“Fully Receive the Word” (1 Thessalonians 2:13-20)

Sunday, August 30, 2015

[prior to reading the text]

        Last week, we received spiritual prescriptions that contribute to us living spiritually healthy lives in relation to God as disciples of Jesus and as a church that stands on the foundation of faith.

        The first prescription is to read 1^st Thessalonians, 2^nd Thessalonians, and Acts 17.

          The second prescription is to the welcome the madness that is in the world, and we do this by creating an environment of love and grace as we invite broken people to come to faith in Christ.

          This morning, we receive additional guidance for a spiritually fulfilled life.  Our Bible passage is 1^st Thessalonians 2:13-20.

                                                                                                      

¹³ We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers. ¹⁴ For you, brothers and sisters,^[d] became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews, ¹⁵ who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets,^[e] and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone¹⁶ by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins; but God’s wrath has overtaken them at last.

¹⁷ As for us, brothers and sisters,^[g] when, for a short time, we were made orphans by being separated from you—in person, not in heart—we longed with great eagerness to see you face to face. ¹⁸ For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, wanted to again and again—but Satan blocked our way. ¹⁹ For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? ²⁰ Yes, you are our glory and joy!

        In 1^st Thessalonians 2:13, Paul says the people in Thessalonica received the word of God not a human word but as God’s word, which works in us.  Note, Paul did not hand out Bibles – the New Testament had not been written and bound books were not available.  We hear the phrase ‘word of God,’ and we think Bible.  Paul meant his preaching.  When he went to Thessalonica and preached to the Jews in the synagogue, he felt that his sermon was the word of God. 

          Something similar should happen here.  When you come to HillSong or to another church, here is what should happen.  The experience should be one in which you encounter the living God.  I don’t say this because my words are necessarily the Word.  I do my part.  I study.  I pray.  I try to write a sermon that is interesting, well-informed, and includes a message that meets a need people have.  But, you receiving the word of God is not contingent upon my competence as a preacher.  Some weeks I do well, some weeks, I really stumble and stink.

          Some weeks, I finish, and I sit down, and I think, “Boy, I am glad that’s over because my preaching was just awful.” Inevitably someone will come and say through tears, “That’s the best sermon you’ve ever preached.”  Do you know why that happens?  God was at work in that person on that Sunday.  They need to express the overwhelming sense of the holy they have had.  How do they express that?  They don’t know.  So they complement me.

          Sometimes people listen very carefully and give me feedback that is directly tied to something I said and I am grateful in those moments whether the feedback is critical or affirming.  But sometimes, people have actually been dealing with God and did not really hear me at all.  They have to react and the easiest thing to do is say something nice to me. 

          I’ll admit it does feel good to hear affirmations and ‘attaboys.’  But, this morning, I think the word in 1^st Thessalonians is calling us to go beyond the easy and immediate reaction.  We need to step toward a more life-changing engagement with the word.  And by the phrase “the word,” I mean the sermon, the Bible, and the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking into hearts as we go through the entire Sunday morning exercise of worship at church. 

          We need to fully receive the word and that requires full engagement of each of us.  Be aware of your life – the good, the bad, the ugly.  Be aware of your spirit.  Are you happy, in a good place right now?  Are you going through difficult times?  Is your life kind of inert, it feels dull, boring?  Is this a season of radical change?  Does all the new that’s pouring to your life leave you feeling unsettled and unsure of what’s next?  As we sit together as a community of faith and encounter God’s word, know yourself, your emotions, your dreams, your situation.  Bring all of it before God.

          When Paul preached at the synagogue in Thessalonica, obviously Jews were present.  Greeks were too.  Non-Jews attended because they found something in the Jewish faith to be attractive.  It was a world of Roman power, Greek culture, and Jewish religion.  Many there knew that the tense situation in Jerusalem.  Certain groups were intent on using military force to evict the Romans.  It would be a suicide mission as Israel was a meager force in the face of the might of the Roman army. 

          The Jews and Greeks who gathered at the synagogue in Thessalonica knew of this.  They heard Paul claim that Jesus, who was crucified, a shameful, loser’s death, had been raised and was the Messiah.  They knew this message was way outside of anyone’s expectations, whether they be Greek, Jewish, or Roman.  How could Paul, a Jew, make such a far-fetched claim?  Yet, he did.  A few Thessalonican Jews believed him and wanted to become disciples of Jesus.  So too did a few Thessalonican Greeks.  Many others got so mad they kicked Paul out of town. 

