With our Ancestors
Rockland Dr. United Baptist Church
May 13, 2007
Godly mothers
Abraham Lincoln said, “No one is poor who had a godly mother.”
Many of us can think back and remember our mother’s faith in Jesus Christ with warm fondness. Whether we’ve always held on to our mother’s faith as our own or have drifted away for a while, we may be able to look at our mother as one of the unshaken women of the faith, a rock in the midst of our own life, always dependable in her dependence on God.
Some of us, of course, may not be able to clam to have a Christian mother, and yet on Mother’s Day we can stop to recognize just how valuable all mothers are. They are the ones who love us, shelter us, comfort us, guide us, teach us, and pray for us from the tender days of infancy on through adulthood.
I’d like to focus our attention, however, on Christian mothers in particular. Specifically, we’ll look at one man’s experience with a Christian mother and grandmother, Timothy the young friend of the apostle Paul. My prayer is that God our Father would fill our hearts with joyous thanksgiving for our mothers, while challenging us with the words we’ll be looking at in 2 Timothy 1:1-5. What challenge do Christian mothers lay before us? What does Christian motherhood tell us about God? How does an appreciation of motherhood help both mother and the rest of us grow in Christian discipleship? What does Christian motherhood tell us about spiritual parenthood and spiritual childhood? May God help us to grasp fully why we can truly say, “No man is poor who had a godly mother.”
The Blessing of Mothers
As Paul began his letter to Timothy, he did as usual and put in a note of thanksgiving to God for his companion and his situation. Timothy, the younger friend of Paul, was leading the church in Ephesus, and had been a close companion of Paul’s for years. Paul thinks with fondness of his friend, characterizing him as one with “sincere faith,” and remembering that Timothy’s mother Eunice and her grandmother Lois also had that same sincere faith living in them. What first lived in them now lives in Timothy.
The word translated “sincere” or “genuine” in this verse is anhypokritos, the opposite of the word we get our word “hypocrite” from. The word hypocrite in those days referred to actors, and meant that they were someone who played a part, who wore a mask in their play. The opposite, the word here translated as “sincere,” literally refers to someone who is unskilled at faking something, someone who is genuine, someone who doesn’t wear a mask, someone who isn’t play-acting.
So Timothy’s mother and grandmother had that kind of faith. They were real, showing their real colours. Their appearance of faith was a sign of the very real faith that characterized them. They were reliable examples to Timothy because their faith was true down to their core.
Do we simply play the spiritual guide sometimes? Paul says, “Thanks be to God for a sincere faith that runs right through Timothy’s family.”
Our children or students or people who look up to us can see right through us if we are not sincere. They see behind the mask. They see the person who is only playing the part. Timothy, Paul says, wouldn’t have been able to see past the mask of his mother and grandmother, since there was no mask. People under Timothy’s leadership in his church wouldn’t be able to see behind his mask, because there is no mask. Is that the kind of thing that characterizes our spiritual example?
We look at our children to see if we can see some of our own traits showing in them, and we’re thrilled when they do. But how much more valuable is it to see “sincere faith” as the trait we pass on to our children?
When Paul looked at Timothy, that was the trait that he saw as shared between mother and son.
Happy Parents’ Day
When Paul sat down with his secretary that day to write this letter, I think he was just overwhelmed with joyful, thankful thoughts about family. Maybe it was Parents’ Day in the Roman Empire, who knows? Anyway, it seems like every word he says has the words parent and child, mother and son, ancestors and grandparents attached to it. He doesn’t just think about Timothy’s mother and grandmother as he writes, but is reminded to think about his own ancestors, whose faithfulness as Jews would lay the foundation on which his acceptance of Jesus as Messiah would later build on.
The Challenge of Spiritual Parenthood
Paul spares no word of thanks to emphasize the importance of Timothy’s mother and grandmother in shaping him into the man of sincere faith and faithfulness that he is. But by these thoughts and throughout his letter, he also shows us something bigger than Mothers’ Day, more inclusive than our biological families alone would allow. Some Christians don’t have Christian parents. Timothy himself had a father who was not a believer, it would seem. What do those people do? And what about the responsibility of men? Is it only mothers who are the guides for their children?
Here we can look at Paul’s words to Timothy in verse 2. What does he call him there? “To Timothy, my beloved child.” In Philippians 2:22 Paul says, “Timothy has proved himself, because as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the gospel.” “As a son with his father.” It’s a powerful comparison for the relationship between these two men in leadership of the Christian church. In the letter to Titus Paul likewise tells the older women how they ought to be teachers and examples to the younger women.
From all of these passages we see a powerful biblical principle at work.
The principle is this: We are not intended to go at this life alone, and in addition to the constant help of the Holy Spirit, we each ought to be able to look to someone as our spiritual parent, whether or not they are older than or led us to the Lord themselves. We should also be looking to someone else as our spiritual child, whom we can help guide through the maze of life in this world as a follower of Christ.
Checklist for being spiritual children:
As we look to those who are more mature or wise in the faith as our spiritual parents, are we imitating them as they imitate Christ (1 Cor. 11:1)? Are we listening to them as they offer wise counsel (Prov. 1:8)? In all things, are we making sure we are as willing spiritual children as Jesus was, who listened to, obeyed, and honoured his Father in his life on earth?
Checklist for being spiritual parents:
As we seek to lead others in the way of Jesus Christ, do we truly find ourselves caring for them, setting an example for them, teaching and guiding them in the ways of God (Deut. 6:4-7)? Are we again taking our lead from the Lord Jesus, who looked out over the city of Jerusalem and lamented, “how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings” (Matt. 23:37)?
Living it Out
Like a man who looks at the beauty of spring and sees only the hand of mother nature and not the finger of God, we are only going halfway if we celebrate Mothers’ Day without taking the challenge of spiritual parenthood upon ourselves. It’s true that “no one is poor who had a godly mother,” but today we mustn’t simply praise our mothers. God is asking us whether we are allowing him to both teach us and use us to teach others by being at all times both spiritual children and spiritual parents. Without having someone ahead blazing the trail and someone behind to lead along the way we set ourselves up to be stagnant, stuck on a road by ourselves, unsure of purpose and unwilling to use the resources God has given us in each other.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Sunday, April 29, 2007
April 15 sermon - A New Family
It's likely going to be another week or two before I get the next sermon online, as I adjust to the new routine of having a baby in the house, but for now, here is the sermon from April 15, which I hadn't posted yet.
A New Family
Rockland Drive United Baptist Church
April 15, 2007
Redrawing Family Lines
Christians, generally, are champions of the family. Groups like Focus on the Family have simply become a built-in part of our worldview. We defend and fight for the success of the nuclear family: mom, dad, and kids.
Rightly so. The Bible has important statements in it about husbands and wives loving each other, and parents and children having proper relationships. It even compares the love of husband for wife to the love of Christ for his church.
But we look around us and see that many, maybe most, families don’t fit this picture. We see many families made up of “yours, mine, and ours,” as some people like to describe it. Sometimes we even see Christians lamenting the existence of these blended families, seeing them as proof of the breakdown of something pure, something God-ordained, found in the traditional family.
