What is God?: a reflection for Trinity Sunday from 1 John

Today is Trinity Sunday.  It is the only Festival, or Feast Day, in the church year that doesn’t focus on an event in the life of Christ.  This special day for the Trinity was created by the Church as a direct response to the Arian heresy in the 4th Century.  Arius was a bishop who caused a great deal of trouble in the ancient Christian world by spreading the idea that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but is not equal to God the Father.  Arius argued that Jesus is God’s offspring, so he is subordinate to God.  So there was this huge debate at the highest levels of the Church about the nature of the Trinity, which is referred to, but not explained in the Bible.

God is One and Three - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Each is equal to, yet separate from, the others.  What exactly does that mean?  We call it a holy mystery.  God in Three Persons.  Someday we can all ask Him, and He will explain it to us, but for now, it is beyond us.

So instead of putting you all to sleep each year with a lecture on what the Trinity is, I find it to be much more productive to talk about what the Trinity does.  To put it briefly, we could say that the Holy Spirit is the presence of God in all of us, calling us, renewing or regenerating us so that we are able to reach out to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, the mediator of the covenant (to be technical), between humanity and God the Father, who is the Creator and our Sovereign Lord.  But, as my own father pointed out to me several years ago, that makes God sound like a committee.  He’s really not Presbyterian!

So another point to consider is that if God is One in Three Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - that means He is in community with himself.  And, without trying to understand how that works, we need to look at it for what it means for us as His children, for those who, as the Book of Genesis states in the very beginning, were created “in the image of God.”

If you create something in your image, what would it look like?  What would its job be?  What would it say about you to others?  What aspects of you, of your character would you choose to reveal through your creation?

We can only really understand the nature of God by referring to our understanding of the world and of humanity.  Typically we look at the best aspects of human nature - love and compassion and things like that - and say, that’s what God like!  So our understanding of God is limited by our understanding of the world.

The Apostle John uses this to relate God’s nature to us, in words that are not complicated, and which evoke images and ideas that go far beyond even our need for explanation, because they are so basic to our understanding of the world.

“God is light, and in him is no darkness at all...if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.”

Our world is a dark place.  John talks about those who walk in the darkness without knowing where they are going because the darkness has blinded their eyes.  Think about that.

The darkness of sin causes us to lose our way.  The darkness of ignorance causes others to stumble.  Jesus is the light, the one who opens our eyes to the truth of a better reality, a higher calling.

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” 

The Bible talks about many different kinds of love, but here is used only one kind of love: agape.  Agape is love that is self-giving, self-sacrificing.  Agape loves to love.  Agape needs to love.  It is this kind of selfless love that the love of God was made manifest among us, “that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”  So that we might love, agape, through him.

 In only five short chapters, by using these two themes, the First Letter of John spells out 1)who God is, 2)what God is, 3)who we are in relation to God, and 4)what we have been called to become as disciples of Jesus Christ. 

One of the verses I keep returning to lately is from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” 

What good works are those?  If we are created “in the image of God,” then our primary function, our basic job description is to reveal God.  It’s as simple as that.  And how do we do that?  By being light, and by loving.  Amen.

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”
 In only five short chapters, by using these two themes, the First Letter of John spells out 1)who God is, 2)what God is, 3)who we are in relation to God, and 4)what we have been called to become as disciples of Jesus Christ.

One of the verses I keep returning to lately is from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

What good works are those?  If we are created “in the image of God,” then our primary function, our basic job description is to reveal God.  It’s as simple as that.  And how do we do that?  By being light, and by loving.  Amen.

The Revolution Begins: an Easter Sermon on Is. 25:6-9 and Acts 10:34-43

The Revolution Begins Video

This is my first time attempting to include video on this blog, so if it doesn't work, the text of the sermon is below.  The sermon was preached by me on Easter Sunday and was video recorded by my stepson.

What makes the Gospel of Jesus Christ relevant to the world today? Why does it matter? Our world is mostly post-Christian, it is more secular all the time. People don’t feel the need to go to church any more. Why not? What is the point of continuing to proclaim the Gospel in a world that has largely made up its mind that Jesus Christ, if he even existed at all, was a good teacher and a role model and all that, but wasn’t God.

In fact, what is the Gospel of Jesus Christ? He forgave all my sins. He died so I don’t have to. He told us that God loves everyone and wants us all to go to heaven when we die. Great! So what? What is point? What is it all for?

I’ve learned that many people, when asked what is the goal of Christian living, what is the point of following Jesus, their response is, “so that I may go to heaven when I die.” That’s okay, but to someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus, who doesn’t really believe in a cosmic intelligence behind the formation of all of time and space, which we call “God,” it’s not very much to go on. They need more.

Because what if there were no heaven? Now, I’m not suggesting that there isn’t, because I believe that heaven is a real, physical place about which Jesus said, “In my Father’s house, there are many rooms. If it were not so, I would not have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you.” But keep in mind that, for many people, maybe some in your own families, maybe even some of you here today, heaven is just not very believable, and more importantly, the idea of going somewhere after we die that is beyond anything we can describe doesn’t really matter when life is happening now.

So what makes the Gospel of Jesus Christ relevant to the world today? Why does it matter? What is so important about that cross?

We find part of the answer to that in our reading from Isaiah, “On this mountain, the Lord of Hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine….and he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples...and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth.”

