Fall on Your Knees (Mal. 3:7; Lk. 12:35-36)

Our youth pastor Nathan gave the sermon for the first Sunday of Advent.  If you'd like a recording of his sermon, contact our church office or email me.

Here are my thoughts on the text of Nathan's sermon.

     Writer Philip Yancey says he has met the most fulfilled, godly people among the poorest of the poor in prison cells, leper colonies, and inner city slums.  In these dark places, where daily life is survival, and just barely, he has encountered truly holy people who are indeed, very close to God. 

Yancey quotes author John Cheever who said, “The main emotion of the adult American who has all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.”[i] I don’t know how Cheever knows that.  I do, though, find the quote compelling. 

Is it true? 

You can test it yourself, this season, leading to Christmas.  As you shop for that new game system or that new I-phone or some other gift that will bring great happiness when pulled from under the tree and unwrapped, ask yourself, is this were happiness and joy are found?  The main emotion of the one who has everything is disappointment.

          I don’t know if that is true.  I know the world is wounded.  I know there is disappointment aplenty in our community.  There is as much disappointment as there is affluence.

          There is also emptiness. 

          My friend wrote a book which he sent to several of us to review.  In his writing, he identifies a worldview that has no place for God and that accepts that humanity has evolved from simpler life forms.  Millions of years ago, simple chemical interactions came together to produce life – single-celled organisms.  Over the eons, these beings evolved to more and more complex organisms up to the present day.  And today we have us, beings with self-awareness. 

          When we die, our bodies will decompose and eventually go back to the dirt from which we came.  My friend, Steve Davis, a pastor whose church is near Fort Bragg, calls us “dirt in transition.”[ii]  This is the worldview he’s describing.

He does not believe that.  He actually believes we are created beings.  Even if evolution is the process, it is a process God created and each one of us is made in God’s image. 

          But many people are materialists.  They cannot by way of empirical observation prove God’s existence, so they assume there is no God.  They not only accept that humans are “dirt in transition,” they are sure of it. 

In terms of meaning, this worldview comes up empty.  Our lives no meaning beyond what we come up with ourselves.  If the only meaning we have is what we or other humans create, it is totally arbitrary.  No matter what we desire, we are in fact just complex chemical compositions fated to die.

          So is that the human condition?  Philip Yancey cites Loren Eiseley a materialist who makes art out science.  Eiseley thinks that when we long for meaning, the idea that there is something more than the world we see, we are like frogs croaking through the night.  “We’re here.  We’re here.  We’re here.”[iii]  And we hope against reality that something out there notices. 

          This bleakness is in the Bible.  The book of Ecclesiastes opens by saying, “Vanities of vanities.  All is vanity” (1:2).  So for Christmas, buy the I-phone for your girlfriend.  Maybe she’ll be happy, at least until the next one comes out.   Then, well, buy the next thing.

          This disappointment and meaninglessness leads to all manners of catastrophe.  On a small scale, people who cannot afford expensive things are envious and disheartened because they cannot have what others have.  Those who can afford those things are disheartened and disillusioned because the expensive toys don’t bring any real happiness.  The longed-for fulfillment never comes.

          On a larger scale, the emptiness leads us collectively to create myths.  Some myths are couched in religious terms that lead us to accept lies or to join movements that wreak havoc, like terrorist groups.  Other myths wear the colors of patriotism.  In our country that is blended with the myth of the middle class American life.  That is where happiness lies.

          Well, no, not really.  This is not where happiness lies! But our advertisers and our politicians have become wealthy selling this myth.  We get convinced and we buy it all time and in bulk around Christmas time.   In longing for something more, meaninglessness and emptiness and disappointment lead women and men to, create the means of their own destruction. 

          What if the incarnation is God’s response to our desperate longing for something more? 

Incarnation is the word we use to explain God becoming human.  In the birth of Jesus, God entered the world in a new way.  God had always been and always is present.  Nothing is hidden from God. There is never a time when you or I are alone, unseen.  God always is with us and sees us.

          In the incarnation, God is present in a unique way.  God took on human flesh as a complete human being with DNA, with a growth process from fetus to new born, from toddler to adolescent to adult.  Jesus was as human as you or I are human. 

          What I am asking us to consider is this.  What if God doing that – becoming human – was God’s way of responding to our condition, a depression of utter meaninglessness?  What if God came in Jesus in order to show us who we are and who we can be? 

          This assumes that God responds to human beings.  I believe the Bible shows over and over that God is a responsive God.  And I think God’s ultimate response to human pain is God’s coming as Jesus.  If Jesus is God’s embodied response, God’s love embodied, then we are saying God does respond to us. 

          So what then? 

