"Return" (Zechariah 1:1-17)

 

watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJMCSvMKLms&t=11s

Sunday, February 7, 2021

 

            Who are we? Who will we be?  Beloved movie heroes entertain us for 2-3 hours, trying to answer these questions.  Elsa in Frozen; who will she become, now that everyone knows she has super powers?  Luke Skywalker in Star Wars; will he ever become a Jedi Knight?  If he does, what then?  Steve Rogers in the Avengers; once the skinny weakling takes the super-soldier serum, what then?  What does he become? 

            As much as I love these stories, I find your more interesting because, (1) I can see you and talk to you.  You’re real!  And, (2) you don’t have super-soldier serum, you can’t shoot icicles out of your hands, and you can’t control force.  What you have going for you is the Holy Spirit!  I want to hear your story once the Holy Spirit enters your life.

            I want to find out who you are when you are ‘in Christ.’  I want to find out who the church will become.  The pandemic has rattled the church’s sense of itself.  Potlucks; bedside hospital visits; raucous laughter shared around the front hall coffee pot before the worship service; laying hands on someone being commissioned or ordained; embracing a friend; these things make the church and we can’t hardly do any of them.  Thanks, COVID-19. 

            What’s more, our church had just changed our name to “Hillside.” At the end of 2019.  We were coming out of two years of bumpy transition.  We were in the process of rediscovering our identity before COVID came along!  Does that mean we were ahead of every other church that had to deal with re-evaluating itself in light of COVID?  Or did it mean we were set back a year in the work we were doing to once again hear and answer God’s call.  I think it’s a little of both.

            More and more people are vaccinated each day.  The end is coming and when it does, we’ll have to be ready to understand our identity so we can be God’s witnesses here, drawing people in our town to Jesus.  But really, we have to begin that work before the pandemic ends.  Right now, today, we are called to be witnesses who tell what we have seen and experienced in following Jesus Christ.

            I had us begin 2021 in Haggai and now in Zechariah because these prophets spoke the word of the Lord to the covenant community in Jerusalem after the exile.  Exile had diminished them, displaced them, and broken them.  None of that changed the call.  Israel was to be God’s chosen people through whom the entire world would know and worship and serve the only true God. 

Exile had been the means by which God had punished his people for failing to answer that call and live his way.  When we get to Haggai and Zechariah, we find that the exile is over.  It’s time to start over, rebuild, and once again turn to the Lord and then draw the world to the Lord.  These prophets speak God’s word to a rebuilding people.

We are a rebuilding people.  The “who” question is an identity question.  Zechariah is not part of the answer to the “who” question.  Zechariah is a guide.  Listening to his truth, it sinks in.  We are the answer to the “who” question.  Who is this story about?  It’s about God as God is revealed in a rebuilding congregation, Hillside Church, emerging from years of transition and seemingly endless months of social distancing.  Who will we become as God’s people in Chapel Hill?

In this story, we are the “who”. God’s church.  What about the “what” and the “how”?

Who will Hillside Church be when we live into the identity God gives us?  “What” is the next question.  What needs to happen for us to be ready to live into our God-given identity as a people? The prophet Zechariah tells us in chapter 1.

“Return to me,” says the Lord of hosts in verse 3.  Zechariah warns the people not to repeat the mistakes of their parents, the exile generation.  God invited them to return, but they continued in their rebellion.  Now, they were gone. God’s word remained.  And so, the invitation is once again given.  “Return to me” (1:3).   

Zechariah writes in verse 6 that the people repented.  They turned away from injustice. They turned away from the worship of idols, false gods.  They turned away from sin and turned to God.  In their broken state, they accepted God’s justice, including the punishment.  With exile over, they were ready to return to God.

After this initial call to repentance and report that the people answered by repenting, Zechariah shares the first of his seven “night visions.”  At night, in a grove of myrtle trees, he sees a man astride a horse, and behind them several horses of different color, typical colors for horses. 

These horses act as God’s emissaries patrolling the earth.  The vision depicts for the prophet what he and we already know.  God can see the entire earth.  He is all-seeing and all-knowing.  The angel reports in Zechariah 1:11 that all is calm, the earth is at peace.