          In writing the letter 1^st Thessalonians, Paul picks up on this ongoing story of struggle and persecution.  When he says, “You received the word as God’s word,” included in this is the acknowledgement that to follow Jesus is to suffer.  Verse 14, “[You Thessalonians] became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews.”  Please remember, in both churches, the Thessalonican and the Judean, many of the Christ-followers were Jews. 

          Bible scholar Calvin Roetzel writes how suffering brought “the suffering churches of Thessalonica and Judea together into a community of shared suffering.”  In this passage, “Paul emphasized the bond between himself and his readers.”[i]  He suffered.  They suffered.  Christians in other cities suffered.  And ultimately, God can identify with all of this because on the cross, Jesus suffered. 

          Suffering of course is not the heart of the faith Paul taught; just the opposite.  In 1^st Thessalonians he is moving to show that God welcomes suffering people.  If you are having a tough go of it, that is not a sign that you’re cut off from God.  Sin cuts us off.  If you’re suffering, God understands and so too do all God-followers.  The answer to the cross and to your pain and mine is the resurrection.  We are united in that we are broken and that we have hope that God will clean up our mess, fix what is broken, heal what’s hurt, and make us new. 

          We won’t receive the word fully unless we attend to it fully and that means bring everything before God when we come into the worship.  The preacher stand to preach and we’re all here – with all our junk.  Our hearts are fully present and so too are our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world.  Our challenges are linked to those who languish in poverty just a few miles from here.  Our story is a part of the story of the faithful believe drowning in a sea of apathy and atheism in post-Christian Europe.  We are connected to the Christian starving in solitary confinement in a North Korean prison.  It is all connected.

          When Paul told the Thessalonians they were receiving the Word as they heard Him speak and when I say here that God’s word is spoken during my sermons, there is a lot more going on than just a guy as microphone offering commentary on the Bible.  God is bringing us all together in Christ. 

          N.T. Wright says it this way.  “I believe [Paul] regarded [his own] work as being to set up cells loyal to Jesus as Lord across the world where Caesar was lord, raising small but significant flags which heralded the dawn of a different empire, a different sort  of empire.”[ii]  We see several things happening.  One is we, in our brokenness are invited in to find what we need, whatever it is, in a community that is based on faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior of all and Lord of all.  Our hope is in Him.

          A second thing at work in this Word of God is the unity we have with one another, with churches and with people from almost 2000 years ago – Thessalonia, Jerusalem, Paul, Silas, and with churches around the world today.  We who have our hope in Christ are connected to all others who have their hope in Christ because we’re all broken and we all have hope of healing from the same source: the crucified, resurrected Lord.

          A third thing in Paul’s letter which Dr. Wright so astutely observes is that we who are healed and connected through the Word we have received are commissioned to announce that Jesus is Lord.  We are to look at the governments of today and the situations of the lives we lead and we are to be today’s heralds of a new kind of empire.  The word we have received heals us and then propels us just as it did Paul to announce the Gospel, the good news of life in Christ.

          I preach this same message just about every week.  I use different words and the themes vary, but the idea that we meet God in Christ, are healed and made whole, and then are sent into the world in His name is at the core of what I think the Bible says we are to be as His followers.  So discipleship and proclamation is always a part of what we do and say.

          Last week we received a prescription of 3 Bible readings and one orientation – an orientation of welcome to all people.

          This week the word is in the form of exercise or spiritual therapy.  I got to doctor in hopes a magic pill that will my shoulder pain disappear.  No, he says, you don’t get medicine.  You have to go through physical therapy.  It takes time and commitment and it is hard work.  But I can tell you, it is worth it!  I didn’t like the exercises, but 6 weeks later, my shoulder was working properly again.

          This spiritual version of physical therapy is demanding.  (1) We need to come to worship with the family of God – the church.  We need to come every week.  (2) When we come – whether here or elsewhere, whether with me preaching or with Heather or Nathan – we need to be fully present.  This doesn’t mean we hang on every word Rob speaks.  We need to come fully present to God. 

          To be fully present, we have to give God our attention.  Distractions happen, but we keep our minds and hearts open to God as the Bible is read and the preacher speaks.  Fully attentive, fully open, prayerfully waiting, we are ready to receive what God has for us.  In that moment, when we sit fully ready and the Holy Spirit awakens us to new truth and revelation God has for us, that is when we receive the word as God’s word.  It may be directly related to the preacher’s sermon; it may not.  Either way, we have received God’s word.