This is not language about the heaven to which we will someday go if we are all good boys and girls. On this mountain? All the earth? This is about here, this is about now. This is about the Kingdom of God.

In the Book of Acts, the Apostle Peter describes Jesus’ ministry, and he says that Jesus is the one appointed by God to judge the living and the dead, but he describes the anointing that Jesus received from the Holy Spirit to go and heal, to preach good news of peace. And then Peter says that he and the other apostles have been commanded to go and do what? The same thing!

He didn’t say to tell everyone that is sick that it’s okay, because they will die someday and be healed in heaven. He didn’t say to tell everyone that they will find peace in heaven, he said that they were commanded to proclaim the very same good news that Jesus proclaimed, to spread that same peace and we know, from the rest of the New Testament, that they were sent out with the same power to heal and to reconcile people to God.

So maybe what Isaiah prophecied about the Kingdom of God coming here is what Jesus himself proclaimed and displayed by his ministry of healing and of reconciliation. Maybe, by dying on the cross and rising from the grave, Jesus broke the power that sin has over us here on this earth. Maybe our sins aren’t just forgiven so that we can live in heaven someday, maybe they are forgiven so we can create heaven around us on this mountain, so that the reproach of God’s people will be taken away from all the earth.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is about now. It is about what the world can become through Christ, it is about who we can be in Christ, and about what Christ can do through us. And all this stuff that we read and hear about in church about heaven is described to us in this way, in this kind of metaphorical language, because it is the only adequate way to express the significance of what Jesus did and is continuing to do on this earth.

Jesus began a revolution. He doesn’t just want us to go to heaven to be with him someday, he wants heaven to be here! It’s not enough for Jesus, the Son of God, to have walked among us and ministered to us and to go through torture and crucifixion and resurrection just to give us all a free pass.

He did it for more than that. So what makes the Gospel of Jesus Christ relevant to the world today? The same reason that it did 2,000 years ago. Our world is broken and in darkness. The good news of Jesus Christ is light and it is hope, it is a message that proclaims freedom to the captive, those captive to their sins as well as those in prison. It gives sight to the blind by the light of truth, and to give hope to the hopeless, by transforming us into a community that is united in fellowship with one another, working together so that we might, within our own lifetimes even (!) see the sort of kingdom of heaven on earth that the Prophet Isaiah describes.

Imagine a feast laid out for all the people of the earth. People of all races and your neighbor that you might not like very much, and the guy down the street who is addicted to heroin. The best food, the best drinks. All of us together. You know, one of the best ways to break the ice with someone and get to know them is to share a meal with them. Somehow it actually creates fellowship. So what if Isaiah’s prophecy was to actually come true? Because we can do that.

Maybe that is the miracle of Easter. That Jesus’ resurrection only began something that is continuing to unfold around us today; this is the revolution, and Jesus is calling us, he is inviting you to be a part of it, to be a part of the story of the salvation of the world!



Don’t you want to be a part of that story? It can be your story too.

My Light and My Salvation

“There is no greater cowardice than a criminal who enters a house of God and slaughters innocent people engaged in the study of Scripture.”  This was from a statement made by NAACP President Cornell Brooks.  

Predictable as always, the country is now engaged in a debate over what kind of hate crime the attacks were on Wednesday in Charleston.  Were they motivated by race or religion?  Why does it matter?  

On Wednesday evening a young man entered Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, shot and killed the pastor and 8 other people who were engaged in a bible study and prayer meeting, human beings who had come seeking the shelter of the Lord, “and to inquire in his temple,” as the Psalmist says.  

Our psalm for today is a bit more hopeful than last week’s psalm 69, this is a psalm written during a time of crisis, but it is not a crisis of faith or a cry to a God who may or may not even be listening, it is a psalm of trust.

“I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!” he says.  And so he comes into the Temple, the house of the Lord, to find God.  The place of meeting in a church is called a sanctuary for a very specific reason.  It is a place of refuge, it is a place to come and find rest, to gain strength for the journey of life.  It is a place to meet God, a place to worship and celebrate our faith, and to welcome all who seek newness of life.  

It has also become a target.  Personally, I believe that Wednesday’s shooting was not about either race or religion...it was about both.  What more of an unsuspecting, naively trusting group of people are you going to find than in a church sanctuary during a Bible study or a church service?  

I don’t say that to scare anyone, but the truth is often frightening.  I say this, actually for a different reason?  Where do we go to find God?  Is God really in this building?  Of course He is, but this is not the only place to find him.  

Jesus said, “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret (Mt. 6:6).”  Now Jesus wasn’t encouraging anyone to skip church, but in the Jewish religion, God’s house was the tabernacle, later the Temple.  He literally resided in the place where the ark of the covenant was kept, and only the priest could open the curtain and enter into that Most Holy Place.  Only the priest could actually enter into the very presence of the living God.  

And so as King David wrote this psalm, that is where he was going, whether physically or, more likely, in his mind, he was entering the Temple, he was going into the very House of God, a little piece of heaven on earth.  The temple was like an embassy for heaven.  When a government sets up an embassy in a foreign country, they actually purchase the ground that it sits on, so if were to visit the U.S. Embassy in another country, we would actually be on U.S. soil.