I’d like to suggest that in the blended family we see a wonderful parable of God’s grace. After the resurrection of Jesus, the Holy Spirit formed a new and very untraditional family out of the broken pieces of a world separated from God by sin and now brought together by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
We’ll be starting a short series this morning on the early church. For the next few weeks we’ll be settling in to the continuation of Luke’s story of Jesus in the book of Acts, but today we will look back and see how in the lifetime of Jesus he was already redrawing family lines in terms of people who either followed him or didn’t, and placing a bigger priority on this new family than on the traditional one.
I hope this will help us be able to gain a proper perspective on our biological families as well as a vision for what the life of the church really ought to look like.
A Strange Family
The very popular Harry Potter books have at their heart an untraditional family redrawn along lines of shared concerns and causes rather than biological lines.
The story’s hero is an orphan whose parents died when he was a year old. At that age he was placed in the care of his aunt and uncle, who were to raise him as their own son. Things have not turned out as they were expected to, and by the age of eleven when it is time for Harry to go off to the boarding school where his parents had met, he is in a miserable family situation. His cousin is given every luxury imaginable while he is deprived. His uncle and aunt have failed, very deliberately, in their role as Harry’s family.
Once he goes off to school, however, Harry finds himself accepted, taken under the wing of various friends of his parents, virtually adopted by his best friend’s family, and cared for and protected by more people than he could ever have imagined. In the fifth book of the series, there is a scene that strikes me particularly strongly for its analogy with the community of Jesus. There at the kitchen table, a group of adults have a somewhat heated discussion about Harry, each one defending their opinion as “what is best for the boy.” They argue about what Harry should and shouldn’t be allowed to hear and be told about, and Harry becomes aware that he is in a very different family environment now than the one he has been raised in.
In this new community, there is acceptance, there is sharing, there are pure motives, and there is a sense of a new family having been assembled around new defining lines. In significant ways, it looks just like what the early Christian community looked like, where even the arguments are based around questions of what is best for the family based on their understanding of who they are as a people.
Jesus’ Family, a Community of the Spirit
In Mark 3, Jesus forces the issue head-on when his family comes looking for him. In verse 21 people have ridiculed him as being “out of his mind.” I imagine it’s possible that his mother and brothers are looking for him with a plan of talking some sense into him, calming him down about all this “kingdom of God is at hand” stuff. We read from other places in the New Testament that it wasn’t until later that his earthly family joined the group of his followers and became important figures in the early church. At this point they still seem to be stuck in unbelief. Perhaps even Mary is a little bit confused and a little bit cautious about the trouble Jesus might be heading towards. In any case, his family doesn’t appear to be on the same page as Jesus in the pursuit of God’s will.
With that background for this scene, we then hear Jesus’ revolutionary pronouncement. The people his family sent find him and tell him, “your mother and brothers are looking for you.” He at that moment breaks down the traditional definition of what a family is, saying as he looks around himself: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:34-35).
Jesus made a number of statements throughout his ministry to the effect that the kingdom of God is more important than family ties and that the group of people who were in line with Jesus’ mission were to look at themselves as a new family. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, we see this view intensify in the rest of the New Testament.
There are little hints of it throughout. Paul spoke of Timothy’s work with him as if he were a son working alongside his father. In his letter to Titus, Paul speaks of the importance of older women being examples to the young women, “so that the word of God may not be discredited.” Our life as the community of Jesus’ followers is to work on a family model. It is a witness for the whole wide world!
One of the most important statements comes in Romans 8. There, while Paul makes his statement about the greatness of God’s plan of redemption for all creation now that Jesus is risen, he says: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” or “within a large family,” another translation says. As the Spirit conforms us into Christlikeness we identify with Jesus as his brothers and sisters, a new family.
In the early days of the church as we read about it in Acts, we see what this looked like. In Acts 1 we see that the Christians were staying together in the same place. I picture it as a sort of headquarters, where they meet to discuss this new commission from Jesus, that “you shall be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8), as they wait for the promised Holy Spirit. In Acts 2 we see a beautiful picture of a blended family as they all come together, bringing the possessions they’ve previously held, and sharing them in order that none may go without. This new family includes all who believe in Jesus, and is a place where distinctions of race, class and gender just don’t matter anymore. They are all in it together. Over the next few weeks, we’ll look more specifically at some aspects of the earliest church.
The Place of the Traditional Family
So what is the place of the traditional family? Should Christian families be ripping themselves apart at the seams in the service of Jesus?
Of course not. All the emphasis we’ve placed on the importance of the family has not been wasted. The themes in the Old Testament of children honouring their parents (Exod. 20:12), of parents teaching children the ways of the LORD (Deut. 6:4-7), and even of comparing God’s relationship with his people to that between a husband and wife (Jer. 3:20, Hos. 1-2) are picked up in the New Testament as we’ve seen already.
All of these New Testament writings, however, are addressed to Christians, and show us how we are to look at our families in light of the love and faithfulness of God and our faithfulness to Jesus. In the truly Christian home – that is, truly Christ-following home – our success as a family is found as we serve the Lord. What this also means is that if our family is supposedly “Christian” but is coming between us and God’s kingdom and his family, we are on dangerous ground in putting our family first. When we look outside the community of believers, the family can still be a picture of what God is doing in the world, but it sometimes will have to be sacrificed in the service of Jesus.
Jesus makes some strong statements about commitment to him being of utmost importance: “I come to bring division. From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother” (Luke 9:52-53).
The Challenge of the Church Family
But the challenge of this new family is ultimately a positive one. We can see what it is by looking at Jesus’ prayer in John 17. There we come to a secret place where we can hear the words Jesus prayed to his Father in his final hours before the crucifixion.
We often attach great significance to a person’s last words. They speak to us of what was on that person’s heart at a time when we would guess that only things of great significance would be thought of.
Think of a man’s last wishes. If someone you loved were dying and making a heartfelt request you would listen closely. If there were any way you could honour that request by helping to make it come true you would do so. I imagine we all feel that way. Why? Because at an important moment a loved one thought this request significant enough to ask for it.
In John 17 we see Jesus at prayer. He has spent a few years in ministry, gathering together a group of followers proclaiming the in-breaking kingdom of God in the world. Now he has a concern on his mind. His concern is for that group of followers he has assembled, that same group that he said in Mark 3 was his real family. Let’s listen to his words, concerning not just his disciples at that time, but even us:
I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
Did you take note of that last part? If people are to believe that the Father sent Jesus, the unity of the family of believers is what will make it believable.
So if our unity is the thing that shows the world that the Father sent Jesus into the world, we must ask ourselves: How are we doing? Are we by our community making that claim believable to the world? Are we really the salt of the earth and the light of the world who bear witness to Jesus the Messiah, the hope of God’s people and of the whole world? Perhaps most personally, are we doing our part in honouring that request of Jesus to his Father? Are we doing our part to cooperate with that prayer?
Is our church a family where there is no suspicion? Where people take their responsibilities and roles in it seriously? You would not think yourself a responsible spouse or parent if you ignored your spouse or children all the time, never spending time getting to know them. Our family falls apart when we take that attitude towards it. Why should the church family be any different? Do we think Jesus was simply talking for fun during that prayer for his disciples? Or do we realize that our community is important to Jesus, and to his Father?
