Holy Fear

This was the sermon I planned to preach this morning (Oct 30, 2016).  It is not terrible, but it had two things wrong with it.  It is too similar to what I preached on Oct 23rd, and it is not what I really wanted to do.  So, I scrapped it at the last minute.

To understand the way the sailors of Jonah chapter 1 related to God, we need to look at the New Testament, the Gospel of Luke, chapter 5.  There, Jesus is already extremely popular, but has not yet called together his 12 disciples.  He is preaching by the shore.  After his sermon, he see Simon Peter, and Jesus tells him to put his fishing nets out in the deep water.  Peter responds that he has not caught anything all night.  Peter probably wants add, ‘Why are you, a carpenter, telling me, a fisherman, how to fish?”  What he actually says is “If you say so, Jesus, I will let down the nets.” 

            The catch is so massive, the nets began break and two others have to help him and they fill two boats with fish.  Awestruck, Peter throws himself at Jesus’ feet and, groveling, says, “Go way from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”  The holiness of Jesus shined a light on his own condition.  Peter could see who Jesus was and who he, himself, was.  He shakes with fear.  Jesus gently raises him to his feet and says, “Fear not.”

            This phrase comes up throughout scripture.  When an angel appeared to Daniel, the angel had to tell Daniel, “Do not be afraid” (10:19).  He had to say this because Daniel was very, very much afraid in the presence of this Heavenly being.  The angel who told Mary she would be the mother of Jesus began by saying, “Do not be afraid, Mary” (Luke 1:30).  In the book of Revelation, the resurrected Christ himself appears to John of Patmos and when John sees him, in awestruck terror he falls to the ground, the life scared out of him.  Jesus raises John saying, “Do not be afraid.”  And in Luke 5, Jesus tells a terrified Peter he need not fear.

            Fear is appropriate and inevitable.  God’s holiness magnifies the corruption sin has inflicted on humanity.  We were created “good,” made in God’s image.  Sin reduces to less than the vision God had in creating us.  In creation, we reflected God’s glory. Tainted by sin, we fall short of God’s glory.

            Yet Jonah was dishonest with himself when it came to appropriate fear of the Lord.  Seeing God, we know that running from God is impossible. Jonah saw God with greater clarity than we do.  He was a prophet called to a specific mission.  His sense of God was particularly sharp.  Yet, he who knew how futile running would be ran!

            Why he ran is a matter of debate.  He was told to prophesy against Nineveh.  God did not say a word about saving Nineveh.  Jonah was sent with a judgment prophecy.  Later, Jonah will claim that he knew God was going to relent from punishing the city (4:2), but that comes after the fact.  That’s like picking the winner after the game has been in played.  In chapter 1, when God tells him to go in verses 1-2 and in verse 3, he goes in the opposite direction, we are not told why.   What’s obvious is the absurdity of it.  He knows God.  He knows there is nowhere one can run from God.  Yet he runs from God. 

            God is holy and we are profane because of sin.  We were created to be holy, but every day, we make choices to rebel against our creator, and the accumulation of sin mocks the God of the universe.  We should fear God, but in a way that compels toward reverence.  Our fear should lead to worship, not retreat.

            This is not like the fear one might have of an abusive parent or of a bully or a dictator.  If you have been a victim of abuse or molestation, that is a different kind of pain and a different kind of fear.  That fear is a fear of evil, an evil born in the heart of the one doing the abusing.  God is not like abuser, the molester, the rapist, the bully.  God is who we run to in order to get away from the abuser. 

            I throw in this caveat because fear has in many cases been a destroyer of faith.  A lot of broken people won’t come to church, and more importantly, don’t think to turn to God for help because the people who taught them about God are the same people who abused them.  Pastors have been guilty of every form of abuse and it is awful.  When my title is “Fear out of Faith,” I do not mean the type of fear related to abuse.  When people have been abused, we who make up the body of Christ have to give them grace and mercy and we do this with enormous patience and gentleness. We have to be the community in which they are safe from fear.  God is graceful and merciful, patient and inviting and gentle.

            God is scary where holiness shines a light which reveals our sinfulness and our smallness.  Peter saw that miraculous catch of fish and wanted no part of it.  But, he didn’t run away.  His mouth said, “Go away from me Lord.”  But his body said something else.  His body was at Jesus’ feet, clinging to Jesus’ knees.  Jesus met him at that point of internal conflict.  Right there, Jesus called him to be a disciple.  Peter wanted to be as far from Jesus as possible and as close to him as he could get; he wanted both at the same time.

