were without hope.

            However, that changed.  “Remember at that time” yields to the language of verse 13.  “But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”  Something happened.  Something changed.

            This change occurs at two levels in Ephesians.  First, the individual is cut off from God by sin, but through Jesus’ work on the cross, the death sin brings is shouldered by Jesus.  So the individual is saved from death, saved for life.  Salvation! 

We saw this in Greg’s life.  He came to know himself as a new person, forgiven by God.  His baptism gives witness.  His baptism is public, a statement made before the entire church.  He is lowered under the water, dead in sin and buried.  But we don’t leave him under the water.  He is raised just as Jesus rose from death in resurrection.  Greg is raised to new life.  It’s the story of everyone who comes to God in confession and repentance.  Each person’s journey is unique, but we are united in our baptism.  What is god doing?  God is saving individuals.

            What else is God doing?  Reconciliation!  We are united in baptism.  Whatever may have previously divided groups of people is removed.  Race.  Ethnicity.  Social class.  Place of birth.  Country of citizenship.  It doesn’t matter what divides us because that division has been removed. 

            What is God doing? 

·         Saving individuals from death. 

·         Eliminating the divisions that come between groups of people. 

·         Building a house – a gathering of people into a family, the household of God. 

In Ephesians, the specific division is between Jews who follow Jesus and Gentiles who follow Jesus.  Ephesians existed as theological writing in the late first century when the church was a couple of generations old.  This is Jewish-Gentile tension had several decades to evolve into an ongoing institutional sickness that weakened the entire church.  One of the main reasons Ephesians was important as a letter is the profound statement of 2:15-16.  It says God [created] “in himself one new humanity in place of two, [reconciling] both groups to God in one body through the cross.”  This action put to death hostility. 

            Why is it hard to draw near to God?  Because of the specific sins you and I commit.

            What is God doing?  Saving people from sin and death, bring together groups who were hostile to each other.

            A third question: what hostility among us is bring broken down?

            Possibilities include the tension between white people who live privileged in society and non-white people who have to contend in society with privileged persons; also, the tension between people who deny there is such a thing as white privilege and those who insist it is an evil that plagues our culture; also, the tension between conservatives and liberals.  These and many tensions would divide us, but they cannot when we live in Christ because, he, “Puts to death the hostility” (v.16).

            Practically speaking, what does this mean?  It means your stand is not that important and cannot be what defines your relationships. 

Where do I stand on gun control? 

Where do I stand on birth control? 

Where do I stand on immigration? 

Where do I stand on tax reform? 

Where do I stand on big government v. small government?

Where do I stand on race relations?

            If, as I went through these questions, you thought of where you stand on each issue, you’re missing the point.  The first thing and the last thing is am standing in Christ?  Am I one forgiven, full of the spirit, ready to love, ready to forgiven, and ready to welcome my brother or sister, even the one who is opposite of me on all these issues?  Am I so grounded in Christ, I won’t run to Facebook to list all my stances in confrontational way that puts people with opposite views down because I know doing so will bring pain to my brother or sister?  I might post my ideas, but not in a way that demonizes people with other ideas.

            Facebook can be an arena of dialogue.  And it is OK to have opinions and hold them passionately.  But for the sake of who we are in Christ and for the sake of being a household that welcomes in people, all kinds of people, will I make it a spiritual discipline to show restraint in my language, in my use of social media, and in my expression of my passionately held views?  I will make sure that whatever I say is said in language colored by love and fragranced by Christ. 

            If you know that I love you no matter what your views are or who you voted for and if I know you love me no matter what my views are or who I voted for, then we can talk, laugh, shout, and cry together in our agreement and our disagreement because we are united in Christ.  If I trust you to be sensitive and not use language that hurts me and to apologize when you have hurt me, and if you trust me to be sensitive and not use language that hurts you and to apologize when I have hurt you, then we talk.  About anything.  The hostility has been broken down.  We are ready to work together to maintain the household of God.

            Jesus accomplishes a lot on the cross, more than we often acknowledge.  We know about the individual’s experience of grace.  Salvation is a work of the cross.  But so too is the work of reconciliation.  Groups welcoming each other – groups previously hostile to each other – is as important to God as the experience of individuals.  Salvation and reconciliation are both important.

