Trinity Sunday (John 3:1-16)

Sunday, May 27, 2018

            By the authority vested in me, as minister of the Gospel, an ordained Baptist Pastor, I hereby grant to all present, every one of you, the sanctified permission to say, “I don’t know.”  It’s OK.  It’s alright to not know everything there is to know about God. 

            That’s true all of the time, but this truth is of special import today – Trinity Sunday. 

            Just imagine yourself.  You go to church.  You sing the songs and listen, really listen, to the sermons.  You read the Bible on your own, and attend a midweek Bible study.  You can, in your own words, explain that you know you are a sinner and Jesus died for you.  You can give your own story, of how and when you gave your heart to Jesus and began living life under His rule, with Him as your Lord.

            Then, a non-church going friend, in the course of casual conversation asks that question.  “I get that you believe in God and everything, but what about the trinity?  Can you explain that?”

            Ooh. At that point, the collar gets a little tight, the mouth a little dry.  Beads of sweat appear on the forehead.  Explain the trinity?  Okay.  The trinity is God, 3-in-1; kind of like water, which is ice, liquid water, and steam; solid, liquid, and gas. 

            That explanation doesn’t work!  Those are just different modes of H2O, just different forms.  The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each God, the one God, but distinct from the other two. It’s how Jesus could pray to the Father.  They’re distinct, but also one.  It is how, as we see in Mark 1:12, the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness.  Jesus does not evaporate and become the Holy Spirit.  The Father does not melt to become Jesus.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct from each other, and the analogy of water fails to explain that. 

            Let’s try again.  How to explain the trinity?  The trinity is like the sun that produces light and heat and gives vitamin D!

            Again, that explanation is a no go!  The Son and the Holy Spirit are not produced by the Father.  Heat and light are things the sun produces as it gives off energy.  God the Son is fully God; so is God the Spirit.  Neither emanates as a product of God.  Both are eternal.  Both are persons existing as personalities, distinct.  And yet, the three together exist as one God and there’s no separating them. 

            We cannot claim the Father, Son, and Spirit are modes of God.  One could make such a claim, but that would not be an orthodox Christian claim.  Nor can we say the Son and the Spirit are produced from the Father, not if we want to align with the traditional claims of Christianity. 

            One more try?  Here goes: just as an apple is the core, the pulp, and the skin – all of the apple – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all equal parts of God. Does that work?

            No!  The Father is not 1/3 of God.  The Father is fully God.  The Son and the Holy Spirit each are fully God.  The three persons of the trinity are not parts.  They are not modes.  They are not emanations.  Each one is distinctly, fully God – the one God; God, 3-in-1.

            Remember!  You have sanctified permission to say, “I don’t know!”  Your unchurched friend says, “Hey, Christian, what about the Trinity?”  Your response?  “The triune nature of God is an unexplainable mystery.  The Father is eternal, fully God, and distinct.  The Son, is eternal, pre-existent, and is fully God.  And the Spirit, is fully God.  The three together are one, existing in a perfect relationship of love and cooperation within the Godhead. 

            Regarding Trinitarian theology, we all have the permission to say, “This is confusing.  I don’t quite understand it.  It’s an incomprehensible mystery.”  However, we do not need to fear the conversation about the trinity.  Don’t be afraid of talking about and thinking about God in this way.  In fact, God as trinity is cause for rejoicing!  How so?

            In our reading, John chapter 3, we meet a great Pharisee, Nicodemus.  Jesus affords him the highest of respect, calling him a “teacher of Israel” (v.10).  Nicodemus also gives Jesus great recognition.  He says to Jesus, “We know that you are a teacher who has come from God.  Nicodemus, the “teacher of Israel,” has come to Jesus, the carpenter-rabbi from Nazareth, to be taught.  He’s not prepared for the lesson Jesus will give.  It is as hard for him to understand as it us for us to wrap our brains around the notion of trinity. 

            Jesus tells him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above” (3:3).  All who want to follow Jesus, all who want to go to Heaven and not Hell, and all who want to be Christian must be born again.  All Christians are “born again” Christians.  Any who have not undergone second birth have are not followers of Jesus.

            I know this can be distressing.  I have talked to people desiring to be Christians who have said to me, “Rob, I cannot sense the Holy Spirit in me.”  Or, “I don’t remember a definitive time of being born again.”  People who want to be with Christ, but lack such a clearly identifiable divine encounter, have obvious concern.  Maybe they aren’t truly Christians.  Maybe you have such worries.

            Jesus explains in verse 5 that “No one can enter the Kingdom without being born of water and of Spirit.”  Nicodemus might hear “born of water” and think of a several different things.  There’s natural child birth.  He might remember the Noah story: the world was remade in a flood.  He would definitely call to mind Israel’s defining moment.  The nation escaped slavery in Egypt, and then received the 10 commandments and the written law at Mount Sinai.  The centerpiece of that story comes when God parts the Red Sea and the people pass through those waters. 

