Truly Human and Truly Alive (Ephesians 2:1-10)

Sunday, September 7, 2014

            Certain passages from scripture need no introduction.

            “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

            “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the father except through me”(John 14:6).

            “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1).

            And this one:

            ²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make humankind^[c] in our image, according to our likeness; … .”

²⁷ So God created humankind^[e] in his image,
    in the image of God he created them;^[f]
    male and female he created them.

³¹ God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good (Genesis 1:26a, 27, 29).

            God created with a plan in mind: the pinnacle of creation would not be the breathtaking sites of nature, the peaks of the Himalayas, the Northern lights, the endless blue of the ocean at the equator, or any other natural wonder.  Nor would the ultimate of all God made be any cosmological phenomenon.  God’s plan reached God’s purpose with the forming of you and me - humans. 

            The crucial point in God’s scheme was the creation of free agents – beings who could actually choose to go God’s away or to go against God.  In a sense, God created sin because God made beings – humans – who had the capacity to choose sin.  And with that choice available, we took it.  From Adam and Eve to Hitler to most of what is seen at the movies to you and me and everyone in between and everyone hereafter, humans sin.  Every one.  Jesus is the exception, the only person to be a human being and not at some point rebel against God.

            In Romans, Paul indicates the cumulative effect of thousands of years of human rejection of God’s authority (Romans 8). 

            ¹⁸ I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; ²⁰ for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³ and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

            Something was lost when the first humans sinned.  We have continued to be more and more lost ever since.  Some authors suggest, we today are not even like the original humans. We are weaker, live shorter lives, and have more limitations on us in all aspects of living.  Sin has brought about degradation so that God’s good creation is now something less than it was at the start. 

N.T. Wright imagines humans who have rejected God.  Here is how he says it.  “Hell is what happens when human beings say to the God in whose image they were made, ‘we don’t want to worship you.  We don’t want our human life to be shaped by worshiping you.  We don’t want who we are as humans transformed by the love of Jesus, dying and rising for us.  We don’t want any of that.  We want to stay as we are and do our own thing.’  And if you do that, you’re saying you want to stop being an image-bearing human being within this good world God has made.  You’re colluding with your own progressive dehumanization. … The reality is … sober and sad. …  [It is a] progressive shrinking of human life that happens during this life.  If someone resolutely says to God, ‘I am not going to worship you,’” and, “deep down [in the heart] there is rejection of the good creator God.”  That is a choice we can make and God will honor that choice.  And then, stuck in sin with no hope of regeneration or redemption, we degrade so much we become no longer human but something grotesque and unrecognizable. 

            Biology and other sciences that study the ancient earth’s origin and the beginnings of humanity offer explanation for how we got here.  Theology, simply put, is a word about God.  Can there be comprehensive understanding of the world that accounts for science and theology?   The assertion that sin has effected a de-evolution of creation does not make sense from the view of Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is amoral.  I generally accept the explanations today’s biologists, physicists, and geologists give for the origins of the universe and of life on earth.  But I don’t think those explanations are perfect and I do not think they account for everything that exists.  Those disciplines are not able to anticipate the future in the way Christian faith can, informed by God’s plan as we are.

            Well, so what? 

Last week, we looked at what we know of God in Christ by looking at the activity of God described in Ephesians 1.  In Christ, we know God.  This week, we see in Ephesians 2 that in Christ we are alive. 

            “Alive” can mean breathing, heart beating, and maybe there are other conditions that need to be present for a technical definition of “alive.”  In Ephesians 2 “alive” means more than that.  When the first humans were truly alive, God could see His own image in each – in male and in female.  The world was so right, completely absent of sin, death, or corruption, that God declared it “very good.”  When Ephesians 2:5 says we are “made alive together with Christ,” it is declaring we are again in a state that is “very good.”

            I don’t think this means a return to Genesis as if the Fall never happened and the forbidden fruit was never eaten.  Salvation is not an eraser that eliminates history.  Salvation happens within history, redeeming the story.  In Jesus, God took on the particularities of gender, time, nationality, and socio-economic class.  Jesus was not just a person, he was a man, the son of Joseph and Mary.  He was not just a man.  He was a first century, Jewish man.  He was of the tradesmen, son of a carpenter. 

