Where God Won’t Go (Jonah 1:17-2:11)

Sunday, November 6, 2016

            Is it odd that sometimes people turn to Jesus after they are incarcerated?  In a child’s way of thinking, people in jail are called ‘bad guys.’  Often these bad guys find Jesus in prison.

            Is it odd that Christianity is growing rapidly in places where faith is discouraged and violently persecuted, places like India, Iran, and China?  Christianity is exploding in those places.  In America, where we are free to go to church and literally have hundreds of choices, church attendance is in decline.  As our population grows, less and less people are go to church even though going to church couldn’t be easier.  In China, attending an unregistered church could get you fired or fined or even arrested, and people keep going.  New churches cannot begin fast enough.  What do we make of this?

            Is it strange that when life is running smoothly, our faith is relegated to a dusty corner?  This doesn’t always happen, but sometimes it does.  We find ourselves winning – whatever winning might mean in your life.  And faith isn’t needed.  But, then we lose – because sometimes we do.  In losing moments, pain-filled, then we desperately rush back to God. Why is this?

            Jonah chapter 2, verse 2.  He says, “I called to the Lord out of my distress.”  If you look at a Bible map of the Mediterranean Sea in the days of Jonah and you look all the way to the left, the far west.  There’s Tarshish.  After that it is the Strait Gibraltar and then the Atlantic Ocean which the ancients believed you’d fall off the edge of the earth.  You’d fall to the depths.  Jonah was safe and sound in Israel.  That’s where God called him.  Jonah didn’t need to call God from his distress.  God called him in his comfort.  All he needed to do was obey.

            Instead, he jumped on a ship going the opposite direction, Tarshish, the farthest point in the known world.  He was trying to get away from God all the while knowing one cannot get away from God.  When God whipped up a storm that rocked the ship and showed Jonah the score, he had himself thrown into the sea, into the depths.  Jonah, knew God would be present on the boat.  Jonah knew God would be waiting in Tarshish.  Yet, he tried to go to those places to hide from God. 

Jonah knew that God not would sink to the deep.  The depths of the sea is the one place God won’t go.  Yet when Jonah ended up there, where God was not, then he reached out to the Lord.  When all was lost, Jonah found himself praying.  When all was well, he ignored God.  From that place where God won’t go, he prayed. 

In the latter half of the verse, we read that Jonah was in the belly of Sheol.  Sheol is sometimes thought of as an Old Testament word for ‘Hell,’ but the Old Testament did not have categories of Heaven and Hell.  Those ideas came later, when the Greeks had heavy influence on Jewish thought during the New Testament period.  The Old Testament sense was focused on the living.  If one lived a good life and had children, when he died, would be buried and considered at rest.  He would live on in his descendants.  That’s why having children was so important and going childless such a tragedy.  One with no descendants was lost.

Sheol was a place of disembodied shades cut off from the living.  Former UNC religion Professor Jack Sasson writes, “We have imprecise and sometimes contradictory knowledge on exactly what the [ancient Jewish person] believed occurred after death.  … Israel’s poets generally locate this other world somewhere below terra firma or even below the oceans; occasionally they place it beyond God’s control and assign it to the dead.”[i]

We see an example of this thought in the Bible, in the great lament psalm, Psalm 88.  Beginning in verse 3,

For my soul is full of troubles,
    and my life draws near to Sheol.
⁴ I am counted among those who go down to the Pit;
    I am like those who have no help,
⁵ like those forsaken among the dead,
    like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
    for they are cut off from your hand.
⁶ You have put me in the depths of the Pit,
    in the regions dark and deep.
⁷ Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
    and you overwhelm me with all your waves.

            “Cut off;” the singer says.  This notion of complete separation colors Jonah’s prayer at the outset, and then, his lament intensifies with each new phrase.  In his song, in chapter 2, the Hebrew poet uses the technique of intensification.  From Sheol’s belly, he cries, “You cast me into the deep” (v.3a).  And it’s not just the deep, but the heart of the seas.  Waves and billows pass over Jonah.  The abyss engulfs him, kelp wraps around his head, and the bars of the netherworld imprison him. 

            The NRSV, the version I use most of time, translates verse 6 like this.  “I went down to the land, whose bars closed upon me forever.”  Sasson thinks it should read this way.  “I sink to the base of the mountains.  The netherworld, its bars about me are there forever.”  ‘Netherworld,’ is a better translation than ‘land.’ 

