The God Jonah Thought he Knew (Jonah 3:1-10)

This morning, we look at God – God’s character. 

Our presidential election ended in a result that shocked a lot of people.  Donald Trump had less total votes than Hillary Clinton, but he got the needed number of electoral votes.  By the standards of our system, he is our next president.  Some voters are very happy, others are quite upset.  Many didn’t like either candidate, would have been unsatisfied either way, and are kind of glad the whole thing is over.

All three types of voters are among us.   If you find yourself elated because your candidate won, please be humble, and sensitive with your brothers and sisters in Christ who feel differently than you.  They are hurting and this is church.  Here, our unity is in our identity in Christ.  We build one another up and bear with one another in love.  If your candidate lost and you feel angry, express it, but with dignity.  Respect those voted against your candidate because they are your brothers and sisters in Christ.  Again, we are the church, the body of Christ.  There is a place for thoughtful criticism and for expressing frustration.  We do all of it in love and work through our feelings in prayer, together.

As a church body and as individual Christ followers, we turn to 1 Timothy 2:1 which says,

“I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, ² for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. ³ This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, ⁴ who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 

            The word of God insists that we pray for “all in high positons.”  We will pray for the well-being and effective governance of President-Elect Donald Trump.  We will, out of our reverence for Christ, respect the office.  I have been voting in presidential elections since 1988.  In my voting life, I have voted Democrat, Republican, third party, and write-in.  At times I have deeply admired the occupant of the oval office.  At other times, I have harbored disdain for the person with the title President of the United States.  As Christians, we will respect the office.  As a people obedient to the dictates of scripture, we will pray for President Trump.  As followers of Jesus who turn the other cheek and pray for those who persecute us – we are called to love all people. 

It is our responsibility as citizens in a democracy to use our voice to advocate for justice, equal opportunity, and compassion for the least of these.  We can, and at time must, oppose the very government we respect and uphold in prayer.  But our opposition is to be peaceful, modeled after the example of our Master, Jesus.  We speak truth to power and we know our purpose is to be witnesses who point the world to the salvation we have in Jesus. 

Note that at the end of the 1 Timothy reading it says, “God desires everyone to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”  See the relevance of this idea – that God wants everyone to know the truth – to Jonah’s experience in Nineveh in Jonah chapter 3.  I pray that we can take this verse, 1 Timothy 2:4 (God’s desire for all to be saved), and we can hold that up to Jonah and God in Nineveh, and in doing this we will see God’s character.   We see who God is. I pray that focusing on God’s character will relieve us of any painful post-election hangover.  Keeping our minds on God’s identity and God’s character, we remember who we are in Christ.  The Kingdom of God is bigger than the United States, and the advance of the Kingdom of God is unthreatened by American presidential elections.

            Jonah chapter 3 begins the same way chapter 1 began.  God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh with a prophecy of doom.  We remember that Jonah at first ran away, was swallowed by a whale, prayed from the whale’s belly, and was then upchucked up onto the shore by the whale.  We previously mentioned that it is not completely clear why Jonah fled God at first.  Jeremiah also prophesied God’s wrath and hated doing so and suffered for it.  No one wants to be the bearer of bad news.

            When the call comes in chapter 3, Jonah goes as God instructs him.  He thinks he is going to see the city destroyed.  He will later claim that he knew all along that God would spare Nineveh, but I don’t buy it.  In chapter 4:5, we find Jonah sitting and waiting to see what will happen.    He said, “40 days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown.’  Jonah sits on the outskirts of the city, watching, waiting for the violent overthrow he’s predicted based on what God told him.

            Jonah believes he is like the prophet Nahum.  Listen to what God had Nahum say when he was called to prophesy against Nineveh.

“An oracle concerning Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh. 

² A jealous and avenging God is the Lord, the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and rages against his enemies” (1:1b-2).

“Nineveh is like a pool whose waters run away.  ‘Halt!  Halt! But no one turns back’” (2:8).

“I am against you, says the Lord of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will let nations look on your nakedness and kingdoms on your shame” (3:5).

            Nahum didn’t just preach wrath.  He preached humiliation.  On another Sunday, we might even call into question’s God’s ethics – at the least the ethics of the God we meet in Nahum.  Today Jonah is our focus.  He thought he was like Nahum, a preacher of a wrath that was inevitable.   He told Nineveh she was going to burn, and then sat on a hill to watch it happen. 

We can’t see what all of Jonah’s thoughts were, but he was unhappy with God’s show of compassion.  He wanted the prophecy he delivered to come true.  He had benefited from God’s compassion and forgiveness when he was rescued from the stomach of the whale.  He did not think that compassion would extend to the Ninevites. 

            As I imagined Jonah and God in Nineveh and things not going as Jonah thought they would, the story of Abraham and Sodom and Gomorra came to mind.  That is found in Genesis 18.