          Finally (3), we carry what we have received into the world so that we are ready to share the healing and to invite the lost and hurting world around us to the hope that we have in the resurrection of Jesus.

          Come, be fully present, and carry with you what’s been received.  These three spiritual practices need to be done regularly for spiritual health and the transformation of the heart. 

          N.T. Wright marvels at this message we proclaim.  He’s amazed that it actually does anything.  He says, “I have often reflected on the strangeness of the task to which Paul devoted his life: telling pagans that there was a single creator God rather than a multiplicity of gods was bad enough, but adding that this God had made himself known in a crucified Jew, who had then been raised from the dead was bound to cause hoots of derision and, if Acts is to be believed, sometimes did.   Yet Paul found that when he told this story, when he proclaimed that this Jesus was indeed the world’s true Lord, people (to their great surprise, no doubt) found this announcement making itself at home in their minds and hearts, generating the belief that it was true, and transforming their lives with a strange new presence and power.”[iii]

          Yes, it is strange.  Come every week.  Listen so presently and intently you meet God.  Go out and share that God in Christ is the answer to the world’s problem.  We don’t have to participate in this exercise to breathe or have a heartbeat.  But to truly live, we do this.  And, as the apostle says, we have joy.

AMEN

---

[i] C. Roetzel (2003).  Paul: A Jew on the Margins.  Westminster John Know Press, Louisville, p.32.

[ii] Wright (2005).  Paul in Fresh Perspective.  Fortress Press, Minneapolis, p.170.

[iii] Ibid, p.100.

One Humanity (Ephesians 2:11-22)

Sunday, September 14, 2015

            Well … it has happened again.  This week a story was shared with me and it got me very upset.  A man in Minnesota was waiting for his kids to get out of school.  The school meets in a business park of some sort.  While he waited someone harassed him.  A nonviolent conflict ensued, police were called, and he ended being tased. 

            He had not broken any law.  He was a man waiting to pick his kids up from school and he reacted negatively as you or I would to being harassed for no reason.

            He is black.  All the officers are white.  Much of the confrontation was recorded.  I heard and watched it.  I was upset.

            This is the place where real life, your life and mine, and the Bible and the Holy Spirit of God collide.  It all comes together.

            How many more times in our country must a black person be assaulted by the police who are supposed to protect us?  I read of someone who had been an American citizen for 4 decades.  She moved from Miami to Georgia and someone posted on Facebook, “make sure you bring your flag.”  The reference was to an unfortunate phrase, “Would the last America to leave Miami please bring the flag?”  The inference is that people who look like Cubans, whatever that means, are not as American as white people. 

            Then there is a video, a farce, where a white man, a jogger, sees another jogger, a woman with Asian features, in the park.  Both are stretching.  He says, “Hi,” and she responds.  Then he says, “Where are you from?  Your English is perfect.”  She says, “San Diego.  We speak English there.”  He says, “No, where are you from?  Where are your people from?”  He proceeds to ask dumber and dumber questions. 

            Then she turns the tables on him.  She asks this white guy, “Where are you from?”  He names an American city and she says, “No, where are your people from?”  He says, “Oh, well, I am just a normal American.”  But she presses him until he says, “England, I guess.”

            Aren’t we all just normal Americans?

            When I led a youth group in Arlington in the late 90’s, nearly every kid in the group was either Hispanic or Sudanese.  The Sudanese were actually born in Sudan or in refugee camps in Kenya or Egypt.  Every single one of those tan skinned Latino kids were born in Arlington, Virginia.  How much more American can you be?

            But they didn’t see it that way.  If they discussed a friend at school they might say, “She’s American.”  I’d say, “What do you mean?”  They’d say, “You know, white.  Not Spanish.”  I though not Spanish.  These kids had parents who were Costa Rican and Argentinian and Salvadorian, but some of the kids, Hispanic kids, could barely speak Spanish themselves.  Yet in their minds, a normal American is white.

            Sometimes,  I will meet a person who is Asian or Hispanic.  I will ask, “Where are you from.”  I ask the same question upon meeting someone who is white or black.  It is a way I show interest in the other person.  I want to connect.  Regardless of what they look like, I expect to hear “I am from Detroit or I am from Wilmington or I am from Georgia or I am from St. Louis.”  I see the other as American, but she responds, “I am Korean.”  She doesn’t trust that I see her as American.