Here’s how Sasson describes the Hebrew concept of netherworld.  “The dead [in the netherworld] lead an eternal but dull existence, where the hurt is due to the unbridgeable separation from the loved one left on earth.  It is now recognized that [this is how] [ancient Jewish] poets [described] life apart from God.”[ii]  Nothing could be worse.  This is the end for the prophet who runs from God’s call. 

            What end lies before us?  Is life hard right now?  What poetic intensification would track your downward spiral?  I knew a guy who was complete broke was he got married.  He was also too young.  There was abuse, and then diagnosis of mental illness, and then divorce.  He wound up homeless.  I have, I am sad to say, seen it a couple of times.  Maybe you’ve seen it too.  How would the Hebrew poet use intensification as a technique in his verse to describe what you’ve seen?  Or what you yourself have experienced?

            In the New Testament, in parables, Jesus uses phrases like ‘weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth,’ and ‘outer darkness,’ and ‘unending fire.’  Some Christians take Jesus’ metaphors as if he were describing a literal place called Hell.  Jesus described the world the way ancient Jews described the world.  His metaphors made sense to his listeners.  He used these word pictures, so familiar to the people around him, as a way of depicting the absolute, ultimate horror the Hebrew poet could not abide – being cut off from God. 

To be where God won’t go; there is no worse fate.  That’s Sheol.  When we use the word ‘Hell’ to describe the lowest one could get, the worst pain, then we know Jonah’s feeling when he says he’s crying out from the belly of Sheol.

There, Jonah discovers what I pray my homeless friend and others I have known might discover.  God is there, even there.  Jonah 2:6 is one of those scripture passages demanding to be highlighted, underlined, and noted in the margin.  The Hebrew poet dramatically disrupts the intensification, with reversal! 

“I went down to the Netherworld,” Jonah moans.

“You brought me up from the pit,” he sings one stanza later. 

The ancient Jews uncompromisingly declared God’s sovereignty.  God is all-powerful, so, God can, when God so chooses, go where God won’t go.  Jonah’s praying from the belly of the whale, the belly of Sheol and yet he says, “My prayers came into your holy temple.” 

The Israelites believed that once David established Jerusalem and brought the Ark of the Covenant there and then Solomon built the temple, God lived there – in the temple.  Worshipping there, in the city of Zion, in the temple, was different that worshipping anywhere else.  God was there in a way that He was not in other places.  Yet Jonah, swimming in a fish’s gastric juices, deep in the ocean felt God’s presence and felt his own prayers rise all the way to the temple. 

In the New Testament epistle, Hebrews, chapter 4, verse 16, we are told we can approach God in the heavenly throne room.  “Let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and help in time of need.”  In Christ, no distance comes between us and our God.  Jonah did not know Christ, but he learned that his calamity, brought on by his own disobedience, did not separate him from God’s love because nothing can separate us from God’s love. 

I alluded to my friend whose life fell apart.  His story has the makings of a Hebrew lament poem or a country music song.  I mentioned that maybe you knew of people in similar despair, or, perhaps yourself are in such a state of loss, pain, and defeat.  We go through seasons in life where problems become so large, the problems are all we can see. Arrested in depression, we are incapable of seeing anything except evidence that all is lost.  In this condition, we miss the most obvious thing.  God, being God, can overcome all difficulties.  This is not just fluffy church talk.  I know people whose pain has landed them in deep ditches of despair.  I have seen God pull them out.

Earlier I used a word – sovereignty.  It is a theological term describing God’s unrivaled might.  God is all-powerful.  In the Jonah this aspect of God’s character is displayed in three ways; first, in God’s presence.  God is with Jonah on the boat.  God hears Jonah’s prayer from the fish’s belly.  When the sea creature vomits Jonah up on the shore, God is waiting for him there.

Last week when we prayed over backpacks to be sent to needy children in Appalachia, God was with as we prayed.  God went with me on the road as I drove those backpacks to a church in Apex, NC.  God was waiting for me there.  God will travel with the people of that church when they take those backpacks to a depressed coal mining town in Southwestern Pennsylvania.  God is already in that town, with each child who is waiting to receive a backpack.

I cannot explain the omnipresence of God except to say that you and I can never reach that place where God won’t go.  He is with us always.

A second way sovereignty is seen in Jonah is in God’s supernatural authority over nature.  The winds of the sea obey him when he needs a storm to get his prophet’s attention.  A fish works for him, swallowing that prophet so he won’t drown.  Later in the story, we’ll see a plant grow because God told it to, a worm eat the plant because God told it to, and then a hot desert wind scorch Jonah’s unshaded head because God told it to do so.