That was what the temple was to the Jews.  That was where David was looking to for his place of refuge.  And the enemies of Israel, they were terrified of it.  The Old Testament histories recall the Israelites actually carrying the ark of the covenant into battle with them, and Israel’s enemies shook with fear, because they knew that the Lord of Israel himself was leading those men into battle against them.  

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”  said David, and in another psalm (118:6) it says, “the Lord is on my side; I will not fear.  What can man do to me?”

David knew full well what man can do to us.  He spent a good chunk of his life running for his life, yet he writes, with hopefulness and trust, “though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.”  

A Christian new commentator wrote about the shooting on Wednesday, and pointed out that whenever God is at work, Satan is at work too.  Between 2003 and 2010, terrorist attacks against Christians escalated by 309%!!  In the past fifteen years, more Muslims have converted to Christianity than in the past fifteen centuries, and look at what Satan is doing with groups like ISIS and al Qaeda.  

In China, much of the church has been forced underground, to meet in secret, because the government is shutting down and destroying churches all over, yet the Christian movement in China is growing more rapidly and gaining more strength than their government can handle.  

And when Jesus finally gained national attention and fame, what did Satan do but turn his own disciple, Judas, against him.  

Rabbi Gamaliel, a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, said to his colleagues, “leave them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail;  but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them (Acts 5:38b-39)!”  

In the world of King David, the people needed symbols, they needed arks and tabernacles and temples in order to assure them of the presence of the Lord in their midst, but when David wrote these words, “He will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent (or tabernacle),” he didn’t mean that he was going to hide out inside the temple as the disciples did after Jesus was resurrected from the dead, cowering in fear behind locked doors, waiting for their enemies to come and find them.  

No, where does David go to find his refuge and shelter?  Where do we go to seek sanctuary and rest?  We go to the Lord.  

The congregation of Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston have experienced persecution before.  In 1822 that church was burned to the ground, and the people were forced to worship in secret until after the Civil War.  Today the church is without its pastor, but they will continue to enter the sanctuary of the Lord, because our sanctuary is not a place that can be taken from us by a man with a gun.  Amen.

Feeding 5,000: A Sermon on Mt. 14.13-33

John the Baptist has just been put to death by King Herod Antipas, the son of King Herod the Great, who was king when Jesus was born.  John had been preaching against the immorality of Herod’s marriage to his half-brother’s wife Herodias.  Both of them had divorced their spouses and married each other.  John the Baptist spoke against that, and Herodias asked her new husband for his head, and the story goes that he presented it to her on a platter.  

John’s disciples buried him, and went and told Jesus about it, and immediately afterward the gospel narrative reads that Jesus, who had been preaching in Nazareth, withdrew from there and went off to be alone.  John the Baptist was Jesus’ cousin, he was and evangelist for Christ, a herald of the Messiah.  Some believed that he was the reincarnation of the Prophet Elijah, and for preaching the truth, he was put to death.

It’s understandable that Jesus needed time to grieve, but he was not given that opportunity.  His intent was to be alone, but crowds of people followed him.  However, instead of getting back into his boat and shoving off again in order to find the much-needed rest that escapes him, Jesus “had compassion on them and healed their sick,” says the text.

Jesus returned to his ministry of compassion, even in the midst of his own grief and loss.  

Now, I think that we can read too much into this text.  After all, this is Jesus we are talking about, it’s not a metaphor or an analogy about how we ought to put everyone else ahead of us all the time.  As Christians, there will always be times when we need to set aside our own worries and respond to the needs of others, but there are also times when “life” just needs to be put on hold for a while and we need to run to Jesus and be fed by him.  

But this story is about us as well.  Maybe you are one of the 5,000 who comes to Jesus to be fed, or maybe you are one of the disciples, trying to do what is right by Him.  Either way, the need was somewhat the same.

What happened when evening came and the people had been with Jesus throughout the day?  As the disciples observed, there was nothing for the people to eat, and nowhere for them to stay.  And so they suggested that Jesus disperse the crowds so that they could see to their needs.  But Jesus said to them, “You give them something to eat.”

Jesus is tired, he has received terrible news about John the Baptist, was denied a chance to grieve, and pursued by crowds of people, all of whom had very real and immediate needs that he could not ignore.  And now they have another need, but now Jesus delegates.  

“You give them something to eat.  You feed them.”  Do we expect to only sit around while Jesus does all the work?  Do we just go to church to be filled and then go home again without any intention of actually doing the things that we hear just commanding us to do when we are at church?  Why are we disciples at all, if not to learn to become apostles, ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, servants who reach out to bring Christ to the world around us?  

Now is the time to put faith into action, now is the time to feed the hungry with the same word that has fed us.  “You give them something to eat,” says Jesus.

But Jesus, the disciples said to him, “we have only five loaves and two fish.”  Basically what they are saying is that they have nothing.  How can we feed so many people with so little?  That’s the problem of ministry.  We really don’t have much to give.  We have nothing.  How can I, who have nothing worth bringing, possibly make a difference in a world that needs so much?  How can I feed a world that is hungry for the truth, hungry for the gospel, when I am still hungry myself?  

This is the point where much of the so-called hope that the world offers us begins to fail.  Food runs out, it fails to satisfy.  

But Jesus does something very different.  He says to his disciples, “Bring them here to me.”  Bring me your five loaves of bread and two fish, bring me your inadequacy, bring me your nothingness, and through it, I will feed the hungry.  Of course the disciples cannot do what it is that Jesus expects of them, but Jesus takes their nothing and transforms it, he makes something out of nothing.  