            Jonah, possessing much greater knowledge of God than Peter, much more experience in his relationship with God, only wanted the first part of the equation.  He just wanted to bail out, to flee, to get away from God.  His fear led him to abandon his own faith and to accept a gross self-deception.  Many believers today want to know God and then to disavow God when knowing God has implications for our lives.  Would-be disciples settle for the same self-deception that tugged at Jonah as he fled God. 

            People convince themselves that it is enough to check off “Christian” on the census, to tell others “I am Baptist,” to go to church 3 or 4 times a year, and to memorize the Lord’s Prayer.  That’s sufficient to be right with God and that’s all they want.  They don’t want to actually know God.  This hands-off approach to faith requires almost nothing, it has no impact on the person’s life at all, and it produces someone who has no sense of what God is about in the world.  That individual might be a church member.  However, that individual has no relationship with God. 

            That person with the noncommittal faith deep down knows he or she is living a lie, but it feels easy to keep living it.  It feels scary to open ourselves up completely so that the depths of our hearts are fully exposed before the living God.  That’s terrifying because when we do that, we are inviting God to step in and begin changing us from the inside.

            In the book of Jonah, we see God willing to do that, step into the lives of people, even for non-Jews.  The sailors on the boat where not Israelites.  They believed in God – or in gods – but, they did not know God.  The storm at sea confirmed something they already believed.  The world is much bigger than them, and it was beyond their ability, even as able bodied mariners, to control it.          The mariners’ response to all loss of control was to run to God.  When Jonah told them his god was the creator of land and sea, those sailors believed without hesitation.  And their fear increased.  They believed God would sink their ship because of Jonah and they would go down with. When Jonah told them the solution was to throw him into the sea, their fear increased more.  They hesitated.  They tried rowing (it hadn’t worked before, and it didn’t work now).  Then, they prayed, and threw Jonah into the sea.  The waves stopped battering the ship, the wind died down, and rain stopped.  The storm was over.  And, like Peter trembling at the miraculous fish catch they feared God even more. 

            In verse 12, Jonah tells the sailors, “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven.”  The actual Hebrew word is not “worship.”  It is “fear.” Jonah literally says, “I fear the Lord, the God of heaven.”[i]       The book of Jonah displays real faith that comes out of genuine fear of the magnificent holiness of God.  Jonah speaks this fear but betrays himself by running, and ends up swallowed by the fish and the sea.  The sailors live what Jonah says.  Their fear leads to worship.

            After chapter 1, we don’t hear from the sailors again in the story, but by the end of Jonah, we are left to wonder.  What did their lives look like after they became God-fearing worshipers?  They made it to Tarshish.  As each sailor, got off that boat, how was his life different after his encounter with the living God.

            How about our lives?  One of the cornerstones of the way we try to live as a body of believers is the encounter.  We pray that when we gather, people will meet God in this place, this gathering of believers.  In that meeting with God, when holiness exposes us at our worst, will fear drive us to our knees in confession and worship?  Or will fear make us runaway and pretend that God is far off somewhere, mostly uninterested in our lives?  We at HillSong try to set conditions so that you will meet God here and stay with Him.  Meet God and be made new in the process. 

            God controls how He will reveal himself.  When he does, we decide if we will run away, or if stripped down, we will kneel at the cross and receive forgiveness and grace and new life. I don’t know what you’ve been through today.  I don’t know the pains stabbing at your heart.  I don’t know your brokenness. 

            I pray this morning, you’ll open your eyes and mind and heart wide enough to see God.  When you see God, I urge you step into the fear.  Like Peter, even though you want to say “away from me Lord,” I pray you will step to God.  Step to the cross and let the Lord hang your sins on it.  Let the Lord wash you and bring you up from the waters clean, refreshed, renewed, and alive.  The sailors in Jonah 1 help me see the new possibilities of life that come when we step to God.  I pray you will see that too and that you will step toward God right now.

AMEN

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[i] E. Achtemeier (1996), New International Bible Commentary: Minor Prophets I, Paternoster Press (Peabody, MA), p.262

First Sermon of the Year - 2016

The Big Reveal (Matthew 2:1-12)

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Sunday, January 3, 2016

My wife loves home remodeling shows and I love my wife.  So, I have watched these shows.  We don’t see them often now that we don’t have cable TV.  But, whenever we get a night away, we sit in the hotel room and watch some “do-it-yourself” program.