            And so, we pray. 

In prayer, think about the group in society today that is the object of your hostility.  You don’t like liberals.  You don’t like people who post of Facebook.  You don’t like supporters of our current president.  You don’t like supporters of our previous president.  Think about the object of your hostility.

            Now confess sins hostility has led you to commit. 

Maybe you will need to go to someone and confess how you have thought hurtful thoughts about them or done hurtful things to them. 

If someone comes to you confessing, give them the grace you want God to give you.  Let this be a time where our hearts are wide open before God.  As church family, may we together pray, asking God to rain down grace, forgiveness, and healing.  We also want God to do some wall-busting.  O God destroy the hostilities that arise and divide us. 

In upcoming weeks, we’ll go deeper in Ephesians as we examine how we live as the household of God. 

This morning we pray for an in-breaking of the Holy Spirit.  May the Lord draw us together – to one another.  May the Lord provoke us to full-bodies, raw, honest confession.  And in that confession, may we accept God’s invitation to come close to Him.

AMEN

Hearts Ripped Open

            “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping and mourning; rend your hearts and not your garments.  Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing” (Joel 2:12-13).

            Isn’t it hard to open one’s heart before God?  Every day, it seems, I say something or do something that makes me look weak.  Or, my words or actions in some way hurt someone else.  If I open my heart before God fully, I have to be completely open about my shortcomings.  It doesn’t feel good.  Who wants to look at his own flaws?  Not me.

            The prophet doesn’t shy away from this.  Joel urges us to turn to God “with fasting, with weeping and mourning.”  If anything, Joel deepens the shame and despairing sense that sin produces.  We are to grieve the condition in which our failures leave us.  A traditional form of grief in ancient Israel was the ripping of garments and this was significant.  Many people only had one or two garments of clothing. Sin was so grievous they did something costly. They rent their garment.

            But no, says, God, that’s not enough.  Rip open the heart!  In turning from sin to God, we rip ourselves wide open.  It sounds unbearable.  What good can come of such raw, honest confession?  Only this: New Life!

            Besides saying what we are to do in confession, Joel describes the character of God.  Joel tells us who God is.  The Lord is the one who says to us “return to me with all your heart.”  The Lord is gracious and merciful … and relents from punishing.”  What the Lord has waiting for us when we come with hearts ripped open, tears shed, and body weakened is forgiveness and new life.  God takes all our shame and makes us new. 

            This Sunday is Palm Sunday and next week is holy week.  What if you and I rip our hearts open and come before God.  We come in raw, exposed confession as we worship, as we sing, as we enter the church building, as we take communion, and as we bow our heads to pray.  What if we open the closet in the interior of our hearts and empty it before God?  What will God do with all our junk?

            Look to the words of the prophet Joel, who tells us God is “abounding in steadfast love.”  God will take the messes of our lives, will wash us, and will replace our baggage and burdens with blessings.  Look to the cross where your sins are nailed to Jesus.  And look to the horizon.  That light that’s breaking through the black shadows of shame is the eternal life that springs in his resurrection.  You and I are beckoned by our Lord to walk in that light.

            Our first step is the step of confession-repentance; full repentance and complete confession.  It isn’t easy.  But it gets easier with each step.  And before we know it we are walking quicker, running, flying, soaring on the wind of the Spirit of God.  I pray this Easter you will know the glorious freedom of forgiveness.

First Sunday of Lent - Forgiveness (Psalm 32)

            This Psalm begins, “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven.”  Doesn’t that assume that the transgressor feels guilt and shame because of his misdeeds?  If he didn’t, he would not need the forgiveness to feel happy.  Maybe the sin itself gives him a thrill, a guilty pleasure, if you will. 

            Have you had that experience with sin?  You know a particular word is offensive, an abhorrent word, but you giggle when you hear it or say it.  Gossip; does it really even count sin?  And systemic sins – sinful systems; who ever heard of such a thing?  Am guilty for benefitting in a sinful system?  Seriously, who feels guilt over sin whether it’s individual or systemic?  You know the phrase.  I’m only human.  Why even make a big deal about disobeying God? 