That is the challenge we are faced with when we think of our part in Jesus’ new family.
A New Family
Rockland Drive United Baptist Church
April 15, 2007
Redrawing Family Lines
Christians, generally, are champions of the family. Groups like Focus on the Family have simply become a built-in part of our worldview. We defend and fight for the success of the nuclear family: mom, dad, and kids.
Rightly so. The Bible has important statements in it about husbands and wives loving each other, and parents and children having proper relationships. It even compares the love of husband for wife to the love of Christ for his church.
But we look around us and see that many, maybe most, families don’t fit this picture. We see many families made up of “yours, mine, and ours,” as some people like to describe it. Sometimes we even see Christians lamenting the existence of these blended families, seeing them as proof of the breakdown of something pure, something God-ordained, found in the traditional family.
I’d like to suggest that in the blended family we see a wonderful parable of God’s grace. After the resurrection of Jesus, the Holy Spirit formed a new and very untraditional family out of the broken pieces of a world separated from God by sin and now brought together by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
We’ll be starting a short series this morning on the early church. For the next few weeks we’ll be settling in to the continuation of Luke’s story of Jesus in the book of Acts, but today we will look back and see how in the lifetime of Jesus he was already redrawing family lines in terms of people who either followed him or didn’t, and placing a bigger priority on this new family than on the traditional one.
I hope this will help us be able to gain a proper perspective on our biological families as well as a vision for what the life of the church really ought to look like.
A Strange Family
The very popular Harry Potter books have at their heart an untraditional family redrawn along lines of shared concerns and causes rather than biological lines.
The story’s hero is an orphan whose parents died when he was a year old. At that age he was placed in the care of his aunt and uncle, who were to raise him as their own son. Things have not turned out as they were expected to, and by the age of eleven when it is time for Harry to go off to the boarding school where his parents had met, he is in a miserable family situation. His cousin is given every luxury imaginable while he is deprived. His uncle and aunt have failed, very deliberately, in their role as Harry’s family.
Once he goes off to school, however, Harry finds himself accepted, taken under the wing of various friends of his parents, virtually adopted by his best friend’s family, and cared for and protected by more people than he could ever have imagined. In the fifth book of the series, there is a scene that strikes me particularly strongly for its analogy with the community of Jesus. There at the kitchen table, a group of adults have a somewhat heated discussion about Harry, each one defending their opinion as “what is best for the boy.” They argue about what Harry should and shouldn’t be allowed to hear and be told about, and Harry becomes aware that he is in a very different family environment now than the one he has been raised in.
In this new community, there is acceptance, there is sharing, there are pure motives, and there is a sense of a new family having been assembled around new defining lines. In significant ways, it looks just like what the early Christian community looked like, where even the arguments are based around questions of what is best for the family based on their understanding of who they are as a people.
Jesus’ Family, a Community of the Spirit
In Mark 3, Jesus forces the issue head-on when his family comes looking for him. In verse 21 people have ridiculed him as being “out of his mind.” I imagine it’s possible that his mother and brothers are looking for him with a plan of talking some sense into him, calming him down about all this “kingdom of God is at hand” stuff. We read from other places in the New Testament that it wasn’t until later that his earthly family joined the group of his followers and became important figures in the early church. At this point they still seem to be stuck in unbelief. Perhaps even Mary is a little bit confused and a little bit cautious about the trouble Jesus might be heading towards. In any case, his family doesn’t appear to be on the same page as Jesus in the pursuit of God’s will.
With that background for this scene, we then hear Jesus’ revolutionary pronouncement. The people his family sent find him and tell him, “your mother and brothers are looking for you.” He at that moment breaks down the traditional definition of what a family is, saying as he looks around himself: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:34-35).
Jesus made a number of statements throughout his ministry to the effect that the kingdom of God is more important than family ties and that the group of people who were in line with Jesus’ mission were to look at themselves as a new family. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, we see this view intensify in the rest of the New Testament.
There are little hints of it throughout. Paul spoke of Timothy’s work with him as if he were a son working alongside his father. In his letter to Titus, Paul speaks of the importance of older women being examples to the young women, “so that the word of God may not be discredited.” Our life as the community of Jesus’ followers is to work on a family model. It is a witness for the whole wide world!
One of the most important statements comes in Romans 8. There, while Paul makes his statement about the greatness of God’s plan of redemption for all creation now that Jesus is risen, he says: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” or “within a large family,” another translation says. As the Spirit conforms us into Christlikeness we identify with Jesus as his brothers and sisters, a new family.
In the early days of the church as we read about it in Acts, we see what this looked like. In Acts 1 we see that the Christians were staying together in the same place. I picture it as a sort of headquarters, where they meet to discuss this new commission from Jesus, that “you shall be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8), as they wait for the promised Holy Spirit. In Acts 2 we see a beautiful picture of a blended family as they all come together, bringing the possessions they’ve previously held, and sharing them in order that none may go without. This new family includes all who believe in Jesus, and is a place where distinctions of race, class and gender just don’t matter anymore. They are all in it together. Over the next few weeks, we’ll look more specifically at some aspects of the earliest church.
The Place of the Traditional Family
So what is the place of the traditional family? Should Christian families be ripping themselves apart at the seams in the service of Jesus?
Of course not. All the emphasis we’ve placed on the importance of the family has not been wasted. The themes in the Old Testament of children honouring their parents (Exod. 20:12), of parents teaching children the ways of the LORD (Deut. 6:4-7), and even of comparing God’s relationship with his people to that between a husband and wife (Jer. 3:20, Hos. 1-2) are picked up in the New Testament as we’ve seen already.
All of these New Testament writings, however, are addressed to Christians, and show us how we are to look at our families in light of the love and faithfulness of God and our faithfulness to Jesus. In the truly Christian home – that is, truly Christ-following home – our success as a family is found as we serve the Lord. What this also means is that if our family is supposedly “Christian” but is coming between us and God’s kingdom and his family, we are on dangerous ground in putting our family first. When we look outside the community of believers, the family can still be a picture of what God is doing in the world, but it sometimes will have to be sacrificed in the service of Jesus.
Jesus makes some strong statements about commitment to him being of utmost importance: “I come to bring division. From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother” (Luke 9:52-53).
The Challenge of the Church Family
But the challenge of this new family is ultimately a positive one. We can see what it is by looking at Jesus’ prayer in John 17. There we come to a secret place where we can hear the words Jesus prayed to his Father in his final hours before the crucifixion.
We often attach great significance to a person’s last words. They speak to us of what was on that person’s heart at a time when we would guess that only things of great significance would be thought of.
Think of a man’s last wishes. If someone you loved were dying and making a heartfelt request you would listen closely. If there were any way you could honour that request by helping to make it come true you would do so. I imagine we all feel that way. Why? Because at an important moment a loved one thought this request significant enough to ask for it.
In John 17 we see Jesus at prayer. He has spent a few years in ministry, gathering together a group of followers proclaiming the in-breaking kingdom of God in the world. Now he has a concern on his mind. His concern is for that group of followers he has assembled, that same group that he said in Mark 3 was his real family. Let’s listen to his words, concerning not just his disciples at that time, but even us:
I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
Did you take note of that last part? If people are to believe that the Father sent Jesus, the unity of the family of believers is what will make it believable.