We are empty when we try to find meaning for ourselves.  God responds to impoverished souls by becoming one of us in order to show us love, to die for our sins, to overcome death in resurrection, and then to invite us to faith and life and relationship as we find ourselves in Jesus.  We have the condition and God’s response. 

What of it? 

          How do we respond to God’s action in Jesus Christ?  Chew on this.  We’re ontologically bankrupt.  We have nothing that brings significance.  Then God comes and fills us with joy and meaning and purpose.  What do we do? 

          The great hymn “O Holy Night” gives part of the answer.  In that hymn, we sing these words.

                   A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.

                   For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Yes, in the coming Christ, all Heaven had broken loose.  Meaning?  Significance?  Purpose?  We clumps of dirt in transition are invited into an eternal relationship of love with the holy God through the action of God-in-the-flesh!  What do we do?  The song gives the answer.

                   Fall on our knees.  O Hear the angel voices.

                   O night divine.  O night when Christ was born

          We don’t kneel very much in our worship services.  Sometimes individuals will come during prayer time after the sermon, kneel at the steps and either bow their heads or look to the cross.  In these profound moments, the kneeling is a beautiful gesture done to show that the one praying knows who God is.  That’s what we say in kneeling.  I know who God is.  And I know it is not me.

          Through the mouth of the prophet, God said the following (Isaiah 45):

          ²² Turn to me and be saved,
    all the ends of the earth!
    For I am God, and there is no other.
²³ By myself I have sworn,
    from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness
    a word that shall not return:
“To me every knee shall bow,
    every tongue shall swear.”

²⁴ Only in the Lord, it shall be said of me,
    are righteousness and strength;
all who were incensed against him
    shall come to him and be ashamed.

          Every knee shall bow.  I wonder if this word from Isaiah was on Peter’s mind the first time he met Jesus and saw a miracle.  He threw himself on the ground at Jesus’ feet in worship and in humiliation (Luke 5:7-9). 

I wonder if Paul had this Isaiah passage before him when he wrote in Romans 14:11 that every knee shall bow to the Lord. 

We find a similar sentiment in Philippians 2.  There, Paul is quoting what most scholars believe was an extremely early hymn, possibly sung within just a just few years of the resurrection.  The gospels weren’t written until probably the 60’s or later.  First Thessalonians was the earliest of Paul’s letters.  The hymn he quotes in Philippians 2 might be the earliest actual written Christian work.  In it is the declaration that upon seeing Jesus in glory, everyone will have no choice but to bow in reverence.  This will be an act of humiliation, not an act of faith.  Every knee shall bow.

What I am suggesting is that now, when our response to God is a faith response, not a response that comes after judgment, we choose to kneel.  There is precedent for making this choice.

Throughout the book Revelation there is kneeling.  First, the author, John of Patmos, falls at Jesus’ feet (ch. 1). Then the elders who spend their time in Heaven on thrones, exalted, threw themselves down before Him (ch. 4, 11).   The otherworldly “living creatures” we meet in the vision do the same (ch. 5).  These are instances of people as well as divine beings choosing to kneel and worship.

We find ourselves in a time when we can choose.  Today, God does not force us to kneel, to worship, to give homage.  God helps.  The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins.  This means, the Holy Spirit shows us the extent to which our sins destroy our lives and the lives of those we love.  The Holy Spirit pricks our consciences, awakens our minds, appeals to our hearts, and opens our eyes.  But God does not force us to worship.  It is our choice and it is one I urge us to consider. 

The prophet Malachi offers a perfect word for us as we live in the days leading up to Christmas.  In Malachi, God says, “Return to me, and I will return to you” (3:7).  Then Malachi writes that the Lord took notice of those who revered Him and said, “They shall be my special possession on the day when I act” (3:17). 

When we kneel before Jesus Christ, we are saying, we are not God.  He is.  He is the source of hope because he brings forgiveness of sin, healing of wounds, restoration of hearts, and an invitation to life.  He gives us meaning when he shows us what love is and fills us with this love and nudges us to share it.  Also, in humility and with great compassion, we invites others to come to Him. 

We are not the source of own meaning.  We are not responsible for filling our own emptiness.  He accomplishes all of this in us when we look to the Lord and when we live in love. 

It starts when we follow the song’s prompt and fall on our knees.  No longer are we consumed with ourselves.  We die to self and find ourselves born again, made new, called into resurrection where our bodies are no longer clumps of dirt, but incorruptible, made of the stuff of Heaven. 

What is Christmas going to be for you this year?  Who can say?  Not me. 

But, here is what I can say.  Of all the things that fill the season, the shopping, the TV specials, the office and school Christmas parties, the decorating, and the other traditions, Christmas is a time of worship.  As you read this, say this out loud, over and over, until it rings in your heart.  Christmas is a time of worship.