In addition to omnipresence and authority over creatures and the weather, a third way God’s sovereignty is on display in Jonah is God’s freedom.  God is free to save the Pagan sailors we meet in chapter 1, even though they do not know the Law.  God is free to give his obstinate prophet second chances, even though he ran away at first.  In chapter 3, God is free to spare the lives of evil kings when they repent.  We’ll get to that next week. 

            Omnipresence, authority over nature, and freedom all show God’s might and power and authority.  Thus Jonah ends his Psalm in chapter 2, “Deliverance belongs to the Lord” (2:9b).  It’s a great statement, but it’s not worth a bucket of doodle if it just serves as the climax of talk about Hebrew poets and Hebrew prophets.  A famous professor of preaching demanded that he students ask and answer, so what?  In Jonah, we see God’s sovereignty through the brilliant poetic techniques of intensification and reversal.  So what?

            Here’s what!  Verse 6 is the center of the Psalm.  In order for us to get to that critical center where everything turns around for Jonah, we have to catch the shift in the latter half of verse 2.  In the first stanza, Jonah says, “I called to the Lord out of my distress, and He answered me.”

            In the second stanza, the pronoun changes.  “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and You heard my voice.”  In Jonah chapter 2, we enter a prayer from a lost, hurting man that reach across the impossible distance from the depths of Sheol straight to the heart of God. 

            Jonah’s prayer becomes real when you and I shift pronouns in our own lives.  This prayer is the first step in reversing the course of a life hell bent on destruction.  When we move from descriptions of God to conversation with God, everything changes.  Theology, words and ideas about God, is important, very needed in the church’s expression of faith.  Theology matters and must be practiced.  But when we’re hurting, when we’re broken, theology doesn’t help much.  We need to move from theology to encounter.

            Jonah shows us that the encounter with God can happen anywhere.  Your encounter with God can happen anywhere because there is nowhere God won’t go.  God is here now.  We all need him.  And He wants us to turn to Him.

            As we sing a closing song, if you especially need God to reverse the trajectory of your story, come to Him.  Come this morning.  Come to the present God, the Almighty God, the God whose love is seen on the cross and in the Holy Spirit who hovers over us in this very moment.  We’re going to sing.  If you need the life change that only God can give, come to Him.  He wants you to.  He wants your heart.  Let the pronoun change so that you are focused on God directly.  Come and give yourself to God right now. 

AMEN

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[i] J. Sasson (1990), The Anchor Bible: Jonah, Doubleday (New York), p. 171.

[ii] Ibid, p.188.

The Praying Life

Sunday, February 8, 2015

            My grandmother is 92.  No one in our family has lived to that age.  When she was 86, she got really sick.  I began preparing for her death.  Most people don’t live into their 90’s.  It is happening more and more, but it is not a tragedy when someone over 85 dies.  I want to be careful with this.  I am not casual about anyone’s death.  We read in 1^st Corinthians 15 that death is the enemy.  It is serious and whenever my grandmother does die whether is this year or when she is 100, we will grieve.  But it is not a tragedy.  It is a full life, lived well. 

            And that would have been true had she died a few years ago when she was sick at 86.  Even so, we prayed for her recovery.  Relative in 8 different states were praying.  In our family, Meme is a revered, saintly figure.  And she recovered. 

            Did she get well because we prayed so hard.  Maybe.  My grandmother was on the wrong medication and once it was changed, her depression was gone.  Her zeal for life, even at 86, returned and is still there now at 92. 

            So what do we see?  Meme recovered because of everyone’s prayers or Meme recovered because they finally got the medication right?  I don’t even try to know the answer.  I believe prayer helped.  I know my praying helped draw me to God.  God walked with me in a tense, uncertain time.  Life is full of tension and uncertainty.  If Meme had died, God would have helped me cope.  Someday she will die.  When it comes prayer will help us because prayer is conversation with God and God loves us.

            Christ followers live in prayer.  When we are right in our walk with God, our lives are prayer-filled lives.  If you think, Uh oh, my life is not prayer-filled, I may not be where I need to be, spiritually speaking, don’t worry.  God is not staring with arms angrily folded, glaring at us and thinking, you better get this right.  God loves us with mercy and grace.  God’s desire is to walk with us.  We are more aware of God when our lives are built on prayer and immersed in prayer.