How can this be so?  How we say “all is well” when God’s temple is a pile of rubble and God’s people live as exiles?  Thus, the angel, not the prophet, confronts God asking accusingly, “How Long, O Lord” will you withhold mercy” (1:12)?  We can relate.  We know people refuse to wear masks, gather in close quarters, and ignore good pandemic behavior.  We know part of the reason this contagion has persisted and dogged us as it has is that people don’t do what is necessary to curb it.  Still, like Zechariah’s angel in chapter 1, we look to heaven, shake our fists, and through our tears bellow out, “How long will this go on, O Lord?” 

Zechariah 1:13 shows God as an understanding counselor, a patient therapist.  It says the “Lord replied with gracious and comforting words to the angel.”  In this same chapter, God is angry and God is understanding.  Both are true because God is perfect love. In verse 16, God says, “I have returned to Jerusalem with compassion.” 

Human suffering breaks God’s heart, even when we bring the suffering on ourselves.  God’s compassion is always for us.  As Jesus says in Luke 15, “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (15:10b).  God wants us to be free of the pain sin imposes and God offers us that freedom.  We need to turn to Him.  We turn from the sin, acknowledge our absolute need, and turn to God.

Thus the “who” – our identity is defined by the “what”; what we do.  We see understand that we can only live dependent on God.  We turn away from putting our faith in people, things, dreams, and systems.  We turn from that and we turn to God.  The “what” is our need for His grace, for the Spirit’s empowerment, for forgiveness, and energy to start again. 

What about the “how?”  Who?  What?  How?  How do we begin living into the identity God has given to us? 

This part of the story is God’s work.  God says, in Zechariah 1:16, “I have returned, with compassion.”  More than once in Haggai God says, I will be with you.  The Gospel of Matthew ends with Jesus’ promise to his disciples (and to us), “I am with you always to the end of the age” (28:20).  In Revelation, we know that at the end of the age, Jesus returns, we are resurrected, and we live forever with him in our resurrection bodies.  The presence of God ties this all together. 

Just as Zechariah prophesied the temple building in Jerusalem, 515BC, we will build Jesus’ church right here in Chapel Hill.  God is with us, so we can do it.  We can encourage each other, feed the hungry, share good news, love all who come, and grow our family because God is here, filling us with His empowering spirit. 

Furthermore, in Zechariah 1:17, God declares, “My cities shall again overflow with prosperity.”  We will flourish as God’s church because we stand in our need, as a broken people who have been healed by love, a dead people born again, a repentant people made new.  It’s the story of God and us – us returning to the God who loves us.  That repentance is our act of acknowledgement and faith.  And the story ends in joy and peace because God is present.

At the communion table, we take a necessary step in the story.  We come to the table as we are.  We don’t put on a false front, no facades.  We don’t hide behind masks of respectability, false presentations of our best selves.  We wear our warts, pimples, scars, wrinkles and dried tears.  This is us.  We come name what we have lost.  We hold out our mistakes.  We have in mind those we have hurt either by our actions or our failure to act. 

On our way to the communion table, a table welcoming all, we stop at the cross.  There we lay down everything – our entire story.  When Zechariah says “return,” this is the repentance we ought to have in mind.  All are welcome, but we can’t get to the table without a stop at the cross.  We meet Jesus at the cross, and he guides us to take our seat at the table where we gather with brothers and sisters, a family, united by God’s love. 

Take your place.  Bring your story.  Open your heart to God.  Receive the grace and forgiveness he gives.  And the prosperity.  He makes us new.  Even as wrong as things seem in the world, he makes things right.

AMEN

Change Course, Eyes Forward (Matthew 3:1-12)

Second Sunday of Advent, December 8, 2019

            “I am the king!”  New Testament professor Michael Wilkens shouted that proclamation to the surprised students in his classroom.  Then he asked them what came to mind as he made that declaration.  Think about it.  When my first words were, “I am the king,” what, besides no you’re not ran through your mind?