God, in Christ, stepped into the gradually decaying world, the world undone by sin.  “Made alive together with Christ” is the insistence that in spite of the undeniable corruption of earth it will be “very good” again.  It is not a harkening back to Eden.  It is an act of Christ that has future consequences and that determines the eternal reality – the coming together of Heaven and Earth.  Salvation also says a lot about our present reality.

We are loved (v.4).  The reason God brings life to us – to we who are fallen in sin – is God loves us.  Ephesians 1:5 states plainly that sin (trespasses in the NRSV) leads to death.  Progressive dehumanization, N.T. Wright called it.  Our sins are not just acts.  They are acts that accumulate and also indicate our condition.  Without ceasing, we slip away from what we were created to be – God’s image bearers.  But God will not just watch us go.  God loves us too much.  So, he comes as Jesus. 

Then the cross, then the resurrection, and then as we respond t0 the Holy Spirit’s prompting by receiving grace and putting our faith in God, we are raised.  Ephesians 2:6, God “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus.”  There is no death there.

Imagine it, if you can.  I confess, I cannot.  My entire paradigm involves beginnings and endings.  I lack the capacity to conceive of an existence in which death has no role, is not.  Perhaps this is a failure of my own imagination.  I try to see it in my mind, but all that comes is bright, brilliant white clouds with blinding rays of sun shooting from all sides.  I see mountains and maybe imagine myself flying. Most of these images have been put in my mind by popular artists’ visions of what Heaven might be like. 

The Biblical picture stands as something more real.  There will be trees, fruit trees.  There will be a city with a river running down the middle.  There will be music.  All these images come from the metaphors of the book of Revelation.  The most important is the coming together of Heaven and Earth.  Biblically speaking, we don’t go to Heaven when we die.  Heaven and Earth come together.  The most important piece in the “raised up with him … in heavenly places” promise is the phrase “with him.”

When Jesus was resurrected, he had defeated death.  He will not die again.  His love for us means he takes us with him.  When we join him in resurrection, we will not die again either.  So to say we are made alive together with Christ is to say the corruption of the fall has been cleansed off us.  We will not die.  We are living into life – eternal life.  That redemption which, as we saw in Romans 8, the creation groans for comes in Christ. 

There is more.  We are raised by God’s love.  We are also created by God’s purpose.  Ephesians 2:10 – “We are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works.”  God created all that is in 6 days and rested on the 7^th.  Creativity was and continues to be an attribute of God as God creates us anew.  Read Genesis 1-2.  In the beginning the earth was a formless void and God’s creation was careful, precise.  God made order out of chaos.  In Christ, God continues His creativity, bringing order to the chaos sin has imposed in our lives.

Our church stands on three pillars.  This is our philosophy for life in Christ.  First, all are welcome.  Come as you are.  The body of Christ is a safe place.  Second, come ready to meet Christ.  When we encounter Him, we meet the living God.  No one can stay as they are after a true experience with God.  We will become a new creations; we are made new.  Third, having been born again, made for good works, we are sent out into the world in Jesus’ name to share the truth that He is Lord and that all people can have life in Him.

Ephesians 2:10 is one of the core verses for the second pillar in this philosophy, “made new in Christ.”  Raised, we know that death is longer part of our story.  Made new, we see that while we are not of this earth, as long as we live prior to the Second Coming and the dawning of the New Age, we have not just been created but created for something.  One alive in Christ cannot be indifferent in the world or toward the world.  It is not possible.

We try.  The Fall and all the corruption sin produces tries to lure us into ignoring God and living for ourselves.  One of sin’s deepest realities is that the self becomes our object of worship.  All sin, at its core is idolatry, the worship of something other than God, something not worthy of worship.  Andy Crouch says an idol is something that in the beginning promises us everything while asking nothing of us; but, over time, the idol asks more and more of us while giving less and less.  In the end, the idol ask us to give it everything while it gives us nothing in return.[i]  Whatever variety of sin tempts you or tempts me, down at the heart of it is an idol that will consume and obliterate our humanity.  To step toward an idol is a rejection of God and prioritizing my fleshly desires over God’s place in my life.   Even after we turn to Jesus, sin, Satan, and death will use idols to try to draw us away from Him.