The experts from the Bravo network or HGTV meet with homeowners and spend the entire show with crowbars and sledgehammers tearing the kitchen apart.  It looks like a disaster.

            But, they stick with it.  They paint.  They review the designs.  They encourage each other in moments when it seems like it cannot possibly come together.  Then at the show’s end, they provide the “Big Reveal.”  The new kitchen is worthy of display in a design magazine.  It is immaculate, fresh, innovative, and so wonderful the homeowners weep in wonder and joy.  Can God do something so marvelous it leads us to weep in our gratitude and wonder?

            Adam and Eve weren’t sure he could.  They decided to trust their own wisdom instead of God’s.  The rebellion continued when their son Cain killed their other son Abel.  Sin spread to the point that the world descended into chaos so bad that God wiped it all out in the flood.  God started over with Noah’s family. 

            As soon as Noah was off the arc, he worshiped.  God accepting the offering, but God also noted that evil perpetually lurks in every human heart.  Noah’s son Ham confirmed God’s observation by shaming his father, who himself had passed in a drunken stupor. 

            By the first century BC, the world appeared as if for centuries human structures and institutions – societies, governments, families – had been torn apart by crowbars and sledgehammers.  However, unlike the design show, the destruction had no bigger purpose.  Sin has taken the good world God created and sent it in plummeting into chaos.  Sin destroys individual lives, communities, nations, and the natural order. 

            At Christmas time, we see how God deals with the devastation.  The coming of Christ is God’s “Big Reveal.”  Jesus is God’s answer.  If we look at disease and disasters, divorce rates and abortion rates, drunk driving deaths and addictions, terrorism and war – if we consider all the ways people suffer; if we see this and ask, OK God, what are you doing about it all???  “Jesus” is God’s answer.

God came and dwelt among us as one of us.  On the cross we see God take all the damnation of sin on himself.  Christmas – the birth of the Savior – is the beginning of God’s revelation of how the world is saved.  On the design show, in the newly remodeled kitchen we see results of the homeowners’ efforts.  They worked really hard.  The birth of Jesus is the big reveal of what God has done.  This is God’s work.  Salvation is what God has done and will do.

            Viewers of the design show, if it is done well, find themselves joyfully surprised at how wonderful the new kitchen is.  It went from a seemingly irredeemable mess to a place of beauty, a work of art that invites us to come in, sit down, and enjoy coffee and conversation.  What surprises come in God’s Big Reveal? 

            Hear that question, and rest with it for a moment.  What surprises does God have in store for you?  If you are an experienced churchgoer, can God surprise you at all?  Everything I have said about God, coming in human form in Jesus, all of it has been said before.  If you attend church regularly or even occasionally, you have heard this many times.

January 6 is Epiphany – the revelation of the Lord.  How much of a revelation is it?  Every year has a January 6 on the calendar.  Every year the magi come and see Christ for the first time.  They may be filled with wonder each time, but we read the story over and over.  How can we still be surprised by God?

I can’t give an exact answer.  If I could it wouldn’t be a surprise!  But I do believe with everything that is in me that God has new things to show me and to show you, to show our church and to show the world. 

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has written several books that anticipate the Second Coming of Christ, the final Judgment, and eternity spent in the Kingdom of God for all who are in Christ.  Wright does not attempt to describe that day in more detail than the Bible gives.  He imagines what life in the Kingdom will be like, but acknowledges that what he’s offering is imagination.  We are given glimpses in the Bible, but not much more than that.  Wright does offer this important suggestion.  He thinks the Day of the Lord, “will be full of surprises.”[i]

I don’t think we have to wait until then for surprises from God.  If we live in a dynamic relationship with God in which our prayers include listening to God, in addition to asking things of God which is also appropriate, God will open our eyes to new wonders all the time. 

To explore the thought that God might surprise us, we will begin 2016 in Biblical stories about people who went looking for God and were amazed and surprised by what they found.  We will go from now, into the first Sunday of Lent, February 14, seeing how different individuals in the Biblical story were surprised by God.  Along the way, we keep in front of us some questions. 

How can God surprise me?

How can God surprise HillSong church?