            Why should she?  If she has been hit with subtle prejudice or outright racism over and over, why should she believe that this white guy will be a nice one who sees her as a beautiful human being, who wants to celebrate her uniqueness, who wants to hear her story?  Why should she believe my good intentions?  She’s been hurt too many times by people who look like me.

            In the case of the Hispanic youth group kids this is a matter of self-identity.  In the comedy video, it is how we see others.  In Miami, it is a matter of some people deciding that individuals who they think “look Cuban” and probably want to be in this country so much they fought to get here are somehow less American looking than those who had the fortune to be born here.  For the black man who was tased in Minnesota, it is a matter of extreme embarrassment in front of his kids and the unsettling reality that he cannot trust the police to be for him.  In the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the racism that plagues us as a people turned out to be deadly. 

            I said earlier, this where real life, your life and mine, and the Bible and the Holy Spirit of God collide. 

            Ephesians 2 is seen against the backdrop of divided people.  Those called “the circumcision,” the Jews were distinct.  Jewish males were circumcised.  Gentiles males, all men who were not Jewish, did not get circumcised.  Jewish people lived by the Law of Moses.  Those who were not Jewish did not live by the law.  The Jews observed Sabbath.  Perhaps this distinction was the oddest to the Gentiles around them.  Why don’t the Jews work today?  Everyone else does?  What makes today so special?

            These distinctions marked the Jews as separate, holy, the people of God.  But they also marked all non-Jewish people as being not included in the people of God.  Gentiles were vile, unclean, and cut-off.  The division was as dramatic and pregnant withthe danger of violence as are the divisions between people in our country today. 

            It cannot be so for we who are “in Christ.”  Paul would not tolerate two churches – a Gentile Church and a Jewish one.  He insists that in Christ Gentiles are “no longer strangers and aliens but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (2:19).  Were Paul to step onto the scene today, he’d tell churches that divisions are antithetical to the Gospel.  Even if our worship styles are different, we are to be one.  Even if my grandparents persecuted your grandparents, I am to confess and repent, and you are to forgive.  We are to be one in Christ.  Even if our peers don’t seek unity and love, as followers of Christ you and are I commanded to seek unity and love in Christ. 

            In Ephesians 2, Gentiles by virtue of being Gentile are separated from God.  “Remember,” we read in verse 12, we who are Gentiles, “were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”  However, in Christ, by the blood of Christ, we are now brought near.  Jesus, is our peace.

            This word peace is central.  I specifically wish individuals in law enforcement would have the inner drive to seek peace and the imaginative creavity to find peaceful solutions to conflicts.  I am sure in a confrontation a policeman feels disrespected.  And if they don’t respect him, he will lose the authority he needs to do his job.  I am sure that’s how he feels.  It is hard.  There is pressure.  I am sure he feels he must show his strength in order to be respected by. 

But, the effort to project strength is resulting in policemen and policewomen doing awful things like shooting unarmed teens and tasing Dads who wait to pick their kids up from school.  I wish more people wanted peace and worked for it.  In Ephesians 2, the word peace is mentioned in verse 14, 15, and twice in 17.

            Jesus is our peace.  “In his flesh, he made both groups into one and” broke down the dividing wall of hostility.  We cannot stop others from hating or giving in to fear.  But we can offer a new story.  We can help break down the wall of hostility through prayer and acts and words of love which include a willingness to listen as others tell the stories of when they were wounded by racism.  With humble patience we listen as much as the other needs us to listen.  What better act of love is there than to value another by affirming his worth as we listen to his story?

            We have to keep faith in Jesus at the center of this because He is our peace.  Without him driving our words, any steps toward peace come up short.  I know religion is a source of division in the world, but that is bad religion, religion built on the destruction of other.  In Christ, our posture is open, humble, inviting, God-focused, Spirit-powered, and aimed at love and unity. 

            This is why Ephesians 2 is so intent on destroying circumcision as a qualifying mark.  This is why Ephesians 2 insists in verse 15 that Jesus has abolished the law.  In the Sermon on the Mount, we see Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and it is true.  Everything the law intended to accomplish in creating people who worship God and live with each other in peace is accomplished in and through Christ.  So in that sense, Jesus in fact fulfills the law completely.  But when the circumcision and the law are markers that identify some people as insiders and others as outsiders, then law and circumcisions no longer serve God’s purposes.  In that sense, Jesus does away with the distinctions. 