This is what God does for us.  In the beginning, there was nothing, and God spoke and the whole universe came into being.  He created us out of nothing, and without Him we are nothing.  Jesus Christ gives us substance, he gives us meaning, and only He can fill us when there is nothing else.  But He does it through our ministry to one another.  

Consider the second story.  Again Jesus attempts to withdraw.  He sends his disciples back across the Sea of Galilee while he disperses the crowd and hopes to get some time to himself.  Again that doesn’t happen.  A storm picks up, and the disciples are stranded in the middle of the sea.  Jesus walks out to them, to give them hope, to give them courage and strength.  

And at first, they react out of fear, then Peter jumps out of the boat with a sort of reckless faith that isn’t really faith at all, and finally, as he is sinking into the water, probably terrified out of his mind and feeling like a complete fool because of what he has gotten himself into, Peter calls out to Jesus, “Lord save me.”  

Immediately, Jesus reaches out his hand and took ahold of Peter.  The disciples had nothing, Peter had nothing, not as it compared to the enormity of the troubles that were facing them.  They could not face the storm alone.  Peter could not walk on water!  They had nothing to bring, nothing to give.  

So often in life, we forget that we are not alone, we forget to cry out to Jesus, “Lord save me!  Lord I don’t have enough to give, not if I want to make any sort of difference.  There is no way that I can do this on my own.”  But we are not alone, ultimately of course, it is Jesus who feeds the hungry, it is Jesus who calms the storms that threaten to overwhelm us and destroy us.  

Jesus takes our nothingness, he takes our brokenness, and He transforms it.  Sometimes we just need to hold on to Him in order to keep from drowning, and sometimes we are faced with 5,000 people who have no food to eat, and they are looking to us to feed them.  

What do we have to save us, what do we have to give?  Not nothing.  We have Jesus Christ.  We are not alone, we do not have to go away hungry.  We do not have to fight the storms on our own.  But we do need to cry out, “Lord, save me!”  in order to remember that He is already here, offering us His hand.  

I love how Jesus has this way of both scolding Peter for his lack of faith, and also encouraging him at the same time.  He allows Peter, and the disciples, to grasp the impossibility of the situations that they are in, and in so doing they learn the lesson that they need to learn, but He does it lovingly, without snapping at them, “Well, you should’ve known that in the first place!”  

Jesus never gives up on us.  May we never give up on ourselves.  In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Stories: A Sermon for Christmas

The other day a news story came out that Pope Francis was blasting the Vatican with a list of spiritual ailments.  One of them was about humor.  I understood him to say that we misunderstand what it means to be serious.  Serious doesn’t mean to be stern and severe, but to seriously express the joy of being found in Jesus Christ.  He said to keep a healthy dose of humor.  And translated from the Italian, Francis called it the Disease of Funeral Face.  I hope it’s not catching.

So here you go, Pope Francis.  Little Eddie went to his grandfather’s church on Christmas Eve, and while he was waiting for the service to start, he looked at all the announcements in the bulletin, and he saw all these pictures of young men in uniform.  So he asked his grandfather who all these men were, and his grandfather said to him, “Well, those pictures are there to remind us to be thankful at Christmas of the great gift that they freely gave us.  These are all our boys who died in the service.”  

Little Eddie then got very serious, and he gulped and said, “Grandpa, which service was that?  The Christmas Eve service or Sunday morning?”

We love stories.  We love to hear about adventures that take us out of the moment to far away lands and about things that we don’t believe we would ever be able to do ourselves.  We love to hear stories that make us feel good, we love stories that scare us, stories that inspire us, stories that challenge us.  

I heard a story just the other day from a young woman who called into K-Love radio to tell a miraculous story about herself.  She said that she was a cutter, someone who cut on herself.  She was, basically, suicidal, and one day she took a box cutter to her wrist and she sliced and sliced and pressed that blade as hard as she could because she had had enough and just wanted to end it all, but nothing happend.  The blade didn’t even scratch her arm.  

Of course she was discovered and an intervention was made and so she was actually calling the radio station from inside the hospital.  What was so miraculous, she said, was that later her father took that same blade and tested it on a piece of copper wire, and it sliced cleanly through it, but it hadn’t even scratched her soft flesh!

It changed her life.  She knew that God himself had saved her, and so she gave herself to him there in that hospital.

It’s an amazing story, but the story doesn’t end there.  This isn’t about making a bad choice and getting over it and moving on.  This young woman recognized that this is her unique story, and that she needs to allow her story to become a part of her, not to simply put it behind her and pretend it never happened, but to allow it to change her in ways that are unique to her and in ways that can bring healing to others as she herself has found healing.  

So she said that she now has a dream to someday open a Christian cutter’s hospital.  In our misguided and depressed society, cutting on oneself is really not that uncommon, but it’s a symptom of a much deeper psychological condition that this young woman is in a unique position to help other people find healing from.  

Her story can help other people to find hope.  Her story gives her a unique gift that not many other people have.  It gives her a unique credibility as a witness to the power of healing.  What I mean is that, I can tell people that there is freedom from depression.  I can say that all I want, but I’ve never experienced clinical depression, so my credibility is not the same as one who has walked that road and understands the pain and the fear and the feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness that are depression, which people face day after exhausting day.