            Professors Wilkins writes that one student said, “King Arthur and the round table.”  Another recalled that iconic scene from the movie Titanic and channeling his inner Leonardo DiCaprio shouted, “I’m the king of the world.”  Maybe you thought of a movie like The King’s Speech, or The Lion King, or the last installment of The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King. [i]

            Wilkins’ point of course is that we have to think about what it is to serve a king if we are to read Matthew rightly.  We Americans, with democracy deeply engrained in us, might find this difficult.  John’s message is the kingdom of God has come near because of the arrival of Jesus – King Jesus.  Wherever Jesus is the Kingdom is.  John the Baptist told the people of the Judean countryside in about 28AD that the Kingdom of Heaven had come. 

            Matthew says in chapter 3 verse 3 that John is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness; ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”  Isaiah did not predict Jesus so much as Isaiah testified to what he saw God doing.  That’s important to remember.  Luther Theological Seminary Professor Karoline Lewis reminds us that Old Testament prophets were not forecasters, but truth-tellers.  Matthew, writing hundreds of years after Isaiah, believed Jesus was fulfillment of Isaiah’s vision.  It was true when Isaiah said it in the 6^th century BC but ultimate, final fulfillment would not come until the Messiah came.  John’s message was, the Messiah has come. 

            I thought about titling this message “Change Course and Don’t Look Back.”  But that would make the emphasis on the change and why it’s irreversible.  The heart of the message is God has acted and is acting.  We want to see what God’s doing; we want to be part of it.  So, yes, change is part of the good news.  That change is irreversible.  Once we come to know God in Jesus Christ, we are born again.  We become new creations.  We cannot go back to who we were before we knew Jesus.  Now that we are in Christ our lives don’t make any sense apart from him.  “Change Course and Don’t Look Back” is a good title.

            But, this morning, it’s not the best title.  The best is “Change Course and Eyes Forward.”  We have to keep our eyes forward because the entire story is about what God is doing.  The only way we see it and experience God and walk with God is to pay attention.  Last week, reading Matthew 24, we heard Jesus say, stay awake and be ready.  We have the eyes of our hearts open and focused on God.  In Jesus God has acted and is acting.  We want to see what God’s doing.  But why the phrase “Change Course?”

            John’s very first word is “Repent.”  Simply defined, it means we turn away from our sins and from a life of sin.  The charge, though, goes deeper.  We’re sorry for rebelling against God. We regret sins we’ve committed that hurt others, those around us, and ourselves, and bring offense to God.  Then, having expressed sorrow and brokenness, we completely reverse our life direction.  Repentance is change from a life apart from God to a life yearning for God, dependent on God, and moving the direction God indicates along the path God clears. 

            When I went through army basic training, the goal of the drill sergeants was to fix in our minds a new way of thinking and being in the world.  We hated all the push-ups.  They yelled “Drop and give me 10,” as a discipline, but it also made us stronger.  I’ve never been in the kind of shape I was in at the end of August, 1989.  Thirteen weeks of hundreds of push-ups a day will transform your body. 

            Physical fitness was just the tip of the iceberg.  If I came up to you and yelled, “Drop and give me 10,” you would look at me like I was crazy, and you certainly wouldn’t do push-ups because I commanded you to do so.  But in the army, you have to know to obey orders.  For one thing, it keeps the unit orderly and organized.  For another, in combat, with bombs exploding everywhere, you have to obey orders immediately.  It’s life or death. 

            Basic training is intense because they are trying to change who you are and how you see the world.  Thirty years later I still have dreams that I am back in the National Guard.  It is tattooed on my psyche.  John’s call to “Repent!” is even more serious.  When we turn away from sin and turn to Jesus, we abandon loyalty to systems, relational ties, and governments of this world. 

Every time I say the pledge of allegiance, I have to have a quick conversation in my own mind.  “Yes,” I tell myself, “I will serve my nation, the United States, and be a good citizen.  But that loyalty is nothing in light of who I am in Christ.  I belong to God as God’s property.  How I live out my life roles as husband, father, pastor, friend, and American citizen is defined by who I am in Christ and every one of those roles is subservient to the claims God makes on me.  When John says, “Repent!” that’s what he means.  Change the course of your life so completely that you see everything in your life in light of Jesus and who you are becoming in Him. 