Therefore we see in verses 15-16 that Jesus “creates in himself one new humanity in place of the two, making peace and [reconciling] both groups to God in one body through the cross.”  The next verses insist that Jesus proclaims peace and peace means that we all have access to God.

In Christian faith we see this in Baptism and Communion.  Baptism tells a story that ends with an invitation: I was a sinner, I died in sin, Jesus rose from death, and because I am in Him, I will rise from death; and you can too if you receive Jesus into your life and follow Him.  He came that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life as children of God.  Communion is a share meal and the only requirement for coming to the table is the willingness to acknowledge sin and our powerlessness to defeat sin.  We come to the communion table as everyone comes to it: dependent on God for everything.

Our one humanity is not homogenous and I would not want it to be.  In other letters, Paul brags about his own Jewish credentials.  He is a Jewish man, not an everyman.  In Ephesians 2, he does not want Jews to stop being Jews.  He is not in search of the generic disciple.  There is no such thing.  Our relationship with God is always particular, always personal.  There is no general Christianity.  Christianity is always the story of you, an individual, walking with Jesus, living as his disciple.  It is even inaccurate to say, “The story.”  I cannot tell “the story,” but I can tell my story.

The world becomes beautiful when we hear one another’s’ stories.  I will never say, “Well, black people and Hispanics and Asians and whites – we’re really not all that different.”  We are.  We are beautifully different, but united in Christ. 

I pastored in Arlington for 9 years and I got into a group of friendships with single people or young couples prior to having kids.   Once kids come along and grow into school age you don’t hang out with friends very often.  Everything in life is geared toward baseball practice and orthodontist appointments and PTA meetings.  By the time it is all done each day, you can’t go out to clubs or sports bars.  For one thing, you’re too tired.  For another, it would be irresponsible to leave the house with your children in bed asleep and go out for beers. 

But, years ago, I did have that life and I had my crowd.  We’d go out to eat at Dupont Circle or go to movies in Adams Morgan.  One of the guys in that crowd is married to a woman who is not Caucasian.  I say it that way deliberately because for years, I did not know her ethnicity.  And I was scared to ask.  She is very outspoken, politically far, far to the left of me, and I thought if I ask, “What are you,” fiery laser beams would come out of her eyes and pierce my skull.  So I didn’t ask.

We were part of the same circle, though.  We all even traveled to Honduras together in 2004 when one of our group married a Honduran woman.  So I was around her a lot.  I now don’t remember the conversation, but I remember her figuring out that I had no clue about her ethnicity.  She liked that I didn’t know and that she knew I was uncertain of how to ask.  After teasing me a bit, she finally told me she was Korean.  She had been adopted by a Caucasian family in Ohio.  They had 4 boys and her mother wanted a daughter badly.  So they adopted a Korean girl.

If you go deep enough with people and listen long enough, you get past the uncomfortable issues that plague our world, like the race conversation.  People will find you are safe and they can share their stories with you.  And they do because we all want to share our stories.  And when they do, then the race conversation is no longer uncomfortable.  It is beautiful.

Janessa and I were friends and so when Candy and I were getting ready to adopt, I could talk to her.  I could ask, “Now you are an adult.  What is it like, your relationship with the parents who adopted you?  What do I need to do to make sure my children will want a relationship with me when they are grown?”  And she helped me. 

Maybe it sounds like I am way off topic here.  I have been discussing unity in Christ especially among people of different races and I have wandered off on this tangent about my old crowd in DC.  But this is the point! Janessa and I remained as white man and Korean woman, but as we listened to one another and came to that safe place in friendship, we became something more.  We became brother and sister in Christ, people who listened to one another’s stories and helped each other. 

This is the other story, the alternative narrative.  Ferguson, Missouri is a reminder that there’s a lot of hate in the world.  The body of Christ has another story to tell – the story of the gospel bringing us together, making us one. 