That’s not a part of my story.  So I wouldn’t be as effective as a depression counselor as this young woman who can identify with debilitating depression and so make real connections with other people who experience this terrible condition.

But we all have a story that makes us who we are.  

These past five Sundays, we’ve been talking about the stories of many of the different characters that are found in the birth narrative of Jesus.  We talked about Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, who didn’t believe the testimony of the angel who said to him that he will become the father of the one who goes in the spirit of the Prophet Elijah to prepare the way for the coming of Messiah, Jesus Christ.  

Zechariah didn’t believe him, he and his wife were too old to have children, and so as punishment, he was stricken deaf and dumb, but this only made his story more credible, but then when John was born, he began to hear and speak praises to God, proclaiming the prophecies that the Angel had foretold to him.  Zechariah’s story of disobedience ended up giving him a unique credibility because of his witness to the power of God working in the world.

We heard the stories of the shepherds, simple men of the country who were not educated, not well-paid, and probably thought of as hillbillies.  But the angels came to tell them the good news of Jesus’ birth in the manger in Bethlehem, so that they went to see for themselves.  Shepherds had a unique place in society.  They were watchers, it was their job to keep very careful watch over their flocks so as to protect them, because there was no one else around, so when shepherds came to town and had news of something they saw, it was usually taken seriously.  Shepherds don’t care about gossip, they only told what they saw, and they were often a reliable source of news in an age without telephones or mail.

And so when they witnessed the baby Jesus in the manger, they went out into the streets shouting the good news to anyone who would listen about what the angels had said to them about this baby boy.  The shepherds’ story gave them a unique credibility, it put them in a unique position to be trustworthy as the very first evangelists of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We read all these and other stories in the bible, and we think that they are all about Jesus being born, about the miracle of God coming down from heaven, but they’re not.  These are stories about us, about people just like you and me.  The miracle is not that God came down from heaven, you can look into just about any religion in the world and find stories like that.  The miracle is that God’s coming into the world can shape our own stories.  

Our own, personal, gospel message grows out of our own, unique story, the story of our lives.  I’m not saying that we should be glad that some bad, horrible thing happened to us years ago, but I am saying that we need to stop being defeated by that bad thing, and recognize how Jesus can use it to turn our story of bad news into a story of good news.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ for that young woman is that a lost, depressed, suicidal girl became a disciple of the Lord with a vision to help other people in ways that only she can, because Christ gave her the power to defeat a disease which would have otherwise defeated her.

Jesus Christ was born into a world very much like our own.  The people we read about in the Bible are very much like you and me.  Just people.  They did things they regretted, they struggled through life just as we do.

Which is why God became one of us.  God became a human being.  He did it for us, so that we might see in Him the credibility that we look for in one who has been there, who understands our pain and our struggles.  

That is Good News.

May you learn to see the light of Jesus Christ in the dark places of life.  May you not be defeated by the shared suffering of this life, but May God show you how to harness the power of your unique story for His glory.  

In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The 3rd Sunday of Lent: Peter Denies Christ

This passage of the Passion Narrative in the Gospel of John is one of the most powerfully real moments of the Passion of Christ for me.  Everything else, it seems, plays almost like a novel or a movie, in which we can get swept up by the plot, but it’s kind of larger than life.  Peter’s Denial, however, changes all of that.

Now, we skipped about 5 chapters from last week to this, but when preaching a lectionary we must make sacrifices and skip around a bit.  I suppose I could try to preach the entire Passion Narrative someday, but that would probably take the better part of a year, and seems rather depressing to me.  It is, however, very much worth taking the time to read for yourselves at some point during Holy Week, beginning with John 13 and reading all the way through the end of chapter 19, with Jesus’ burial; and then you will be ready for Easter Sunday, the Resurrection of the Lord.

But anyway, we are at Jesus’ trial before the High Priest Caiaphas, and Annas.  Verse 15 tells us that Peter actually followed Jesus into the courtyard, along with only one other disciple.  The other disciple was able to enter into the court to witness Jesus’ trial, because he was known to the high priest, but Peter could not, so he remained out in the courtyard by the fire alone, without any of his friends.

I believe that his denial was a surprise, even to him.  I believe that he believed that he would stand up for Jesus, his Lord and Master, to the end, as he professed.  At the end of Chapter 13, Jesus foretells Peter’s denial, although Peter says to him, “I will lay down my life for you.  Jesus answered, will you lay down your life for me?  Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow until you have denied me three times.”

Of course, we have the luxury of looking back through history and knowing that both Jesus and Peter were right.  History shows that Peter died as a martyr for his faith at the hands of the Roman Empire.  But Jesus’ prophecy about him came true as well.  

What is also significant to consider in this, as always in the Scriptures, is the context in which we find Peter denying his relationship to Christ.  Just hours before Peter’s denial, at the time of Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas led the Jewish authorities to surprise and capture Jesus.  Immediately, Peter draws his sword and launches an attack on the soldiers, but Jesus  stops him, saying to him, “Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?”

Peter was a Zealot.  And while that word today simply means that someone is very active and passionate about something, in the time of Christ, the Zealots were a militant political party whose goal was to incite a military uprising to throw out the Romans.  Peter believed that Jesus was the one to finally bring about that rebellion and finally cast off the yoke of Roman rule and oppression.  Judas may also have been a member of the Zealots, and it is argued that he believed the same thing as Peter, which was the true motivation behind his betrayal of Christ, that he was forcing a confrontation between Jesus and the Jewish authorities in order to spark a revolution.

