The Cross: Our Foundation (1 Corinthians 1:18-25; 2:1-5)

Sunday, July 14, 2019

            Each week at the end of the message I say, “Now is the time to respond to God.”  I invite us all to open our hearts to what God is saying to us and doing in our lives.  I invite any who feel the need to come to front for prayer, whether kneeling at the steps or with me or Angel, or in the back with the elder of the week. 

            I’ll close with this same invitation today.  I’ll say, “Look at the cross and think about what it means.” God in human skin, Jesus who was innocent of crime and had not sinned.  God accepted his sacrifice as atonement for the sins of all people.

            Think about the implications.  God will sacrifice for our benefit.  He didn’t need to die on the cross in order to be God, wholly sufficient and wholly loving and good.  But we need that because our sin separates from God and we all sin.  We make choices, speak words, and commit actions that indicate we have, in small and large ways, chosen ourselves over God. That sin separates us and we cannot wash the sin away with good deeds or with endless repentance. 

The sin is covered by Jesus’ death on the cross.  We are made right by Jesus’ death on the cross.  And Jesus was fully human.  It hurt his body as much as it would yours to be flogged and then crucified.  It hurt his pride and dignity as much as it would mine to be stripped, mocked, and paraded through Jerusalem carrying the beam on which I was to be nailed.  It hurt his heart as much at it would hurt mine or yours to be abandoned by friends, and then seemingly ignored by Heaven when he prayed for another way.  The cross is an indication of how much Jesus sacrificed to help us be right with God. 

So, I will say, “Look to the cross.” 

Then, I will say, “Be fully open, honest, and receptive with God.”  Open – don’t hold anything back, not before He who sees all. He knows your story, but God wants to hear you tell it.  Honest – don’t try to impress God; you can’t.  Don’t try to be tough with God; he knows the weakness in Chuck Norris, and even he has them; and God knows the weakness in you and me.  Don’t try to act like you don’t need God.  There are longings in our lives only God can satisfy, hungers only God can feed, holes in our lives only God can fill. 

Look to the cross.  Be open and honest before God.  Then I will say, “Come and receive what God has for you.”  You might need God to give you a nudge because you’ve hesitated when God said “Go.”  You might need forgiveness because you’re weighed down with guilt.  You might need courage because you’re facing great obstacles or threats in your life.  I don’t know what you need, but God does.  Look to the cross.  Be honest with God.  And come and receive from Him. 

Studying 1 Corinthians 1 & 2 this week, I became aware of just how important it is that we begin by looking at the cross.  Paul, writes in 1 Corinthians 2:2 “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”  In this letter, he touched on marriage, spiritual gifts, the proper way to observe the Lord’s Supper, sexual immorality, the supreme value of love, and the resurrection.  In fact 1 Corinthians is the core scripture text for many of our most cherished Christians beliefs. 

With much to say on so many topics, why does Paul write, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified”?  His Corinthians ministry takes place in a city that’s awash in competing ideas.  The Corinthian contenders jockeying to dictate the spirit of age includes Greek philosophers whose ideas determined the history of ideological development into our present age. 

However, Greek intellectuals weren’t the only ones trying to dictate the way people thought about the world.  Jewish theologians were as committed to monotheism as Greeks were to philosophy.  Jewish scriptures, more historically durable than any other writings in history, and their approach to wrestling with their scriptures – the idea of Midrash – continue to influence human thought today, nearly 2000 years after the writing of 1 Corinthians.  

One more contestant fought on this battlefield of ideas and ideals: the Romans with their power and organization.  They could not match Greek intellectualism or Jewish theology, but they held the power.  Whatever practice of living that would come out of Greek philosophy or Hebrew religion would have had to exist within a Roman system. 

Then Paul comes along and says, “I am not going to try to be smarter than the Greeks or better at religion than my fellow Jews or stronger than the Romans.”  In different ways – intellectual, religious and faithful, and political and militarily – the Greeks, Jews, and Romans, all vied for power.  Paul refuses to play this power game because He knew where real power was found.

Today we live in a swirling torrent of ideas where forces from all sides try to tell us what to think, how to think, what to believe, and how to practice our beliefs.  We have the American concept of freedom.  We are so indoctrinated into the American notion of liberty we believe it is the only way one can be free.