            There God, appearing as three men, promises Abraham and barren, post-menopausal Sarah they would have a son.  Sarah laughs off such a promise but God is committed to it and acknowledges but does not punish her laughter.   After Sarah laughs, God appears to have an interior conversation.  It is clear there is one God, but somehow this one God, appearing as trinity, is able to converse within God’s own self.  Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?  No, for I have chosen him” (18:18-19a).

            That thing that God is about to do is inspect two cities – Sodom and Gomorrah.  God will assess just how wicked those cities are.  Abraham already knows it is not good.  Destruction is inevitable, as Jonah said it would be centuries later for another wicked city, Nineveh.  So Abraham does what the great people of faith have done from time immemorial.  He challenges God.

            He asks God, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked” (Genesis 18:23)?  Abraham suggests that if 50 righteous people were found in the wicked cities, God’s own character would not allow such a thing. It is a stroke of boldness, to tell God almighty that He is bound by his own character.  “Far be that from you!”  Declares Abraham (18:25).  God does not chide his chosen one.  Rather, he agrees to Abraham’s terms.  If 50 righteous people are found, God will not overturn Sodom and Gomorrah. 

            Abraham is just getting started.  He asks, would God spare the city if 45 righteous are found?  Yes, for 45 righteous people, Sodom and Gomorrah will stand.  Abraham continues, whittling away at God’s resolve.  Forty, O Lordy, would you spare it for 40?  It reads like a Dr. Suess book.  For 30?  Yes, for 30, the cities will be spared.  Abraham take the number all the way down to 10.  God meets Abraham right where he is in his anxiety over the annihilation of two cities.  God accepts Abraham’s logic, tenacity, and confrontation. 

            The stories are eerily similar.  A man of God stands outside a city about to be razed to the ground by divine fire.  Abraham begs for the city to be spared if there is any way to spare.  God agrees.  But there is no way, and Sodom and Gomorrah are not spared.  They are eliminated by fire and sulfur that rain from heaven. 

            Jonah, like Abraham, stands outside a city.  Unlike Abraham, Jonah does not ask for mercy for the Ninevites.  Maybe he remembered the Sodom and Gomorrah story and thought he was going to see a repeat performance.  Instead the opposite happens.  God had promised Abraham he would spare Sodom and Gomorrah if even 10 righteous people were found there.  No righteous people are found in Nineveh.  But the wicked hear the message of the prophet and repent.

            First, the people hear Jonah, and they believe that he does represent God and is speaking truth.  God is going to destroy them (Jonah 3:4).  Upon hearing this, the people lead the way by putting on sackcloth.  The businessmen and shop owners going into a time of mourning and grief – grief over their own wickedness.  The farmers and the peasants and the homemakers.  Everyone all over Nineveh.  It is a movement – a movement of shame and sorrow. 

            Next, word of what’s happening makes its way to the palace.  The King gets off his throne and acknowledge that while he may indeed be king of Nineveh, he is not the all-powerful one.  He removes his royal robes and follows the lead of his subjects.  He repents of his sins.  He puts on sack cloth and pours ashes on his head. 

            Finally, that king makes a proclamation.  The nation will add fasting to their mourning in ashes.  He even takes the risky move of imposing the fast upon the livestock and children.  Everyone is to go without eating in a period of fasting.  Everyone is acknowledge and to grieve sin.  Everyone is to pray.  In a time of national crisis when the survival of the kingdom is at stake, the Ninevites believe the reluctant Jewish prophet Jonah and beg for mercy from God.  They accept that they are deserving of death.  They never doubt the authority or truth of Jonah.  They simply say, “Who knows?  God may relent and change his mind” (3:9).

            In that most curious of verses, Jonah 3:10, we see the character of God.  “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.”

            The book of Jonah is in our Bible to show us a different side of the God Jonah thought he knew.  A lot of people felt as Jonah did that a prophecy of doom would be followed by a fulfillment – Sodom and Gomorrah style.  Many ancient readers of Jonah who anticipated wrath forgot something God said to Abraham so many years earlier.  God told Abraham his descendants would “become a great and mighty nation, and all nations of the earth would be blessed by him” (Genesis 18:18).  Here Nineveh, deserving of wrath, is blessed by that God of Abraham.  Instead of wrath, Nineveh gets mercy and a second chance to live faithful, decent lives of justice and compassion. 

            Instead of seeing the God he expected, Jonah found a very different God.  First, he was rescued from a death in the seas; rescued in spite of his disobedience.  Then, Nineveh received mercy instead of punishment.  What will our country see in the God we actually meet in Jonah?

            If we are scared or at least unsteady based on what happened this week, we see that God is the one with the power to destroy nations, but also the one with the heart to forgive repentant sinners.  We can as a body and as individuals repent of sin.  Knowing God through the crucified, resurrected Christ, we know we will be forgiven.  We know we have new life and hope – hope for today.