But when we are surrounded by friends, and our leaders seem to be in positions of power, we also feel strong and bold to act.  Take all that away, however, and force us into a place of vulnerability, with no friends in sight to support us, and how we will we stand the testing of our convictions?  That is what really speaks to me from this passage.

So I have to ask?  Are we going to be Peter?  Quick to speak out in defense of Christ, or quick even to spring into action when it appears that we have the upper hand, but also quick to deny the convictions of our faith when the chips are down and peer pressure is high?

Still, it was only Peter and that other disciple who remained with Jesus throughout his trial at all.  Where were the others?  After Jesus’ arrest, there is no more mention of them whatsoever until after His resurrection, when they were hiding out in an upper room of an inn, terrified that they would also be arrested and put to death.  Peter and the other disciples can be seen as the most faithful of all the disciples because they stayed with Jesus the longest.  

And maybe that is why Peter’s denial was the hardest and most remembered of all the disciples.  “I am not,” he said to the servant girl who asked if he was one of the twelve.  “I am not,” he said to the people standing around at the charcoal fire, who asked the same question.  And it is at that very moment, as Peter was denying his relationship to the Lord, that Jesus himself was denying nothing, and in fact was standing behind everything he had done and said during his ministry.  

What is this “I am not?”  I am not the holy man that you think I am, he was saying to them.  I am not so certain and secure in my convictions as to be unshakeable in my faith.  A moment of weakness reveals to us that the great Apostle Peter, to whom Jesus said, “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Mt. 16:18);” this Peter is very much like all the rest of us.  

Jesus, however, knew this as well, and having loved Peter, he loved him to the end.  Later, after the resurrection, Jesus confronts Peter at another charcoal fire.  He asks him three times, “Peter, do you love me?” at which Peter becomes a bit offended, and says, “Yes, Lord.  You know that I love you.”  Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”  

Jesus knows that Peter loves him, and Jesus loves Peter no less for his betrayal.  But why does Jesus choose Peter, who is broken and weak, to lead his church into the future?  I believe it is because Peter is broken and weak that Jesus chose him.  Peter’s soul is empty and ready to be filled; he is, as he says himself years later, in a letter to the Church, like a newborn infant, longing for the pure spiritual milk, that by it he may grow up into salvation.

The Psalmist says, “the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise (51:17).”  
The story of Peter’s denial reminds us that we are a broken people, with a broken church, living in a broken world.  And while it is very Presbyterian of me to point out that obvious truth, I believe that we must always keep our brokenness before us, acknowledging the lordship of the only Physician who can heal us and make us whole.  In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We Are Made By What We Make

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the British Commonwealth, used to have regular bible study with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.  Blair said to Sacks one day that he was reading in Exodus and had "just come to the boring bit."

Of course Rabbi Sacks had to ask him, "Which boring bit?"

"You know," he said, "the passage about the Tabernacle at the end of Exodus.  It does go on, doesn't it?"

Exodus Chapters 25-31 and 35-40 deal directly with provisions for construction of and worship elements in the Tabernacle.  The Tabernacle pre-dated the Temple in Jerusalem.  After the Hebrews left Egypt, they wandered in desert forty years, finally settling Israel.  They were, essentially, a nomadic people, and so the Tabernacle, for them, became a sort of Temple which could be moved and set up like any other tent.

Except it wasn't like any other tent.  It covered 11,250 square feet, had a courtyard, a separate tent within it which contained the Ark of the Covenant.  There were multiple altars, multiple rooms, and everything was made out of gold and bronze and acacia wood.

Rabbi Sacks pointed out to Tony Blair that the description of the building of this Tabernacle in Exodus takes up about 500 verses, whereas the creation story in Genesis only takes up 34 verses.  His point was that "it is not difficult for an omniscient, omnipotent God to create a home for humankind.  What is difficult is for finite, fallible human beings to create a home for God.  This tells us that the Bible is not man's book of God, but God's book of humanity."

In the Bible, we see God fashioning for himself a community of people who create community.

But first, he takes a group of people who were victimized and enslaved and who lament their fate that God has abandoned them.  God sets them free and leads them out of Egypt, but the people complain and grumble against God, saying that it would have been better in slavery to the Egyptians.  There's no food, they say. There's no water, they say.

So God provides for them.  Manna from heaven, water from a rock.  Meat.  Freedom.

When Moses leaves them to go up Mt. Sinai to commune directly with God, the people complain and grumble, and decide that they don't like Moses' God anymore, and they don't know what's become of him anyway, so they make a new god for themselves.  An idol, a Golden Calf.

These are a people to whom God has given and given and given.  These are a people who are too immature to come together as a unified nation.  They're only worried about themselves, their own wants and needs, and what they can get, rather than what they can give.  And so they remain a nation of slaves.  They are enslaved by their worship of the god "Me."

It's not until God gives them the instructions for building the Tabernacle, with all its complexity of design and function that a fantastic change begins to come over the people.

Rabbi Sacks says, "It is as if God had said to Moses: if you want to create a group with a sense of collective identity, get them to build something together.  It is not what happens to us, but what we do, that gives us identity and responsibility."