          Look at your nativity set.  The lowly shepherds and the gathered magi together kneel before the baby Jesus.  As we worship this Christmas season, may we worship while kneeling before the glorified, risen Lord.  May we discover the joy and happiness that can only be found there. 

AMEN

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[i] P. Yancey (2014). Vanishing Grace (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI), p.208.

[ii] S. Davis (2015).  Faith in Your Handwriting (self published, on Amazon Kindle reader).

[iii] Yancey, p.137.

Christmas Salvation

December 24, 2014 – Christmas Eve Worship

          When Jesus was born, God entered humanity.  The God of unmeasurable greatness, of knowledge so vast we cannot comprehend it, reduced God’s own self to a newborn baby.  The theological word for this is incarnation.  The most important moments in salvation history are the crucifixion of Jesus and then his resurrection.  Neither matter unless the incarnation happens. 

          Pastor Jenny Warner of Oregon feels strongly about the importance of incarnation prior to crucifixion and resurrection.  I had not really thought about the sequence or the idea of distinguishing among these theological treasures, but her words make it clear why thinking first on incarnation can be quite powerful.  She writes:

Every year of my life, the sentiment goes stronger, the belief grasps tighter, that it is the incarnation that saves me, that incarnation is the germinating seed containing the healing of the world, that incarnation may be Christianity’s best hope for a relevant future. Easter is not possible without Christmas. In fact, Easter may be just one more manifestation of the incarnation.

Flesh infused with God. God encountering flesh. Holiness embedding itself into a human life and revealing itself with compassion, healing, truth-telling and relentless embrace. I want that.

Give me incarnation before you give me resurrection. The end of my life may be a long way off, but today my life feels like a Bethlehem barn. Hay is scattered everywhere. Children must be fed and nurtured. The list of things to do is longer than the hours in my day. There is no time for reflection. I need to know that mystery resides in the most mundane and profane realities of my life.[i]

          Does life ever feel like a “Bethlehem barn?”  It’s noisy.  The other day, Candy decided to have some of M__ and H__’s good friends over for decorating Christmas cookies.  It was Candy and 8 children, 7 of them elementary school-aged.  I__r, the 8^th, was her helper.  She said the two young boys in the crowd were a little jumpy.  Noise.  Cookie decorations everywhere.  Eight kids bouncing off the walls because school is out and Christmas is almost here.

          Does life ever feel like a “Bethlehem barn?”  Some are spending Christmas far from family.  Their kids are grown and it was too expensive to fly home this year.  Every TV show has teary-eyed family reunions with heartwarming holiday music on.  The list of who to shop for is lengthy.  And the only emotions that won’t go away are disappointment and sadness.  Christmas isn’t going to be quite what the Hallmark special makes it out to be.

          I imagine Joseph and Mary had disappointment.  After the trauma of birth without midwife or any help, they were out in the cold.  No one in their family came.  Except for Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, no one in their family approved.  That noisy, stinky barn was the cradle of new life, the Son of God.  But sadness crept from the dark corners.

          The Bethlehem barn is not an easy place.  Think of actual Bethlehem today and the Middle East in general.  A few generations ago there were significant communities of Middle Eastern Christians – Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis.  Many have died off in the unending wars of religion and territory.  Many Syrian Christ followers this year are spending their fourth Christmas in the Bethlehem barn – refugee camps. 

          Pastor Warner knows salvation is in the cross and resurrection, but she also know it is not only there.  And sometimes those events seem so Godly, so out of reach and she needs something that feels real.

Today life feels like a Bethlehem barn. Hay is scattered everywhere. Children must be fed and nurtured. The list of things to do is longer than the hours in my day. There is no time for reflection. We need to know that mystery resides in the most mundane and profane realities of life.

          We need the salvation we have in the living Christ and in the life Jesus led.  It began at his birth.  It began before his birth.

          Isaiah 62 is originally a prophetic poem about God’s salvation of the city of Jerusalem.  Jerusalem in both testaments represents that place where God is at home.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus says true worship is not place-dependent but can happen anywhere people worship God “in spirit and in truth” (ch. 4).  The New Testament and the church that grows out of it is a ‘sending out’ church.  We are to spread out over the world proclaiming salvation in Jesus.

          Still we have much to learn of God from the words about Jerusalem and in the end, we who have “gone out to tell” will be gathered to God, to God’s Holy City.  We will be called home to rejoice in eternal life lived in God’s presence. 

          Before that eternal life, we live in this one.  God stepped into humanity the way we all do, as a baby.  And on the occasion that we remember his birth, the lectionary organizers have us read Isaiah’s words.  “See, your salvation comes; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him” (v.11). 