            But this singer, in Psalm 32:3, says, “While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.”  Kept silence; he, or she, the singer, kept it inside.  Whatever the sin was, he buried it deep in his heart.   This Psalm is attributed to David and his most public of sins was to have an adulterous affair, try to cover it up, and then have the wronged husband, Uriah, murdered in a way that would protect him from guilt.  David committed both individual and systemic-power related sins in the Bathsheba episode.  You can read about it in 2 Samuel 11-12.  Psalm 32 is one of David’s confession songs. 

            However, the Psalms are portable.  What David sang, you or me or anyone could sing in reference to our own sins.  We could sing, if we feel guilty.   David had help feeling guilty.  He says in Psalm 32:4, “Day and night your hand, [O Lord], was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.”  The way God’s hand fell on heavy David was through the confrontation provoked by the prophet Nathan. 

            God’s heavy hand sets upon us until we have to face our sin, the damage it does, and the guilt it throws on us.  Two of history’s most acclaimed authors have captured this guilt sin has wrought.

            We’ve already mentioned that a parable from the prophet Nathan provoked King David’s guilt.  In 1843 Edgar Allen Poe published “the Tell Tale Heart.” In the poem, the narrator is driven by his own madness to the kill the old man.  He thinks the murder and brilliant cover-up has relieved his gnawing insanity, but it only drives it all the more. 

            A couple of police officers come to the door because a neighbor heard a midnight cry.  The narrator has successfully hidden the body and the police officers are about to leave the house when his screaming madness awakens with a vengeance. 

Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men --but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder --louder --louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

            Day and Night, God’s hand is heavy upon us in our sin.

           

            Twenty years or so Poe published his account of agonizing guilt in ‘The Telltale Heart,’ Fyodor Dostoevsky’s presents a similar theme in his novel Crime and Punishment where the gifted but starving writer and student Raskolnikov bludgeons the old woman Alena Ivanova.  She is stingy with her money and has no pity on this able, but poor young man.  The police suspect someone else in the crime, and that man commits suicide.  Raskolnikov is in the clear.  But, we are never in the clear. 

            Leaving Lieutenant Elia Petrovitch, Raskolnikov knows he is free, but when he steps from the police station, there she is waiting, his beloved Sonia.  She knows what he has done.

Her countenance expressed the utmost despair.  At the sight, Raskolnikov smiled, but such a smile!  A moment afterwards he had gone back to the police-office.  Elia Petrovitch was in the act of ransacking some papers.  “Ah!  There you are again!  Have you forgotten something?  But what is the matter with you?”  With pale lips and fixed gaze, Raskolnikov slowly advanced toward Elia Petrovitch.  [He] allowed himself to sink into a chair that was offered, but could not take his eyes off of Elia Petrovitch.  For a moment, both men looked at one another in silence.  “It was I – “said Raskolnikov.  “It was I who killed, with a hatchet, the old moneylender and her sister, Elizabeth, and robbery was my motive.”  Elia Petrovitch called for assistance.  People rushed in from various directions (p.421).

In the Psalm, David sings, day and Night, God’s hand is heavy upon us in our sin.  We are not murders like Raskolnikov or Poe’s narrator, or David for that matter, but sin rests just as heavy on us.  Our sense of guilt is enough to crush us and when it does not, God’s Holy Spirit convicts our soul.  When our conscience is dull and we seem content in spite of our words and deeds that hurt others, not bothered that we are agents of pain and deception, then God steps in and pricks the conscience and convicts the soul.  As long as we deny our need for forgiveness, we waste away, groaning all day.

However, there is hope – the best of hopes.  That’s the point of Psalm 32 and the simple message of this day.  There is a way out of this fog of sin, a fog so thick it is only cleared after God the son is murdered by us all when he’s nailed to the cross.  There’s a light that shows the path from crippling guilt and shame to unfettered freedom, a freedom that enables us to soar to the heavens. 

Again, the Psalm: “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  Happy are those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, in whose spirit there is no deceit” (32:1-2).  David knew that happiness because he confessed, received forgiveness, and rose to stand as a new man.  He says as much in the Psalm.  “I acknowledged my sin to you … and you forgave” (32:5).  It is a basic, central Christian belief.  When we confess our sins by name, repent of those sins by turning away from them, and turn to Jesus, we are forgiven and we are made new.