But the Holy Spirit is persistent.  We have been created for good – good that is seen in our actions in the world.  To be alive in Christ is to point the world to the future time when Heaven and Earth come together.  Ephesians 2:10 is direct – we are what he has made us, “created in Christ Jesus for good works.”  The Spirit leads us to God, and after we put our trust in Jesus, the Spirit continues to be at work in our lives.  We can turn away even after having seen God, but we do so with the Spirit pulling on us, constantly trying to draw us back to God.  God could simply force us to worship and faith, but then we would lose our identity as image-bearers. 

We have been created as God’s image bearers.  Sin shattered each of us, but in Christ we are made new; we are re-created for life in Christ and with the mission of sharing his love and the Gospel with everyone who does not know him so they too can receive the salvation he offers. 

I began this morning identifying passages from scripture that are familiar even to people who don’t realize these things are in the Bible.

I close with a final look at one of those passages, Genesis 1, where we see that to be human is to be in God’s image.  If we are not bearing God’s image, we are something less than human.  Sin makes it impossible to bear God’s image.  But the testimony of Ephesians 2 is that Christ has come and our sins are forgiven.  Once again we are created, made anew, you and I, made to be image bearers who live in and guides other into the Kingdom of God.

AMEN 

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[i] A. Crouch (2013).  Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power.  InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, p.56.

Gospel of Invitation

Sunday, May 26, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            And yet …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            “See, I am coming soon.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AMEN

Invited to God's Life

Sunday, November 18, 2012

 

            As Christians, a major point of our self-definition, a question we either ask or have asked and answered is a question that does not concern Job.  Christians are not the only ones who ask this question, but the question’s importance is central in Christian faith and theology.  From the book of Romans, “there is no one who is righteous, not even one. … All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (3:10, 23).  In the book of Acts, the warden in the Philippian jail says with great fear, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”  Paul and Silas respond, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” (Acts 16:30-31).  This question of salvation is a New Testament question.  We believe all people are cut off from God by our innate sinfulness and by our sinful choices and actions.  To die in that “cut-off” state is to be destined for Hell.  We want relationship with God and we want a Heavenly eternity.  We need to know how one is saved and we need to know if we are saved.

            Job is an Old Testament book.  The story belongs to Israel and is read as the word of God for the Chosen People.  They don’t fret about being saved.  They’re already the people of God.  Job is not asking about salvation.  His concern is purpose.  What is the meaning of innocent suffering?

            We come to Job, but the question shaping our faith is how can I know I am saved?  Job welcomes us.  But, he’s not telling how to be saved.  He’s asking – is there meaning in suffering?  Has this led to a frustrating misunderstanding on the part of many Christians who want to read Job and hear the word of God. 

            We must move past the “how do I get saved” question, but we must not diminish the importance of it.  Salvation will always be central in our story of relationship with God.  Without it, there is no relationship.  Until the salvation question is answered, we are stuck in our sins and the pain they bring.  But we “how?”  Again, the man who imprisoned Paul and Silas in the city in Philippi and then fell impotent before them when a force of God ripped open the prison walls.  Trembling he asked, “What must I do to be saved?”  “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.”  This is the gospel.

            The question of purpose is the next question.  As we have seen, Job is the story of a man of true faith.  He was the model of worship; the model of confession.  If he lived today, he would be the ideal Christ-follower.  His relationship with God is completely right. 

But his life falls apart.  He loses everything.  His responses to his suffering are varied.  David Clines has observed that in his 11 different speeches, Job adopts a different theological posture each time (World Bible Commentary, vol. 17, p.xlii).  Is Job patient?  Yes.  Does Job complain endlessly?  Yes.  Does Job become suicidal?  Yes.  Does Job hold onto hope and life with everything that is in him?  Yes.  Job’s experience is complicated and his speech is varied.  All of his lows are a part of his tortured quest for meaning.