          How does it all tie together?  Why do present day scholars read a 5^th century BC prophet who imagines a new Jerusalem and connect his promises to the birth of Jesus?  Why does an Oregon pastor sometimes feel more hope filled by a powerless newborn than a courageous savior who embraces the cross?  She still knows the cross and resurrection are the key events.  But, for this night, she actually focus on the salvation we have in Jesus’ birth and life.

          Remember, Jerusalem – the city of Shalom – that is where God is at home.  If people want to be at home with God they need to be there.  If one is not at home with God, that one is truly lost.  Christmas like no other time can magnify an individual’s feeling of being abandoned, lost, alone, disappointed.  If our hurts are blown up and made even bigger than they seem around Christmas it would appear that in such a state of despair we are farther from God than ever.

          Ah, but then, don’t we see the genius of the incarnation.  People who feel like their lives are a mess are the very people who can most easily identify with Mary and Joseph at their lowest moments.  When they were ready to quit and the journey to Bethlehem seemed too much, Mary and Joseph epitomized human frailty.  A person alone, sobbing in grief on Christmas Eve epitomizes human frailty.  And that is where God appears.  

          The baby in the manger is God who can be touched.  Jerusalem is the Holy City that is where God is at home and to be at peace with God we have to get there.  But most people can never get there.  The incarnation, Jesus in the manger, is God’s recognition that we cannot, try as we might, get there.  The only way we can live in peace with God is if God will meet us in our own Bethlehem barn.  The birth of Jesus is God’s statement that God is willing to do just that. 

          We have role in the story and that role is to recognize our own brokenness and from that place of brokenness to reach out to God.  “Upon your walls, O Jerusalem” says Isaiah 62:6.”  “Upon your walls, I have posted sentinels.  All day and all night they shall never be silent.  You who remind the Lord, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it renowned throughout the earth” (v.6-7).  That’s right.  Our job is to pester God! 

          Remind the Lord?  Give him no rest?  That is what it says.  So, let this baby born Bethlehem remind us that God loves us so much God made God’s own self accessible.  The holy God of the universe reduced himself so that humans could not just approach but embrace, eat with, laugh with, and cry on his shoulder. 

          Now, we get blinded by our pain, or the business and stress of life becomes all we see, or the bad things that go on like police officers being killed, like wars, and numerous other problems become obstacles – all of it obstructs our view of God.  We forget about God to the point that we think God is gone and we’re on our own.  God isn’t gone.  But He’s out of our view.  And we aren’t living in Jerusalem any more, in that place of being at peace in God’s presence. 

It is then that we “remind” God of who He is – our Savior.  In this reminder, we also reiterate what God does – saves us from lives of meaninglessness and pain.  He gives us abundant life.  Isaiah tells the sentinels to give God no rest, but to continue to pray day and night.  Our job, in the depths of our depression, is to pray day and night, reaching out to God constantly until we have received His blessing.

We also do this on behalf of others.  A part of our spreading out as New Testament people is we look around and see who is hurting.  We reach to them with whatever help is needed – comfort, friendship, hospitality, etc.  At the same time, we reach to God on their behalf.  In their pain, they cannot see that God is as easily touched as a new born baby’s cheek is stroked.  We reach to God for them that He might reveal himself to them that they would see His salvation.

In here excellent message this past Sunday, Heather made this point.  She said even though Christmas falls at the end of the calendar year, it is the beginning of the lectionary year.  Christmas is the beginning of the story.

At the cross, Jesus pays the ultimate price for sin.  That is a dramatic, one-time event.  That is the story for the ages.  Christmas is the opening chapter in that story.  Our Christmas salvation is the arrival of God in a way that we can see every day.  It is the promise that God is not just saving for Heaven after we’ve trudged through the miseries of earthly life.  God is trudging through the miseries with us. 

God helps us host the 7 elementary school and we need that help when we do that having just gotten over a week of sickness.  God helps those Syrian believer find joy even if their Christmas is in a refugee camp.  Because He is with them, it can still be a celebration.  God helps the lonely person for whom Christmas seems terrifying.  It can have happiness too, because God brings that.  God is in everything with us.  God is in the Bethlehem barn and thus the Bethlehem barn becomes that place where God is at home and one can have peace with Him. 

Wherever we are, we find that we can have “Immanuel,” God with us.  That is our Christmas salvation.

AMEN

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[i] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jennywarner/2012/12/why-an-incarnation/

The Heavenly Witnesses (Psalm 96)

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Christmas Eve Worship

            I am thinking of characters in this story – the story of Jesus’ birth.  These are major characters, extremely important in this.  We don’t know how many there, just that there are many.  They are all over the place, very active in the story. 

I keep saying story, but that does not mean fiction.  This is a story that is more fantastic than fantasy, and as real as you and I are real.  This happened, but the power of it is that is continue to live and generate new life in you and me as we enter the story.  These characters are not the main ones, but they are essential.