Nicodemus would remember that.  He also knew that his own day, John the Baptist and other radical teachers were baptizing in the Jordan River.  He would have known that Jesus himself was baptized by John.  So when he hears Jesus say, “Born of water,” familiar thoughts come to mind.

            What is “born of Spirit?”  Nicodemus is absolutely perplexed.

            Jesus has told him that he cannot enter the Kingdom of God without being born of the Spirit and he doesn’t know what that means.  I insist that this teaching, for us in our time, means each one of us has to be born of the Spirit to be with Christ.  I say that knowing many people who want to be Christians but cannot, in their own story, identify that specific time when they were “born again.”  It’s hard to pinpoint.

            The crux of the matter comes when Jesus talks about the wind in verse 8.  In both Biblical Greek and Biblical Hebrew, the same word means wind, breath, and Spirit.  As we said a few weeks ago, as the writer of this gospel set pen to parchment, he surely had the prophet Ezekiel on his mind.  Ezekiel tells of a time when God set him down in a valley of dry bones and commanded Ezekiel to tell the bones to come to life.  He obeyed, and the commanded the bones rattled and came together and took on muscle and tissue and skin.  And there before Ezekiel stood a multitude of lifeless people.

            They did not come to life until Ezekiel prophesied a second time, this time to the breath.  He did that, and the multitude came alive.  God told Ezekiel, in exile, the nation of Israel completely destroyed, “Mortal man, these bones are the house of Israel” (37:11).  God told him to tell the people in exile, “I will open up your graves” and restore your life.  “I will put my spirit in you.”  They would not be the people of God until God put God’s spirit in them. 

            Nicodemus may not have thought of Ezekiel when he spoke with Jesus.  But looking back on the encounter, later, after he gained understanding, I imagine he made the association.  God promised to put his spirit in the people, through the mouth of the prophet.  And God the Son, Jesus, told Nicodemus, you must be born of the Spirit to see and enter the Kingdom of God.  I think Nicodemus understood that when Jesus told him this, he, Nicodemus, was having his own Ezekiel moment.  I think he figured this out later, probably with a lot of help from the Holy Spirit.  He’s probably the one who shared the entire story that’s told in John 3 with the writer of the Gospel.

            In the moment, he was thoroughly lost.  “How can these things be?”  Jesus let him ponder.  He didn’t clear it up right away, but rather, he let Nicodemus sit with it.  All he said to Nicodemus was, “Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things” (3:10)?  That’s how utterly new and unexpected the Gospel was.  Neither uneducated people nor the most educated of people were ready for what God would do in Jesus.  The only way understanding could come would be by the Spirit.

            Yet, Jesus says in verse 8, “The wind [the spirit] blows where it chooses and you hear the sound of it but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”  We have no control over the Holy Spirit.  It seems hardly fair for God the Son to tell us that we need God the Spirit to enter the Kingdom of God the Father, when we cannot grab hold of the God the Spirit.  Does that mean that anyone who has not felt the touch of the Spirit is just left out?

            Of course not!  Jesus mentions in verse 13 that he is the one descended from heaven, and then in verse 14, he references another story Nicodemus would have known.  This comes from the book of Numbers and might be less familiar to us.  The people of God were in the wilderness and rebelled against God.  Poisonous snakes came and began biting the people and they were dying.  God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and to display it atop a tall pole.  Anyone who had been bitten should fix his gaze upon this serpent that had been lifted up and he or she would be healed of the poisonous snake bite.

            Jesus tells Nicodemus and all of us, John’s readers, that he must be lifted up like that snake.   If you fear that you lack of that experience with the Holy Spirit that tells you that you’ve been born again, look at Jesus, lifted up on the cross.  Verse 15, “Whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” 

            This illustrates both the beautiful dance of the Trinity and the reason our understanding of God as Trinity is cause for rejoicing.  The Kingdom of God the Father is eternal life, eternal joy, and eternal love.  We all want to be in it.  We need the Spirit to get there.  But we can’t control the Spirit.  However, we can fix our gaze upon the God the Son, who inhabited human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth.  We can look at Jesus, believe in him, worship and follow him, and we are saved.  Even if you don’t feel it, per se, the Spirit is working.  Believe in Jesus. 

            The next verse, maybe the most famous in the Bible, ties together God’s love and the salvation of the world.  Remember what we’ve stressed throughout our 9 weeks spent in the Gospel of John.  “The world,” as presented in this Gospel, it opposed to God.  It is the realm of the enemy.  John 3:16 says God loved this world so much, he came – gave his only son – that whoever believes in him may not die, but rather may have eternal life.