So if our unity is the thing that shows the world that the Father sent Jesus into the world, we must ask ourselves: How are we doing? Are we by our community making that claim believable to the world? Are we really the salt of the earth and the light of the world who bear witness to Jesus the Messiah, the hope of God’s people and of the whole world? Perhaps most personally, are we doing our part in honouring that request of Jesus to his Father? Are we doing our part to cooperate with that prayer?
Is our church a family where there is no suspicion? Where people take their responsibilities and roles in it seriously? You would not think yourself a responsible spouse or parent if you ignored your spouse or children all the time, never spending time getting to know them. Our family falls apart when we take that attitude towards it. Why should the church family be any different? Do we think Jesus was simply talking for fun during that prayer for his disciples? Or do we realize that our community is important to Jesus, and to his Father?
That is the challenge we are faced with when we think of our part in Jesus’ new family.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Easter Sermon
The Best Ending Ever!
Rockland Dr United Baptist Church
April 8, 2007
Surprises, Surprises
An episode of the television show Friends contained a scene in which three of its thirty-something characters ransacked their friend’s apartment trying to discover where their Christmas presents were hidden. It had become a game to them, but they also really wanted to know what she had gotten them. I can’t remember ever looking for my own Christmas gifts as a child, but remember my brother telling us that he once found his, and found Christmas morning to be much less fun that year than any others. The thrill of opening the gifts was gone, and as a child that mattered to him.
We might notice about our world today that we are a people who do everything we can to eliminate surprises from everyday life, planning intensely away all the uncertainties. We can now choose our own wedding gifts by making a gift registry; we can look at Call Display to know who’s calling us when the phone rings; we can even (in many places) find out if a pregnant woman is having a boy or a girl. We seem to have systematically removed the element of surprise from our lives.
But moving out of our “real” lives, and into, say, the life of a story, a book, or a movie, we find that our taste for the surprising, for the unknown, is still something we very much cling to. Surprises in these cases are the thing that keeps our interest held.
Twist endings may be the best: we enjoy a story on its own terms from start to finish, and then such a surprising conclusion comes that we are forced to reread or rewatch and see things all over again with a different and new perspective.
At the center of the Christian faith and at the heart of Easter is the greatest surprise ending of all time: Jesus Christ, raised from the dead and on through to life! What a twist to the end of that story!
This morning we will look at two stories in the Bible that tell of the change that is brought about by this twist ending, the resurrection of Jesus. The first is from Luke’s gospel, and is about two dejected disciples walking along the road. The second is from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, and it is about us. So let’s listen to the story of the two disciples of Jesus, and then listen to our story, addressed so clearly in Paul’s words to his troubled church.
Hopelessness and Hope on the Road to Emmaus
In this passage we meet two disciples walking along the road on Easter Sunday. In their minds, though, it is not Easter Sunday at all. To them, it’s day two since their leader and teacher died by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.
These two disciples, Cleopas and his friend, are walking along when suddenly a third person comes alongside them. It’s Jesus, but for some reason, they don’t recognize him. We’re not told what exactly it was about Jesus’ body after the resurrection that made it possible for people to fail to recognize him sometimes, and yet to be able to look and see the wounds in his hands and feet from his crucifixion. Perhaps God closed their eyes for a time, perhaps his resurrection body actually looked different; either way, Jesus was able to join them and talk with them on this road without them knowing who he was.
Jesus notices the dejection in these two disciples. Just as he knows all of our feelings and thoughts, he knew the anguish of those two on that road. So he asks them, “What are you talking about?” And entering into their conversation, the two tell the story of all that had happened to Jesus in the last week.
They most expose their feelings when they say in verse 21, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” We had hoped. They had that hope before, but now it was gone. Now they were two dejected disciples, two followers of Jesus trying to come to grips with having been mistaken about everything they had devoted this last part of their lives to.
Many people in the years before and after Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, “the one to redeem Israel.” Their stories can be read in various history books; some of them are even mentioned in the Book of Acts, men like Theudas, Judas the Galilean, and “the Egyptian.” These men were leaders, revolutionaries claiming to be God’s anointed, gathering together a great crowd of followers. But each one of them in turn had died. Each one of them left behind followers who, like these disciples of Jesus, must have walked with their heads hanging low in the days after their demise, coming to grips with the fact that they had followed the wrong person. These two disciples feel like they’re joining the ranks of others who have “followed the wrong guy.”
Today they’ve heard a strange story, they tell Jesus. This story is a story “the women” have told them. “The women say that they went to Jesus’ tomb and that it was empty. They say he is alive.”
But Cleopas and his companion clearly don’t buy it. They are not convinced. After all, Jesus died. People don’t come back to life after they die. Everyone knows that. So they continue to carry on in their hopelessness and dejection.
Their story has a surprise ending, though, a twist that they have not believed and still don’t see coming. Jesus starts to tell them how the scriptures said these things were necessary. This is what they should have expected, he tells them, as he shares with them their own scriptures to show the destiny of the Messiah. They are intrigued as he starts to walk on, so they invite him to eat with them. While eating, the gospel account says, “their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. Then he vanished.”
In that moment of recognition the two disciples know that their story has not ended in hopelessness, but that Jesus indeed was raised to life. “Were not our hearts burning within us as he spoke with us?” they ask each other. No longer hopeless, Cleopas and his friend are now filled with hope and joy and enthusiasm.
The story they’ve known leads them through to the end with certain emotions. The “twist” of the resurrection makes them have to rethink everything through a brand new lens. Everything looks differently the second time around.
Our Story in Paul’s Letter
In 1 Corinthians 15 we find ourselves faced with the chapter of the Bible that most focuses on the resurrection. This is the chapter where the meaning of the resurrection is most thoroughly pondered, and where we find ourselves face to face with our own condition as we read. As we read this passage, we are reading our own story.
Let’s remember our analogy of reading a story that has a twist at the end. Now let’s remind ourselves that the twist in the story of Jesus is the resurrection. Given those two facts, we find that Paul addresses both readings of the story of Jesus in this chapter. He asks two questions:
1. If the resurrection is not a real thing, what does that mean about the story of Jesus and the story of us?
2. If the resurrection is real, what are the implications for living?
If there is no resurrection…
This is a complicated chapter. For our purposes, we’re going to have to be satisfied to look at just a couple of representative verses.
Paul says in verse 17, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.” Futile is a pretty strong word. In other words, Paul says, if the story ends with Jesus’ death on the cross, everything we hold onto as Christians is of no value. As one theologian put it, if Christ has not been raised,
“their faith is not only ‘empty,’ but ‘futile’… a waste of time; and the crucial point is not just that they are believing rubbish about the resurrection, and about Jesus, but that the new age in which sins are left behind has not after all been inaugurated.” (N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 332.)
In other words, if we claim that there is no resurrection, that people don’t rise from the dead, that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, any faith we might claim would be useless, because it is in Jesus’ resurrection that God began the new age, the new way, the Kingdom itself! We are still mired in the old order, where evil and sin control us, if there is no resurrection.