Popular myth tells a variety of unsupported, unbiblical ideas about them.  Christians often buy into these myths and express numerous unfounded doctrines.  Movies cash in.  A TV show was based on their visit to unsuspecting humans and their divine touch.  I am talking about angels.

            What are angels?  The Bible does not set down a systematic definition of angels.  ‘Angelology’ is legitimate subset of theology, but like many subsets, much of the thought is educated guess because the Bible’s goal is to tell God’s story.  Angels are only included in the way they help us understand God.  In doing that, they are very important.  But, in an of themselves, we can’t say much.  We cannot say more than the Bible says.  We won’t go into discussion of spiritual warfare.  I offer no speculation on guardian angels.  I want to look at that night and the days leading up to it. 

            The word angel comes from a Greek word that means ‘messenger.’  The word was used for humans who carried messages, but it had a special application for divine couriers who broughtthe thoughts of the gods to humans.  The New Testament writers took the Greek concepts to communicate in writing the revealed truth about God.  The divine messenger had to work overtime when God’s son came.

            Especially busy was the angel Gabriel.  He is named as the angel who carried God’s word to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist and of course to Mary, the mother of Jesus.  Gabriel made individual appearances to both.  An angel also spoke to Joseph, first to announce Mary’s pregnancy, and second to guide Joseph, Mary, and Jesus to Egypt to avoid Herod’s murderous plots.  That angel was not named.  Nor was the angel who first appeared to the shepherds to announce Jesus ‘birth.  It may have been Gabriel or another.  The story moves along on the basis of God’s communiques.  Angels deliver those messages.

            “Do not be afraid Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard.  Your wife will bear a son and you will name him John.  You will have joy and gladness and many will rejoice at his birth.”[i]

            “Do not be afraid Mary, for you have found favor with God.  And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.  He will be great and will be call the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.  He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end.”[ii]

            “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born this day in the City of David a savior, who is Christ, the Lord.  This will be a sign for you; you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”[iii]

            Do you hear the echo in the angels’ words?  The Heavenly witnesses bring to life the song from the Psalms.  We just heard a sample of the eternal praise from Psalm 96.

            “Sing a new song.” 

            “Everyone on earth, sing praises to the Lord” (96:1b-c).

            “Tell every nation on earth. ‘the Lord is wonderful and does marvelous things’”(v.3).

“Tell everyone of every nation, ‘Praise the glorious power of the Lord’” (v.7).

            “Everyone on earth, now tremble and worship the Lord” (v.9).

“Announce [the good news] to the nations, ‘The Lord is King’” (v.10).

 And v. 11, “Tell the heavens and the earth to be glad and celebrate.”

            Churches everywhere embody the Psalm as we add our voices to the Angelsong.  Prompted by the Holy Spirit, we understand a little bit how big this is.  The birth of Jesus is the beginning of the climax of the story of God’s salvation for the world.

            Think about who the angels told: Zechariah, an aged priest who with his post-menopausal wife was childless.  He was fading from the scene and of no importance.  Even less significant than him was Mary, a Jewish peasant.  Her gender and her station in life slotted pretty far down on the social ladder.  But she was not as low those who worked with the sheep.  As important as these animals were in the sacrificial system of worship the men who kept them were made unclean by the very necessary work they did.  They were not allowed into the inner parts of the temple.

            But God is restrained by temple or religious institution.  God is not obligated to appear to kings or emperors.  God sets the initiative.  In Jesus, God came as a common human.  In his perfect love and sinless holiness, Jesus cast a spotlight on the sinful condition of all of us – kings and beggars and everyone in between.  In his light, all are commoners.  That reality is seen throughout Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, and in his church whose first leaders were men whose hands smelled of fish.  These barely literate disciples established the body of Christ as they spread the Gospel that continues to spread today.

            What is the most important offering a witness gives?  His testimony!  The story resolves not because of the importance of the witness, important as he may be, but because of the truth.  Yes, the Heavenly witnesses gave their testimony to aging priests, anonymous maidens, and sleepy shepherds.  The true testimony of these witnesses from Heaven is that God has come for all people – for you and me.

            The angels don’t really care if they hang from Christmas trees or decorate red and green sweaters.  They came to announce God’s actions.  When we listen to them and then give our hearts to God by receiving Jesus, the angels rejoice.  There is a heavenly party every time someone becomes of a follower of Jesus.  The witnesses celebrate that their testimony has ignited true faith. 

            “Angels we have heard on high” – yes they want to be heard, and they want us to sing with them.

            “Silent night, holy night, darkness flies; all is light. Shepherds hear the angels sing: Alleluia – hail the king!”

            Alleluia.  Jesus Christ is Savior and Lord and King. 