What surprises does God have in store for 2016?

As it is Epiphany, we begin with those seekers from the East who followed the star.  In our hymn, we described them as “three kings” from the Orient.  They are also called “wise men.”  We don’t know the actual number in their traveling party.  They were magi, ancient astronomers, first century Persian scientists.  They journeyed across the desert following a phenomenon in the sky.  They were headed toward Jerusalem.

Because so many Jews stayed in Persia after the end of exile, the Jewish religion was known there.  These intellectuals were more familiar with Hebrew Scriptures, including Messianic prophecy, than many Jews.  The amazing star and the fact that it led them to Israel made it clear that the Jewish Messiah had come. 

So the seekers went to the King’s palace in Jerusalem.  There, Herod gave them their first surprise.  “When King Herod heard this,” Matthew writes, “he was frightened.”  Why would the king of Israel fear the coming of the one promised in his own holy book?  He should have been watching for the Messiah.  Why did these Persians see the sign God had sent, and Jewish king did not?  The seekers discovered that Israel was not expecting anything from God; at least Herod, the supposed Jewish King, was not.  How could this be?

We must pause and deal with a haunting question.  If someone outside of Christianity looked into the church, would they be surprised to find that Christians don’t expect much from God?  Would they be shocked to discover our view of reality and our values in life are no different than people who have no interest in God?  We may find it easy to cast Herod as a faithless villain.  How much are our lives marked by a faith that truly expects God to speak, to protect and provide, and to act in ways that will bless us and the world in which we live?

The second surprise for the magi came in Bethlehem.  By the time they arrived, Joseph and Mary were out of the stable.  However, I bet their living quarters were far more humble than what the magi had back in Persia.  These erudite, wealthy scholars found themselves in the home of a peasant family.

Yet in that home in that baby, they saw the face of God.  How surreal was it for Mary when these exotic guests  began showering her with gifts worth more than generations of her family had ever seen?  What did Joseph think when these men who would normally never cross his path knelt to worship his baby boy?

The wise men left Bethlehem with an understanding of God they did not have before they came.  That’s what happens when we meet God face to face.  They learned how unconcerned God is with human conventions. God has no need of human kings.  God did not need Herod’s approval or acceptance.  God was fully God in a simple peasant family’s home.  And God was fully absent from deviant, faithless king’s palace. 

The wise men did not know a cross was coming, or a resurrection.  But after what they had seen, I don’t think they would have been surprised.  Rome crucified so many people, the news of Jesus’ death would not have causes even a ripple in the lives of people in other parts of the world.  Yet, I kind of think that the magi, the wise men, kept tabs on this baby they visited.  I believe they heard news; Jesus has been crucified.  I imagine them in deep grief.

And then, in a way that strains credibility but is just like our God of the possible, the report of the resurrection found its way east to the ears of these God-seeking scientists.  And I believe their heavy hearts felt the blinding brilliance of Heaven’s light shine on them.  Of course!  The God we met so many years ago, the nursing baby, conquered death through resurrection.  We didn’t see it coming.  Of course we didn’t.  I think they heard of the resurrection, believed it more easily than even the disciples, and broke out in smiles that could not be erased. 

This is the God we meet in the story of Jesus: the God of surprises.  What is God going to do in your life in 2016?  I believe God will do something.  I don’t know what it will be.  I am certain it will be beautiful.  I am certain of this because of who God is.  God is the God of the possible, the God of blessing, and the God of wonder.  I believe wonders are in store for us. 

I say this knowing people are going through some real trials.  Many among us care for ailing parents and have to make hard decisions.  Some among us face the specter of cancer.  Some live in the shadow of job uncertainty.  Some are in relationships that are very fragile right now, threatening to completely break.  I believe God sees all this, all that we go through.  I believe God loves us so much, there is more than just a promise of help in the face of pain or crisis.  God does not just want to get us through, help us survive.  God has blessing in store. 

This doesn’t mean the pain is not real.  It is and that needs to be named.  But even in dark days, I think God can and will reveal blessings that bring joy and enable us to flourish.  We will see what God reveals as we watch and listen in prayer, and we do this together.

How can God surprise me?

How can God surprise HillSong church?

What surprises does God have in store for 2016?

We begin 2016, turning our hearts to Heaven and putting these questions to God.

AMEN

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[i] He says this in Surprised by Joy and in other writings.  I have also heard him make this point in several speeches.