There are those even in churches who will claim that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Just as Cleopas had heard the witness of the women but yet walked in hopelessness because of his denial of Jesus’ aliveness, so people today will claim, “I believe in God, but people don’t come back to life after they’ve died – that’s not how it works!” For these people Paul’s words are strong and direct.
What are the implications for living the resurrection?
But many do not have the problem of denying Jesus’ resurrection and the resurrection of the dead. After all, our strong hope in times of death is found in John 11:25: “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever lives and believes in me, even though he dies, yet shall he live.”
Our problem here, where Christian beliefs form the bedrock of our whole culture, is that we claim that the resurrection is real – even showing up dutifully in church to say so – and then try to prove by our lives that it doesn’t mean the slightest thing.
Paul has words for us too: in verse 34, he admonishes: “Come to a sober and right mind, and sin no more; for some people have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.”
Paul says to us, you’ve heard the story, you’ve followed it through, and now you’ve seen the big surprise God had in store at the end of the story. The story cannot stay the same in your mind now that you’ve seen the end. Your life cannot be lived according to the story that ends in death and shame, but must be lived according to the story that ends in the resurrection.
The resurrection is the beginning of God’s new age, of God’s kingdom. “Sober up and think straight – stop sinning!” Live in the life you’ve been given by God, not some fantasy world that is only half the story.
“Some people have no knowledge of God.” Likely Paul said this because there were some who claimed to have special knowledge of God. Perhaps they thought themselves better than the others, even refusing to fellowship with them sometimes. To them Paul says, “You call yourselves ‘knowledge people’ – well, I say you actually have no knowledge of God at all. And you should be ashamed of yourselves that this is true.”
The Challenge of the Resurrection: Rereading our story
Paul makes it clear to us that if we say, “Jesus Christ is Risen,” it changes everything. We listen to the story of Jesus, and it seems to be the story of a good and special man. But when we say, “He was raised from the dead on the first Easter Sunday,” we throw down the challenge for ourselves.
The challenge says: If Jesus is risen, am I living as if that’s true? Have I let go of the sinful ways of the past? Have I embraced God’s Kingdom and the Lordship of Jesus in not just my life but over everything? Has the twist at the end of this story sent me back to the beginning of Jesus’ story and my own life, looking to reexamine everything in light of the resurrection?
Jesus Christ is risen today. That changes everything.
Rockland Dr United Baptist Church
April 8, 2007
Surprises, Surprises
An episode of the television show Friends contained a scene in which three of its thirty-something characters ransacked their friend’s apartment trying to discover where their Christmas presents were hidden. It had become a game to them, but they also really wanted to know what she had gotten them. I can’t remember ever looking for my own Christmas gifts as a child, but remember my brother telling us that he once found his, and found Christmas morning to be much less fun that year than any others. The thrill of opening the gifts was gone, and as a child that mattered to him.
We might notice about our world today that we are a people who do everything we can to eliminate surprises from everyday life, planning intensely away all the uncertainties. We can now choose our own wedding gifts by making a gift registry; we can look at Call Display to know who’s calling us when the phone rings; we can even (in many places) find out if a pregnant woman is having a boy or a girl. We seem to have systematically removed the element of surprise from our lives.
But moving out of our “real” lives, and into, say, the life of a story, a book, or a movie, we find that our taste for the surprising, for the unknown, is still something we very much cling to. Surprises in these cases are the thing that keeps our interest held.
Twist endings may be the best: we enjoy a story on its own terms from start to finish, and then such a surprising conclusion comes that we are forced to reread or rewatch and see things all over again with a different and new perspective.
At the center of the Christian faith and at the heart of Easter is the greatest surprise ending of all time: Jesus Christ, raised from the dead and on through to life! What a twist to the end of that story!
This morning we will look at two stories in the Bible that tell of the change that is brought about by this twist ending, the resurrection of Jesus. The first is from Luke’s gospel, and is about two dejected disciples walking along the road. The second is from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, and it is about us. So let’s listen to the story of the two disciples of Jesus, and then listen to our story, addressed so clearly in Paul’s words to his troubled church.
Hopelessness and Hope on the Road to Emmaus
In this passage we meet two disciples walking along the road on Easter Sunday. In their minds, though, it is not Easter Sunday at all. To them, it’s day two since their leader and teacher died by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.
These two disciples, Cleopas and his friend, are walking along when suddenly a third person comes alongside them. It’s Jesus, but for some reason, they don’t recognize him. We’re not told what exactly it was about Jesus’ body after the resurrection that made it possible for people to fail to recognize him sometimes, and yet to be able to look and see the wounds in his hands and feet from his crucifixion. Perhaps God closed their eyes for a time, perhaps his resurrection body actually looked different; either way, Jesus was able to join them and talk with them on this road without them knowing who he was.
Jesus notices the dejection in these two disciples. Just as he knows all of our feelings and thoughts, he knew the anguish of those two on that road. So he asks them, “What are you talking about?” And entering into their conversation, the two tell the story of all that had happened to Jesus in the last week.
They most expose their feelings when they say in verse 21, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” We had hoped. They had that hope before, but now it was gone. Now they were two dejected disciples, two followers of Jesus trying to come to grips with having been mistaken about everything they had devoted this last part of their lives to.
Many people in the years before and after Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, “the one to redeem Israel.” Their stories can be read in various history books; some of them are even mentioned in the Book of Acts, men like Theudas, Judas the Galilean, and “the Egyptian.” These men were leaders, revolutionaries claiming to be God’s anointed, gathering together a great crowd of followers. But each one of them in turn had died. Each one of them left behind followers who, like these disciples of Jesus, must have walked with their heads hanging low in the days after their demise, coming to grips with the fact that they had followed the wrong person. These two disciples feel like they’re joining the ranks of others who have “followed the wrong guy.”
Today they’ve heard a strange story, they tell Jesus. This story is a story “the women” have told them. “The women say that they went to Jesus’ tomb and that it was empty. They say he is alive.”
But Cleopas and his companion clearly don’t buy it. They are not convinced. After all, Jesus died. People don’t come back to life after they die. Everyone knows that. So they continue to carry on in their hopelessness and dejection.
Their story has a surprise ending, though, a twist that they have not believed and still don’t see coming. Jesus starts to tell them how the scriptures said these things were necessary. This is what they should have expected, he tells them, as he shares with them their own scriptures to show the destiny of the Messiah. They are intrigued as he starts to walk on, so they invite him to eat with them. While eating, the gospel account says, “their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. Then he vanished.”
In that moment of recognition the two disciples know that their story has not ended in hopelessness, but that Jesus indeed was raised to life. “Were not our hearts burning within us as he spoke with us?” they ask each other. No longer hopeless, Cleopas and his friend are now filled with hope and joy and enthusiasm.
The story they’ve known leads them through to the end with certain emotions. The “twist” of the resurrection makes them have to rethink everything through a brand new lens. Everything looks differently the second time around.
Our Story in Paul’s Letter
In 1 Corinthians 15 we find ourselves faced with the chapter of the Bible that most focuses on the resurrection. This is the chapter where the meaning of the resurrection is most thoroughly pondered, and where we find ourselves face to face with our own condition as we read. As we read this passage, we are reading our own story.