AMEN

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[i] Luke 1:13-14.

[ii] Luke 1:30-33

[iii] Luke 2:10-12

God in the Neighborhood

This is the way Numbers 35:34 is rendered in the New Revised Standard Version:

“You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I also dwell; for I the Lord dwell among the Israelites.”

Do not defile this land God has given you, Israel.  God is making His home with you.  Act as if God is present even when you don’t see Him, because God is always with you.

I like the way the verse is rendered in The Message:

“Don’t desecrate the land in which you live. I live here, too—I, God, live in the same neighborhood with the People of Israel.”

The incarnation is similarly described in The Message rendering of John 1:14. 

“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”

We Christians, we humans, must always live as if God is watching us.  No, Bette Midler had it wrong.  God is not watching “from a distance.”  We live as if God is with us.  God lives in the neighborhood.

Is there an environment where a human being is more in his element, more natural and less affected than in the neighborhood?  That is where one’s norms are established.  Everything else in life is measured by the pace, volume, and sense of life as experienced in the neighborhood. 

If you neighborhood is in the city that never sleeps, in the middle of constant traffic and masses of humanity in constant motion, you would find the country arrestingly quiet. 

If you live in a small town where all the houses have huge yards and farms are seen beyond the town’s outskirts for miles and miles in every direction, you’d be appalled at the cramped quarters in an urban suburb, like Arlington, VA.  There, people pay top prices for .25 acre plots.  Half the money would get you 2.5 acres out in the country.  But the country folk find the city too crowded, too congested.  It’s too unlike their neighborhood.  The city people would find the country too quiet and a bit dull.  It’s not fun and hopping – like their neighborhood. 

In Israel, God made Himself at home among a particular people.  Whatever they imagined to be their neighborhood norms, God was at the center.  In Christ, God makes Himself at home among all peoples.  God settles right in the wide open spaces.  God is just as comfortable in the sensory-overloaded city. 

Do we live like God is the norm in our own neighborhoods?

I don’t think my neighborhood would feel comfortable with the thought of God being in the midst of everything.  Rarely do my neighbors and I talk about God.  Most know I am a pastor.  Out of respect, I try not to force religion onto people.  I find they will be more receptive conversation partners if they bring up spirituality or theology or evangelical Christianity. 

Usually when I bring it up, I feel a couple of things.  First there is the apology.  “I know, I know – I should go to church more often.”  I may not have said a word about church.  I may have tried to invite God into a conversation or make the conversation about God.  But quickly, my neighbor switches to a safer topic – church.  From there he acknowledges he “should go to church” the way people should brush their teeth or call their moms once in a while.

Another response is the buffet.  You believe what you want, and I’ll believe what I want.  In this posture, absolute truth is an unwelcome subject.  God is an option, not an actual, living, personal reality.  I could say what I felt like saying about God, but the response is always some form of “I am glad that works for you.”

A third reaction to me raising the notion of God is very similar to the first.  My conversation partner will refer to some church in town as “my church.”  I know that last weekend that person went to the beach, and the weekend before they were at the mountains.  Prior to that they referenced being in the grocery store when it was empty, 10AM on Sunday morning.  Knowing this person as I do, and knowing their Sunday habits, I wonder when they ever actually attend “their church.”  I am convinced they have attended once or twice and it becomes “their church” because when you’re talking to an overly zealous pastor or especially to preacher, you have to be able to reference “your church.”  Otherwise that preacher might not leave you alone.

The far worst response when I try to raise topics like faith or religion or Christianity or spirituality is the non-verbal wall.  The person’s face loses expression.  Nonverbal cues indicate that defenses are going up and a counteroffensive may be in the works.  The other seems bothered, even offended to the point of hostility, that I would dare raise the idea of God in a friendly conversation.  They will most likely shut down the conversation and things will not be friendly again until this encounter is completely over and we talk in a few weeks. 

All these responses – the apology, the buffet, the fake “my church,” and the nonverbal wall – make it clear that most people do not want God to be at home in our neighborhood.  But in the Pentateuch, in the book of Numbers, God is not asking to be invited.  God is not asking at all.  God is commanding.  “Do not desecrate the land.  I live in the neighborhood.”

Christians cannot control the neighborhoods in which we live.  But we can make decisions about how we live.  Maybe I’ll use another post to ponder ways around the apology, the buffet, the fake “my church,” and the nonverbal wall, although I will say right now I don’t have any secrets. 

In this post I simply suggest that the ways of God should be what is normal for a Christ-follower.  We know that in Christ, God moved permanently into the neighborhood.  Not only that, but God declared that the neighborhood belongs to Him.  We should acknowledge that, respect it, and live with our lives pointed toward Him.