In this Psalm, God is not an angry judge waiting to crush us in our guilt.  It is our guilt itself that crushes us.  In the Psalm, God’s heavy hand is meant to lead us to confession that we might be forgiven and rescued from the weight of our sins.  Verse 6 says, “Let all who are faithful offer prayer to you.”  And in the next verse, the singer sings to God, “You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance” (32:7).

Confession is freeing.  We fear it because walking through our guilt is painful, but God walks with us.  And the church must walk with people so they don’t have to face their own shame alone.  We cannot be a judging community that compounds the pain and shame of the guilty by rejecting them.  We have to imitate our Lord by forgiving as God forgives. We have to be a community of grace, a community in which grace is extended to all.

In this way, and only in this way, does confession bring freedom.  And, O, what freedom it is!  Dostoevsky captures it well at the end of Crime and Punishment.  Sonia goes with Raskolnikov to Siberia.  She will wait for him to serve out his 7-year prison sentence.  She has been his conscience, by her purity forcing him to confess, and staying with him when he did.  She did not preach at him, but she lived her faith.  She gave him a New Testament, but never forced him to read it.

On the last page, he sits in his sell, holding the closed Bible, contemplating all that has happened: his crime, his confession, Sonia’s love for him.  He notes that as hard as things have been for her, “nothing could take her joy!”  And thinks to himself, “Her faith, her feelings, may not mine become like them” (p.434).  The books ends, “Now a new history begins: a story of the gradual renewing of a man, of his slow, progressive regeneration, and change from one world to another – an introduction to the previously unknown realities of life.”  Those are the realities of the happiness and freedom we have when we turn to God in Christ and receive forgiveness. 

A final note from the Psalm reiterates the necessity of grace from God to us and from us to one another.  Verse 10 says, “Many are the torments of the wicked.”  And we might expect the next stanza to say, “But great are the delights of the righteous.”  However, it does not say that.  It says, “Steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.” 

The contrast is not between the wicked and the obedient, the sinful and the righteous.  David, the singer of this Psalm, knows we all sin.  The contrast is between those who are miserable because they are stuck in sin and don’t see the way and just suffer the pain of it all, and those who, in the midst of the messes of their own making, turn to God and trusted God.  God can be trusted with our junk, with our messes.  “Steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.”

Enter that freedom today.  Fully confess your sin today and look to the cross and know that you are forgiven.  One of the ways God makes things right in the world is the gift of freedom.  God frees us from our own sins by forgiving and making us clean and new.  Confess today, and receive the new life God offers.

When we do that, then the final verse, Psalm 32:11 is ours.

“Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart” (32:11). 

AMEN

Free In Christ (Philemon 1:21, 25)

Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Several years ago, I visited a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Some of the people there were in their 40's or older, some barely in their 20’s. There were black and white people, men and women. Everyone there needed help staying off drugs. Some attended 5 or 6 meetings each week. I thought it was excessive. I was wrong.  Heroin, cocaine, crystal meth:  under that spell, you can't will yourself free. You're a slave to the substance. Only by the grace of God and the help of others can you claim victory over the addiction. Every person there admitted he or she was an addict and would be an addict the rest of his or her life. But, being an addict does not mean you have to stay under the influence of the drug. Going to 5 or 6 meetings, spending time with others who are also fighting the addiction, praying, and appealing to the Lord can bring freedom.

I was a total outsider at that meeting. I am not an addict. When these people, who had bodies broken down from years of drug use, gave their testimonies, I felt distant. I lacked knowledge, and I was glad that I didn't know how they felt. But, I am not any cleaner or any more innocent or virtuous than those regulars at NA meetings.

I may not sin by getting high, but I sin in a 1000 other ways. I am guilty of sins. We all are. Even the faithful parent, the devout Christian, the good citizen falls short of God's glory. We're all in the same boat. We may not go to Narcotics Anonymous, but we have our own group.  It is called church.  It is where are reminded of how much we need Jesus.  We are also reminded that because Christ is in us, we have joy.  He gives abundant life.  In Jesus Christ, we are redeemed, born again.