            Can’t explain the Trinity?  It’s OK.  The Trinity is a mystery beyond comprehension.  What you can share with friends and what you can count on, if you’re trembling in the shadow of doubts about your own relationship with God, is the Gospel.  We can rest secure in the Gospel. 

God is love.  God’s love is on display in the beautiful dance within God – the perfect love and cooperation between Father, Son, and Spirit.  The Son went to the cross for our sins.  The Spirit is about in the world, convicting people of sin so that they might repent and turn to God.  The Spirit is also residing in your heart and in the body of Christ – his Church.  Instead of trying to reduce this beautiful mystery to an easily contained explanation, live in it.  God invites us to join in the dance and live in relationship with God.  And not just at Pentecost or on Trinity Sunday, but every day.  Every day, His love is real and present for us.  Every day, God walks with us that we might have life and live in His joy.

AMEN

When We Dream (Joel 2:28-29)

Sunday, November 22, 2015

          We have prayed that God would grant wisdom and give revelation to HillSong Church.  These seven weeks have had an inward focus.  Our direction is Godward.  We have collectively, as a family of worshipers, as brothers and sister in Christ, pointed our faces toward the Lord.  We have joined voices and together asked God to speak.

          In the process, we have reflected upon who we are God’s people.  There is a sense of what a Christian should be.  We describe, generally speaking, what a church should be.  We have emphasized what HillSong Church is called to be in the first quarter of the 21^st century. 

          These prayers will not cease as we conclude this church-wide emphasis on discernment.  Understanding who we are in Christ is a constant process.  However, it is now time to reflect on what has been revealed; this is also the time to cast our gaze down the road and ponder where we are headed and also to see who, from afar, is coming toward us.

          We have talked about HillSong being safe place.  We strive to be a place of welcome where one can come and be loved and be encouraged and nurtured.  This will always tested as we who make up the community are born-again, spirit-filled yet also tempted by our weaknesses and by the devils’ wiles.  We, the people yearning to create safe space, sometimes are the ones who make it unsafe.  But we press on, we try again, as we welcome the next one through the door.

          In the safe space, our community, we worship.  In worship, our hearts are laid bare before the Lord and we pray that we actually meet God in those encounters.  In meeting God, we are forever changed.  We are made new – new creations. 

As new creations, we are then sent into the world to announce that something has happened.  God has done something.  God has come in human form, in the flesh.  That’s Jesus!  He is God in the flesh and in Him the Kingdom of God has come near.  In Him, people have forgiveness of sins and rescue from death.  We are sent to proclaim that He is Lord and King and people can have life in His name.  We are sent to help people become His disciples.

“Safe-New-Sent;” these words have become a mantra at HillSong.  But this is not all God has revealed.  Relationships matter.  We are a relational people.  Watch what happens when the worship service ends today.  People don’t flood to the exits.  I have been in church services where when the final song is over, people head for the exits like the building is on fire.  Here, people linger to talk, laugh, and embrace.  We love each other.

And our relationships are expanding.  New people come all the time.  Now, new congregations are in the fold with Zion Karen Baptist Church and Iglesia del Amor de Dios meeting in our buildings.  When our elders and deacons met a month ago, one of the observations we took away from our conversations was God is bringing the nations to HillSong.  And we are thrilled about that.

As a relational people living in fellowship with a divine calling to welcome the sojourner and seek out the lost that we might help them find the way to salvation, where do we go from here?

I appeal to the words of the prophet Joel.  He spoke of judgment and called a sinful people to repentance, but then, God showed him a new day dawning.  Here’s what God says through the prophet Joel.

^28 [a] Then afterward
    I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
    your old men shall dream dreams,
    and your young men shall see visions.
²⁹ Even on the male and female slaves,
    in those days, I will pour out my spirit.

          The dreams that come don’t originate with us. God says, “I will pour out my spirit.”  God’s Spirit visits us, and then the dreams come.  The good in our lives, the purpose which drives us to live and to live in a certain way comes from God.

          Joel shows that we dream God dreams.  To be people of faith, to follow Jesus, is to believe in visions and to experience dreams.  What’s more, this is all of us.  This is not reserved for the spiritual superheroes among us.  Nor is this purview of the privileged or the experienced or those more honored than others.  Children prophesy, senior citizens see things they’ve never seen before, and slaves dream and show the truth of God.  The revelation of God is generously shared as God desires to give it.

          But, what in the world does this mean?  The prophecy from Joel is beautiful and inspired and incomplete, because it doesn’t seem to ever become reality. 

          Then Jesus.

          Jesus comes along, and then Joel makes sense.