But hold your horses because along with American notions of freedom, we are lured to material wealth.  Capitalistic forces convince us the key to happiness and a life of meaning is found in stuff that we buy or experiences that we buy.  When we consider how relentlessly advertisers bombard us in the attempt to get us to buy what they’re selling, how could we deny that materialism is a force that’s attempting to define the spirit of the age in America, 2019?

Besides American Liberty and Western Materialism, on this spiritual/intellectual battlefield, Personal autonomy wants its say.  You are your own master and your own moral standard.  Do what’s right for you.  In the Marvel Avengers movie Infinity War, the character Star Lord is asked, “What master do you serve?”  Angrily he responds, “What do you expect me to say, ‘Jesus?’”  He goes on to vehemently declare that he serves no master except himself.  Of course, his name is Star Lord. 

Paul’s response to Greek wisdom, Jewish Theology, and Roman power is our response to the attempts made to dominate our souls by American Liberty, Capitalistic Materialism, and Personal Autonomy.  Paul said, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing”; those without Christ.  “But to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”  He doesn’t claim to have earned it.  Paul does not save.  He counts himself among those being saved. 

We are in that number.  We also need to be saved.  The good news is on the cross, Jesus began the work of our salvation.  How, the wise Greek asks, can this one who died so shamefully save the world?  It’s scandalous, the faithful Hebrew declares, to glorify one who dies as a common criminal.  It’s weakness, the mighty Roman roars, to hang there, defeated.  But Paul writes, “God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.  For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1:21-24).

Note, even as Paul refutes the different ways we humans define power, he invites all of us into the salvation of Jesus Christ.  In his day, there were Jews who accepted that Jesus was the Messiah and the fulfillment of all their religious hopes.  There were Greeks who came to see that Jesus was the epitome of superior knowledge.  There were Romans who left behind their notions of might and power as they, born again in Christ, surrendered – think about a Roman surrendering – to the power of God.  Paul himself was a child of a Roman-Jewish union, and his right hand man Timothy, the child of a Jewish-Greek union. 

Ethnicity doesn’t matter.  Mixed-race families are fine.  All are saved when we give up our hold on power and surrender our hearts fully to God, confess faith in Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit.  This hodgepodge of people was the New Testament church, and it is the church today.

American Liberty says our country’s story is the definition of freedom for all people.  In Christ, we claim that our greatest freedom is found when we give our hearts to God and become God’s possessions.  As jolting as it is to say it this way, we believe we discover our greatest freedom when we are enslaved to God. 

Capitalistic Materialism has completely bought into the idea that whatever we hope for in life can be purchased.  If I just get that house …; when I have enough for that car I really want; I just need to be able to retire in luxury and ease.  In Christ, we find joy in being extravagantly generous, giving away as much as we can to help others flourish.  In Christ, we claim that our money, possessions, relationships, time, and our very selves – belong to God.  Our greatest happiness is found when we are used by God for His purposes. 

Personal Autonomy insists that we are each endowed with inalienable rights that include the right to determine our own personal destinies.  It doesn’t say anything about inalienable rights in the Bible.  In Christ, we don’t determine who we are.  God tells us who we are.  We come with a story, tell that story to God, and then He is takes our story and invites us into His.  We don’t write our own stories.  We step into the story God is writing. 

Paul “decided to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified” because that’s the foundation.  Life is built when we die on the cross and are raised by God to new life in Christ.  Standing on that foundation, Paul can talk about current issues, theology, households and relationships, worship practices, and creation care.  Paul’s worldview develops after he sets the foundation, his encounter with Jesus at the cross. 

The 21^st century has already seen explosive growth in communication, technology, and scientific understanding.  We engage this complicated world after we have met Jesus at the cross.  Whatever new modes of relationships, sexuality, and our understanding of human gender arise in our time, our engagement with the world as it is happens after we meet Jesus at the cross. 

Whatever changes come to the world in the next 100 years – it does not matter.  We meet every new idea or new way of living as followers of Jesus – the crucified, resurrected one.  On the foundation of the cross, disciples are built.  I earlier mentioned the swirling torrent of ideas and change in which we live. The way to stand in swirling winds is to be anchored to a firm foundation and we are when we are anchored to Christ.  

So, look to the cross.  Open yourself completely to God’s love and forgiveness.  In honesty, come, tell God your story and then give it to Him and receive the new story He has for you.  In Christ, you are His beloved child.  Come to Him.