Confession is an ongoing part of our lives as followers of Jesus.  In Romans, Paul sets the course.  We are in Christ, free from sin’s clutches.  He writes in chapter 6,

⁸ As surely as we died with Christ, we believe we will also live with him. ⁹ We know that death no longer has any power over Christ. He died and was raised to life, never again to die. ¹⁰ When Christ died, he died for sin once and for all. But now he is alive, and he lives only for God. ¹¹ In the same way, you must think of yourselves as dead to the power of sin. But Christ Jesus has given life to you, and you live for God.

¹² Don’t let sin rule your body. After all, your body is bound to die, so don’t obey its desires ¹³ or let any part of it become a slave of evil. Give yourselves to God, as people who have been raised from death to life. Make every part of your body a slave that pleases God. ¹⁴ Don’t let sin keep ruling your lives. You are ruled by God’s kindness and not by the Law.

²² Now you have been set free from sin, and you are God’s slaves. This will make you holy and will lead you to eternal life. ²³ Sin pays off with death. But God’s gift is eternal life given by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yet, though we are free from sin, still we make mistakes, let God down, and do things to hurt ourselves and others.  We sin.  We are being made perfect, but the work of God in us is not finished.  God’s work is complete in that Jesus has accomplished all that is needed for salvation with his death on the cross.  Yet, we still stand astride two worlds – the fallen world where sin roams, Satan rules, and death threatens, and the Kingdom of God were our hope is resurrection.  Too often we live oriented toward the fallen.  We don’t realize who we are in Christ and who we are becoming in Christ. 

One of the ways to face the reality, the truth about ourselves, is to make confession a regular practice.  Lent, the 40 days leading up to Easter is a special time of acknowledging sin, turning away from it and turning to God.  Confession is painful but it is also a time of renewal.  Who we are and who are becoming in Christ becomes clearer. 

At HillSong, our theme through Lent, then Easter and then into the rest of the year 2014 is identity.  Who am I when I see myself as one who is “in Christ?”  I am free.  I am free to be completely honest with God – honest about all that is in me, my hopes, my failures, my uncertainties.  I am free to love and free from embarrassment.  I am free to invite people to turn to Jesus; How they respond is between them and Him.  I am free to worship, to pray, to laugh, to cry; and to confess.  The Father of beckons us to come to Him.

One of the speakers at the Narcotics Anonymous meeting I attended was celebrating her 16th year of being clean and sober. She gave the glory and the credit to Jesus Christ. That's what Jesus does. He frees us from the shackles of sin and when he does, life changes for us and people who know us. 

This freedom and the changes that are part of it are themes in Paul's letter to Philemon. The last of Paul’s letters in the New Testament, situated between Titus and Hebrews, Philemon is a story about three men.  Paul is an evangelist and church starter.  Onesimus is a runaway slave who becomes a Christian when he meets Paul in prison.  Philemon is the slave's owner and also someone led to Christ by Paul. In the relationship of these three men, oppressive social structures of a sinful class system fade to the background.  The light of Christ and who we are in Christ shines.

            Paul begins the letter like this.

From Paul, who is in jail for serving Christ Jesus, and from Timothy, who is like a brother because of our faith.

Philemon, you work with us and are very dear to us. This letter is to you ² and to the church that meets in your home. It is also to our dear friend Apphia and to Archippus, who serves the Lord as we do.

               Pauls’ words inspired by the Spirit and containing truth for all Christians, have specific ramifications for Philemon’s life. He owns Onesimus.  This man is his property.  He can punish Onesimus for running away. He would be expected to, at the least, issue a severe flogging.  He might even be justified in killing Onesimus. Paul has something else in mind.  Paul never offers social commentary on the institution of slavery, much though we wish he had.  Instead, he speaks to his brother in Christ, Philemon.