            The Philippian jail warden baptized by Paul (Acts 16:34).  What’s next? We have had several baptisms lately.  All who follow Christ come the journey by stating their faith and being baptized.  What comes next?  Baptism is a climactic moment that begins a story.  What happens in the rest of the story? 

            Our experience of reality, and in reality, changes.  We previously lived for ourselves.  Now we live in Christ.  The world around us, our culture, provided a frame of reference for how we made decisions, what we valued, why we thought the way we did.  Now, our frame of reference and our moral motivation and what defines us is the kingdom of God.  Once we are saved, at Paul says, we are new creations, born again.  From salvation we move to the question of meaning.

            Job’s quest for meaning was born in his suffering.  Not all of us come to Job’s story as sufferers.  Some do.  Some readers resonate because as they read they are in the midst of pain and turmoil.  Or they’ve lived through significant periods of very real suffering.  They read Job and they say, “Yes, I can relate.”

            Others though, have not been in Job’s shoes.  To say it in a ridiculously simple way, some readers of Job are people who have happy, good lives.  Things have mostly gone very well.  The difference in experience with suffering creates distance.  Still, all readers can glean from Job inspiration for the pursuit of answers to the question “Why?”  Job shows us that we can, ask God why?  Job also shows us that God answers and Job shows what happens when God answers. 

            Imagine Job’s ragged robe, only it covers not him, but you.  You are Job’s place before.  You’ve dared to pray boldly, demandingly, courageously, and through tears, and now God answers.  Now, God is the speaker and you the listener.  Out of the whirlwind, God bellows, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?”

            All confidence evaporates.  Naked?  Yes.  Scared.  Oh yeah.  No place to hide?  No place to hide.  Who are you to stand before God? 

            The booming voice commands.  “Gird up your loins.  Stand up like a man.  Stand your ground like a woman.  Be the human being you were made to be.  You will answer me.  You will answer my questions.”

            The questions that follow are impossible.  No one could answer.  Is God just making a point of showing how big God is and small and insignificant we are?  I don’t think so.  If Job were so unimportant, why does God even bother?  The God of the universe is taking time to give Job individual attention.  It is true that the speeches in chapters 38-41 accent the awesomeness of God and the smallness of Job and of all humans.  God says much and never once mentions humanity.  But, God does not take time to explain himself to horses or to leopards or tigers or anacondas.  Pick your favorite animal.  God doesn’t deign to speak to that one, not in the way God speaks to human beings.

            In the Bible, over and over, the Almighty steps out of eternal glory and into our time-bound experience in order to relate to humans.  Job is blown away, but this whirlwind speech is a personal gesture on God’s part.  While Job is never told why he suffered, he is re-created and given new life.  He is invited to God’s life.

            “Gird up your loins.  I will question.  You will answer.”  God invites Job to conversation – and us too.  The invitation shows the special place of humanity in the creation.  Think back to Genesis 1:27.  “God created humankind in his image.”  Whatever anyone can ever say about you, you are made in the image of God.  You and I – we are God’s image bearers. 

Flip over to Genesis 2:18.  “It is not good that man should be alone.”  God is relational and God made us relational beings.  God made birds and animals and brought them to Adam to see what Adam would call them.  Look closely at Genesis 2:19.  God waited to see what the man would name the animals and whatever name he came up with, that was the animal’s name.  The way that verse reads, God did not know a turtle was a turtle until Man looked and said, “mmm … turtle.”  Before that, God has created a bunch of these slow, shelled creatures, and an angel says, “Lord, that’s kind of a dopey looking thing.  What do you call it?”  God kind of shrugs.  “I am waiting on Adam.”  And Adam is there thinking.  “Oh I don’t know.  Turtle … terrapin .. tortoise … God what do you think?”  “Adam it’s up to you, but we have a lot of animals to go, so could you kind of get on with it?”   Genesis 2:19 tells us God brought everything living thing to the man to see what he would call it and whatever he called it, that was its name.