AMEN  

Follow Jesus ... a Lenten Path

            “Jesus went out and he saw a tax collector named Levi, and he said to him, “Follow me” (Luke 5:27).  Christians make it their life’s work to follow Jesus.  Christian pastors preach that following Jesus is the business of the church.  The church exists to help people be devoted followers of Jesus Christ.  The calling of Levi in Luke 5 is one of many passages that lead Christians to insist growing as disciples of Jesus is the purpose of life.

            Why?  Why did Jesus call specific individuals to follow him?  Why do Bible readers interpret the call to discipleship experienced by James, John, Peter, and the rest as a prelude to the calling of all humanity to discipleship?  Christians believe all people are invited by God to follow Jesus.  But why is following Jesus so important?

            “When the days drew near for him to be taken up,” says Luke 9:51, “Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  “Taken up” means the crucifixion.  Where it says Jesus “set face,” it means he was determined from that point onward to journey to Jerusalem.  Nothing would stop him.  Everything in Luke’s gospel from 9:51 to chapter 23 is built upon Jesus’ journey to the cross.  He was determined to go to the place where he knew a brutal death by crucifixion awaited him.  Why?

                Why is Jesus so intent that all people become his followers?  Why was he set on going to his death?     The key to answering both questions is Luke 19:41-44:

⁴¹ As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "If you even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.  Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you, and hem you in on every side.  They will crush you to the ground, you and your children with you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God."  

Jesus wept over the city because they were lost in sin.  Of that city, he said,

³⁷ “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37)!

Jerusalem reject God’s prophets, thus rejecting God’s word.  When we sin, we reject God’s way for us to live and choose our own way.  Jesus desperately wants to rescue us from our sin, but at least in the case of Jerusalem, the week before the crucifixion, the people rejected God’s offer of salvation.  That’s why the cross was necessary.  Sin brings death and eternal separation from God.  Jesus took on himself both our death and our alienation from God when he died on the cross in our place.  That’s why the cross is so important; it’s why he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

            The only way Jesus’ death on the cross become affective in our lives is when we put our trust in him and give our lives to him, acknowledging him as our Lord.  Why is crucial that we follow Jesus?  God wants a relationship with us in which we are His sons and daughters and he is our Father and Lord.  That relationship comes when we follow Jesus.  When we confess our sins, repent, and acknowledge Jesus as Lord, we are baptized in the Holy Spirit and adopted as sons and daughters of God. 

We are called to follow because God loves us.  But we cannot accomplish discipleship by our own spiritual will power.  We sin, we hurt God, we hurt others, and we hurt ourselves.  So Jesus came to cover our sins and effect transformation in us.  Jesus died on the cross because God loves us. 

These are the basic elements of the God-human story.  During Lent, we rehearse this story, retell it, walk in it, and discover it anew.  I have been a Christian for 38 years and am diving to greater depths as I go through the story this year, in some ways as this were my first time in Lent.  I hope you are learning what it means to follow Jesus and as you do, I hope you see the cross.  As you see the cross, I pray you will see your life, covered by Christ. 

Because God loves us, we follow and learn continuously learn new, richer ways to love Him and each other. 

God, the Maker of Worlds (Psalm 16)

Sunday, February 5, 2017

            In the Fantastic Four super hero comic books, one of the enemies of the Fantastic Four is Galactus, an alien so large, he travels through the universe consuming planets.  When they made the Fantastic Four into movies, in one of the films, another alien, the Silver Surfer, came to earth to warn us of Galactus’ approach and intention of eating our planet, and all of us.  The Surfer told the Fantastic Four, “It is called Galactus, ‘Destroyer of worlds.’”

            What kind of Greek trip am on that I would read Psalm 16 and think of Marvel comics and the Fantastic Four?  It’s not the first thought I had in my reading of Psalm 16.  In fact, I’ve been reading that Psalm over and over for almost a month now.  I’ll get to that in a bit, but first, what about that?  What about Psalm 16 and Galactus and the ‘Destroyer of worlds?’