          In the book of Acts a series of events takes place.  First, Acts picks up right after the resurrection.  Jesus, who died and was buried, is walking about in his body resurrected.  The disciples see Him depart.  He goes to Heaven, to the right hand of the Father.  Then, after 40 days, the Holy Spirit rains down in tongues of fire on the disciples gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost.   As they are filled, they speak the languages of all gathered there.

          It doesn’t make any sense.  These are Galilean fishermen, not educated linguists.  Yet with unmatched eloquence, they tell the story of God coming in the person of Jesus, dying, and offering salvation to the world.  The crowd, astounded, doesn’t know what to make of it all.

          That’s when Peter stands and says this.

¹⁴ But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵ Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶ No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

¹⁷ ‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
    and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
    and your old men shall dream dreams.
¹⁸ Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
    in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
        and they shall prophesy.
¹⁹ And I will show portents in the heaven above
    and signs on the earth below,
        blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
²⁰ The sun shall be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood,
        before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
²¹ Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

          Peter’s way of making sense of all that happens is to appeal to scripture – the prophecy of Joel.  But Joel only makes sense when understood in terms of the resurrection.  Why can Peter say that the spiritual phenomena that happened at Pentecost is the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy?  Because Jesus was raised.  That spirit was and is the Holy Spirit of the Lord filling His people.

          Joel’s prophecy continues to be fulfilled as we gather, worship, glorify God in Jesus Christ, and band together as His people.  In this context, the church together, the Spirit pours new revelation and calls us to the work of holy living and holy love in the midst of a hurting and dying world. 

          Where do we go from here?  We worship – together.  We give and receive forgiveness – together.  We passionately discuss the issues of our day.  Sometimes those conversations heated, but it is for the sake of the Gospel because when we go over the issues of the day, what we are really talking about is how sin continuously wounds men and women.  When discuss, because we are Spirit-filled Christ followers, our discussion always comes back to figuring out, in the power of God, how we help heal the wounded.  This too is something we do together.  We live into the calling God has placed on us.

          An issue pressing the world right now, shows this point.  I have been in a number of conversations, debates, about how a nation like America ought to respond to the attacks in Paris and to the crisis of thousands of displaced Syrians.  Some argue that sound foreign policy is to send those Syrians elsewhere.

We don’t even think about sound foreign policy.  We know that our security is in the Lord, not in our government.  We want those who hurt at our doors so we can love them and help them.  Refugees who cannot find a shore?  This is our moment.  To care for them is to live into our calling.

Also, this morning, we have seen where we go from here.  In Baptism, in new members sharing their stories, our fires as a relationship people called together are rekindled.  The newly baptized believer and the newly welcomed member sharing there are hearts as we open our hearts to them and to all who come – this is what we are about.  This is who we are.

Next is Advent, that season in which we remember the coming of Christ and anticipate His return and the final, complete establishment of His Kingdom when Heaven and Earth come together. 

I pray that you will dream dreams the Holy Spirit plants in your heart.  I pray each of us will see our individual relationships with God become deeper, more real, and richer in the season ahead.  I pray God will shape HillSong Church so that in this place His love rules, and people grow into a full understanding that we are His.

AMEN

Comforted and Strengthened (2 Thessalonians 2:1-17)

          I was around 30 or so and had been a senior pastor for just a few years.  One of the elderly women in our church died and I had preached her funeral.  Her family appreciated the way things went.  So they called me a few months later.  One of her distant relatives, someone who did not have a pastor, was in a coma.  They were considering taking him off life support but they wanted to talk to me first. 

Something occurred to me this week as I remember that time 15 years ago.  It did not occur to me then, but it struck me this past week.  The man was young – only 48.  I was not so dense at age 30 that I thought 48 was “old.”  I was not foolish to think, ‘OK, he lived a good life.’ But it didn’t register with me that 48 is young.  I am now 45 years old.  Forty-eight seems young now.  He was 48 and his wife had to make the agonizing decision to take him off life support and sit with him as he died.  She wanted a pastor present.  She hoped I could offer meaning and make sense of what was taking place. 

I don’t know if I was of any help to her.  She was not part of our church family, so I did not see her after I preached her husband’s funeral.  Often people will turn to pastors, even people who have never been in church, when questions of mortality and ultimate meaning arise and they have no resources to answer such questions. 

The two questions facing us are (1) what bad news or misfortune hits with such devastation that we find ourselves at such a loss and so disoriented or overwhelmed that it would indeed be a crisis?  What losses in life knock us flat on our backs?  Your answer will be different than the person a few rows behind or even the person sitting next to you.  Maybe some of us have been through such a devastating crisis are in the middle of one. 

Syrian refugees are in the midst of life-changing events and indeed a life and death struggle.  In our own community, families locked in poverty face agonizing decisions that could render them homeless and maybe even tear their families apart.  And even families who are in relatively safe communities and have financial means, are middle class or higher, face personal crises that potentially bring suffering and loss.  What is the danger you face or I face?  That is the first question.