            In the book Streams of Living Water, Richard Foster writes that the prayer-filled-life is defined the “steady gaze [or a person’s] soul [is] upon the God who loves us” (p.49).  The stead gaze of her soul is upon the God who loves her.  The steady gaze of your soul is upon the God who loves you.

            I don’t know about you, but that is kind of different from the way I normally think and talk.  We would suppose Christians – we – are praying people.  But when we say that, what exactly are we saying?  Again, consider Foster’s quote, “the steady gaze of the soul upon the God who loves us.”  Do you picture an esoteric aesthetic who retreats to the mountains and sits in silent mediation?  Or the monk, cloistered in a cell, chanting for hours on end?  We can imagine the guy steadily gazing upon the soul of the God who loves him.  I can’t see myself being that guy.

            I imagine myself and it is a week before Christmas.  Christmas shopping needs to be done.  There is a Christmas event at church.  My older son is singing in school choir’s performance at Barnes and Noble.  My younger son has a basketball game.  I need to finish my sermon.  We have out-of-town company.  And both Candy and I are sick.   If someone is tempted to chalk that up to “Christmas stress,” there are numerous other times in the year that the schedule is that full.  And we know a lot of people, devoted Christian people, who are as busy as we are.  How are supposed to “maintain a steady gaze upon the God who loves us?”  We are so caught up jumping from one event to the next, we don’t have a steady gaze on anything. 

            But it is not just stress that interrupts us and gets in the way of living the praying life.  The problem of evil crops up. I read an interview just this week touching on this. A British actor, one I thoroughly enjoy in films, was asked about his atheism.  The interviewer said, ‘what if you died and found there is a God?  What would say to him?’  The actor replied, ‘I’d say to God, bone cancer in children.  What’s that about?’  He went on to name other dreadfully awful tragedies.  He blamed God for all of it.[i]  If there is God, that God is to blame for all the evil and suffering in the world.  The theological term for this is theodicy; the problem of evil. 

            It is a reasonable thing to consider when we talk about prayer.  Pondering evil, how do we pray at all?  We think about the suffering that is in the world and it gets heavy?  If we have a heart, we are wearied by the plight so many people face.

            Each of the four gospels offers examples of Jesus at prayer.  In Mark’s account we see Jesus, right in the midst of a very full life, making space to gaze upon God.  And, Jesus does surrounded by examples of the pain and suffering that the actor and many atheists cannot stomach.  No one hates the evil and the hurt humans endure more than Jesus.  This is why he came. 

In a Sabbath day service with Jesus preaching in the synagogue, a man interrupts everything.  His maniacal rants make it clear that he is possessed by a demon.  Today we see such a thing and chalk it up to severe mental illness.  I believe demons are real.  I believe demons are real.  I believe mental illness is real.  There is no way to determine what was up with this guy.  He came off as insane as he interrupted Jesus’ sermon with his crazed rants. 

            Then, the unexpected; the demons recognize Jesus.  “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are, Holy One of God.”  What was this demon saying?  Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, not God.

            Jesus sternly called out the demons and they obeyed.  The affair rocked that little Capernaum synagogue.  They had seen possessions, but never had they witness demons meekly submit to a man’s authority.  This was the carpenter’s son.  Jesus became the talk of the town.  Simon Peter’s mother-in-law had a debilitating fever.  Jesus touched her and she was back to full health. 

            Word spread.  There’s a miracle man at Simon Peter’s house.  Mobs of people descended on this out-of-the hamlet, and Jesus responded to every need.  He and his disciples walked from village to village, teaching the Kingdom and casting demons out of people. 

            Once, a leper came to him.  Lepers were supposed to stand at a distance and shout “unclean” so other would stay away.  One was so desperate, he violated convention and ran right up to kneel before Jesus.  Jesus was “moved with pity.”  He healed the man. 

            In Mark Jesus was always hurried and rushed by crowds.  The word that characterizes Mark’s gospel is “immediately.”  Every need was right now.  On one occasion, Jesus was so exhausted, he fell fast asleep in the bow of the boat.  Waves lifted the small craft high in the air and then slapped it down hard on the water again and again.  The 12 disciples held on for dear life.  I wonder if the tax collector got seasick.  I doubt he was an experienced sailor.

Jesus, also not a boatman, lay in bow and snoozed away.  The only time people gave him any space was when he was in the middle of the sea in weather not fit for man nor beast.  If ever someone did not have time to pause and cast a steady gaze of the soul upon the God who love us, it was Jesus.