Let’s remember our analogy of reading a story that has a twist at the end. Now let’s remind ourselves that the twist in the story of Jesus is the resurrection. Given those two facts, we find that Paul addresses both readings of the story of Jesus in this chapter. He asks two questions:
1. If the resurrection is not a real thing, what does that mean about the story of Jesus and the story of us?
2. If the resurrection is real, what are the implications for living?
If there is no resurrection…
This is a complicated chapter. For our purposes, we’re going to have to be satisfied to look at just a couple of representative verses.
Paul says in verse 17, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.” Futile is a pretty strong word. In other words, Paul says, if the story ends with Jesus’ death on the cross, everything we hold onto as Christians is of no value. As one theologian put it, if Christ has not been raised,
“their faith is not only ‘empty,’ but ‘futile’… a waste of time; and the crucial point is not just that they are believing rubbish about the resurrection, and about Jesus, but that the new age in which sins are left behind has not after all been inaugurated.” (N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 332.)
In other words, if we claim that there is no resurrection, that people don’t rise from the dead, that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, any faith we might claim would be useless, because it is in Jesus’ resurrection that God began the new age, the new way, the Kingdom itself! We are still mired in the old order, where evil and sin control us, if there is no resurrection.
There are those even in churches who will claim that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Just as Cleopas had heard the witness of the women but yet walked in hopelessness because of his denial of Jesus’ aliveness, so people today will claim, “I believe in God, but people don’t come back to life after they’ve died – that’s not how it works!” For these people Paul’s words are strong and direct.
What are the implications for living the resurrection?
But many do not have the problem of denying Jesus’ resurrection and the resurrection of the dead. After all, our strong hope in times of death is found in John 11:25: “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever lives and believes in me, even though he dies, yet shall he live.”
Our problem here, where Christian beliefs form the bedrock of our whole culture, is that we claim that the resurrection is real – even showing up dutifully in church to say so – and then try to prove by our lives that it doesn’t mean the slightest thing.
Paul has words for us too: in verse 34, he admonishes: “Come to a sober and right mind, and sin no more; for some people have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.”
Paul says to us, you’ve heard the story, you’ve followed it through, and now you’ve seen the big surprise God had in store at the end of the story. The story cannot stay the same in your mind now that you’ve seen the end. Your life cannot be lived according to the story that ends in death and shame, but must be lived according to the story that ends in the resurrection.
The resurrection is the beginning of God’s new age, of God’s kingdom. “Sober up and think straight – stop sinning!” Live in the life you’ve been given by God, not some fantasy world that is only half the story.
“Some people have no knowledge of God.” Likely Paul said this because there were some who claimed to have special knowledge of God. Perhaps they thought themselves better than the others, even refusing to fellowship with them sometimes. To them Paul says, “You call yourselves ‘knowledge people’ – well, I say you actually have no knowledge of God at all. And you should be ashamed of yourselves that this is true.”
The Challenge of the Resurrection: Rereading our story
Paul makes it clear to us that if we say, “Jesus Christ is Risen,” it changes everything. We listen to the story of Jesus, and it seems to be the story of a good and special man. But when we say, “He was raised from the dead on the first Easter Sunday,” we throw down the challenge for ourselves.
The challenge says: If Jesus is risen, am I living as if that’s true? Have I let go of the sinful ways of the past? Have I embraced God’s Kingdom and the Lordship of Jesus in not just my life but over everything? Has the twist at the end of this story sent me back to the beginning of Jesus’ story and my own life, looking to reexamine everything in light of the resurrection?
Jesus Christ is risen today. That changes everything.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Sermon - April 1
Pilgrims on the Road
April 1, 2007
Rockland Drive United Baptist Church
Living Under Poor Leadership
We’ve all heard stories of life under terrible leadership. Names like Hitler, Mussolini, and Hussein might perhaps cause us to breathe a sigh of relief that we live where we do. Novelists like George Orwell and Ray Bradbury have depicted societies ruled by bad leaders, and their vision does nothing to make us feel less appreciative of living as we do in a Western democracy.
But perhaps we are unaware of another rule over our lives. Perhaps we think we’ve seen what a good society is all about. Perhaps we like what we seen. The Bible points us, however, to recognizing corrupt rule in our lives and offers a solution to the situation.
The Replacement King
There is a story in the Old Testament about a particularly bad time in the kingdom of Israel. Evil is just running amok. People are living under the tyranny of the family of the wicked king Ahab, who with his wife Jezebel led the people into all kinds of idolatry and disobedience to the LORD. In addition to that, there is violence in the land, a brutal and harsh violence that would have innocent people like Naboth (see 1 Kings 21) slandered and killed in order for the king to have more luxury. What an awful rule to live under.
The LORD sees the situation, of course, and tells the prophet Elisha to send one of his associates to go and find one of the commanders of the land. The purpose of this search is to anoint the commander, Jehu, as king. Jehu is to be the king that will end the years of struggle and hardship.
The prophetic messenger does as he is told, which entails quickly delivering his message and literally running out of the room as soon as he’s done. (God seems not to mind having his people occasionally look like lunatics in his service.) The whole job is done in such a bizarre manner as to make Jehu’s friends ask what’s going on. He at first tells them, “You know what people like him are like, the kinds of things they say.” They say, “No, actually, we don’t – what did he say?” and Jehu decides to tell them that he has been anointed and declared to be the king. They immediately, and probably unexpectedly in Jehu’s mind, take off their cloaks and spread them on the ground where he walks, proclaiming, “Jehu is King!”
There is a story in the New Testament about a replacement king, the anointed one who will lead his people out from under the oppression of a wicked kingdom, and for whom a procession lined with cloaks was also prepared as he was declared to be the king. This king is Jesus. The story can be found in Luke 19:28-40.
Jesus, the Proclaimed King
The first thing we may notice about this passage is the joy in the people’s hearts and on their lips as they give glory to God as Jesus walks the street heading toward Jerusalem. He is proclaimed King: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”
This phrase comes from Psalm 118, where the people welcome one coming in the LORD’s name into Jerusalem. Some interpreters have seen this as a welcome given to pilgrims coming to Jerusalem, while most will recognize that there is something deeper hoped for in that passage as well. So what we find we’re looking at here in Luke 19 is a group of pilgrims walking together in the train of one unique pilgrim, proclaiming him to be the “king who comes in the name of the Lord.”
We seem to know instinctively as we read this passage that we want to join the throng of pilgrims welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem as king. Just as we know that we don’t want to identify with the Pharisees as we read Jesus’ conflicts with them, so we know that this group of pilgrims is a safe one to join. Judging by this passage, that group of pilgrims is not just safe; it’s where the party’s at. And so we sing with gusto that triumphant line from the hymn Crown Him With Many Crowns: “Hail him as thy matchless king throughout eternity.”
For Jesus to be proclaimed King means God has set him apart, anointed him for his kingly mission. It also means that he must be listened to, must be obeyed, must be taken seriously.
If we take Jesus’ whole life as an indicator of the life of the kingdom that he proclaimed to be near, we can see contrasts at every point between what was accepted and what the kingdom norm is shown to be.
(A fuller explanation of the next two paragraphs can be found in Stanley Hauerwas’ The Peaceable Kingdom, chapter 5.)