Now we are in Job.  He’s cowering even as God tells him to stand.  God’s command, if we remember it in terms of Genesis, is for Job to be who God made Job to be.  The questions of Job 38-41 cannot be answered.  “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”  Job and you and I have to mutter and sing, “You, O God, are creator, and we are nothing.”   But we are not nothing.  God gave us work – name the animals.  Have dominion.  Manage my creation.  Be who I made you to be. 

Throughout these words God unleashes on Job like a tidal wave, there is the refrain, “Can you?” 

“Do you know the ordinance of the heavens?  Can you establish their rule on earth” (38:33)?

“Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you” (38:34)?

“Can you hunt the prey for the lion” (38:39a)?

More poignantly, God turns to the mythic monster of chaos that filled men with complete dread.  “Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook, or press down its tongue with a chord?  Can you put a rope in its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook” (41:1-2)?  Leviathan represented every sea-dragon ever thought of in any ancient myth, every Greek titan that stepped on humans as if they were ants.  The only thing the ancients did in reference to Leviathan was run away.  And if they were out on a boat, lost at sea, and they fell under Leviathan’s attack, they considered themselves dead, without hope.

If we are tempted to dismiss this ancient literature and say, “Oh, we’ve sent submarines to the deepest parts of the ocean.  We know there is no Leviathan. That’s just a myth.”  If we do that, then we miss the power and truth in it.  God’s words to us, along the same lines could be, “Can you blow a hurricane the size of Katrina or Sandy as if you were blowing out a single birthday candle?”  The things that totally overwhelm are as playthings to God.

No, we cannot establish the rules of the heavens.

No, we cannot hunt the lion’s prey for him or fish out Leviathan with a hook.

No, we cannot command the clouds.

But wait a minute.  We are in God’s image.  We are called to work – God’s work.  To be human is to have vocation that is rooted in our relationship with God.  If our sins block the way and make impossible for us to do God’s work, well, God has done something about that.  In Jesus, God has made a way – a way for salvation.  God has made a way for us to be sons and daughters of God.  God has made a way for us to do the work we were created to do as God’s image bearers. 

God says, “Can you?”  We say, “No we cannot.”  But Jesus could and did.  He commanded the clouds to stop raining and they stopped.  He died, and in the resurrection, pushed death aside.  If we put Jesus in Job’s shoes, and he went through the impossible quiz of Job 38-41, and God said to him, “Can you,” Jesus would respond, “yes Father.  I can, and I will.” 

Moving from salvation to meaning, we follow Job.  We follow Job and in our own lives, as saved persons, sons and daughters of God, we search for meaning.  We search for God’s purpose in our good times, in our suffering, in our losses, and in our triumphs.  When I say that we are made new so that we can live out God’s vocation for us, I hope you know the specifics of living out God’s vocation are unique to each person.  In your life, God will show you what it means to be the human He created you to be. 

But there is this warning.  Once we go where Job went and we stand before God, the whirlwind swirling about us, about to engulf us, we will die – die to self.  Death is crucial in salvation and in the search for meaning.  We die in our sin.  This is seen in another “Can you” type of question.  This one was asked by Jesus. 

He had predicted his suffering and violent death.  Two disciples, James and John, completely ignoring the death part, said, “We want to sit at your right hand and left hand in your glory” (Mark 10:37).  These guys were at this point operating in the limited worldview of Job’s friends.  Eventually, James and John would die to self and in being born again, they would surpass even Job in Heavenly wisdom, but at this point, they were seeking their own glory.  And Jesus invited them into the whirlwind.

“Can you,” he asked, “drink the cup that I drink?”  Can you sacrifice yourselves for the Kingdom of God if that is needed?  Jesus was arrested and they fled in terror, cowards running wildly in the night.  These guys thought they were going to be at side of the King.  At the first site of danger, they booked it out of there.  Then came the cross.  Then the empty tomb.  After resurrection, James and John stopped asking about sitting at Jesus’ left and right hand.  They were in Jerusalem preaching salvation, which leads to meaning, and they preached so hard, they got imprisoned and exiled and beheaded.  And they smiled all the way because it is better to be in prison if that is part of God’s vocation than it is to sit on a royal throne and not know why you are there.  And what about those thrones anyway?  Read  the final book - Revelation.  There the 12 disciples sit on thrones.