            If we are confident in our own identity in Christ, then we are the messengers of today who, like Abraham, can appeal to God on behalf of others, and like Jesus can invite people to repentance and to the heart of the God who will welcome them into His Kingdom.   Abraham was the patriarch and Jonah was a prophet.  We are witness who inherit the testimonies of both men and the Gospel from Jesus.  We share that Gospel by creating space in which we welcome, shelter, and encourage scared people. 

            Either scared or confident, you can put your trust in God this morning.  Things may seem chaotic, but he is with us, always.  He is with us, we are his, and we can be agents of positive change.  Giving mercy, speaking real hope, and helping people meet Jesus is a good place to start.

AMEN

Keep Hold of the Plow (Luke 9:51-62)

February 10, 2016 – Ash Wednesday

            Jesus “set his face” to go to Jerusalem.  Now, there would be no turning back and no diversions or distractions.  All that he does on this journey described in Luke chapters 9 – 19 is directed toward his final purpose; death and resurrection.  Along the way, Jesus’ teaching and actions show us how to be disciples.[i]

            Jesus would not be deterred.  But we are.  We say we want to follow Jesus, and I think we really do.  But we get distracted.  Social media; relationships – good and bad; work; past hurts and disappointments; the stuff of life; the dysfunction in life; the abuses we’ve suffered; so many things creep into our lives or burst into our lives and vie for our attention, our loyalty, and our hearts.

            Jesus and the disciples are on the road and a Samaritan village does “not receive him.”  The Samaritans refused hospitality.  With his intense focus on Jerusalem, Jesus did not notice the breach of manners.  His disciples James and John did.  “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”

            Do these guys see themselves alongside Abraham as he watched Sodom and Gomorra burn?  Jesus ignored the unhospitable Samaritans, rebuked James and John and moved on.  There’s no time to worry about the actions of Samaritans who don’t know God.  Jesus is on his way to hang from a cross for the sake of the people who don’t know God, like those Samaritans. 

Confession as a spiritual discipline helps us reckon with the things we allow to distract us.  Cancer; divorce; addiction.  We name the things that distract us.  We receive God’s grace.  Procrastination, unkindness, harsh words, withholding love; we confess.  Selfishness, greed, failure to help those in need; we admit our sins and receive grace. 

When we rebellion against God, it reduces us.  In rebellion we become something less than we were meant to be.  We were created in the image of God, made to be his stewards on this good earth he designed.  However, our sins have distorted and disfigured us so that the image of God in us is barely discernable.

Can we ever live into God’s purpose for us as his image bearers doing and making good things in His name?  Yes, if our sins are completely removed.  This is the accomplishment of Jesus on the cross.  I invite you to join me in journeying to the cross with Jesus in 2016.  This is a walk into God’s call for us corporately, as the body of Christ, and for each of us as individual disciples.  Together, we declare that will we turn to Christ, open our hearts to the Spirit, and renounce the things that distract us and draw our attention away from God.  This Lent our goal is to go deeper and reorient our worldviews, so that we hear the voice of God and see the world through the lenses he colors. 

The closing verses of Luke 9 give us our theme. 

There, Jesus sets his face for Jerusalem.  Samaritans fail to give hospitality, disciples want to hurl consuming fire as they ride their high horse, and Jesus has time for none of it.  Seemingly without stopping, he ignores the Samaritans’ social faux pas, chides James and John, and strides forward. 

Next, Jesus tells a would-be-disciple, “Foxes have holes, birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  You want to follow Jesus?  Are you sure?  He’s on a journey that ends with everything changed.  Are we sure we want that? 

Once we decide we’re on the move with Jesus, he calls us out of our weakness and out of our brokenness.  He calls us out of our pain and in spite of our losses.  He calls us to the path that he walks.  In Luke 9, that path led to the cross.

Today it leads us to die to self.  That peculiar phrase comes up throughout the gospels.  What does it mean to die to self?  To put it simply, it means I no longer matter because Christ is all that matters.  I won’t be a doormat for a bully.  I won’t try to be a people pleaser.  In Christ I will actually exhibit a stronger character and a more determined sense of purpose because the confidence I have comes from Him. 

To die to self is to say, I am no longer my own.  I belong to Him.  Can we live our lives that way?   Or do we prefer to have control?  That’s the question to wrestle with this year throughout Lent.  Who gets control in my life?  Who is the authority to whom I yield?  Who sets the standard by which I measure myself? 

We know we cannot measure up to God.  But living in grace, walking by faith, we know we don’t half to.  Our lives can be spent walking in grace, giving grace, and sharing the good news of the kingdom of God by inviting people to turn to Christ.  To live this life that God intends to be ours we have to keep at the plow and not look back.

Jesus says, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).  What is causing you to look back instead forward?  What commitment is keeping you from a deeper commitment to God?  What past pain has you ensnared and makes it impossible to fully give yourself to the Lord?