Through this experience, the Hebrew people truly begin to grow into the nation that is Israel.  Why?  Because they worked together.  And during that entire time while constructing the Tabernacle, there is no mention of grumbling or complaining.  When Moses asked the people to contribute to the construction, either through material gifts or by donating their skills, he actually had to restrain them from giving!!

In our reading of Holy Scripture, in our service to our churches, to the community, to our families, I think we often miss this, or at least we forget it: "The most effective way of transforming individuals into a group is by setting before them a task they can only achieve as a group."

Why are churches and volunteer fire departments and social organizations that promote volunteerism dying out in our society?  I believe it is because the concept of the group is being replaced with the idol of self.

At the moment, while I write this, a song came on the radio.  A man is singing about how we look around at the state of affairs in the world and say to God, "Why don't you do something?"  God, then, replies, "I did.  I created you."  The artist then issues us a challenge, "it's time for us to do something.  If not us, then who?"

God has given and given and given to us.  Now it is time for us to give back.

I do believe very strongly that there are some people who try to do too much in their group, and by doing so, they actually end up having very little effectiveness over all.  That is a problem in and of itself.  But there are many more who are completely content contributing so little that they end up taking more than they give to the group.

God has called us out of slavery to be a community of givers and doers and builders, not takers, and so to lead others to do the same.

"When leaders become builders, they create peace; otherwise they merely create dissent."

What are you building?

__________________
Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations are from Sacks, Jonathan. "Nation-building: Ancient Answer, Contemporary Problem," in Covenant and Conversation Exodus: the Book of Redemption. Pp. 289-295 (Maggid Books, 2010).

Advent 4:John 1:1-18

The Gospel of Mark begins with Jesus as an adult.  “In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” In one sentence, Mark’s Gospel skips through three chapters of narrative that is told in Matthew and Luke.

Matthew and Luke both begin before Jesus was born, explaining prophecies about the coming Messiah and the announcement of the angel of the Lord to Mary, who was just a girl.  There are genealogies which describe Jesus’ heritage as a descendant of King David, and even though most of us find genealogies in Holy Scripture rather tedious and dry, they are, after all, a part of Holy Scripture, and every genealogy has its own story or stories to tell.  Each opens up a wealth of teaching from the Word of God.

John’s gospel, however, begins in the beginning.  The very beginning.  The setting is the creation event itself, and what is unique about this passage, which we call the Prologue to the Gospel of John, is that Jesus is not named here.  To name something defines it, in a way.  It categorizes it, puts it into a box with a label.  John wants us to remove that label and take Jesus out of our box and think about Him in a different way.

Jesus is the Word.  He was with God in the very beginning.  In fact, He was God.  Where Matthew, Mark, and Luke don’t get around to explaining this to their readers for several chapters, John lays it out plainly right up front.  The Word is God, and Jesus is the Word, although that is not immediately apparent, not until John the Baptist sees Jesus coming toward him and declares, “This is he of whom I said, after me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me (v. 30).”

This is the gospel, packaged very neatly into eighteen verses.  Perhaps John wrote it that way because he was, in truth, re-interpreting an old story.  By the time John’s Gospel was circulating, Matthew, Mark and Luke had already been around for over 20 years, and even then it was at least 20 years since Jesus’ resurrection.  

The people already knew the story, so John’s job was not to tell it to them, but to open their minds to understand the story in a new way.  He was a preacher with a congregation, not an evangelist, although evangelism is always at the very heart of the gospel.

Jesus is intimately related to all of creation, and Jesus is intimately related to all of us.  Verse 10 explains that “...the world was made through him…”

Again, we don’t get stuff like that in the other Gospels.  Jesus has always been, and without that description, without John’s Gospel, we could easily see Jesus as nothing more than God’s offspring, His creation.   But Jesus is God.  He was there in the beginning, and all of “this” came into being through Him.  This wording should sound very familiar to you in another way as well.  It is the language of pregnancy.

If Jesus were to have a child, it would be us.  

This is the first of four key purposes of Jesus, four interrelated themes about His being as the Word of God.  The Word of God is our Father.  

The second purpose of Christ, revealed in John’s Prologue, is that Jesus is, for us, the source of revelation and grace.  He is “the true light which enlightens everyone (v.9),” and He is “full of grace and truth (v. 14).”  The Word of God is our Mentor.  More than just a friend, more even than just a Father, He sees potential within us that we cannot see in ourselves, and nurtures us in it.

Jesus was intimately involved in our creation and our nurture and growth, but the world rejected Him.  Vv. 10-11 say that he was in the world, and that even though the world came into being through Him, still the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own, and his own would not accept Him.

Do you know what it feels like for your child to say to you, “I hate you?  I don’t want anything to do with you?”  Can you imagine what that might feel like?  Wouldn’t you do anything to bring him or her back to you?  Wouldn’t you give anything?  

The relationship that Jesus Christ had with his own children was broken, and lying in ruins.  They did not know Him, their own Father!  And so “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” writes John (v.14).  God has always been intimately connected, related to His creation.  He has always been personally involved in His children’s lives, as should every father be.

He is not up there on His throne, judging us and manipulating us for His own good pleasure.  He is here among us, as one of us.  John calls Jesus the Word of God, and what does “word” mean?  In Greek, logos literally refers to an accounting or an understanding.  In English it means “the study of” something.  Psychology, biology, theology.