For example, in Jesus’ shared meals with outcasts, “tax collectors and sinners,” we are shown that unlike the rule of this world, where you either select your friends based on what benefit they can give you or take meals with those who can get you a promotion, the kingdom of God allows for hospitality with people just because they are valued by God, whether or not they have status or are thought of as “the right crowd.”
In Jesus’ exorcisms and healings we see that unlike the rule of this world, where every type of evil overcomes us, ruining our motives for even the good that we might try to do, bringing selfishness and manipulation into our relationships, in the kingdom of God it is possible to have victory over this evil, because Jesus has defeated these powers. This, of course, is plainly seen in the cross and resurrection, where Jesus’ sacrifice and emptying of himself is seen to be more powerful than all the political and spiritual forces who tried to keep him down.
Jesus, the Mocked King
But we are aware that we live in a world where not everyone lives as if this kingdom were a reality. People still push each other around, manipulate one another, backstab, hold resentments, take power trips, ignore God. And not everyone along the road that day, or in the rest of Jerusalem that last week of Jesus’ life, proclaimed Jesus as king.
There were among the crowds Pharisees who thought they could appeal to Jesus to scold those who proclaimed him as king. Jesus, though, showing the necessity of the advance of the kingdom, says that even if the people weren’t shouting, the rocks would proclaim him as king – the kingdom of God is that all-encompassing.
But the full extent of the mockery of Jesus came to light later in the week. Two images stick in our heads. The first is of the soldiers who, having twisted a bunch of thorns into a makeshift crown, placed that crown on Jesus’ head, laughing at him and at the claim of the kingdom. They, of course, with their violent and polarizing ways, represent precisely the kingdom that usually reigns on earth. It is actions like these that represent everything Jesus’ life pointed away from. Where Jesus shows us God’s care for the downtrodden and weakest among us, the kingdom of this world - the rule of the Romans, the rule of Satan and evil – kicks the oppressed when they’re down. And we hang our heads as we realize just how like that our everyday dealings with one another can be.
The second image we remember, after the crown of thorns, is that sign they placed above Jesus’ head on the cross: “This is Jesus, King of the Jews.” Another mocking look at what Jesus was doing and who he was shows us the world in stark contrast to the kingdom of God. Jesus, mocked and scorned and beaten, says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Apparently, not everyone in Jerusalem was proclaiming Jesus as king that day or that week.
False Witnesses
We are faced with this passage of scripture and must answer the question, “Which voice are we raising?” Are we rejoicing with the pilgrims on the road, proclaiming Jesus to be king? Or do we find ourselves joining with the mockers, making a joke of the words, “Jesus is king”?
You often hear of people saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” A parent saying this implies that saying and doing are two different things. We can possibly imagine someone telling another person to do something and doing the opposite himself. But when it comes to proclaiming Jesus as king, our actions are very important indeed.
Because Jesus’ kingship, the fact of him being Lord means we obey him. If he is our leader, we follow him. If he is our master, we serve at his pleasure. If we don’t live as if the kingdom is a reality, we prove our statement, “Jesus is Lord” to be false.
Stanley Hauerwas is a theologian who describes very well the nature of the kingdom and how we are to live in it. He has been called by Time magazine “America’s best theologian.” To this “honour” he replied, “Best is not a theological category! Faithful or unfaithful are the right categories.” He’s right. We are called to be faithful to the story of Jesus, faithful to the kingdom of God. Faithful witnesses is what Christians are meant to be.
If we find ourselves saying with our lips, “Lord, Lord, Jesus is Lord,” and showing by our actions that we don’t believe the world is a different place at all because of him, we are bearing false witness. If we don’t live as if there’s a bigger reality than the kingdoms of this world live by, we are no better than those Romans who nailed that sign above Jesus’ head on the cross. We say the words, but they don’t mean anything good.
Joining the Singing
We can only join in singing with the pilgrims on the road, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” if we are living a life that is in harmony with the statement that Jesus is Lord. We can live lives of truth and beauty, as God’s creatures, if we recognize that God’s kingdom is made real in Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Then can we truly say, “Jesus is Lord.”
Followers of St Francis of Assisi know the quote, “Everywhere you go preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.” This quote is very true, speaking truly of the witnesses we are called to be to the wonder and greatness and goodness of God who gave his Son for us and who has defeated the powers of this world with the most unlikely weapons of all: peace, forgiveness, selflessness, and sacrifice. All of these are found on the cross, and it is at the cross that we see our salvation and see truly that Jesus is King.
In the Meantime
In Luke, this passage begins with the time setting, “After saying these things.” If we look back at the previous verses to what Jesus had just said, we can find one last encouragement and challenge.
There, in the verses beginning at 11, Jesus tells the crowd a parable about a “man of noble birth” who goes to a distant country to be appointed as king. While he is away his servants are left with a pound each. This money is entrusted to them to do as they wish. Some are faithful to that trust, while others are not. The king commends those who are faithful to that trust.
As we go through this week, we contemplate Jesus going to a distant land (Jerusalem and the grave) to go through death and resurrection, where he obtains kingship (Romans 1:4) and one day will return. In the meantime, we are required to be faithful to the trust we have been given. “You will be my witnesses,” Jesus said (Acts 1:8). We are witnesses to Jesus’ life and to the kingdom of God. We are witnesses to Jesus being the true king.
April 1, 2007
Rockland Drive United Baptist Church
Living Under Poor Leadership
We’ve all heard stories of life under terrible leadership. Names like Hitler, Mussolini, and Hussein might perhaps cause us to breathe a sigh of relief that we live where we do. Novelists like George Orwell and Ray Bradbury have depicted societies ruled by bad leaders, and their vision does nothing to make us feel less appreciative of living as we do in a Western democracy.
But perhaps we are unaware of another rule over our lives. Perhaps we think we’ve seen what a good society is all about. Perhaps we like what we seen. The Bible points us, however, to recognizing corrupt rule in our lives and offers a solution to the situation.
The Replacement King
There is a story in the Old Testament about a particularly bad time in the kingdom of Israel. Evil is just running amok. People are living under the tyranny of the family of the wicked king Ahab, who with his wife Jezebel led the people into all kinds of idolatry and disobedience to the LORD. In addition to that, there is violence in the land, a brutal and harsh violence that would have innocent people like Naboth (see 1 Kings 21) slandered and killed in order for the king to have more luxury. What an awful rule to live under.
The LORD sees the situation, of course, and tells the prophet Elisha to send one of his associates to go and find one of the commanders of the land. The purpose of this search is to anoint the commander, Jehu, as king. Jehu is to be the king that will end the years of struggle and hardship.
The prophetic messenger does as he is told, which entails quickly delivering his message and literally running out of the room as soon as he’s done. (God seems not to mind having his people occasionally look like lunatics in his service.) The whole job is done in such a bizarre manner as to make Jehu’s friends ask what’s going on. He at first tells them, “You know what people like him are like, the kinds of things they say.” They say, “No, actually, we don’t – what did he say?” and Jehu decides to tell them that he has been anointed and declared to be the king. They immediately, and probably unexpectedly in Jehu’s mind, take off their cloaks and spread them on the ground where he walks, proclaiming, “Jehu is King!”