We’re going to pass out rocks.  Yes, rocks.  Take this rock and let it constantly remind you of the distraction that has taken your mind off the plow.  This distraction has your attention – attention that really belongs to Jesus.  From now until Ash Wednesday, carry this rock.  Let it be a reminder.
            This rock reminds us of the things that distract us and divert us from the course Jesus has set.

This rock reminds us to practice spiritual disciplines during Lent – fasting, prayer, journaling, silent meditation, lectio-divina, prayer-walking.  Choose disciplines that will help you see your dependence on God and help you receive the grace of God. 

This rock reminds us that the Holy Spirit is with us even when our attention is diverted and our focus is on things that are not of God.  Carry this rock at all times.  Maybe even sleep with it.  Let it be the reminder that the Holy Spirit of God is present and beckons us to receive and enter God’s grace and love.

We’ll bring our rocks to worship on Maundy Thursday.  In that service, we will lay them at the cross. We will look at the things that draw us away from a devoted life in Christ, and we will take our eyes off the distractions and put them on the Lord.  We leave the rocks at the cross as way of saying that we want to become who Jesus is calling us to be.  We want to see the world through lenses he gives us.  As we do, we pray that the fruit of our Lenten spiritual disciplines will be a deeper, more focused life with God. 

Pray for this – that many in our church will take up this challenge, will face the cares of the world that draw them away from a life of devoted faith.  Pray that many will commit to keep hold of the plow and to follow Jesus with abandon.  Pray that the discovery of deep relationship with the Lord, made by many in our church, will have a long-lasting effect on our fellowship and on our church’s witness in this community.

AMEN

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[i] Fred Craddock (1990).  Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Luke. John Knox Press (Louisville), p.141.

Hold Someone’s Hand (Ezekiel 16:46-52, 59-63)

Sunday, October 12, 2014

            Is it easier to hug another person or to avoid being involved with that other person?  This is kind of tricky.  Some folks are huggers: they just hug everybody.  For others, it is less certain.  Maybe they came from a family of hand-shakers.  Maybe in their experience, there has not been much physical affection.   It could be their culture is not as affectionate as other cultures.  I went through a phase in my early 20’s where the only real contact I wanted with other people was of the violent kind that came in rugby matches; no hugging or affection!  I walked around proudly showing off my bruises and blackened eyes.  Then I went on a trip to Mexico.  All the men hugged me and all the women kissed me.  I had more affection in one week than two years.  It was great.

            But, be careful with this.  In my life now, in the sexual climate of the United States, I have to be aware of how my actions could be perceived.  It would be foolishly irresponsible for me to be oblivious to how someone might interpret what I do or how I do it.  I hug female friends, but I also watch for cues or hints that someone might misunderstand my intentions.

            Hugging comes with risks.  Innuendo is one.  Vulnerability is another, and here I mean literally the act of the embrace, and metaphorically, the posture of embrace.  The best book out there on this is titled Exclusion and Embrace by theologian Miroslav Volf.  To present yourself to another, arm open, face inviting, heart expectant is to let your defenses down.  You have opened the gate in the wall that is safeguarding your heart.  You are saying to the other, this is how close I want to be.  I want to pull your body to me.  This is not sexual.  It is intimate.  Intimacy scares us.  Vulnerability scares us.

            It is also risky.  What if you decide the hug is worth it, the relationship is worth it and the other feels differently.  You open, and the other closes.  Now what?  Are you embarrassed?  I certainly am when that happens.  It definitely does happen.  I am left there, arms opened.  More significantly, I have opened my heart, and the other’s closed posture is an unmistakable message.  Stay back.  Stay at a distance.  I do not want you close to me – not in body, not in spirit. 

            Mistaken intentions, unwanted vulnerability, terrifying intimacy, needless risk – is the posture of embrace worth it?  We could leave the gate in the wall locked up tight.  We could protect ourselves by never opening ourselves to anyone.  A lot of people live this way, emotions withheld, arms stiff, bodies rigid; it is a cold way to be. 

            To live rejecting embrace – this is so isolating.  Those who live this way lose the art of living in relationship and God made us to live in relationship.  To live in a perpetual defense mode keeping the world at bay is to say to the creator God, I know you made me to walk with others, but I cannot.  We all go through seasons in which we shut others out.  Sometimes solitude is necessary.  But if rejection becomes our life, we in effect say to God, I know you created me for relationship, but it hurts too much.  I have been beaten up by lovers, by friends, by family, and by strangers.  I cannot do it.  Then your experience becomes more powerful in defining your life than God’s wisdom. 

            Yes, embrace is confusing, exposing, intimate, and risky.  It is all those things.  If you choose to embrace others and relationships of love with other humans who sin as much you do, you will get bruised and burned.  You will also be living in the way God created you to live – life in relationship.  I intend to show that faith is comprised of a life in which we live by God’s designs even when our experience would suggests this is not always the best idea.  No, it is not easier to hug than to not hug.  But it is better.  Embrace is the pathway to life lived as people who are made in the image of God. 