But more basically than that, ‘word’ is a means of communication.  Jesus, the Word made flesh, is the communication of God to us, He is God’s means of relating to His creation.  

Which brings us to the fourth key purpose of Jesus Christ in John’s Prologue.  

“And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (Vv. 16-17).”

Does this mean that the Law is not truth?  Does this mean that there was no grace before Christ?  No, of course not.  But a relationship with a person is very different from a relationship with a law.  The Law, the Torah as it was called, guided the people, it ruled the people and set down a standard of living in righteousness.  It is objective and impersonal.

Jesus Christ, however, is a person, and guides us in our understanding of the Law.  He demonstrates for us how we are to follow His Law.  We can know the Law, but we can connect with Christ, we can understand the Law through Him, and so learn that the journey to Heaven is not so far as we might have otherwise believed.

For Jesus to fulfill all these purposes, “he must be of God in the fullest possible sense (Karl Kuhn.  Commentary on John 1:1-18 http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1960, accessed 20 December 2013).”

But Jesus cannot also identify with humanity if He is not human, and so He took upon Himself not only our humanity, but all of our humanity.  Our acceptance as God’s Chosen, and our rejection as God’s Justice.  

One commentator wrote:

For John, the scandal of particularity is not just that in Jesus the Divine becomes “incarnate and dwells among us.  The scandal is also that the transcendent Word becomes so deeply enmeshed in our twisted affairs, that he is even willing to endure the humiliation and hatred embodied in the cross.  The Word...embraces this, to enlighten all those who would receive him.  He comes to his own and loses his life for them, that they too might become children of God and, like him, close to the Father’s heart (ibid.).”

As Advent draws to a close, and we welcome the Christmas season into our homes and our lives, let us praise God for what He has done for us, what He is doing within us even now, and for what He will bring to completion through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Last Words from the Cross - A Good Friday Devotional

“After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), ‘I thirst.’  A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth.  When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished, and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” -Jn. 19:28-30, ESV

When Jesus was on the cross, dying from the most cruel and shameful death ever imagined by the Roman Empire, Scripture records seven things that he said to his disciples and those standing around before he died.  You would have to read all four of the gospel narratives to find all seven, because each gospel doesn’t have all seven.  

These words reveal some very important characteristics about our Lord.  They reveal his true nature.  The best way to really get to know someone for who they are, is to subject them to intense pressure.  All sorts of interesting thoughts and emotions come bubbling to the surface, some because they lose their inhibitions, others because they hold on to their core convictions to the very end.  

This is what Jesus did on the cross.  He held to his convictions to the bitter end.  The cross showed him to be true to the things that he had been saying and teaching all along, whereas a lesser man might have shown himself to be false when faced with such torture.  

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  This is one of my favorite sayings of Jesus.  He’s not angry, he’s not resisting.  The Roman guards are nailing him to a cross, and he has pity on them.  He prays for them.  There is forgiveness in his heart, and mercy in his words, something that we see again when Jesus talks with the two criminals who have been crucified alongside him.  The one mocks Jesus, but the other appears to repent of his crimes, acknowledging that he has received his reward and says to Jesus, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  

Again, Jesus feels nothing but pity and forgiveness and mercy, and he says to the man, “Truly, today you will be with me in paradise.”

What great love the Father has for us.

I’m going to skip around here a little bit, as this could really be an entire 7-week sermon series.  And while Jesus’ Words contain one of my favorite quotes of his, they also contain one that I find perhaps the most disturbing.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

How many of us here can honestly say that we have not ever felt abandoned and alone?  Have you ever felt forsaken by God?  Have you ever felt tempted to just give up?

Jesus has been tortured and crucified, his disciples have abandoned him.  Peter, who was to be the Rock upon which the Church would be built, publicly denied Jesus 3 times!  The people all surround his cross and mock him.

What would you do?

The Greek actually says that Jesus shouted in a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  

But God did not abandon His only Begotten Son.  

It has been pointed out that Psalm 22 runs through the entire Crucifixion narrative, with this verse being the first verse of the psalm.  As we read that psalm on Good Friday, we can see how it moves from despair, saying “I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people (v.6),” to complete hopelessness:

“I am poured out like water...my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death (Vv. 14, 15).”  

But then the Psalm takes a positive tone, crying out to the Lord, in whom there is still hope.  It ends with a shout of triumph:

“The afflicted shall eat and be satisified; those who seek him shall praise the Lord!  All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.”

Now, does that sound like abandonment?  Do you think Jesus would have chosen those particular words to exclaim if he truly felt abandoned by God?  Yes.  And no.  Jesus always chose his words very carefully, and very specifically.  

He knew what was coming, he knew the glory that awaited him, the glory for which he suffered.  But right at that moment, he was abandoned by God.  William Barclay says “that Jesus would not be Jesus unless he had plumbed the uttermost and ultimate depths of human experience.”  And there is no greater human experience than to feel alone and abandoned, even abandoned by God.  

Jesus came to forgive sins, and to live as one of us, experiencing the full range of human emotions and temptations, even the temptation to abandon the One who seemed to have abandoned Him.  He came to show us that God is with us, even though we don’t always feel or want His presence.

That’s what Jesus expresses in His last words on the cross.  In a nutshell.  So there is nothing left.  “It is finished,” he said, and gave up his spirit.  Amen.