The second is what resources do you or I have to stand as the looming shadow of the approaching threat grows and threatens to swallow us?  What do we have that enables us not only to survive the threat, but to thrive in the face of it?  Jesus did not just promise he would get us through, help us survive.  He offered more.  He offers abundant life.  When faced with the death of a loved one at too young an age or the myriad struggles that come with poverty or the trail of tears refugees must walk or some other crisis, what gets us through and helps us joyfully thrive even in dark times?

We approach 2 Thessalonians 2 through these questions because of the first two verses.  We beg you brothers and sisters … do not be quickly alarmed as if the day of the Lord has already come (paraphrase).  The Thessalonian Church members accepted that persecution would come.  They would suffer because they chose to follow Jesus.  That was the course they had chosen.  That was not their crisis.  The letter does not specifically identify the source of the persecution.  It could have come from many corners.  Whatever the source, there were enemies opposing the preaching of Jesus in Thessalonica. 

The crisis came in continued speculation and confusion about when the risen Jesus would return, bring history to an end, judge the word, and usher in the Kingdom of God.  Even though this question had been directly addressed in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 5, confusion and concern over it persisted.  In fact, the people were very alarmed.  Their faith was beginning to crack not because of persecution but because of doubt.  Did Jesus come and did they miss it? 

Our crisis is not theirs but in our church as in their church, doubt comes when we get blindsided by some major problem threatens the vibrant relationship we have with God, and robs us of the joy we have in Christ.  The promise to that ancient church remains for us preserved in this letter. 

We see the specific issue for the Thessalonians beginning in verse 3.  Before the Day of the Lord comes, there will be a rebellion led by the lawless one.  This lawless one is called the beast in the book of Revelation.  In 1^st and 2^nd John, the term used is antichrist.  That term, ‘antichrist,’ is only recorded in two books in the Bible – 1^st John and 2^nd John.  Lawless one, beast, and antichrist – do these terms refer to specific individuals?  Are they each ways of identifying the same individual?

James Efird who taught at Duke Divinity School points out that because Paul did not specifically identify this person it is futile to try to do so.[i]  Paul felt the lawless one would be active soon, within a decade of his writing.  And, the Roman Emperor Domitian would have fit the bill as his persecution of Christians in the last decade of the first century AD did make things hard for Christians.  Abraham Mallherbe believes Paul was not identifying a specific enemy of God but rather had in mind an end-times “personification of lawlessness, the ultimate representative of those in whom lawlessness comes to expression.”[ii]

We could fill in names.  Hitler was the antichrist, the lawless one.  Osama Bin Laden is who Paul meant.  Or maybe today, the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the one.  When he’s off the seen another enemy of humanity will come along.  The point is evil is in the world right now.

God has already won the final battle.  That happened when Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world and then rose from the grave.  Those two events are inseparable.  Taken together, we see what God has won – our freedom from death and sin.  There is no final battle coming. 

However, the news of the victory has not yet made it throughout the world.  So for the time being, we live as people who have the Holy Spirit, are saved, born again, and are called to be heralds announcing the life people can have in Christ.  We have this truth and the mission to which we are called in the midst of a world where there is pain and suffering.  Evil has been defeated but not yet sentenced to eternal death.  In this interim period between resurrection and second coming, we live in the tension of the eternal power of God and the present reality of evil, suffering, and death. 

The Lawless One of 2 Thessalonians 2 represents the reality that evil is in the world.  We have to live within that reality.  This chapter falls in with a style of writing called apocalyptic.  This style uses fantastic images as an artistic way of describing God’s activity within human history.  Many reader mistakenly see in apocalyptic writing a script or a forecast of the end times.  It doesn’t actually work that way.  The book of Daniel, Matthew 24 & 25, and the book of Revelation are examples of apocalyptic writings.  In each case, the thing to catch is the promise of God described in poetic images.

Again, Professor Efird on the lawless one in 2 Thessalonians: “given the symbolic nature of apocalyptic thinking, it is possible that Paul did not have anyone or anything in mind as this “man of lawlessness.”  It appears that he speaks again in traditional symbolic imagery to describe a scene he does not know how to depict with specifics.  Paul always realized, as some others have not, that the future belongs to God and will be worked out by God.”[iii]

The urging in 2 Thessalonians is that the church not be shaken by rumors or lies or threats.  Whomever or whatever power opposes God and injures God’s people will wilt before the force of Jesus.  Verse 8, “The Lord Jesus will destroy [the lawless one] with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming.”