But what about Job and you and me?  Where does all this leave us?  The God life is different for each person.  I know this.  Sin keeps us from God.  But if we’ve put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then we have salvation.  If we have salvation, then we are invited into the whirlwind.  We are invited to that terrifying moment where we are asked to name the animals and drink the cup and preach the word.  We are invited into relationship, and in that relationship, where we live God’s life, we have purpose.  We – you, me, each one of us – we have that moment.  The unspeakable splendor of the Almighty fills all existence until it is just you and God and he says, “Gird up your loins.  I will speak.  You will answer.”

Life Begins with Sabbath Rest

In the reading I have done on Sabbath, I frequently came across an idea I had never considered. Several authors and Bible scholars made this same point. The idea is that creation points to the 7th day, the Sabbath. God wasn’t just making the heavens and the earth on a whim. God wasn’t in his eternal glory, bored, and he thought, “I know! I’ll create a universe.” There was more purpose to it, so the idea goes. Sabbath is a key.

Consider the movement in the creation account: day one, separate light from darkness. Day two, God created the sky (the “dome”). Day three, God makes dry land and plant life. Day four, the sun and moon were created. Day five, it was sea creatures and birds.

Now up to this point, God reflects on each act of creation. God saw that it was “good.” But, there is more to it on day five. On day five, God has direct interaction with the living beings He has made. “21 God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth”(Genesis 1:21-22). God spoke to his creation and gave them responsibility. The animals (sea animals and birds) were to be fruitful and multiple.

Things changed even more dramatically on the fifth day. God made land animals; then God’s masterpiece. 26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the [ak]sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the [al]sky and over every living thing that [am]moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:26-28).

God may have related to some animals through instruction, “be fruitful and multiply,” but it went much deeper with these he made in his image. Humans were also to be fruitful and multiply, which means procreation, and humans were to manage as God’s stewards. God blessed humans. That essentially communicates that God created conditions so that it would go well with human beings if they did things God’s way. Blessing is a component of covenant. Blessing means life is good.

Blessing also comes with responsibility. Humans were to fill and subdue the earth in a way that recognized the goodness of God’s creation and the wonder of God’s glory. When God saw all that was done and humans had the blessing and the commands God had given, God saw that it was better than good. It was “very good” (1:31).

Thus it appears that creation reaches its climax when men and women are made and given their divine marching orders to manage the earth. But this is only the sixth day and there are seven days. Creation is driven to the seventh day, the one day God “hallowed” (NRSV), or “made holy” (Genesis 2:3). When all the conditions were ready, by God’s creation, and God saw that the world was as He thought it should be, then God felt confident in rest. He could stop creating. He could leave humans in charge. He could rest and enjoy what He had made.

Sabbath is what God had in mind when God created. Creation leads to Sabbath. The first day of life, once created, for Humans was the seventh day, the Sabbath. Life for human beings began with Sabbath rest. In our keeping of Sabbath, can we recreate those Eden conditions where all we need is provided in fruit trees planted by God and streams that run as God directs them and there is no danger and nothing to fear? No!

Life in our time is full of pitfalls, some in nature, more in civilization. The fall of Adam and Eve and every human that has ever sinned has drawn away from God’s Sabbath intention. So what good today is Sabbath-keeping, if it simply amounts to a dim reminder of what was lost?

Sabbath-keeping remembers Eden, the perfection God created. Sabbath-keeping reminds us that God is good and God wants good for us. And Sabbath-keeping, when focused on Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit calls us forward. Our life (our human origins) did not simply begin with Sabbath rest. We have ahead of us an eternity in God’s new heaven and new earth. When we set time apart as Sabbath time, time for worship, community, and rest, we anticipate the eternal joy we will have in the unending presence of God. That eternity will be filled with love, togetherness, worship, feasting, and peace. What was at the beginning, the goal of creation, Sabbath, will be forever. So, in Sabbath-keeping, we remember, we look ahead, and we celebrate God.