Jesus knew busyness, yet he prayed.  His relationship with his Father-God deepened as he prayed in trying times.  Jesus could not be who he was without prayer.  Mark 1:35: “In the morning, while it was still dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”  He prayed at meals.  He prayed with large crowds in the country side.  While he hung dying the cross, he talked to God.  Mark’s gospel shows how normal it was to see Jesus praying. 

As a guest in Simon’s home, he sacrificed sleep, rising pre-dawn so he could focus on God.  Everyone else was still in bed.  He was fully human and needed sleep as much as anyone.  Something he needed more than sleep was time with his Heavenly Father.

Other times, he went far into the wilderness, leaving crowds behind.  I know I sacrifice prayer time for tasks, sometimes very necessary things; sometimes not-so-necessary.  Jesus sacrificed tasks, and appointments because prayer took priority.  He built his life around it.  He did not fit prayer into the life he was building.  Everything else came after he had his time with God.

How does this look in your life or mine?  In 2015, with all the ways life gets filled, how do we live the praying life as Jesus lived it?

It begins with the development of our relationship with God.  No one can do this for you or for me.  We go to God together as a community.  Together, we sing.  Together we serve.  Together we pray.  We all have to be in it.  There is no surrogate faith.  Your mom, my friend, an elder – no one else can develop your life with God.  It is you and God.  It is God and me; we have to step toward the Father in prayer. 

God has stepped toward us.  Jesus came – God in flesh.  Jesus took the penalty of sin upon himself.  With death on the cross and his resurrection, sin no longer comes between us and God.  We repent, he forgives, and the relationship is right there to be lived.

We are made ready for stressful days through our prayers during the calm times.  We make daily prayer a top priority.   What I offer here are a few possible ways one might enter the praying life.

It could be every morning.  With that first cup of coffee, you read a few verses, write your thoughts and prayers in a daily notebook, and then spend at least five minutes in quiet, talking in your spirit to God and listening in your heart as God speaks to you. 

It could be a quiet meditation.  You make sure every day to arrive at work 5 minutes early, but you don’t go in right away.  You sit in your car for 5 minutes.  Read a passage in the Bible. Spend quiet moments asking God to prepare you for the day ahead. 

Perhaps you have young children.  As the school bus pulls away, you pull out your Bible and set it on your kitchen table.  The next 20 minutes will be you, God, the word, and your prayer notebook.  And nothing else gets that time.

Peter woke up.  No Jesus.  Where was he?  Peter, Mark says, “Hunted” for Jesus.  I don’t know if Jesus was done praying when Peter found him, but Jesus was ready to go. 

When shape our lives so that we get to those desert places alone God and daily, we linger there.  When those quiet moments become fixed in our lives and prayer is normal for us, then everything else falls in place.  It does not mean everything is easy or perfect.  It means we are in touch with God.  We sense God’s presence and hear when God speaks.  Like Jesus, from our times of prayer, living the prayer-filled life, we are ready to live the purposes and works God has for us. 

So, copy the master.  Carve out space so that life is filled up with prayer and thus filled up with God. 

AMEN

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[i] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11381589/Watch-Stephen-Fry-brands-God-utterly-utterly-evil.html

Called for Life (Colossians 4:2-6)

Sunday, June 29, 2014

            Fans of the movie Frozen remember how important “Coronation Day” is in that story.  In the story of our church life, “Ordination Day” is a big day.  If it is your ordination, you have to speak in front of the congregation.  The church gathers around you and lays hands on you as your name is carried to God in prayer.  If it is not your ordination, you may not remember as much about the day.  Like most Sundays, you come to church.  It is special, but may not stand out from other Sundays. 

            This morning three individuals are recognized as uniquely set apart.  Each has answered the call to a servant-ministry role that is specific in the life of HillSong Church. 

            As all of us participate in recognizing the ordination of Jess, Tabitha, and Jeremy, we remember the word of God from last week, Colossians 3.  We are God’s chosen, beloved and holy.  Not all are ordained, but all who are in Christ are God’s people.   To be his is to have his purpose as ours.  God chooses us and God defines us.  If there is something we all might remember from this ordination day – those being ordained and those laying on hands and saying prayers – it might be the words of wisdom Paul gives the church in the opening verses of Colossians 4.

            He begins, “devote yourselves to prayer.”  Make prayer a marker in your life, an activity, a ‘go-to’ coping response, and an automatic way of processing information and emotions.  This cannot be overemphasized.  The disciple lives a praying life.  It would require a sermon series lasting a couple of months to think through all the different ways that we pray.  I simply urge each of this morning to identify one way that we pray that is most comfortable and to practice that method without fail daily for the next 30 days.  It could be prayer with journaling, it could be praying the scriptures, intercession, or something else, but find your sweet spot in prayer and don’t miss a day for the next 30.  Find a style of praying that works for you and stick with it. 