It’s not easy.  Roads in Israel in 28 AD were rocky, full of bumps and holes.  The only time those roads would get clear was when someone extraordinarily important, royalty, was coming through.  John the Baptist, a prophet in the true sense of the word, saw repentance as the clearing the road to our hearts so we’d be ready for the arrival of King Jesus. 

Repentant, we quit behaviors that hurt others and offend God.  We have to give up activities that tempt us to sin.  We have to change the way we feel about people – even people who are evil to us.  We have to make faith an active, daily priority in our lives.  You know the things in your life that need to be jettisoned and the practices that need to be added so that you are attuned to God and alert to what God is up to.  Change is not easy.

John’s baptism helps, but it’s not the baptism that would get us to the point we are completely turned to God.  He immersed people in the water to symbolize that they were cleansed of sin.  However, John the Baptist knew full well that people come promising they repented, were baptized, and as soon as they came out of the water, returned to behaviors God condemns.  He was so aware of our tendency to choose our way instead of God's, he lashed out at religious leaders, Pharisees and Sadducees, who too often did this very thing (v.7).  He told them that if their water baptism were to mean anything, they would need to bear fruits worthy of repentance.  In other words, their lives would need to change and the change would be seen in how they treated people, especially poor, common peasants. 

Among others things, John saw Jesus as a great divider.  He referred to the practice of winnowing.  The harvested grain would be in great piles and the harvesters would use pitch forks to fling it up into the wind.  The useless chaff, the shell-likes husks, would blow away.  The weighty grain, the “fruit” fell back to earth to be gathered and stored in the barn. 

Jesus, says John, is holding his pitch fork.  He tosses our promises of repentance in the air.  He looks at our lives.  Any empty faith words we speak float off and are ultimately burned as kindling.  Our words that are anchored to a life of prayer, to acts of forgiveness, to service to our fellow humans, especially the poor and downcast – our anchored faith is gathered.  This is the fruit that signifies our repentance has taken hold in our lives. 

Can we, by the power of our wills, commit to such weighty, life change?  No, and John knew it.  That’s why his baptism was just the start.  “I baptize you with water,” he said, “but the one coming after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (v.11).  Just as we are immersed in water by John, we are immersed in the Spirit of God.

Have you ever sat at a campfire and watched the logs burn down?  The wood changes, is consumed, and can never again be a log.  Precious metals are refined by fire.  It hurts, but also produces warmth and in refinement greater strength and beauty.  Baptized in the Holy Spirit, we become something totally new and cannot go back to what we were.  The reason John the Baptist flashes into the gospels unexpectedly and then is gone from it even more quickly is he’s not the story and didn’t want to be.

John drew everyone out of the cities to the wilderness, grabbed their attention, and then directed it to Jesus.  Matthew, writing this story about 40-50 years after these events happened included John’s part but only to get us to Jesus.  I have often wanted to do an extended study on John the Baptist, but each time I try, I realize he doesn’t want that.  The gospel writers who present him won’t give that.  This luminous time is John’s time and he uses his time to shine the spotlight on the arrival of the Savior, Jesus.  That’s where John wants us to look. 

I don’t know what’s going on in your life, but as we sing Christmas carols about the birth of Jesus, I invite you to turn from whatever you think, say, and do that hurts others and disregards God.  Turn away from that and turn to Jesus.  John the prophet, Matthew the storyteller, and I, a preacher descended from these giants, I, a miserable sinner who’s been saved by grace – we all shine the spotlight on Jesus so you’ll look there.  In him, God is saving the world.  You want to be part of that.

Next week, we start life as Hillside Church.  A group of pastors I pray with met at our building this past Thursday and one of them said, as we prayed, that he sensed something.  He sensed that God is acting, doing a new thing, and our launch of a new name is just the start!  This is the beginning of us seeing what God is doing and joining where God is at work. 

I don’t know your life’s direction.  This is your time to change course and fix your eyes on God.  Jesus’ arrival is a statement of God’s love for you.  Give your life to Him.