It is actually something a great Bible scholar said about the Psalms and what Israel was doing when they sang the Psalms in worship and what God did through the Psalms in the heart of Israel and in us when we worship through reading, praying, singing, and most importantly believing the Psalms.  In his brief commentary Abiding Astonishment, Walter Brueggemann wrote the Psalms “intend … to unmake, deconstruct, and unmask … worlds which seduce and endanger Israel.”[i]

In this sense then, the real God, not the Marvel Comics Galactus, is the ‘Destroyer of Worlds.’  God destroys worlds – threats, ideologies, lies, false theologies, idolatries, fears, seductions.  The Psalms reiterate again and again that God is faithful and is Almighty.  No threat will come to Israel that possesses more power than God.  Foreign invaders like Egypt and Assyria and Babylon and Rome will hurt Israel, but only because God permits it.  And those injuries always come in conjunction with Israel turning away from God, turning to false God, trusting in unwise alliances, and exploiting the poor.  Unfaithfulness and exploitation always, always accompany the arrival of a foreign power in Israel’s history.

God is never off the scene.  God sometimes moves to the background to allow Israel to live with the pain that comes with her sins.  But God is always present to destroy the invader and ideological and political worlds that threaten God’s order.  God is a destroyer of worlds. 

What’s true of what God does for and in Israel is also true for the rest of human society.  First through the creation mandate to scatter over the earth, then through the priestly mandate to Israel to be a Holy nation that draws lost and sinful humanity back to God, then through Israel’s prophets who imagine a future in which all kingdoms of the earth find their fulfillment in the worship of God, and finally in the Great Commission to make all of the world followers of Jesus, the words of the Psalms ring true for the church.  God is a destroyer of worlds, the forces that would seduce, threaten, and ultimately kill the church. 

What are some of those forces?  What draws our attention away from the Gospel?  What tries to tell us who we are, when we know our identities are based on who we are in Christ? 

Some voices insist we must advocate on behalf of refugees.  Their lives are fluttering in the wind and we in the wealthy west must open our hearts and our arms and homes.  It’s matter of valuing lives.  Yet, the same voices will not permit space for the unborn when the conversation switches to crisis pregnancies or unwanted pregnancies.  Then, we can’t talk about the baby’s life, only the woman’s choice.

Some voices insist that we get very specific in damning certain sins, like homosexuality.  We must declare it an evil that threatens our way of life.  And this insistence ignores completely the way Jesus welcomed people – all people, and gave extra love to those who needed most, people rejected in society.  The voices insisting this righteous condemnation ignores the truth that the Holy Spirit is leading the church to love all people and welcome all people.

Conversely, there are voices that are just as loud that demand that all relationships be affirmed by the church.  A Christian baker or photographer sees his work as a kind of ministry.  But then these voices tell him, he has to serve a same-sex wedding.  His reading of scripture tells him that’s against God’s will.  Those voices aren’t interested in his reading of scripture.  He either has to go against what he thinks God is telling him in the Bible and bake the cake for the same-sex marriage; or he has to give up the business he loves and believes is a ministry. 

What forces draw our attention away from who God tells us who we are in Christ?

Some voices insists that our primary identity involves the country of our citizenship, instead of our belief that we are subjects in an eternal kingdom.  As citizens our top concern should be for border security.  We know our calling to go out; ‘go into the all world baptizing and making disciples.’  It’s hard to remember our call when so many voices vie for our attention and compete to tell us who we are.

I’ve done a very rough run through of just some of the issues that have dominated the headlines in the past couple of years, right up to today.  I believe we have a call from God to care for all lives – refugees, the unborn, persecuted persons in other countries, disadvantaged persons in our own community.  We are called to love these individuals and help them know Jesus as their Savior and thrive as his disciples.  We are called to love and welcome people who are confused about their own sexuality or who openly claim a sexual identity that is outside the parameters of what’s allowed in scripture.  The church must be in the mercy-giving business.  If condemnation is to come, let it come directly from God to the individual.  We’re to be mercy, love, and grace-givers.  And because theology is so complicated, I think we have to create space for people to have different beliefs on issues, but still feel at home among us.

The grand issue is calling.  We are called to the cross – to confess and then leave our sins there.  We are call to receive forgiveness and new life.  All these issues and many I have not mentioned turn into idolatries that seduce and endanger us.  God is the destroyer of the worlds that would come about if we forfeited our unity in Christ for the sake of commitment to issues instead of commitment to Him as Lord.  We’re not to be an issue-driven church.  We’re to be a Kingdom-driven church.  We love refugees and speak for the unborn, and we love and welcome straight people and gay people because love is a core Kingdom value intrinsic to who we are. 

Through the Psalms, through the church, through the work of the Holy Spirit in the world, God destroys some worlds to make room for the world God is constructing, creating.  There’s one line that has daily drawn me back to Psalm 16.  “In your presence, there is fullness of joy.” 