Of course this promise raises a more immediate concern.  It is wonderful to think that one day Jesus will come and conquer evil and death will no longer threaten nor will anything else.  We can count on that.  But what about between then and now?  Remember, we began with two questions: (1) what crises threaten us?  And (2) what helps faces these threats?  So, we say, great!  One day Jesus will come and defeat evil.  But what about today?  How do we live under threats to world security and safety, the threat of disease and death, and the specter of destructive behaviors and relationships that fall apart and leave us defeated and heartbroken? 

I have not mentioned Satan, this morning.  Verse 9 says the lawless one and Satan are affiliated with each and they use “all power, signs, lying wonders, and every kind of wicked deception” in the destruction of the lives of men and women.  Satan’s works are made manifest in antichrists and lawless men and women.  We don’t see the devil, but forces of evil are real and active.  We see the results of their malevolence when we fall prey to temptation and step off the path of discipleship and onto the way that leads away from God.

This takes different forms in each person’s life.  Evil is extraordinarily individual.  What tempts you has no allure for me.  What leads me into sin wouldn’t be snare for you at all.  In the promises of this passage, what help do have that enables us to repel these threats and live an abundant life in Christ?  What assurance do we have for today?

In 2 Thessalonians 1:3-5, we see the potentially redemptive character of persecution and the concomitant suffering.  As we endure and keep our eyes on God, we receive his blessing and direct the attention of our persecutors to Him.  Paul prays for God’s grace for the church.  Today people in the church pray for each other and God answers with encouragement and transformation.  God’s Holy Spirit is with us.  It is God himself with us that gets us through our trials.  Through our suffering, God can actually work for good.  I don’t believe God causes suffering, but I do believe God works in it.

In 2 Thessalonians 2, that same Holy Spirit is said to sanctify us.  Just as the forces of evil conspire to tempt us into causing our ruin, the Holy Spirit God is at work in us, making more God-like.  Sanctification is a fancy word that means we become holy.  And as the closing verses the chapter reaffirm, this is not something we accomplish but a work God does in us.  We are told, “stand firm and hold fast to the tradition of faith,” but immediately after that instruction we see that our Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father both comfort and strengthen us (from 2:15-17).  The fullness of God – each person of the Trinity - stands by us with the Spirit makes us more like God and less prone to sin, and the Son and Father comfort us so that our suffering is muted and our blessing multiplied and strengthens so we can stay faithful when tempted and tested.

What temptation do you face or what trial are you suffering through at this moment in your life?  Whatever the answer, we have a promise.  God is with us in it.  With our focus on him, even trials will become the grounds on which our faith is honed and enlarged and we find ourselves in the joy of the Lord instead of the clutches of the enemy. 

May our Lord Jesus Christ … carry us into every good work and word.

AMEN

---

[i] J. Efird (2006), Left Behind: What the Bible Really Says about the End Times, Smith & Helwys (Macon, GA), p.51

[ii] A. Malherbe (2000), First and Second Thessaloians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Doubleday (New York), p.431-432.

[iii] Efird, p.51.

The Dragonslayer’s Son

The first portion of this story, written in italics, is from my memory.  The second half, written in normal script is a reflection on how my perception has shaped my life since then.

It is around 1978, maybe ’79.  My family lives in a small Suburb North of Detroit between 14 Mile Road and 15 Mile Roads.  My dad is in the yard gardening.  My younger brother and younger sister and I are in the yard playing.  It is early summer.

A guy in a black muscle car turns from the side street onto our street and guns his engine.  His radio is blaring ACDC or Kiss or some metal band like that.  As he zooms past our house, my Dad aggressively shouts “Slow down!”

And time slows … and slows  … and  …  almost stops.  The moment I frozen and I feel frozen, powerless to move a muscle.

          The guy flips Dad the bird. 

          “Do it again and I’ll break it off,” my Dad shouts.

          The ACDC guy in his muscle car slams on the breaks and jumps out and up and up.  I see his thick mop of dark hard, black t-shirt, sloped shoulders, barrel chest and large gut.  If this guy didn’t present as such a slacker, he could be a linebacker.  He’s got to be 6’2”, 250.  To my 9-year-old eyes, he looks like a bruiser, a real giant.

          And my Dad looks like a shrimp.  He’s 5’10”, 170lbs soaking wet.

          I look at the bruiser and at my Dad, and I am scared.  I think, ‘my Dad is going to get killed, right here, right now.’  I am shivering, trembling with fear.  A moment ago, I was carefree, playing with my brother in the driveway.  Now I am so scared.

          My Dad doesn’t miss a step.  He grabs a shovel and marches right up to ACDC guy.   Dad sticks his finger in the bruisers face.  I don’t hear the conversation.  I just hear a sound that is far more powerful and intimidating than this tough guy, this Gene Simmons wannabee.  It is the sound of my Dad’s raised voice.  That sound typically ends whatever naughty behavior I am into.  Now that sound is unleashed on this clown who races through residential neighborhoods.  Dad is animated, mad, and he has a shovel.  The bruiser’s slouching shoulders slouch a bit more as he tucks his tail between his legs, lowers his head, and drives away slowly.