           

            Is it easier to worship God or to rely on the self?  I know that I am asking it in the midst of a worship service.  The answer might seem painfully obvious.  But, let us look at it. 

            When we truly worship – worship in spirit and in truth as Jesus says (John 4) – certain realities are in play.  First, we really believe there is a force, a personality, a being, a reality present – one we cannot necessarily see, feel, or hear.  But this thing – God – is here.  We set ourselves up for a diagnosis of some mental illness.  We gather, study, sing to, pray to, and give our allegiance to this empty space that we claim is occupied by … what?  God.  What is God? 

            Moreover, we not only claim God is real.  We also assert God is all powerful.  Dina typed out the worship bulletin.  Starlyn selected the songs – song that were written by people, humans and sung by the humans you see up on the stage.  I wrote this sermon.  Yet, we all conspire to say God is the one who is in control.  Are we sure?  Are you?  If we are truly worshipping, we have to be pretty convinced that this whole idea of God is real.

             Yet, we cannot be because doubt always has seat in our gatherings.  Some Sundays, you are so in touch with God, you feel a light and see a heat in the sanctuary that normal human senses could not perceive.  You don’t need convincing any more than you would need someone to prove water is wet.  Some Sundays, you know God.  But someone a few rows behind you isn’t so sure.  He got himself here.  He came.  The effort to do that was all he could muster.  He is right now hearing this sermon and thinking, oh, I don’t know.  This whole thing might be a farce. 

            He leaves less convinced than when he came in.  But then, over time, he sees God.  Others don’t what he’s talking about, but he knows it is God.  And in a month, he’s back in church and it is real.  By then, things have happened in your life, and your faith is being hit by gale force winds and you are unsure.  Is this house built on drifting sand or a firm foundation?  You do not know.    Then there is the Sunday where you are sure and your friend is sure and everyone here is absolutely sure of the reality and presence and love and power of God; everyone except the pastor.  He or she has days of doubt too.

            To worship is to acknowledge uncertainty.  If we want a positive spin, we say it is mystery.  That sounds nice.  But often mystery is scarier than it is inviting because it is mysterious. 

            I mentioned the power of God.  That’s another thing to acknowledge when we are trying to figure out if a life of worship is easier than a life in which we eschew worship.  When we worship, we are bowing, whether we literally go to our knees or not.  We say that God is the one in charge, the one with the power, not us.  Do we want to say that?  Do we want to name our weakness?  Do we want to confess sins?  Do we want to have to ask the unseen, unfelt, all powerful one for blessing?  Is life easier like this?

            No!  No, if we put our hearts into worship, life is not easier.  I say this not because getting up for church on Sundays is all that difficult.  It is not.  Thousands of people get up every Sunday, go church, and they do this without fail all their lives.  Not all of them truly worship, truly pour their hearts before God.  For many this is just part of the weekly routine.  If we really believe God is here right now, there can be nothing routine about this moment.  If we seriously think God is all-knowing, we cannot hold anything of ourselves back in this moment of worship.  To hold back would be a pointless waste of the time, time in God’s presence. 

            I say a life of worship is not easy because it is a life in which we give up control.  We pray, often very specifically, but God chooses when and how to answer.  We seek, but it is God’s decision as to how God will reveal God’s self.  God calls us by God’s initiative.  Worship, in one sense, is an exercise in waiting.  In hope and in faith, worship is a life of waiting to see what God will do in the world and how God will involve us in what God is doing.  Of course that is not all worship is.  Some might take great offense at this definition.  Fine.  Take offense.  Or embrace the definition and get to waiting, but always waiting in faith, expectantly, and hopefully. 

            No, this life of worship will not feel easier than a life of ignoring God.  It is though better than the godless life because God does act.  God is involved in the world.  God indeed does call us before we ever step toward Him in worship.  Giving ourselves to a life of worship does not guarantee we’ll be in the starting lineup on God’s team.  But it does orient us toward God – the God of infinite grace and infinite love, the God who calls us to be His sons and daughters.  Living in worship is better than avoiding God.  Living in worship points us to Him.  However it plays out, to choose the opposite of worship is to choose to turn away from God’s love.

            I have made the claim that embrace while not easier is better than a relationless life.  It is better to choose embrace.  I have made the claim that to live in worship while not easier is better than a godless life.  It is better to live in worship.

            What did Jesus name as the two greatest commandments?  Love the Lord your God with all your, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.  Obeying this by loving God begins in worship.  The second of the commands Jesus names is that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Neighbor-love begins when commit ourselves to embrace. 

            The prophet Ezekiel did his work about 600 years before Jesus came on the scene.  But what Jesus said about God-love and neighbor-love was as true in Ezekiel’s days as in Jesus’.  In God’s view of how the world ought to work, God-love and neighbor-love are absolute truths going back to the very beginning, Adam and Eve.  Ezekiel’s prophecies come after God had determined that his people, the nation of Israel, had worshiped idols of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon. 