I look to God and say it over and I over.  I sit down to pray and begin with silence.  I try to shut out the noise of the latest rally or protest, the latest outcry or accusation that leaps off the new website.  I get my mind as quiet as I can before God, praying for the Spirit to fill the void.  After a minute or two, I then begin filling the quiet with that phrase, “In your presence, there is fullness of joy.”  I need to remember that God is present and what it means because God is present.

Reaching for that palpable sense of God’s presence, I then proceed into prayer and Bible reading and then into the day.  This yearning for God to be present and make sense of the world that seems to be devolving toward chaos is what led me to the whole idea of the ice berg.  If you haven’t been here, I’ve proposed that our mission in worship has been to seek more and more of God the way we might see more and more of the iceberg beneath the surface of the water.

This not escapism, an attempt to pretend the world’s problems don’t exist.  They do and we Christians must be a witness in the midst of the conversation.  But whether it is the refugee crisis, the abortion question, the conversation over sexual ethics, or something else, we do not come it as people of a particular stance.  We see as if we are standing in the Kingdom already.  We see it in the light of who God is.  Saying that, I do not give an answer as to what view the church holds in any specific case.  Rather, I insist that we who are in Christ view each issue through a prism of love, grace, and mercy. 

The debates over each of these issues that have produced such division turns the issues themselves into idolatries, but we will not be seduced into walking to our own destruction.  We are followers of Jesus who know God is present and thus we keep our attention on him.  We look to the Holy Spirit to know how to think, act, and speak.  And we keep looking back to the Spirit knowing the Spirit is dynamic, always on the move, leading us onto new paths. 

The Psalm itself gives markers both of God’s presence and of who we are because God is present.  In these markers we see the worlds God destroys.  We also see what God makes – a world of beautiful relationships; a world run by love.

The first marker is verse 2 – “I say to the Lord, you are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”  A few weeks ago, I came across a quote that is going to be part of my self-understanding going forward.  My life makes no sense apart from God.  Either I do good and help people because I yield to God love in me and allow God to direct my life, or I rebel against God’s love and thus I live selfishly.  Either way, the only way to understand a Christ-follower is in terms of his or her relationship with God.  Similarly, the only good in our lives is the good God brings into our lives.  Other pleasures will turn out to be relatively harmless forgeries or life-destroying seductions.  We are aligned with God when we can truly say the good in our lives comes from him.

The second marker is verse 5 – “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup.”  Originally this may have be sung by Levites or referred to Levites.  In ancient Israel they were the one group not allotted land.  They were assigned to oversee worship, so their food and their provision was mandated in the commandments.  When society was obedient, they provided; thus, God was their portion.

The verse speaks to us to remind us that in addition to giving us all that is good in our lives, God meets our needs.  It’s basic to the Lord’s Prayer.  “Give us this day, our daily bread.”  Through the disappointments and triumphs, life’s wins and losses, God is always present.  God works in our pleasure and our pain, always making us new and preparing us for the eternal Kingdom.

That leads to the third marker of God’s world-making in Psalm 16 and it comes in verses 10-11.  “You, O God, do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the Pit.  You show me the path of life.  In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”  God gives us good things and our lives make no sense apart from him.  God is our portion, provider of all we need.  And, God’s future for us is rescue from death; rescue to eternal life.

The word Sheol and the concept of the pit are both Old Testament descriptions of death and separation from God.  The idea I’ve been trying to present is that God rescues us by destroying divisions and temptations that separate us from Him.  God destroys those worlds without him in our lives that would arise as we follow those temptations.  Where verse 10 says God does not let His faithful one fall into the Pit, we see a Messianic prediction.  God will rescue the Messiah and we believe that rescue comes when the Messiah, Jesus Christ, is resurrected.

First Corinthians 15 says Jesus is the “last Adam,” the “life-giving Spirit.”  As he was resurrected, so will we be.  As his disciples, we have resurrection and eternal life ahead of us.  It’s all promised in this Psalm: all the good in our lives, all our needs met, and rescue from death.  “In God’s presence, there truly is fullness of joy.”