This is not seen in how holy we act.  Prayer, Bible reading, and church participation are all important things, vital life practices.  But, our orientation toward God is seen when we treat our own families with love and grace.  Our God-lives speak when we are filled with joy.  Our witness is energized when everyone in the neighborhood knows we are people of love and they know our love is linked to our faith.  If we can establish that witness, it won’t mean all our neighbors feel at home with God.  But they will know that someone in their neighborhood has God in their home.  That is a start.

1 John 1:1-2:2

            I recall being a party to something very embarrassing.  It was several years ago, I was in another country, and another pastor from America was with me.  He and I got into a theological argument that was so heated we forgot the gracious hospitality of our hosts, we ignored the other people around us, and 1ooo’s of miles from the United States we verbally sparred over secondary issues.  My wife had to point out to me how foolish I was.  Here we were, in a third world country, doing God’s work, and he and I shamed ourselves by arguing over trivial matters.  I tell my kids to never say the word “stupid,” but in that moment, this brother-in-Christ, and I were both stupid.

            What’s worth an argument?  When Christians are together, doing God’s work in a context of poverty, is that the time to bicker over theology?

            The author of one of the commentaries I read on 1^st John told of a Christian religious society at one of the Ivy League schools that had just on standard for all participants.  All members had to affirm the ordination of women.[i]  That was the only core issue.  You could believe Jesus is currently on the moon inventing new kinds of cheese and sending it to Wisconsin, and you’d be OK as long as you agreed women could ordained to preach this milk curd gospel.  Ordination of women was the issue.

            The same author pointed out the standard for membership in an organization called The Evangelical Society.  That group required its members to sign a statement affirming the inerrancy of scripture.  Mormons have radically different beliefs about Jesus than do Protestants and Evangelicals, but they would have no problem signing the statement as it is worded.  It was more important to claim inerrancy than to clarify what was meant by it.

            I once had my own witness as a pastor assaulted because of my views on the creation of the earth.  Obviously I believe God is creator – I believe that absolutely, without equivocation.  I believe the way man has observed and described what God did within the limits of our scientific powers of observation is best described by the Big Bang theory.  Our world has evolved and continues to evolve.  Someone heard me say that and heard that I accept that the world is billions of years old, not 10,000 or so, and this person said that because of my failure to read Genesis literally, he had to reject what I had to say about Jesus.  If I didn’t hold his views on creation, then my statements about salvation, taken straight from the Gospels and Paul’s letters were immaterial.

            What’s the core issue for Christ followers?  What’s worth arguing?  When must we stand our ground?  Is it the ordination of women?  Is it our stance on a political issue like abortion or the death penalty?  Is it something with an evasive meaning like inerrancy?  A lot of people hold to the inerrancy of scripture, but they don’t hold the same definition of “inerrant,” or they aren’t the same scripture.  Is one’s position in the creationism-evolution debate the determining factor in whether one is a true Christ follower?

            In 1^st John, the core issue is clear – the one thing that cannot be compromised.  The opening to the letter makes the point.  “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of Life” (1:1).  Scientists operate in the realm of five senses – that which can be proven by empirical observation. The authors of 1^st John declare that all they propose is built upon what they saw, heard, and touched.  Their fellowship, their relationship with God, and their relationship with other people, including all who read their letter are based on God’s appearing.

            We must agree.  God became flesh and walked the earth in the form of a specific man in history – Jesus.  God is Jesus.  Usually, we say, “Jesus is God.”  Try is this way – God is Jesus.  The awkwardness draws our attention.  We can argue about ordination of women, form of baptism and whether re-baptism is OK; we can discuss these and 100 other issues.  We must agree that God appeared to humankind in Jesus.  God is Jesus.  Jesus is God.  On this we stand.  All who claim the name Christian disciple must hold that Jesus is God and that God appeared in Jesus.  He walked among us.  He died for the sins of the world.  To have life in his name, we must believe in Him and put our faith in Him. 

            If you aren’t sure about Jesus, we are glad you are here and we aren’t going to get in your face.  We won’t try to jam Jesus down your throat.  We love you because love is essential to Jesus.  It is has to be the rule in His church.  We cannot truly be His unless we love. 

To be a church member and a true Christian, the core issue is Jesus.  God came in the flesh in Jesus.  That issue was being debated in the churches who received the letter we call 1^st John.  And God died for us to cover our sins.  Sin also was an issue in the late first century continues to be an issue today.

First John was probably written in response to heresies unfolding in the churches that had been founded by the same people who wrote the Gospel of John, disciples that included the Apostle John and others.  The young churches under their leadership were infiltrated by people who denied that Jesus came in the flesh and people who said sin didn’t matter.  These deceivers claimed to be sinless.  That’s what they said, anyway. 