            Idolatry is at the root of all sin.       Idolatry is giving worship that belongs to God to someone or something other than God.  It is a failure of Jesus’ first command – the command to love God.  This failure always leads to a failure of the second command – the failure to love people. 

            Ezekiel was an Israelite priest, but he lived in Babylon.    The Babylonians had overrun Jerusalem, defeated the Israelites in battle and enslaved the most powerful among the people.  Are you one of the educate elite among the Israelites?  Off to slavery in exile in Babylon you go!  Are you an army officer?  Off you go to exile.  One of the religious leaders, a priest?  Off you go! 

The first 25 chapters of Ezekiel are comprised of prophetic allegories Ezekiel wrote and shared among the exiles in Babylon.  He graphically tells of God’s punishment.  Israel practiced idolatry, exploitation, and host of other sins and did so for many generations.

In Ezekiel 16, the prophet likens Israel to Sodom.  The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is found in Genesis 19.  Abraham’s cousin Lot is lives in Sodom.  Along with its sister city Gomorrah, Sodom is known for sexual excess and perversion.  God is going to wipe out both cities, but first, Lot and his family must be rescued. 

Angels come to extract Lot, but when the men of Sodom see the angels, they have other ideas.  These angels appear as human men.  The men of Sodom are going to spend the night raping them.  Lot shelters the men in his home not knowing that it is they who will rescue him, not the other way around.

At daybreak, the angels hustle Lot out of town and then Sodom and Gomorrah are obliterated by fire from Heaven.  Some interpreters believe this story is a condemnation of homosexuality.  The men of Sodom intended to have relations with these angels whom they took to be men also.  That would be rape, a crime of violence that is sexual in nature but not the same thing as consensual homoerotic relationships.  The Sodom account definitely relates to sexual purity, but it would be wrong to hold this up as a cornerstone defense in arguing that homosexuality is sinful.  It would be wrong because it would be missing the point of the story.

Other readers make the case that the real failure in Sodom was a failure of hospitality.  There clearly is this failure by the men of town.  They want to take something from the visitors instead of offering shelter and food to the visitors.  Just as there was sexual sin involved in the story, there is the failure to care for travelers.  But again to say the Sodom account is primarily about the sin of not showing hospitality is to focus on a detail instead of the overarching theme. 

The overarching theme is faithfulness to God.  This is seen in worship and neighbor-love.  In Ezekiel 16, the prophet says to the people of God who now wallow as slaves in exile, “The people of Sodom … were never as sinful as you.  … They had everything they needed [yet] they refused to help the poor and needy” (from Ez. 16:48-49, CEV).  In the verses leading up to this, Ezekiel rails against the exiles for idolatry (see v. 36).  Both idolatry (failure of God-love) and Sodom (failure of neighbor-love) enrage God. 

In verse 60, God reminds the beleaguered exiles that he has not abandoned them.  They have not stopped being God’s people.  They are just under God’s heavy hand of discipline.  God will one day fulfill all his promises to Israel.  We Christians believe that day came in the life of Jesus, his death on the cross, his resurrection, and his sending of the Holy Spirit.  He is God’s final answer to sin.  He defines worship and embrace, God-love and neighbor-love for us. 

We live awaiting the final consummation of the Kingdom – Jesus’ return, the resurrection of all the dead when those in Christ will enter the Kingdom and those not in Christ will be banished.  That’s coming. 

Until then, we bear witness to the goodness of God, and we do it in a posture of embrace as we love our neighbors.  As we await Jesus’ return, we worship, loving God with our heart, soul, strength, and mind. 

In the commentary on Ezekiel Franz Delitzsch and Carl Friedrich Keil translate the Biblical text into German.  Later, James Martin, translated their work into English.  His rendering of their translation of Ezekiel 16:48 sets for me a concept that is the essence of what it is to love in God-love and neighbor-love, worship and embrace. 

“Behold this was the sin of Sodom, [your] sister, [Israel]; pride, super abdundance of food, and rest had she with her daughters, and the hand of the poor and needy she did not hold” (p.219).  The hand of the poor and needy, she did not hold.

We can learn from Israel’s mistake by asking God to help us see the needy in our midst – the spiritually needy, those who suffer from poverty of relationships, and the emotionally needy.  Whatever actions of love we show to help someone come from hearts that beat with love for God.  We have embraced His Gospel when it is said of us they held the hand of those who needed to be held. 

Open your arms in embrace.  Bend your knee in worship.  Live in God-love and neighbor-love.  Bear witness to the Kingdom God and the Lordship of Jesus by holding someone’s hand. 

AMEN

First Sunday of Lent, 2013

Letting God Work (Romans 3:21-26)

I__, what are you working on there?  Bring that up here.

(Preplanned: my son I__ brings up on the platform a Lego house he has built.  He hands it to me and I look at it. And then I begin the Sermon.)

            This is a good Lego house.  For at least three years now, I__'s abilities in Lego-construction have far surpassed my own. 