AMEN

---

[i] Wilkins, Michael (2004), Matthew: The NIV Application Commentary, Zondervan (Grand Rapids), p.148.

The Cost of Turning (Hosea 3:1-5)

Sunday, July 8, 2018

The great 20^th century American poet Langston Hughes writes in his autobiography,

I was saved from sin when I was [almost] 13.  But not really saved.  It happened like this.  There was a big revival at my Auntie Reed’s church.  Every night for weeks there had been much preaching, singing, praying, and shouting, and some very hardened sinners had been brought to Christ, and the membership of this church had grown by leaps and bounds.  Then just before the revival ended, they held a special meeting for children, ‘to bring the young lambs to the fold,’ [they said]. 

That night I was escorted to the mourner’s bench with all the other young sinners.

My aunt told me that when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside!  And Jesus came into your life. … She said you could see and hear and feel Jesus in your soul.  I believed her. 

So I sat there calmly in the hot, crowded church, waiting for Jesus to come to me. 

The preacher preached … [and then said] “Won’t you come?  Won’t you come to Jesus?  Young lambs, won’t you come?”  And he held out his arms to all us young sinners there on the mourners’ bench.  The little girls cried.  Some jumped up and went to Jesus right away.  But most of us just sat there. 

A great many people came and knelt around us and prayed.  The whole building rocked with prayer and song.

Still I kept waiting to see Jesus.

Finally all the young people had gone to the altar and were saved, but one boy and me. 

He said to me, “I’m tired o’sitting here.  Let’s get up and be saved.”  So he got up and was saved.

I was all alone on the mourners’ bench.  The whole congregation prayed for me in a mighty wail.  And I kept waiting serenely for Jesus, waiting, waiting – but he didn’t come.  I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me.  Nothing!

It was getting really late.  I began to be ashamed of myself, holding everything up so long.  So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I’d better lie and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved.  So I got up. 

That night, I cried in bed alone, and couldn’t stop.  I was crying because I had deceived everybody in the church.  I hadn’t seen Jesus, and now, I didn’t believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn’t come to help me.

            What poor young Langston Hughes didn’t know is people deceive the church all the time.  Some of those huddled around him crying, praying, shouting, and singing that night probably hadn’t seen Jesus either, at least not in the way he hoped he would.  Some people do.  I believe visions happen.  I can’t predict when.  I don’t think visions of the Holy Spirit are conjured up, or happen because the one praying is earnest enough.  Some people speak in tongues.  Some don’t.  Some hear the voice of God.  Some don’t.  Some see visions.  Some don’t.

            However, God is not only talking to some people.  Those who don’t see visions and don’t hear God’s audible voice and don’t speak in tongues are not ignored by God.  God speaks to them in other ways.  At some point we take a step in faith trusting that on God’s time and in God’s way, God fills in the gaps. 

            A crucial step in moving toward God in faith is repentance.  We have to be able to truly see our own sins and the effect of those sins.  It doesn’t help to talk about sin in the abstract.  For us to be convicted in the heart, we have to be specific.  Marriage infidelity; greed; sexual promiscuity; gossip; rage; substance abuse; neglect of the poor; racism; violence; hoarding and not sharing; objectification of a people group; these are cagtegories of actual sins that we commit.  These sins hurt people.  When we see that our actions reveal that our hearts are turned against God and against others, then, we are positioned to have a change of heart. 

            That’s repentance – a change of heart.  We turn from the damaging things we do, the hateful words we say, and the ungodly thoughts in our minds. We turn from this path that leads away from God.  We turn back to God.  That’s repentance. 

            Twelve-year-old Langston Hughes thought he knew what God was supposed to do at the revival. He didn’t deal with things in his own life.  He was trying to live up to the expectations of others.  Our faith happens in community, but our decision to turn to Jesus has to be ours, based on God’s dealing with us.  The people around him had a limited view of how Jesus speaks.  When salvation didn’t come in the way he thought it would, a crisis of faith followed.

            How do you think God speaks and acts?  Is your sense of God limited to the things you hear this church, or heard in the church in which you grew up?  Whatever you believe about God, know this.  God is bigger than what we can possibly know.  God is unpredictable.   We don’t know how God will speak or where or when God will directly intervene in the world.  So, the the best way to live is expectantly, in constant prayer, and in raw honesty.