AMEN

Entering the Story of Life (John 20:30-31)

Sunday, January 26, 2014

John 20:30-31

³⁰ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.³¹ But these are written so that you may come to believe^[a] that Jesus is the Messiah,^[b] the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

David Lose of Luther Seminary in Minnesota observes “that the primary challenge facing the Christian Church in North America in the 21st century is that for most of our people, God is no longer a primary actor in the story of their lives. … It’s not that people don’t believe in God, it’s just that apart from church they don’t think about God all that much. … The biblical story – the narrative, that is, that teaches us to recognize God’s activity in the world – is relatively and increasingly unfamiliar to them and certainly not a source of the kinds of stories we regularly tell and share as we seek to make sense of our lives.”[i]

I agree with his observation, which is why our church wide emphasis is on understanding the Bible, getting into the Bible and getting the Bible into us.  Church-goers are by and large Biblically illiterate.  This lament fills seminary halls, the pages of Christian literature, and the conversations of pastors when they get together.  A lot of people claim the Bible is important.  Few actually know what it says.  Fewer still understand what a rigorous, lifelong endeavor it is to read and live in the Bible. 

If upon hearing this, your reaction is, oh no!  I don’t know the Bible!  He’s talking about me.  Relax.  There will be no quiz this morning.  When I observe that people generally, even church goers, are unfamiliar with the Bible, I do not say it as an accusation.  I intend it as an invitation.  If someone said to me, I don’t know the Bible; my response is “You can.” 

The Bible is not intended as an inaccessible holy book only the experts and the initiated can understand.  It is not easy.  It is often challenging.  But the challenge is there to be met.  Difficulties that come up in reading, understanding, and applying the Bible to life are invitations from God.  God is challenging because God is holy and sin blocks our view of him.  God reaches to us and invites us to look past whatever is blocking the way.  As we overcome the obstacles sin lays down, we get to where we have a real, dynamic, life-making relationship with God. 

The 20^th chapter of John’s Gospel ends with a statement of purpose.  “Jesus did many signs … not written in this book.”  John acknowledges this without hesitation or apology.  John wasn’t trying to write an exhaustive biography.  The Gospel has qualities of a biography, but the goal of the final composition was not to simply tell Jesus’ story.  Was the author of John’s gospel aware of Matthew, Mark, and Luke when he wrote John?  That question inspires much debate.  I tend to think, yes, he knew of the traditions that went into those other gospels.  I doubt he had copies of them in front of him when he wrote John.  I am not fully convinced that John was the last one written.

Nor am I at all convinced that the Apostle John, one of the 12 disciples, is the author of the Gospel of John.  I don’t know if there is any way of being certain of the identity of the original author and compilers.  The Gospel itself only says that the author was the disciple whom Jesus loved (21:20, 24).  In John chapter 11, Lazarus was described as the one Jesus loved (11:3b).  Certainly, there were more disciples than just the 12.  I think a compelling, though not convincing, case can be made that the author of the 4^th gospel was Lazarus. 

At any rate, this Gospel was written with a purpose, and that purpose was not to exhaustively catalogue Jesus words and actions.  Much was included that is not in Matthew, Mark, & Luke.  Much in those gospels is not in John.  And the material in all four is arranged and presented uniquely in each. 

The Gospels of John wants to be read.  The Gospel of John wants the reader to see Jesus within the pages.  The Gospel of John wants the reader to meet Jesus and believe in him, that he is the Messiah, the Son of God, God in human flesh.  The Gospel of John wants this because if one believes in Jesus, that person will have life.  There are plenty of people in the world, billions, who eat, grow, procreate, work – they are alive.  They don’t know Jesus at all and yet a biologist would define them as living.  No, says, the Gospel of John.  Life, life as God intends it, can only be had by the one who knows Jesus.

Thus the problem as observed by David Lose.  People in our day, place, and time, don’t think much about God outside of Sunday morning, and they don’t look to God’s word to make sense of their lives.  People are alive but not living.  We immediately see what this means for us, a church family.  Before us sits the fourth gospel saying – read!  Read and believe!  Believe and have life – life as God intends it. 

Have we read?

Are we living the life we’re invited by God to live?

What about people around us who don’t have this?  Either they have not read the Gospel or they have no access to it or they aren’t interested in it.  Whatever the cause, we are surrounded by people who do not have the life God wants people to have.

John is the Gospel that records Jesus saying, “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly” (10:10).  John is the abundant life Gospel.  John is the Gospel where Jesus says to a Pharisee, Nicodemus, “God so loved the world, he gave his only son so that whoever believes may not perish but have eternal life.”  In John, Jesus tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me though they die will live.  And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (11:25-26).  John is an open book – open for everyone, every person.  We read, meet Jesus, believe, and have eternal life; abundant life. 