“Philemon, you're a Christian now,” He says. “So too is Onesimus. The world may treat sin with anger and punishment. But, Jesus doesn't do that. Jesus forgives all who humbly seek forgiveness. You Philemon must treat your slave's transgression with love and forgiveness.” Because of the freedom we have in Christ, the relationship changes.  The world will not recognize such a change as something good.  Philemon gains nothing if he loves Onesimus as a brother.  His peers won’t be impressed.  His social status will not improve and might actually decline a bit. 

But, we are in Christ.  Impressing people is no longer important.  We love people; people who have wronged us, stolen from us, hurt us.  We are free from guilt and free from grudges.  We are free because of Jesus’ forgiveness.   We are free to give forgiveness. 

At the end of the letter, Paul speaks of hope. He hopes that Philemon will exceed the minimum requirements in his Christ-love for the former slave, Onesimus (v.21). He hopes he can come and visit Philemon (v.22). 

Paul writes,

Epaphras is also here in jail for being a follower of Christ Jesus. He sends his greetings, ²⁴ and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, who work together with me.

²⁵ I pray that the Lord Jesus Christ will be kind to you!

All this is written by Paul, from prison.  Because of Christ he is free not to wallow is in squalor.  He is free from self-pity. Forgiven he is free from his own sin; born again with the promise of resurrection, he is free from fear of death.  He doesn't know if he'll get out of prison. He doesn't know if he will ever see Philemon again. All he knows is that God is in control. What the prison officials and Roman authorities say is inconsequential to Paul. He will hope in Christ and live in Christ. He wants Philemon to do the same.

Can Philemon do that?  He is being challenged to change the way he sees the world. Love Onesimus, a slave?  Can he do that?  He can if sees that he himself is one who has been freed from slavery to sin. 

You and I can change the way we see the world if we first understand the lesson from those who battle addiction.  We are all enslaved and our only hope is Jesus.  Once we have that hope, once we live in the freedom he gives, we become new people.  Yes, Philemon can love the one who was his slave and is now his brother because he is in Christ.  Yes, the addict can have joy, freedom, meaningful life, life that contributes to the greater good of God’s world.  That happens for the addict who is in Christ.  Yes, you and I are in Christ when we receive forgiveness, die to self, and recognize that He is Lord – Savior and Lord.  We absolutely need Him.  He comes to all who recognize their need for him.

Confession is a spiritual discipline that enables us to see who we are in Christ.  Already this evening, you have written down sins in your life.  No one knows what you wrote.  Those cards have been burned up.  We will now take the ashes and form the cross on our foreheads.  We are reminded that our sins have gone up flames, flames of love, the love of God.  Jesus has taken our sins and the punishment for them on himself.  We take Him into us. 

After tonight, I encourage you to explore ways that confession can be your Lenten discipline.  Maybe it involves specific reconciliation.  You go to someone to attempt forgiveness and the restoration of the relationship.  Maybe you will read Psalms of confession throughout Lent.  Maybe fasting will be a way of drawing to the surface buried guilt that needs to be given to God.  Maybe you’ll continue keeping a God notebook where you read scripture, learn about God, write the insights, and to it add what you learn about yourself as you seek God and walk with the Spirit. 

This season, these 40 days leading to Easter, is a call.  God invites us to give our hearts to Him.  May this be a season of confession and discovery.  We don’t just list the mistakes we’ve made.  We receive the grace of God.

As I think about confession and the occasion of Ash Wednesday, I close with the comments of Professor Debra Dean Murphy of West Virginia Wesleyan College.

Ashes are the residue of death. They are the ruins, the remains of something no longer alive, no longer with us. Ashes are all that’s left when a house burns down or when a body is cremated. And so it is fitting that we wear this sooty tattoo as we identify with Jesus and his journey toward death. A journey into, not around, suffering.

We don’t receive this sign of the cross as a symbol of our own righteousness. We receive the ashes because we’ve been asked to confront death—and the death-dealing ways of the world.

The black sooty cross that we wear on Ash Wednesday is ultimately a sign of love, for it is love alone that conquers death. Among the rubble and ruin of Wednesday’s ashes is a black, organic substance that marks us as God’s own beloved.[i]

We stand as people forgiven, free to live joyfully in Christ. 

Pastor Heather will now lead us in the service of receiving ashes. 

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[i] http://debradeanmurphy.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/love-in-the-ruins/