So, we unite in God.  Plenty of ideas and movements, forces of evil afoot and on the move, are jockeying to divide us and destroy us.  The Holy Spirit is drawing us together in Christ because that’s what God does.  We’ve talked about how God is big and relational.  We’ve talked about how God goes out His way for poor and downtrodden people.  We’ve talked about God loves riches and powerful people and they can see that when they see their own brokenness.  Today we see that God is a maker of worlds.  God prepare us for life in a world where love what drives relationships.  We can be active in this world, helping people, participating in causes, and raising our voices.  But whatever we do, our eyes are on God and we step out at God’s prompting, as God clears the path ahead.

AMEN

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[i] W. Brueggemann (1991), Abiding Astonishment: Psalms, Modernity, and the Making of History, Westminster/John Knox Press (Louisville), p.26.

Keep Hold of the Plow (Luke 9:51-62)

February 10, 2016 – Ash Wednesday

            Jesus “set his face” to go to Jerusalem.  Now, there would be no turning back and no diversions or distractions.  All that he does on this journey described in Luke chapters 9 – 19 is directed toward his final purpose; death and resurrection.  Along the way, Jesus’ teaching and actions show us how to be disciples.[i]

            Jesus would not be deterred.  But we are.  We say we want to follow Jesus, and I think we really do.  But we get distracted.  Social media; relationships – good and bad; work; past hurts and disappointments; the stuff of life; the dysfunction in life; the abuses we’ve suffered; so many things creep into our lives or burst into our lives and vie for our attention, our loyalty, and our hearts.

            Jesus and the disciples are on the road and a Samaritan village does “not receive him.”  The Samaritans refused hospitality.  With his intense focus on Jerusalem, Jesus did not notice the breach of manners.  His disciples James and John did.  “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”

            Do these guys see themselves alongside Abraham as he watched Sodom and Gomorra burn?  Jesus ignored the unhospitable Samaritans, rebuked James and John and moved on.  There’s no time to worry about the actions of Samaritans who don’t know God.  Jesus is on his way to hang from a cross for the sake of the people who don’t know God, like those Samaritans. 

Confession as a spiritual discipline helps us reckon with the things we allow to distract us.  Cancer; divorce; addiction.  We name the things that distract us.  We receive God’s grace.  Procrastination, unkindness, harsh words, withholding love; we confess.  Selfishness, greed, failure to help those in need; we admit our sins and receive grace. 

When we rebellion against God, it reduces us.  In rebellion we become something less than we were meant to be.  We were created in the image of God, made to be his stewards on this good earth he designed.  However, our sins have distorted and disfigured us so that the image of God in us is barely discernable.

Can we ever live into God’s purpose for us as his image bearers doing and making good things in His name?  Yes, if our sins are completely removed.  This is the accomplishment of Jesus on the cross.  I invite you to join me in journeying to the cross with Jesus in 2016.  This is a walk into God’s call for us corporately, as the body of Christ, and for each of us as individual disciples.  Together, we declare that will we turn to Christ, open our hearts to the Spirit, and renounce the things that distract us and draw our attention away from God.  This Lent our goal is to go deeper and reorient our worldviews, so that we hear the voice of God and see the world through the lenses he colors. 

The closing verses of Luke 9 give us our theme. 

There, Jesus sets his face for Jerusalem.  Samaritans fail to give hospitality, disciples want to hurl consuming fire as they ride their high horse, and Jesus has time for none of it.  Seemingly without stopping, he ignores the Samaritans’ social faux pas, chides James and John, and strides forward. 

Next, Jesus tells a would-be-disciple, “Foxes have holes, birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  You want to follow Jesus?  Are you sure?  He’s on a journey that ends with everything changed.  Are we sure we want that? 

Once we decide we’re on the move with Jesus, he calls us out of our weakness and out of our brokenness.  He calls us out of our pain and in spite of our losses.  He calls us to the path that he walks.  In Luke 9, that path led to the cross.

Today it leads us to die to self.  That peculiar phrase comes up throughout the gospels.  What does it mean to die to self?  To put it simply, it means I no longer matter because Christ is all that matters.  I won’t be a doormat for a bully.  I won’t try to be a people pleaser.  In Christ I will actually exhibit a stronger character and a more determined sense of purpose because the confidence I have comes from Him. 

To die to self is to say, I am no longer my own.  I belong to Him.  Can we live our lives that way?   Or do we prefer to have control?  That’s the question to wrestle with this year throughout Lent.  Who gets control in my life?  Who is the authority to whom I yield?  Who sets the standard by which I measure myself? 