I do not know the exact year of these events.  I do not have any way of verifying the factual accuracy.  What I am sharing, in narrative form, is my perception of what happen and the pictures painted by my memory are cloudy.  I am not affected by what actually happened.  It was about as insignificant as an event could be.  There were words exchanged and it was over.  I shaped by my perception of it all and how that perception was a part of a larger narrative I was writing, a narrative that produced the lens through which I viewed the world. 

How did that event affect me?  First, of the thousands or millions of experiences big or small that I have forgotten, this one I remember.  Why?  Why did this make such an impression?  I know exactly why.  I was scared out of my mind.  And my Dad wasn’t scared at all.

          I have not researched the conventions of grammar, but I don’t think the word ‘dad’ is to be capitalized.  It is a role, not a proper name.  But in my story, it must be capitalized.  If my story were written down on a page, the writing would be across a page with my father’s face filling the page.  He was over everything. 

          By this, I do not mean that he was tough or abusive or anything like that; in fact, it was the opposite.  Sure, my dad spanked, and until I was an adolescent, I was afraid when he did.  But far more often, Dad was a source of fun and love and safety.  For every spank there was 1000 tickled and not the tickle of the torture variety but of the fun variety.  My Dad laughed with his kids – a lot.  And we laughed with him.  I could go to sleep at night without fear because the dragonslayer was watching my house.

          Recently as I reflected on the incident with ACDC guy, what it meant to me became clearer.  Because Dad was fearless (in my eyes), as long as I was under his protection, I could be fearless.  My home was a place of safety not only for me, but sometimes for kids from homes less stable than mine.  I had friends who would come to our house because our house was the stable, safe place.  However, looking back now, I realize that all that time I was internalizing something, although I certainly was not aware of it then. 

It looked to me like the Dragonslayer was saying to the Dragon, “Get the hell out of my neighborhood and don’t come back.”  And the dragon sheepishly looked to the ground, kicked the dirt, and mumbled, “Yes sir.”  That’s how it looked to my 4^th grade eyes when Dad confronted ACDC guy.  That is how I understood what I was watching.

Deep within me, I fell into a dilemma.  I knew as a boy, I would grow into a man.  I had my model.  Until I entered adolescence, God lived in my home in the person of Bob Tennant.  Only as I entered manhood, did he begin shrinking.  There was a slow almost imperceptible change.  Dad became what he always was, just a man.  I began seeking God apart from my parents (both of whom represented God for me in my young years). 

However, as I think back to that day when I watched him intimidate the dragon, I realized I needed to someday become a man myself.  There would come a day when Dad was not around and I would have to be the one to face the dragon and slay the dragon.  I was scared, but being scared is not allowed because my Dad was never, ever scared, or so I thought, I can’t do that.  He was not scared, at all!  I am too scared.  I can’t do it.  Admitting my fear made me ashamed. 

Any time in my life I have felt fear that has transferred to self-loathing.  Indiana Jones is never scared.  Jason Bourne is never scared.  Captain America is never scared.  Dad is never scared.

And there was born in me, an evil loop. 

Devil: “A man does great things.  Rob, to be a man, you must do great things.”

Rob: “But, I can’t.  I am scared.”

Devil: “Your Dad is never, ever scared.”

Rob: “I know, but I am.  I do get scared.”

Devil: “Then, you’ll never be a man.”

          To be clear, my Dad never did this.  Dad never, ever said to me, “You’re not man enough.  You’re not tough enough.  You’ll never amount to anything.”  Dad did the opposite.  Dad was the ultimate encourager.  Dad always said to me, “You can do it, Rob.”  I now am a leader in an institution (a pastor of church) that requires me to weekly do what many people fear greatly, speak in public (the weekly sermon).  I am convinced that I am able to do this with confidence because all my life I have heard from both parents, “You can do it.”  Both of my parents built me up and have supported me all the way.  The imagined conversation above between Satan and me, and deep in my soul more real than imaginary, did not come from my Dad.  He never made me feel ashamed of being afraid.  He never said, “What are you, a baby?”  I promise that I am not just denying his posture.  My Dad was not perfect at all.  He made mistakes.  Shaming his kids was not one of them.  My brother and sister would have to share their own perception, but I do not ever remember my Dad shaming me or criticizing me for being afraid.  I remember my parents heaping encouragement on me.  This shame based in fear came from my own perception of things. 

          A turning point happened years later.  We had moved to Virginia and I was playing high school football.  I was in great shape.  My younger brother and my Dad and I would wrestle in our living room. I was physically strong enough to pin both my brother and my dad at the same time.  My independence was bursting forth.  Yet, psychologically, my Dad was still the man in that house, I still the boy. 