Imagine this house represents a human being, maybe you.   Imagine a human created in the image of God – not perfect, but good, very, very good.  You and I are God’s image-bearers. 

            This week in our Ash Wednesday service, we were invited to take up the Spiritual practices of confession and acknowledgement.  We confess that we, God’s image-bearers, have sinned.  We are sinners.  And we acknowledge that sin has a destructive impact on us and on humanity.  Sin pollutes God’s good creation and there is nothing you or I can do to overcome it.  Sin is more powerful than we are.

            Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned” (throw I__’s Lego house into the air), “and fall short of the glory of God.”  All we who are God’s image bearers are nothing more than smashed Lego houses, pathetically small pieces of plastic scattered about without purpose.

            (It is important at this point that I__ shows no emotional reaction.  He simply begins putting the house back together.  His only focus is reconstructing the house.  It is as if no one else is present.)

            All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  This belief about sin is fundamental to the entire Jesus story.  God became human because humans, in their sins, were and are cut-off from God.  God detests evil.  God wipes out that which rebels against Him.  Our sins put us in rebellion against God.  We are thus in the direct path of God’s fierce wrath.  In Genesis the story of Sodom and Gomorrah depicts how God feels about sin.  Those cities were full of perverted people and corrupt practices.  God annihilated both cities in avalanche of consuming flames.  That picture of God’s wrath is also a predictor of the fate of anyone who sins.  We all sin.

            On Ash Wednesday we heard two things. First our grand spiritual goal is to live in relationship with God.  Second, Sin makes the achievement of our goal impossible. 

            The good news is Jesus came to take care of sin.  So, we were invited and I invited every one this morning to spend time in prayer contemplating sin.  Think about your own specific sins.  And think about the way sin, in the big picture of your life and the even bigger picture of human history, has distorted the beautiful relationship God wants with each one of us. 

            How you specifically enter this spiritual practice of confession & acknowledgement will surely differ from how your neighbor does it.  Maybe you write down mistakes you’ve made, thing you’ve done that fill you with shame.  Then, you remember your forgiveness and you light the piece paper and burn it up, knowing you are forgiven. 

            Maybe, thinking big picture, you read a book about the holocaust.  That could be a Lenten discipline.  You read and you pray as your read.  The reading is informative, filling your mind with knowledge of a very dark chapter of human history, but it also is a call to prayer.  You ask the Holy Spirit of God to be at work in the world, healing and redeeming. 

            The spiritual practice of confession of sin and acknowledgement of the sin problem can take many forms.   My prayer is this work of confession and acknowledgement will enter our minds and our hearts and our daily thinking throughout Lent.  In raising our consciousness of sin, we become intensely aware of our need for Jesus. 

            Our spiritual goal is to be in relationship with Jesus – a relationship that is present and real and felt and even tangible in every part of our lives.  A new understanding of relationship with God: that’s the Lenten program at HillSong in 2013. 

            A goal within that goal is to shed the sin.  We talked about confessing and acknowledging on Wednesday and I hope you find in the rhythms of your life an intentional process of prayer in which you confess and acknowledge.  I strongly encourage you to do this throughout Lent.  But it can’t stop there.  That would not be good news – ending the story saying, “Yep, we’re sinners, cut off from God.”

            We want to be cleared.  The problem is we can’t.  We cannot on our own power erase our sins or the damages of sin.  We cannot make up for sin.  We cannot do away with it.  We cannot make amends that will make it all better.  And worst of all, we cannot stop sinning.  We want to, but we don’t have the power.  Paul says, “I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin.  I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:14b-15).  Sin gets in the way.  We long to walk with God, but we look at our lives and see pain and mistakes repeated and hurt.  It is not good.

            For the goal of relationship with God to be realized, sin has to be removed.  Thus innocence is a spiritual goal.  Every one of us needs to be able to stand before God and be declared innocent of sin and cleared of all sin’s damages.

            This is where Jesus goes to work.  In re-creating us so that we become new creations, sons and daughters of God, Jesus has clean-up work to do.  In Romans 3, Paul illustrates this through three metaphors.  His writing here, thanks to the influence of people like Martin Luther and John Calvin, is at the very core of what we believe as Christ-followers.  For the most part, we aren’t even aware of how much Luther’s thought was shaped by Augustine and Augustine’s thought was formed in his reading of Paul and specifically Romans.

            I say that just to point out that the metaphors in Romans 3 are extremely helpful in showing what Jesus has done.  But the story is not the terminology.  The story is Jesus at work making a way for us sinners to be declared innocent of sin and free of sin.  The real spiritual work is accomplished by Jesus.  Paul’s metaphors illustrate something Jesus is getting done.  McClendon, a theologian I referred to on Ash Wednesday describes Paul’s use of metaphor.  “Metaphors are not the furniture of some fairyland of unreal or pretended existence; metaphor is not an alternative to true utterance or a way of avoiding the (literal) truth.  [Metaphor is] a native device for speaking the truth in as plain and helpful as way as can be” (Systematic Theology: Doctrine, p.216).