Or if they admitted their sins, they said because God is spirit, sins of the flesh don’t matter.  Jesus was a spirit – not a flesh and blood man, and so sins committed in the body are inconsequential.  Both claims are outright lies – the claim that I do not sin; and, the claim that I might sin, yes, but my sins are of no importance because only intangible, spiritual realities last.  These deceptions are contrary to the Gospel.  The writers of 1^st John started off by connected words of life and salvation to what the authors saw, heard, and touched – the physical reality of God in the flesh, Jesus. 

            Getting very personal, the author says in the beginning of chapter 2, “My dear ones, I write so that you will not sin.”  Obviously sin happens, and he’s already made that point.  He knows those in the church will mess up sometimes.  Sin is a part of human reality.  He’s rejected the opponents who claimed to be sinless.  “I write so that you will not sin,” – this means so that we do not make the mistake of claiming perfection. 

We make mistakes, which is why we need Jesus.  First John 2:2 says He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and for the sins of the world.  The death of this very real man, God in the flesh, covers all sin because sin needs to be covered.  As people of God, we have to take sin seriously and we have to acknowledge our absolute need for the forgiveness we have in Jesus.

            Once we receive that forgiveness, first John tells us to “walk in the light as he is in the light” (1:7).  In the light, all sin is acknowledged.  The ways of God are openly named and life is conformed to God’s standards and God’s expectations.  This is true of all our relationships.  In all our human interactions, we do things God’s way, the way of selfless, sacrificial love. 

            As we step into 1^st John, we see a progression for the life of one who follows Jesus.  First, the reality: the discipels have seen, touched, heard – God in the flesh, Jesus.  First John is based not on an indescribable mystery, but on his very real encounter with Jesus. 

Next, because we have met Jesus, for us in the form of the Holy Spirit, we identify falsehood, name it, and root it out.  The falsehoods 1^st John fought against was a denial of the incarnation and the lie that sin is not present or it is present but unimportant.  Naming the centrality of the life of and death and resurrection of Jesus, and declaring the presence of sin, we are then called to walk in the light because only in the light are we walking with Jesus.  Walking in the light means faith (believing the Biblical story about God), and obedience (submitting to God’s rule).  And God’s rule is love. 

            Where does it all lead?  Why was 1^st John written?  What’s the point?

            The best life a person can have is life in Jesus Christ.  Only in Him do we have truly blessed relationships with people and with God.  In friendships with Christians and nonChristians alike, we love best because God is at work in us and we are sensitive to and cooperative with His Holy Spirit.  And this best life, this life in Christ, reaches its peack when we share the story of salvation and the love of the Gospel. 

First John 1:4: “we are writing these things so that our joy may be made complete.”  For that first century community of committed Christ-followers, absolute fulfillment and happiness came in sharing the gospel with the church who would in turn share the Jesus story with the world.  Joy was present complete when the truth was believed and the sins forgiven and heresy demolished.  But joy was complete when the good news was told to the world.  Our joy is in our witness, our telling. 

As we go through six weeks in 1^st John, the authors’ joy will once again be increased.  Our little church will drink and be filled with the living word of God.  In Heaven somewhere, John rejoices.  We read this letter so we will grow in our knowledge of God.  In our reading our relationship with Him deepens.  In our sharing it deepens even more.

If you were here last week, you heard a new believer’s testimony read and you saw her proclaim new faith in Jesus by being baptized.  I had my own role in her story even though I was not here last week.  I wouldn’t say I “led her to the Lord.”  I think the Holy Spirit did that.  I don’t take any credit for ____’s salvation and I don’t give credit to any person.  Phil, Jonathan, Heather, and I – we are all grateful God allowed us a role in ____’s story.  We rejoice.

I want everyone here to experience that kind of rejoicing.  It comes when you are a witness and you honestly and fully tell of how you were saved by the love of Jesus.  You tell someone who doesn’t know Him.  And you pray for that person, and he or she considers the Gospel, and prompted by the Holy Spirit, becomes a Christ follower.  I want everyone here to know the thrill and joy of playing a part in another person’s salvation.   I think 1^st John shows what a joy that can be. 

So we end with invitation.  Maybe someone listening has not yet put his or her faith in Jesus Christ.  You are invited to come to Him today.

Maybe someone didn’t know that everything in faith, everything in life depends on God in the flesh, Jesus the Anointed.  Maybe someone thought he knew the Christian story but disregarded the seriousness of sin.  You are invited to pray a prayer of repentance today.

Maybe someone knows the story, believes it, repents of sin, but doesn’t share it.  We want your joy to be complete.  You are invited to pray and ask God to help you be a Gospel-sharer this week. 

Seekers, we invite you to pray to receive Jesus today. 

AMEN

As our musicians come, you are invited. 

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[i] Gary Burge, The NIV Application Commentary, p.60.