Sabbath, Origins, and Eternity (Genesis 1:26-2:3)

Abraham Joshua Heschel writes, “The sense of holiness in time is expressed in the manner in which the Sabbath is celebrated. … On that day … symbols are superfluous. The Sabbath itself is the symbol.”[i] Our church is in the middle of a 4-week examination of Sabbath, a Jewish idea. Of course Christianity is a descendant of Judaism, and Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. We as a church of mostly gentile Christ worshipers are seeking to understand how Sabbath-keeping should be done in our lives, where our worship is on Sunday, not the Sabbath day which is the seventh day, Saturday.

Are we supposed to keep Sabbath? If so why? And how are we to do it? I believe we are. Sabbath is command and more than command, it is gift. Heschel, one of the preeminent scholars of Sabbath believes it is holier as something given by God than ancient festivals, than law, than any other gift. “The Sabbath is all holiness,” he says.[ii] But don’t take his word for it, or mine.

Genesis 2:3: “God blessed the seventh day and [made it holy], because on that day God rested from all the work he had done in creation.” To that point, God had been intentional in his order and in the product as he made the world. He created all and with each act of creation Genesis says, “God saw that it was good.”

Then, God made human beings. Men and women were created in the image of God. Men and women were blessed and told to fill the earth through procreation and to subdue the earth as God’s regents on the earth. When God had made human beings and clearly blessed human beings then he was done. Once humans had been given their responsibility to manage God’s creation and enjoy God’s creation, then God saw that it was not just good, but “very good.”

Creation reached its climax on the seventh day. God had made such a perfect world; He did not need to do any more. There was nothing else to be created. God did not need to micromanage what had been made. All was right. The world was in a state of peace. Better still, the world was in a state of shalom. Creation reached its goal on the seventh day and God established the seventh day as a holy day.

Thus we see that Sabbath comes from God. Sabbath comes from the very beginning. And Sabbath is central in God’s vision for us, for creation. As far as we can tell, Jesus and the Apostle Paul both were Sabbath-observant Jews. Jesus did not reject Sabbath, only the abuse of it. Paul did not do away with Sabbath. He objected to the idea that Sabbath-keeping in accordance with the cumbersome rules Jesus opposed was more important for salvation than faith in Jesus. Paul did much of his most effective evangelizing on Sabbath days in the house of worship, the synagogue. God started Sabbath. Jesus, God in the flesh, kept Sabbath and taught the truth on Sabbath, and Paul shared Jesus on Sabbath.

In our own Sabbath observance, as we live our Christianity in a fast-paced, computer age, we see that whatever we do must honor God and seek Him. If we are thinking of ways we can keep Sabbath time, whether it is Saturday, Sunday, or another time, we must set aside a particular time to honor God in a unique, Sabbath way, and we must seek him and share the good news of His salvation.

Last week, in introducing this block of discussion on Sabbath, I said that Jesus gives us a new day, a new rhythm, and rest. Someone turned in to me a very wise note reminding me that God has always been merciful, and that from the very beginning God gave Sabbath rest as a gift. I appreciated that feedback immensely. Building on that, I must say that the New Testament God is not a kinder, gentler replacement for the harsh Old Testament God. God is God and always has been. First John chapter says God is love. God has always been love. In the Old Testament God’s hatred of sin is painfully clear. God hates sin just as much today, and sin is punished, in time in this life, and in eternity in Hell.

I do think Jesus brought something new in God coming in human flesh. I do think Jesus ushered in a new way of knowing God and being in relationship with God. But what I appreciate about what was written on the note was the suggestion that as much Jesus is new, Jesus is a return to the original. The new rhythm Jesus brings is the rhythm God originally intended for human beings in the creation.

Now, we’ve said Sabbath is from God, comes at the beginning, and for that reason is central in God’s vision for us and for creation, which belongs to Him and comes from Him. Because of the centrality of it, we must keep Sabbath and in doing so we must honor God, seek God, and share the good news of salvation. In looking a bit longer at Genesis 1 & 2, what can we learn about this gift of Sabbath rest that God has always intended for us to enjoy?