            In Hosea’s day, the nation of Israel did not expect God to intervene in their affairs. That’s why they could worship God and at the same time, go through religious ceremonies for other, false gods.  They could practice true religion and idolatry at the same time because they didn’t think it mattered.  The rich and powerful of the nation, the religious leaders – they did not think what they did in worship made any difference.  They did not believe God would answer their prayers.  They certainly did not expect God to allow Assyria to overrun the nation and take them into permanent exile.  They did the opposite of living expectantly, in constant prayer, and in raw honesty. 

            When the leaders and the priests stopped helping the people find their way to God, God raised up a prophet – Hosea.  “Love a woman who … is an adulteress” God told the prophet.  Hosea writes that he bought a woman for 15 shekels, a second time purchasing her at that price.  That was the price one would pay for a slave.[i]  Hosea had already married the prostitute Gomer, but now in chapter 3, she with another man, and God tells Hosea to bring her back home.  This shows how God will bring back to himself an unfaithful people.

            Our modern ears find it offensive that a wife would be purchased and we should.  Ancient practices included evil gender inequality that should be eradicated from society.  Yet in order to hear the Good news of God, we take the ancient world for what it was and we rejoice that God worked with people in that context just as God works with us in ours.

            Hosea declares of Israel that though they belonged to God, they loved “other gods and raisin cakes.”  The eating of raisin cakes in Hosea’s day was typical of fertility cult activity.  It would be like someone today claiming to follow Christ, but at the same time insisting they have to go to a séance to be in touch with the spirit world, or insisting they have to strictly observe the rules of Ramadan in order to be holy.  It’s like hedging your bets.  I’ll dabble in all the religions hoping one of them will save me.

            Trying every single one is the same as being faithful to none.  Constant prayer happens within the bounds of true faith in God.  What Israel did and what many people do amounts to treating God as an object to be manipulated.  Living expectantly means we believe God will do something, but we can’t possibly know until God does it.  Poor, young Langston Hughes suffered from failed expectations because those expectations came from human ideas, not from the mind of God.  What ties the constant prayer and the expectant living together is raw honesty.  And this is costly.

            The amount Hosea paid for the woman was high – 30 shekels.  A poor man, which Hosea might have been, could barely afford such a sum.  What he received for this exorbitant fee was an unfaithful wife.  The cost to God was even higher.  God had created humankind in God’s image, but in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, we see the first humans throw off God’s creation vision and turned away from the God who created in love.  God in turned sought to redeem his rebellious children by working through one people – the descendants of Abraham, the people of Israel.  Now in Hosea, we see God’s people turning away from God.  He will take them back knowing their unfaithfulness.

            The first repentance that happens is God’s.  God turns from wrath to mercy.  And we know that God paid the ultimate price – the death of his son Jesus Christ on the cross. For God to turn from punishment and wrath to forgiveness and new life for us cost God everything.

            The raw honesty that leads to repentance is also costly for us.  We have to look at ourselves and we feel the pain our sins bring.  The Israelites built their identity around the institution of monarchy.  Hosea declares that when they return to the Lord, “they will remain many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar” (3:4).  Repentance includes tearing life down and starting over.  They will rediscover what it is to belong to God and they will forfeit the life they built when they were unfaithful.

            One of the difficulties that comes with the sins we commit is the pleasure.  A part of us finds great enjoyment in the excess or the illicit acts or the sense of power that comes in our rebellion against God.  We sin because we like the way it makes feel; temporarily; until we experience the destruction that comes.  But that momentary good feeling makes it hard to believe life is better when we turn away from the sin.  We can’t believe God’s way is the better way.  To step to God is a step in faith. 

            The high point of Hosea’s message is verse 5.  “Afterward the Israelites shall return and seek the Lord their God.”  That returning comes after the pain of betrayal, after a period of God’s anger, and after a sense of loss.  Hosea says “they shall come in awe to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days” (end of v.5).  The word awe can either mean ‘terror’ or ‘profound respect and reverence.’  Here it means both.  Having been confronted with the absolute devastation that comes with sin, the people trembled as they returned to God.