Yes, I was a bigger and stronger boy, but I still grappled with the same dilemma. 

                   Devil:  “Oh, you’re bigger and stronger now.  But still afraid.”

Rob:  “Yes.  The other wide receivers are faster and taller, and they’ve played more years of football than me.”

Devil: “Your Dad was never bothered by being smaller.  He was army infantry.  He was a war vet.  He was a hero.  You’ll never be one.”

Rob:  “Hey!  I am on the football team.  Most guys my age aren’t even on the team.”

Devil:  “Yeah, but you’re not a starter and you never will be.  You’ll never be the man your Dad is.”

Rob: “Wait a minute!  My Dad didn’t play football.  He was never really into sports much.  I am an athlete.”

Devil: “Tell yourself that when you get flattened in practice tomorrow.  You’ll always be a junior varsity benchwarmer and everyone knows it.”

Rob: “Yeah.  I guess that’s right.”

          The conversation was different.  I had things I could say back to devil.  I could put football team member on my “man resume.”  Later on I went through army infantry training and I put that on the “man resume” I was keeping this resume in my head.  I never needed to write it down because I went over it almost daily. 

          I remember myself as a junior, about 5’ 9”, 170 lbs.  I was playing free safety.  The fullback had the ball and a full head of steam.  He was 6’ 3”, 240 lbs. and he was coming.  He got right in front of him and stuck my shoulder in his sternum, my facemask on the ball.  A second and 4 yards down field later, he was down.  I had tackled him!  I felt like I had been run over by a truck, but I tackled him.  “Good job, Tennant!” I heard the coach say.  Every moment like that was me slaying that dragon, trying to fill my role as the dragonslayer’s son.

          I am lousy long distance runner.  My body hates that constant pounding on the pavement.  I have never felt that “runner’s high.”  However, in army basic training, I did complete the 5-mile run at the end of boot camp.  A marathoner would call that a short day, but for me, I was once again reaching for the goal, trying to live up to being the dragonslayer’s son.

          Now, I am a 44-year-old man, the father of kids aged 12, 7, and 5.  I see how my children look at me, like a dragonslayer.  I don’t see any point in trying to convince them that they don’t have to live up to a role.  They will be controlled by their perceptions just as I was.  I cannot control how they perceive things any more than my dad could control my perceptions.  I need to do for them what Dad did for me.  I need to be available through everything, all the good and the bad.  I need to celebrate as our relationship changes through the years.  My dad definitely did that. 

I told him I’d be writing this.  He recalled my high school years.  He recalled coming to the realization that he could not control me physically anymore.  From about 16 on, I was the strongest one in the house.  Yet, something beautiful began to happen as the relationship changed.  As I became an adult, my parents transitioned into the role of good friends.  They are still parents to me, but now, they are people I simply enjoy being with.  I know I’ll be encouraged and supported.  I know they will help me however I need.  I know they will love my kids.  They are human-sized.  And, as I am a pastor, they sometimes ask me questions about God. 

I still struggle with feeling shame when I am scared.  How can a real man shake with fear?  Clint Eastwood never would!  I still hear those voices.  About two years ago, there were a series of break-ins in our neighborhood.  For many nights, I lay awake wondering how I would response if an intruder broke in.  Would I stay composed?  Would I be quick enough to save my kids and wife?  Would fear make me completely ineffective?  I still hear the questions in my head and sometimes cannot sleep because of them.

Another question is even more important.  Would I love the invader with the love of Christ?  The tough guy action hero would never ponder this, but I know someone who might: my dad.  As much as I built him up to be some kind of superman when I was a kid, I am so pleased to know as a man that he asks this question.  He is just like me, a follower of Jesus trying to live his life as Jesus would live it.  In that sense, I still want to be like him.  Copying him on these lines, trying life a with-God life, is a good thing. 

The lingering fears about a failure of manhood aside, I am in a healthier place now, a place that includes me being gentler with myself.  I will never run a marathon or climb Mount Everest and that is OK.  I will probably never jump out of an airplane or go scuba diving, and that is OK.  The measure of my manhood from Heaven’s perspective is this: am I doing my best?  Am I loving as Jesus loves? 

The dragon to be slayed in my life is the dragon of self-loathing, self-loathing that starts with fear.  That dragon is not yet dead, but definitely is mortally wounded.  I need to stay turned toward God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  I need to give myself grace.  And, I need to give loads and loads of grace to the most important people in my life.  There is no room for self-loathing in the giving of grace.  And, in the midst of self-loathing, I don’t think it is possible to give grace.  Only Jesus at work in me can kill the dragon.  He, not my dad or any man is the true dragonslayer.  I need him at work in me and I need to practice being his child by giving grace in droves, starting with those closest to me including myself.