Hope, Riches, and Power

Hope, Riches, and Glorious Power

          No, this is not an election slogan from Donald Trump’s campaign. 

The title here comes from Ephesians chapter 1.  I believe God is in the process of reminding the people of HillSong Church of this specific promise and I believe God will show us how we receive the promised blessings as we live our lives here and now as individual believers and as a church family.

How did I arrive at thoughts about promises from God?

          Shortly after Easter this year, I was thinking about our church and I felt a little directionless.  That’s not where you want the pastor to be.  I talked to different people in the church, sought opinions, prayed, and pondered about how God would lead us forward.  As I discussed it with my wife Candy she recalled a Bible study group she was in that prayed scripture, specifically Ephesians 1.  She suggested I do that.

          As I considered our church's identity as the body of Christ and my role in it, I prayed the words of this chapter from the Bible.  I invited the elders to join me in this prayer.  We titled this season of prayer “Wisdom and Revelation Prayer” from verse 17 which says, ^“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him.”  For a few months, the church leaders prayed this chapter, seeking God’s wisdom, hoping for revelation. 

          This process flowed into an idea for our entire church – a seven-week period of recapturing a vision for who God is calling us to be and what God is calling us to do.  The pastoral staff along with the elders and the deacons continue to pray the words of Ephesians 1.  Now, we ask you, the church family, to join us in this.  And beginning October 11 and running through November 22, in sermons and group discussions our church will think about, pray about, imagine, and step into God’s vision for us for the next 5 years.

          When I say, “Vision,” it doesn’t mean I can see the future.  It is more of my sense of a road we are on and a sense of where that road is headed.  I don’t know all that will happen.  But, I trust what God says in the Bible, in this case specifically Ephesians 1:17.  Our HillSong prayers are for the same things Paul sought for the Ephesians, “that, with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may know what is the hope to which he has called us, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, ¹⁹ and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.”

          In some ways, we live into these promises by continuing to grow in what we are already doing.  This includes creating an atmosphere of welcome and love, sending people off on mission, small groups in which people spend life together, and trips where we partner with churches in other parts of our community or other parts of the world to announce the Kingdom of God.  Moreover, we will restart past ministries, like the Dental Bus.  And there will be new partnerships and new ministries.  All of it will enrich us in the Spirit as we walk in the power of God.

          The vision, the prayer, the promises, all of it is our life and is within our reach because of who we are in Christ.  “[God] has put all things under [Jesus’] feet and has made him the head over all things for [HillSong Church],²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

          I am excited about this time of dreaming and looking into the future God has for us.  Please pray Ephesians 1 and share with me your hopes for our church as we get ready for the way God will shape us so that we can answer his call on us.

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.

Birthrights, Birth Responsibilities (1 John 2:22-29)

Sunday, July 27, 2014

          God is light and in Him there is no darkness.  Jesus is the light of the world, a light the darkness cannot overcome.  The Gospel of John and First John both offer a binary faith.  It is an either/or seeing.  As a man, a dad, a Christ-follower – in all of life, I can take the this-or-that as I strive to choose and speak as Jesus would have me choose and speak.  The A-or-B, this or that process is one way of seeing for a disciple of Jesus. 

          Firsy John chapter 2:22 says, “Who is the liar, but the one that denies Jesus is the Christ?  This is the anti-Christ.”  A lot of confusion arises in Biblical reading and Christian literature over that term, ‘anti-Christ.’  Christian fiction like the Left Behind series would have us anticipating one specific future person who is the anti-Christ.  Other villains of history were bad, but until he appears, the anti-Christ has not yet come, so the teaching goes.  First John actually teaches that the anti-Christ is anyone who denies that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, the Son of God, and God in human flesh.  Verse 18 says there are many anti-Christs.  It is a way of talking about anyone who denies the divinity and necessity of Jesus.  And of course 1^st and 2^nd John are the only places in the Bible the term ‘anti-Christ’ is used.

          That’s “A” – the liar, the one who denies Jesus is an anti-Christ.

          Then, “B” is seen in verse 29.  “If you know that he is righteous you may be sure that everyone who does right has been born of him.”  Two ideas are asserted.  First, Jesus is just or righteous.  Second, people who work for justice or do the right thing are born of Jesus.  The word for right, as in ‘do the right thing,’ also means ‘justice’ and could just as easily be translated that way.