            Also, pray in ways that are challenging.  You struggle with silent prayer.  You don’t like to get up early, so sun rise prayers are tough.  Praying in public is difficult.  Find that one way that is most difficult for you.  Practice that for 30 days. 

We meet God in our comfort zones and also way outside our comfort zones.  In both meetings with God, we are blessed and we grow.  Especially, newly ordained leaders, you will want to discover new avenues of prayer.  You will want to find out what it means to live a praying life.  Paul insisted here and in other letters that we devote ourselves to prayer.  He wanted every church under his influence to be a praying church (Phil. 4:6; 1 Thess. 5:17).

            Devote yourselves to prayer.

            “Pray for us … that God will open a door for the word” (Col. 4:3).  In asking that they pray for him, Paul acknowledged his own dependence.  He could not succeed without God’s constant help.  He also knew that if he did succeed, it would advance the Kingdom of God.  Prayer by the church then and now plays a role in the advance of the kingdom.

            Colossians 4:3 is a summons to the church to pray for that church’s pastors.  In our case, this is a call to prayer for our youth minister Emily, and for Heather and me.  We need your prayer for us to be successful in helping our body of Christ-followers make sense of the world according to the word of God.  We will be better pastors if you make prayer for us a part of your lives.  And the church will be closer to who God is creating our church to be with pastors and ministers who are covered in prayer.  In addition to volunteering, prayer is a way you participate in church life.

            Colossians 4:3 also ties the prayers of the church to the work of God in the world.  Paul’s intent is that God will open a door for the Word as Christ followers spread the gospel around the world.  In living a praying life, we are called by God to pray for Christian workers – evangelists, missionaries, and lay people who serve God on campus and in the marketplace. 

Choose one day a week your own prayer life and make that the day you pray for pastors, missionaries, and Christian workers in the world.  Make your prayer specific.  Pray for our partnership in Ethiopia.  Pray for members of our church going on trips.  Pray for persecuted Christians in Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and Nigeria.  Pray for our members – your friends; ask God to make them missionaries in their jobs.  Make this prayer for the advancement of the word in our own community and worldwide something that matters greatly in your life.

Devote yourselves to prayer.

Pray that God will open a door for the word.

A final instruction – “Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders; let your speech always be gracious.” 

As we become praying people – we come to know God more and more.  As we invest our heart’s energies in praying for the advancement of the Word, we become more connected to God’s work in the world.  Striving for wisdom and gracious speech, we embody God’s loving, inviting character.  Our faith comes to life as it is lived beyond the walls of the church building.  We see what kind of Christ followers we truly are in how conduct ourselves with non-Christians.  Are we aloof or warm and inviting?  Are we judgmental or gracious?  Everyone can be a Christian at church.  There one is rewarded for singing well, praying well, and speaking well.  The God who calls is a God who sends and we are sent to engage in relationships with people who have not given themselves to Christ.  We live out our lives within systems not in step with the Kingdom. 

Coronation day is a declaration of the state of affairs of the kingdom.  If the new ruler follows a tyrant, the subjects in the kingdom have hope that life will be better under a newer, gentler monarch.  If the new king replaces a beloved king, there’s anxiety.  Can he be as great as his father?  Can anyone?  What will become of our kingdom?

Similarly, the ordination is statement of the health of the life of the church.  I look at Jess, Tabitha, and Jeremy and I have hope.  God is at work in the lives of the people of our church and they are answering his call.  And I have seen people in our church live praying lives.  I have heard as HillSong people have prayed fervently for the advance of the Word of God in the world.  I have watched my brothers and sisters in this place conduct themselves wisely in the world, sharing grace, and acting as salt that preserves and seasons their environments with the Gospel.  I am impressed by how much this church calls me to pray and live.  I know the three being ordained today will step into that role of encouraging their fellow church family members just as they are being encouraged.

Colossians ends with Paul telling someone named Archippus to complete the task he has received in the Lord (4:17).  He had something specific in mind for Archippus.  His advice transcends and speaks to us.  We complete the task God has given us by living prayerful lives as followers of Jesus.  This is true for ordained deacons and elders and it is true for all who read the word, hear the call of God, and decide to give themselves to Him.  All of us are called to life and called for life.

AMEN