We know we cannot measure up to God.  But living in grace, walking by faith, we know we don’t half to.  Our lives can be spent walking in grace, giving grace, and sharing the good news of the kingdom of God by inviting people to turn to Christ.  To live this life that God intends to be ours we have to keep at the plow and not look back.

Jesus says, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).  What is causing you to look back instead forward?  What commitment is keeping you from a deeper commitment to God?  What past pain has you ensnared and makes it impossible to fully give yourself to the Lord?

We’re going to pass out rocks.  Yes, rocks.  Take this rock and let it constantly remind you of the distraction that has taken your mind off the plow.  This distraction has your attention – attention that really belongs to Jesus.  From now until Ash Wednesday, carry this rock.  Let it be a reminder.
            This rock reminds us of the things that distract us and divert us from the course Jesus has set.

This rock reminds us to practice spiritual disciplines during Lent – fasting, prayer, journaling, silent meditation, lectio-divina, prayer-walking.  Choose disciplines that will help you see your dependence on God and help you receive the grace of God. 

This rock reminds us that the Holy Spirit is with us even when our attention is diverted and our focus is on things that are not of God.  Carry this rock at all times.  Maybe even sleep with it.  Let it be the reminder that the Holy Spirit of God is present and beckons us to receive and enter God’s grace and love.

We’ll bring our rocks to worship on Maundy Thursday.  In that service, we will lay them at the cross. We will look at the things that draw us away from a devoted life in Christ, and we will take our eyes off the distractions and put them on the Lord.  We leave the rocks at the cross as way of saying that we want to become who Jesus is calling us to be.  We want to see the world through lenses he gives us.  As we do, we pray that the fruit of our Lenten spiritual disciplines will be a deeper, more focused life with God. 

Pray for this – that many in our church will take up this challenge, will face the cares of the world that draw them away from a life of devoted faith.  Pray that many will commit to keep hold of the plow and to follow Jesus with abandon.  Pray that the discovery of deep relationship with the Lord, made by many in our church, will have a long-lasting effect on our fellowship and on our church’s witness in this community.

AMEN

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[i] Fred Craddock (1990).  Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Luke. John Knox Press (Louisville), p.141.

Good Friday Message - 2014

God on the Cross (John 19:28-30; Psalm 69)

Friday, April 18, 2014 (Good Friday)

        As Jesus was dying on the cross he said “I am thirsty.” The author of the 4^th gospel adds the editorial comment that he said this in order to fulfill the scripture.  That notion, that Jesus did things to fulfill scripture, is sprinkled throughout the gospels.  What scripture was fulfilled when he said, from the cross, “I am thirsty?”

          Psalm 69:21.  It is from a prayer of David who says in this verse, “they gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” 

          The Psalm begins “Save me, O God, from the waters that come up to my neck” (v.1).  Early in David’s life, he stared down lions as he protected his flock.  He battled the Philistine giant Goliath.  Then, as he rose to prominence, the jealousy of King Saul led him to repeatedly attempt to kill David. 

          After Saul’s death and David’s rise to the throne, problems continued.  He fell into deadly conflict with his son Absalom.  At times, Saul had armies hunting for David.  Later, it was Absalom with armies on the hunt.  More than once, surrounded by enemies David felt himself to be as good as dead unless God saved him.  And God did.

          The Messiah was to be a descendant of David.  Raised by Joseph who was in the line of David, Jesus met the requirement.  As a ‘son’ of David, Jesus had the qualification needed to be the Messiah. 

Jesus was also David’s Lord.   He lived differently than the great king.  David, in desperation, prayed that God would save him.  God did as David made it through many treacherous scrapes.  In the end, David died of natural causes.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus likewise asked God to take the cup of suffering from him (Luke 22:42).  This time, God did not. 

Another difference was the attitude toward tormentors.  Both had enemies intent on killing them.  Who was it that hated David (Psalm 69:4)?  The Psalm does not say but in his life, we see many candidates.  Any number of people might be opponents who David, in the Psalm, asked God to punish severely. 

Let their table be a trap for them, a snare for their allies.
²³ Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually.

²⁴ Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them.

²⁵ May their camp be a desolation; let no one live in their tents.

²⁶ For they persecute those whom you have struck down, and those whom you have wounded, they attack still more.^[b]

²⁷ Add guilt to their guilt; may they have no acquittal from you.

²⁸ Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous.