            What they discovered was God’s open arms – his “goodness.”  We see the ultimate example of this in the New Testament after the crucifixion.  Resurrection comes next.  The risen Jesus appears to Peter.  Peter in all his shame has to face Jesus after having denied him.  However, instead of chastising Peter, Jesus restores him.  Like the Israelites, Peter’s terror gives way to reverence and love and he is restored to good relationship with God in Christ.

            That’s the end of repentance.  If you and live like we expect God to act in our lives, our spiritual sense will be heightened.  If you and I pray constantly, our attention will be toward God.  If you and I are completely honest with ourselves, we will see our sins and the damage they cause.  We will be broken.  Broken, we turn away from the sin and toward God seeking His forgiveness.  And He gives it in abundance. 

            As Hosea says, after that, we return to God and see His goodness.  We discover that life lived in relationship with God is the best life one could hope for. 

            I won’t promise an audible voice or a vision of Jesus the way Langston Hughes’ grandmother did.  Her intentions were right, but because she confined God to the box of her own experiences, he ended up faking a conversion.  His heart was not stirred.  I won’t make any promises I can’t guarantee.

            I’ll share what I believe.  I believe that if we live in expectation, in constant prayer, and in raw honesty, then we will want something better from life.  And if at that point, we turn from sin to God, seeking Jesus Christ, God will welcome us.  After that comes new life – the best life we can have.  It’s costly to get there, but it’s worth the price.

AMEN

---

[i] Elizabeth Achtemeier (1996), New International Bible Commentary: Minor Prophets I, Hendrickson Publishers (Peabody, MA), p.31.

Hearts Ripped Open

            “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping and mourning; rend your hearts and not your garments.  Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing” (Joel 2:12-13).

            Isn’t it hard to open one’s heart before God?  Every day, it seems, I say something or do something that makes me look weak.  Or, my words or actions in some way hurt someone else.  If I open my heart before God fully, I have to be completely open about my shortcomings.  It doesn’t feel good.  Who wants to look at his own flaws?  Not me.

            The prophet doesn’t shy away from this.  Joel urges us to turn to God “with fasting, with weeping and mourning.”  If anything, Joel deepens the shame and despairing sense that sin produces.  We are to grieve the condition in which our failures leave us.  A traditional form of grief in ancient Israel was the ripping of garments and this was significant.  Many people only had one or two garments of clothing. Sin was so grievous they did something costly. They rent their garment.

            But no, says, God, that’s not enough.  Rip open the heart!  In turning from sin to God, we rip ourselves wide open.  It sounds unbearable.  What good can come of such raw, honest confession?  Only this: New Life!

            Besides saying what we are to do in confession, Joel describes the character of God.  Joel tells us who God is.  The Lord is the one who says to us “return to me with all your heart.”  The Lord is gracious and merciful … and relents from punishing.”  What the Lord has waiting for us when we come with hearts ripped open, tears shed, and body weakened is forgiveness and new life.  God takes all our shame and makes us new. 

            This Sunday is Palm Sunday and next week is holy week.  What if you and I rip our hearts open and come before God.  We come in raw, exposed confession as we worship, as we sing, as we enter the church building, as we take communion, and as we bow our heads to pray.  What if we open the closet in the interior of our hearts and empty it before God?  What will God do with all our junk?

            Look to the words of the prophet Joel, who tells us God is “abounding in steadfast love.”  God will take the messes of our lives, will wash us, and will replace our baggage and burdens with blessings.  Look to the cross where your sins are nailed to Jesus.  And look to the horizon.  That light that’s breaking through the black shadows of shame is the eternal life that springs in his resurrection.  You and I are beckoned by our Lord to walk in that light.

            Our first step is the step of confession-repentance; full repentance and complete confession.  It isn’t easy.  But it gets easier with each step.  And before we know it we are walking quicker, running, flying, soaring on the wind of the Spirit of God.  I pray this Easter you will know the glorious freedom of forgiveness.

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

---

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