          So we have “A”, the one who denies Jesus is a liar and is an anti-Christ.  And we have “B”, the one who is righteous, that is who does justice, is born of God through faith in Jesus.  It is this, or it is that.  What a clean way of visualizing Christian thought.

          Unfortunately history shows it is rarely that simple.  In fact, the history of the works associated with John in the New Testament reveal how cluttered theological dialogue can be.  The so called Johanine literature is comprised of the Gospel of John, and 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd John.  And many also include the book of Revelation.  It was also written near Ephesus, where all the other works are supposed to have been written.  And, Revelation is the only book in the collection whose author actually give his name - John.  He does not claim to be one of the 12.  He just claims to be John, a Christ-follower in exile on the Island of Patmos. 

          The Gospel, the Epistles, and the Revelation were written in different contexts, as responses to forces that threatened the Christian community.  A major theme in the Gospel is the tension between Jesus and synagogue leaders who reject the idea that He is the one sent by God.  Throughout John, we read that Jesus was opposed by “the Jews.”  This does not mean all Jews, though tragically, it has been used that way in history.  This evil misrepresentation of the Gospel has been a tool of hate filled anti-Semitism, something God vehemently opposes.  When John was written, most Christ-followers were Jewish and were persecuted by Jews who rejected him.  The Gospel was the voice of a persecuted minority.

          In the Epistles, the opponents are not synagogue Jews that oppose Jesus.  The opponents are fellow church members who believe in Christ but offer a different interpretation of him, an interpretation that minimizes his earthly life and ethical example.  And, in the situation of the book of Revelation, the opponents are Roman authorities who persecute Christ-followers because they refuse to worship Caesar. 

          When we read ‘anti-Christ’ in 1^st and 2^nd John, the only place we’ll find it, we need to realize that those who wrote the term did not anticipate a future evil person who would try to rule the world.  If the writer of the Gospel of John had used the term, he would have applied it to synagogue and temple leaders that reject Jesus as the Messiah.  In Revelation other terms are used, terms like dragon and beast.  IN that work, these terms in refer to the Roman emperor.  And the elder of 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd John used the term to refer to other Christians whose doctrine he opposed. 

          With the context in mind, do we still find the this-or-that method of thinking theologically helpful in our reading of 1^st John?

In our situation, we don’t have another religious group threatening our worship, so whatever our struggles are, they not those faced by the author of the Gospel of John.  We don’t have a powerful government crucifying our preachers or throwing us to the lions.  We aren’t facing the situation in which Revelation was written.  We do understand church splits, but HillSong is not going through that and even if we were, I hope we wouldn’t be calling each other ‘anti-Christs,’ though I have seen that sort of spite in other church splits I have experienced.  What can we make of 1^st John?

          I hope recognizing context keeps us humble in our theology and in our practice of Christian life within the community.  We need to be patient with each other because situations change, get muddled.  Because of our sins we can count messes being made.  In the future, messes will come and we will find ourselves waist-deep in them.  This is why 1^st John uses such harsh language for the opponents who are causing a church split. 

          God is even more dependable than sin.  We can count on human sin bringing chaos, but we can also count on the love of God restoring order and calling us into God’s embrace.  This is why Jesus came – to save the world from itself.  We can be sure God loves us and wants us to have joy.  This truth –that we can rely on God as we know Him in Jesus – helps the binary thought make sense. 

          It is absolutely so: the one who denies Jesus is a liar.  That one is an anti-Christ where ‘anti’ means against.  In that vein, Muslims who refer to Jesus as a prophet but not as the son of God are against him and against our message that salvation is in him.   I am not saying Muslims are worse sinners than Christians and are bent on destroying the world.  Maybe that is true of a few, but most Muslims are just people like Christians, people who need God.  But, if they deny the lordship of Jesus, then they are against the message we preach.

          Similarly those in Judaism who reject Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, are against our proclamation that salvation is in Him and Him alone.  In this respect, they are ‘anti,’ against the idea that Jesus is the Lord. 

          The “A”-or-“B” approach helps clarify this.  When a written work is called a polemic, it means that work is an argument against an opposing doctrine.  Works in the New Testament like 1^st John, 2^nd Peter, and Jude, are polemics, arguments against false statements about Jesus.  These harshly written pieces give us a sense of clarity. We can see why it is absolutely necessary to know the truth about Jesus, speak that truth, and not allow any wiggle room. 