        When the mob came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter using a sword, cut off the ear of one of the men.  Jesus healed the man as he rebuked Peter (Luke 22:51; John 18:10-11).  When the soldiers whipped Jesus, crowned him with thorns, and nailed him to a cross, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).  Unlike David, he did not pray “May their camp be a desolation … let them be blotted out of the book of the living.”  Jesus did not ask for God’s wrath to fall on those who were so cruel.  He asked God not to hold their sins against them.

          Yes, David lamented that his tormentors gave him vinegar.  Obviously he spoke poetically using metaphor to pour his heart out to God.  Yes, Jesus fulfilled that line from David’s poem, not in metaphor but literally.  As he hung dying on the cross he said “I am thirsty.”  A soldier jammed a vinegar soaked rag in his face.  The Fourth Gospel rightly sees the threads of Israel’s scriptures in Jesus’ story. 

          David was a man of his times, an era of visceral, up close violence.  He could not launch missiles that would kill his enemies who were 100’s of miles away.  He could not stay safely out of sight as warriors do today.  He had to look them in the eye as he stabbed them in the heart.  David’s prayer that God blot out his enemies may not sound holy, but it was honest.  The Bible calls him the one after God’s own heart; but not the Savior.

          That’s Jesus.  Yes, as John says, his actions fulfilled scripture.  What he demonstrated in word and deed and heart also re-imagined the Bible.  Jesus cast a new light on everything humanity thought about God.  In Jesus, we see God working in new ways.  People knew of God’s mercy and love prior to Jesus but he brought God closer than ever before.  Because of him, the path to God was opened to all people.

          “It is finished,” he said.  Then he died.  The old day was done. 

          In our somber remembrance we are painfully aware that like David we would like to call down curses on our enemies.  Like the religious authorities who killed Jesus as a matter of convenience, we would remove anyone who obstructed our path and foiled our personally made planes.  Like the Pilate, we are blind to truth.  Like the rage-filled Roman soldiers, violence pumps in our veins.  Jesus hangs crucified because of sin – because of my sins.

          Remembering, we grieve how our sins crucified him.  We also do well to set our hearts’ attention on the one who died for us.  Think about whom he was, who he is.  He did not die so much as he, as the gospel says, bowed his head.  Even in this moment, nailed to the cross, seemingly immobile, shamed, and beaten, it is Jesus who is in control. 

          Jesus provided for his mother’s care as he hung cross (John 19:25-27).  Nothing more happened until he determined it would.  He said, “I thirst,” and then scripture was fulfilled.  Jesus declared, “It is finished.”  Only after making that statement did he give up his spirit (v.30). 

Yes, God is the one who flooded the earth but protected Noah, split the Sea so Moses could pass through, stopped the sun in the sky for Joshua, and closed the lions’ mouths for Daniel.  God is the mighty God of the whirlwind in the book of Job, the God praised by the most powerful forces of nature in the most thrilling of Psalms, Psalm 148.

          God is also the humble savior who washed his disciples’ feet, who healed the ear of one of the guards sent to arrest him, who shared truth with the governor who tried to intimidate him, and forgave the soldiers who mocked and crucified him.  We can see God in the scriptures leading up to the Gospels but we are invited closer in the Jesus we meet in the Gospels. 

          Good Friday is a day to be as honest as David was.  We come fully clothed in sin and hang our sins on him as he hangs.  Naked we stand before him.  He drapes a robe of light onto us, his divine light.  We shine because his name is affixed to us.  It is a day of sadness on one level.  We enter that sadness and do not minimize it.

But, it is a remembered sadness, not a felt one.  We know where story goes.  More importantly, entering it at this point, at the cross, we know that is a day that we see God.  This is a day we understand how it is that God loves us. 

          The gospels tell us nothing of the Saturday after the crucifixion.  I do not know the proper spiritual practices for that day.  I do not believe there is any one way to observe ‘holy Saturday.’  I offer this.  Why not spend that Saturday quietly, fixing our minds on the crucified God.  Do it early, so that the sense of Jesus being for you sets in.  Do it intensely enough so that truth that you are forgiven and free becomes so real, you live it.  Saturday is a day for washing; Jesus cleanses our hearts, polishes our souls, renews our minds.  He brightens our smiles.  We are bathed in the redeeming, creating love of the crucified God.  We come out new because Jesus makes all things new including you and me. 

AMEN