            Thus Paul offers a legal metaphor.  “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift” (Rom. 3:24).  Thousands of pages of ink have been spilled by some of the greatest thinkers in Christian history debating what ‘justification’ means.  I find value in the conversation, but for our purposes, striving after relationship with God, the key truth is that justification renders us innocent even though we are sinners.  In this courtroom metaphor, we stand trial, accused of sin.  God sees what Jesus has done on the cross for us, God looks at us, and declares, “Innocent.”  Remember all the awful things said about sin?  They’re all true.   But we are innocent because of Jesus.

            Paul also offers a crass economic metaphor.  We are “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”  Redemption refers to slavery.  A slave is freed when his freedom, his manumission, is purchased.  We’ve already referred to Romans 7.  Slavery is the master and we are in chains forever.  But Jesus has crushed the cruel taskmaster.  Jesus has redeemed us.  We are slaves no more because what he has done. 

            We are innocent.  We are free.  The third metaphor is a worship metaphor.  We are “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith” (3:24-25b).  I am severely limited in explaining this third metaphor.  For me personally, this sacrifice metaphor – the blood atonement – does not unveil truth in native speech in a “plain and helpful way,” to use McClendon’s terms.

            But it was very much in common vernacular when Paul wrote it.  In first century Rome, pagan worship involved shedding of animal blood to cover human sins.  In Jewish worship in the temple, the same thing happened.  There is a scene in the movie the Nativity, about the birth of Jesus.  Herod is in the temple and the priest says, “Transfer your sins to the animal.”  Herod leans over and touches his forehead to the cow’s head.  Then the cow is slaughtered.  Paul is saying that when Jesus’ blood was shed, that was the last blood sacrifice ever needed for the sins of all people of all time.  And his first century readers might be surprised by such an audacious claim.  They certainly understood it.

            Is there literally a courtroom where we stand accused and God sits at the judge’s bench?  Are we literally in chains on the auction block and Jesus comes along and buys our freedom?  Is Jesus literally the perfect blood sacrifice?  I am not even trying to answer these question and I am not Paul was either.  Paul was saying, we humans have this serious sin problem.  Jesus’ death on the cross eliminates it completely, forever.  We believe in him and what he did become effective for us.  Paul uses the legal, economic, and worship metaphors to point to Jesus, his death on the cross, and our status before God.  That which would prevent us from being sons and daughters of God is gone.  The path is clear.

            In the debates about what exactly justification means, one things is agreed upon.  Jesus is the one who accomplishes it, not us.  So what then do we do?  If the spiritual goal is innocence and the means of achieving that goal are entirely in Jesus’ hands and he’s already done it, where does that leave us? 

            A spiritual practice for us in Lent in 2013 is to receive.  Receive the grace God gives.  He’s working. We need to receive what he’s doing for us and giving to us.

            What I mentioned Wednesday related to sin, confess and acknowledge, sounded a bit less than specific.  It’s not a guided discipline like fasting every Wednesday throughout Lent.  Maybe fasting helps us acknowledge and confess, but I wasn’t suggesting fasting.  I was prescribing the work of acknowledging and confessing.  Now I am prescribing even more strongly the work of receiving, paradoxical as they may sound.  I had a brief conversation with someone this week.  She said she needed something more concrete.  I understand, but this is where each of us has to take responsibility in our personal Lenten practice. 

            To receive the grace God is giving in Jesus Christ sounds vague.  It is not vague.  It is abstract to an extent, and it might be general, but not vague.  Receiving demands that we slow down.  We take in less input, less stimuli.  We spend time in quiet and solitude joyfully contemplating that no matter what has happened or what will happen, we are innocent, free, and sin is covered forever.  Jesus has done this and is doing this for us and in us constantly. 

I find it helpful to walk and pray.  Prayer walking is a way to set ourselves to receive God’s grace.  Perhaps praying in the early morning, before the world is awake when all else is quiet will help us be quiet and hear from and receive from God.  Maybe in the middle of Lent a silent retreat is in order.  These are a few suggestions.  The key is recognizing that Jesus is the one working.  And God is at work.  As Paul says, “He justifies the one who has faith in Jesus” (3:26).  This is hard for highly successful, determined people to grasp.  It you have accomplished a lot in your life, you surely hear the faith story at church and think, ‘what do I have to do.’  What you and I have to do is quiet down and slow down and let God be at work in us, cleansing us, remaking us. 

(Call I__ up and hold up the repaired house).  In his hands, with Him working on us, we become the new creations God wants us to.  So, we are in Lent.  Find a way that works in your life that is affective for you, to slow down and quiet down.  Set yourself to receive what God is giving.  When it comes to sin, don’t strive to overcome it.  Rather we turn to God and in faith, let Him be about His work in our lives.

AMEN