          We cannot accept flaky ideas like the wishful notion that “many paths lead to God,” or “all religions teach the same thing,” or “religious truth is a private thing and we’ll all find out who was right when we get to heaven.”  All religions do not teach the same thing.  We reject pluralism and universalist fluff in matters of theology and expressions of faith.  We insist that Jesus is Lord – the Jesus we meet in the New Testament and in the Holy Spirit.  This is true for all people whether they acknowledge it or not.  Jesus is Lord and must be followed and worshipped. 

          The binary way of seeing gives clarity even when we know our situation is vastly different than the numerous 1^st century environments in which Christianity was born.  There was more than one context then and ours is different than all that existed then.  The world in which we live is not like the world in which the Bible was born.  Yet, we are clear about Jesus and what we need to believe about Him because the Bible, inspired by the Spirit, transcends generations and continents and cultures. 

The “this-or-that” viewpoint also tells us what is true about us.  “He has promised us eternal life” (1^st John 2:25).”  And we are to abide in him because “everyone who does what is right, [read who does justice as the prophet Micah says], is born of him” (2:29).

          The sign that we are his is our treatment of people.  We do the right thing.  Doing the right thing does not earn us salvation.  God gives it.  Our efforts at right-living are the signs that we have received the salvation God gives.  The A-or-B point of view is only somewhat helpful in fully understanding the New Testament but it is extremely important in our lives as Christ followers.

          Our birthright is eternal life.  Jesus rose and we will rise.  Death of the body is coming because the fall has corrupted God’s world, but Jesus has overcome death.  He rose and all who are in him will rise.  Death has been defeated.  We will enter resurrection in bodies that cannot die and will be with God forever.

          Our birth responsibility is to live as Jesus lived.  We are to do the right thing.  No matter how hard the choice is, no matter much easier other choices appear we are to work for justice, to do right, and to obey God in all things.  When you or I say we are in Christ, we are saying we have committed to live life on his terms.  In matters of how we treat people whether it is daily interactions or larger societal issues, we are guided by the same compassionate love that God showed in sending Jesus for us. 

          Or, as 1^st John 4:7 puts it.  “Beloved let us love one another because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God.”  We live with hope and joy because eternal life is our birthright.  We live in love showing compassion to all who hurt as we work for justice because it is the right thing to do.  This is our birth responsibility.

AMEN

Review of Girl at the End of the World by Elizabeth Esther

Girl at the End of the World by Elizabeth Esther is a must read.  I read the book in one day.  The story is so compelling I could not put it down.

The author was raised in a legalistic, fundamentalist cult in which the role of women was to have babies and obey their husbands.  Because she kept a journal all through her growing up, Esther is able to piece together the pain of living in such an oppressive home.  She describes the absurd practices of people who seriously believed the actions of the United States government were directly tied to references in the book of Revelation and who thought the world would end within their lifetimes.  The Bible clearly declares we will not know when the end will be (Mark 13:32); no matter.  The cult acted as if the future were irrelevant and all that mattered was preparation for eternity.  They made predictions about when it would happen (1988) and when those predictions proved foolish, they simply recalculated.

This indifference to the love Christians are called to share with all people along with an extraordinarily selective reading of the scriptures and a horribly unjust male dominance resulted in the cult thoroughly breaking the will of its members while turning a blind eye to systemic abuse. The author not only survived, but lived to describe it.  Yet her depiction is not without pain.  She is exposing her family – the family from which she came. 

Every follower of Jesus Christ should read this simply to see where the Christian faith can go horribly wrong when it is separated from humility and love.  As I read, I took breaks to spend time with my daughter.  I wanted to heap love her to somehow make up for what the author missed.  I wanted to make sure my daughter’s life is the opposite of what Elizabeth Esther experienced.  That’s how much this book affected me.

As I said to begin this review, Girl at the End of the World is a must read.  Enjoyable would be the wrong word.  It is compelling, powerful, heartbreaking, and inspiring.  And the author’s excellent writing of a story that needed to be told will lead readers to be more humble and loving in their own practice of Christian living.

Disclaimer - I received this book for free from WaterBrookMultnomah Publishing Group for this review.

Gospel of Invitation

Sunday, May 26, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            And yet …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            “See, I am coming soon.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AMEN