It is a day set apart, different from other days. I am in two of the small groups discussing Sabbath and I have posed the question, which you might think about now. As you grew up, if your family treated Sunday as Sabbath, then how was Sunday different? In some cases, people said other than attending church, Sunday was like any other day. In other families, Sunday was different. There were activities or prohibited activities that set Sunday apart.

In my own case, I remember, ironically, that when I was in high school, Sunday was the only day I worked. Monday through Friday was school and football. Saturday was church youth group activities. Sunday night was also church youth group. And Sundays from noon until 5, I was a bus boy at a restaurant. I had no Sabbath time. And my relationship with God suffered for that. I had a relationship with God, for sure. But it was not what it could have been because I wasn’t giving God all of me, and I wasn’t honoring God as I could if I had set time aside to do so.

Setting time apart for God is an act of faith. We admit that our activity doesn’t keep the universe going. God is the sustainer, not us. It is trust. We trust that if God could rest and things would be ok, then we can rest. To refuse to take Sabbath is ultimately hubris.

Well, our world is more complicated than when God created in the beginning. That was a simpler time. Please! God is bigger than all that is around us. God is more important the things that fill our lives.

In keeping a Sabbath that is focused on God – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – we experience the wholeness, the rest, the peace that in Hebrew is called Shalom and we have Shalom in a way that only can be known on Sabbath.

Thus in addition to practicing Sabbath so that God is honored, sought, and shared, our Sabbath must be unique. Whatever activities we pursue – worship, a walk in the woods, a special time of prayer, the simple enjoyment of nature – it should be unique, only done quite that way on Sabbath. Yes, we worship at other times, and we walk in the woods and pray and enjoy nature and slow our pace and light candles – we do all those things at many times during the week. But there should be a uniqueness that announces we are entering Sabbath time.

The notion of Sabbath, a time set apart that Christians celebrate with a focus on the Father, on Jesus, and in communion with the Holy Spirit, began in our origins. When we keep Sabbath we are directed to and prepared for our eternity. Sabbath is where Genesis 1 & 2 meets Revelation 21 & 22, the very beginning and very end of the Bible. Genesis describes the origin and Revelation, after the final victory of Jesus and final judgment of all describes the destination.

In Revelation 21-22, we read about the New Jerusalem and the New Heaven and New Earth where the perfect city is juxtaposed with the perfect garden and perfection in nature. It is where we are headed. Scholar Walter Bruegemann writes that Sabbath is the affirmation that God is at work to bring creation to His purpose and that Sabbath, and I would add the shalom we have in Christ when we keep Sabbath, is the goal of life.[iii] His comments are on Genesis 1, but they lead to the conclusion in Revelation 21-22.

The same directional arc of history is seen in Romans 8. Paul writes,

“The creations waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but of the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until know, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (v.19-23).

Paul is talking about freedom from sin.. He’s not talking about Sabbath.

The freedom he mentions was present on the original seventh day in Genesis 2 before sin came and that freedom, which like peace and love and blessing and wholeness is a part of Shalom, is where the redeemed in Jesus are headed in eternity. In Sabbath keeping we get a little glimpse of Heaven, what it might be like. Why? We are closer to God, and we relinquish control of our well-being to God; he determines our wellness.

Our Sabbath points to a life lived in good relationships. Meeting Jesus in Sabbath changes who we are in this world as we wait for our redemption. So our Sabbath-keeping must be communal, with others, and must anticipate where we are headed when our earthly life is up.

In Sabbath practices, we enjoy nature; we worship and pray; and we do it with other people. Slow-cooked meals for large group are a Sabbath possibility. Even if the group is small, a group is good. Sabbath is not a time for fasting or solitude. It is a time to honor God and seek and share God; it is a unique and we should approach it as such. No other time is what Sabbath time is: time for relationship – us with God and with one another. We won’t be alone in Heaven and we should not be alone on Sabbath. From our origins when God created, to life with Jesus, to life now, lived in the Holy Spirit, to eternity in the New Jerusalem, we are called God, and our best experience with God includes that which he makes holy, the Sabbath.

AMEN

[i]Heschel, The Sabbath (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1951), p.82

[ii]Ibid, p.82.

[iii]Bruegemann, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Genesis (John Knox Press, Atlanta), p.38.