Before us sits the fourth Gospel, the word of God.  Are we into the life God wants for us?  Are we inviting the world around us into that life?

I have been recommending pathways into the Bible.  Some readers will be blessed memorizing verses of scripture like John 3:16, or one my favorites, John 14:6.  “Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the father except through Him.”  Memorization helps us feel the wholeness of God’s word encapsulated in a verse or 2.

Others feel blessing in the walking through the Bible in a deliberate fashion reading a few chapters each day all the way through in a year’s time.

I suggested reading as a way of meeting God; keep a God notebook in which you record your encounters with the Creator of all that is as you meet him in the pages of the book He had given.

I suggested reading the Bible and the newspaper together each talking to the other so that our journey in scripture relates the world around us and we see the world in light of scripture.

A fifth pathway into the Bible involves deep introspection.  Write your own life story.  We heard Matthew share his last week.  Chris and Nelson shared theirs two weeks ago.  Imagine you were to be recruited to share your faith story, your testimony.  Next Sunday you would tell who you are.  Surely the journey would include season, maybe long stretches, in which you felt very far from God.  And maybe stretches felt like you walked hand-in-hand with God.  Everyone has his or her own story.  Imagine yours.  I recommend writing it out if you never have.  Doing so requires you to deal with details you might be tempted to sweep under the rug.  Imagine your life story, including all the hardest of hard places.

Now, take your life story with you every time you step into the Bible.  And as you review your life story, see the story of God in the scriptures alongside it. 

Some people recommend having a life verse.  I think this can be helpful.  In your reading of scripture, find verse that sums up your life as you have walked with God, fallen away, and come back again.  This is the fifth pathway into the word, I propose.  Review your life story with scripture in view and identify a Biblical story or a verse or two that is your life verse.  And by the way, as life changes, your understanding of your life verse does too and you might even find a new life verse when you enter a new season.  That’s OK.

The 4^th Gospel testifies that the Bible is intended to draw us to God and to have life in Jesus’ name.  In John 20, Jesus appeared to the disciples.  Judas hung himself after betraying Jesus.  Thomas missed seeing Jesus.  He heard of the resurrection from those who had seen Jesus, but he refused to believe.  The Gospel that invites the reader to faith also recognizes the potential for doubt, unbelief.  Some will hear the stories of resurrection and flat-out refuse to accept that it could be true. 

John 20:21 says,

²¹ Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²² When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

This commission of Jesus, including the forgiving and retaining of sins prompts New Testament professor Susan Hylen to ask, "What is expected of later followers of Jesus?"[ii]  The fourth gospel expects to be read by believers, not just pastors, but everyone in the church.  The fourth gospel expects us to trust the witness offered.  The fourth gospel expects us to, upon hearing the testimony, to believe in Jesus and have life in his name.  Beyond, that, we are to become the inviting voice that draws in others, doubters, skeptics, sinners, you name it.

Jesus grants his followers the authority to forgive or retain sins.  The weight of this commission can only be shouldered by Christ-followers who know their own weakness.  When we realize that we are receiving this commission because at our lowest point we were lifted up by Jesus and He is our only hope, only then, in full view of our weakness, can we receive the commission to forgive or retain sins.  Professor Hylen reminds us that in John’s Gospel, ‘sin,’ means failing to see Jesus as the Son of God and believe in him.  

If we are in Christ, then we are never inclined to want to retain anyone’s sin.  Our bent is to see people outside the faith, or those in the church, who are not walking with Jesus, turn to Him, see Him, believe, and come to life.  That’s what has happened to us and now it is what we want for others.  In Christ, having seen, we do not want to see anyone’s sin retained.  We want for others the abundant life Jesus has given to us.  We become the invitation we have answered.

This week, read the Bible.  And review your life.  Read your own autobiography as you read the Bible.  Remember who you were and who you are, where you have been and where you are today.  Let God’s word prod you to deeper faith and abundant, eternal life.  Along the way, make your life an invitation, inviting a nonbeliever to see Jesus, believe in Him, and have life in His name.   

The Bible is your entry point to life. 

Your invitation is a wake-up letting your friend know that he too is invited to enter the story of the with-God life.

AMEN

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[i] David Lose (2013), http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2509

[ii] Susan Hylen (2013), http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1585