There is a story in the New Testament about a replacement king, the anointed one who will lead his people out from under the oppression of a wicked kingdom, and for whom a procession lined with cloaks was also prepared as he was declared to be the king. This king is Jesus. The story can be found in Luke 19:28-40.
Jesus, the Proclaimed King
The first thing we may notice about this passage is the joy in the people’s hearts and on their lips as they give glory to God as Jesus walks the street heading toward Jerusalem. He is proclaimed King: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”
This phrase comes from Psalm 118, where the people welcome one coming in the LORD’s name into Jerusalem. Some interpreters have seen this as a welcome given to pilgrims coming to Jerusalem, while most will recognize that there is something deeper hoped for in that passage as well. So what we find we’re looking at here in Luke 19 is a group of pilgrims walking together in the train of one unique pilgrim, proclaiming him to be the “king who comes in the name of the Lord.”
We seem to know instinctively as we read this passage that we want to join the throng of pilgrims welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem as king. Just as we know that we don’t want to identify with the Pharisees as we read Jesus’ conflicts with them, so we know that this group of pilgrims is a safe one to join. Judging by this passage, that group of pilgrims is not just safe; it’s where the party’s at. And so we sing with gusto that triumphant line from the hymn Crown Him With Many Crowns: “Hail him as thy matchless king throughout eternity.”
For Jesus to be proclaimed King means God has set him apart, anointed him for his kingly mission. It also means that he must be listened to, must be obeyed, must be taken seriously.
If we take Jesus’ whole life as an indicator of the life of the kingdom that he proclaimed to be near, we can see contrasts at every point between what was accepted and what the kingdom norm is shown to be.
(A fuller explanation of the next two paragraphs can be found in Stanley Hauerwas’ The Peaceable Kingdom, chapter 5.)
For example, in Jesus’ shared meals with outcasts, “tax collectors and sinners,” we are shown that unlike the rule of this world, where you either select your friends based on what benefit they can give you or take meals with those who can get you a promotion, the kingdom of God allows for hospitality with people just because they are valued by God, whether or not they have status or are thought of as “the right crowd.”
In Jesus’ exorcisms and healings we see that unlike the rule of this world, where every type of evil overcomes us, ruining our motives for even the good that we might try to do, bringing selfishness and manipulation into our relationships, in the kingdom of God it is possible to have victory over this evil, because Jesus has defeated these powers. This, of course, is plainly seen in the cross and resurrection, where Jesus’ sacrifice and emptying of himself is seen to be more powerful than all the political and spiritual forces who tried to keep him down.
Jesus, the Mocked King
But we are aware that we live in a world where not everyone lives as if this kingdom were a reality. People still push each other around, manipulate one another, backstab, hold resentments, take power trips, ignore God. And not everyone along the road that day, or in the rest of Jerusalem that last week of Jesus’ life, proclaimed Jesus as king.
There were among the crowds Pharisees who thought they could appeal to Jesus to scold those who proclaimed him as king. Jesus, though, showing the necessity of the advance of the kingdom, says that even if the people weren’t shouting, the rocks would proclaim him as king – the kingdom of God is that all-encompassing.
But the full extent of the mockery of Jesus came to light later in the week. Two images stick in our heads. The first is of the soldiers who, having twisted a bunch of thorns into a makeshift crown, placed that crown on Jesus’ head, laughing at him and at the claim of the kingdom. They, of course, with their violent and polarizing ways, represent precisely the kingdom that usually reigns on earth. It is actions like these that represent everything Jesus’ life pointed away from. Where Jesus shows us God’s care for the downtrodden and weakest among us, the kingdom of this world - the rule of the Romans, the rule of Satan and evil – kicks the oppressed when they’re down. And we hang our heads as we realize just how like that our everyday dealings with one another can be.
The second image we remember, after the crown of thorns, is that sign they placed above Jesus’ head on the cross: “This is Jesus, King of the Jews.” Another mocking look at what Jesus was doing and who he was shows us the world in stark contrast to the kingdom of God. Jesus, mocked and scorned and beaten, says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Apparently, not everyone in Jerusalem was proclaiming Jesus as king that day or that week.
False Witnesses
We are faced with this passage of scripture and must answer the question, “Which voice are we raising?” Are we rejoicing with the pilgrims on the road, proclaiming Jesus to be king? Or do we find ourselves joining with the mockers, making a joke of the words, “Jesus is king”?
You often hear of people saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” A parent saying this implies that saying and doing are two different things. We can possibly imagine someone telling another person to do something and doing the opposite himself. But when it comes to proclaiming Jesus as king, our actions are very important indeed.
Because Jesus’ kingship, the fact of him being Lord means we obey him. If he is our leader, we follow him. If he is our master, we serve at his pleasure. If we don’t live as if the kingdom is a reality, we prove our statement, “Jesus is Lord” to be false.
Stanley Hauerwas is a theologian who describes very well the nature of the kingdom and how we are to live in it. He has been called by Time magazine “America’s best theologian.” To this “honour” he replied, “Best is not a theological category! Faithful or unfaithful are the right categories.” He’s right. We are called to be faithful to the story of Jesus, faithful to the kingdom of God. Faithful witnesses is what Christians are meant to be.
If we find ourselves saying with our lips, “Lord, Lord, Jesus is Lord,” and showing by our actions that we don’t believe the world is a different place at all because of him, we are bearing false witness. If we don’t live as if there’s a bigger reality than the kingdoms of this world live by, we are no better than those Romans who nailed that sign above Jesus’ head on the cross. We say the words, but they don’t mean anything good.
Joining the Singing
We can only join in singing with the pilgrims on the road, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” if we are living a life that is in harmony with the statement that Jesus is Lord. We can live lives of truth and beauty, as God’s creatures, if we recognize that God’s kingdom is made real in Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Then can we truly say, “Jesus is Lord.”
Followers of St Francis of Assisi know the quote, “Everywhere you go preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.” This quote is very true, speaking truly of the witnesses we are called to be to the wonder and greatness and goodness of God who gave his Son for us and who has defeated the powers of this world with the most unlikely weapons of all: peace, forgiveness, selflessness, and sacrifice. All of these are found on the cross, and it is at the cross that we see our salvation and see truly that Jesus is King.
In the Meantime
In Luke, this passage begins with the time setting, “After saying these things.” If we look back at the previous verses to what Jesus had just said, we can find one last encouragement and challenge.
There, in the verses beginning at 11, Jesus tells the crowd a parable about a “man of noble birth” who goes to a distant country to be appointed as king. While he is away his servants are left with a pound each. This money is entrusted to them to do as they wish. Some are faithful to that trust, while others are not. The king commends those who are faithful to that trust.
As we go through this week, we contemplate Jesus going to a distant land (Jerusalem and the grave) to go through death and resurrection, where he obtains kingship (Romans 1:4) and one day will return. In the meantime, we are required to be faithful to the trust we have been given. “You will be my witnesses,” Jesus said (Acts 1:8). We are witnesses to Jesus’ life and to the kingdom of God. We are witnesses to Jesus being the true king.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Last Sunday's Sermon - The Broken Wall
THE BROKEN WALL
ROCKLAND DR. UNITED BAPTIST CHURCH
Mar. 25, 2007
The Big Language Barrier and the Death of Jesus
It can be tricky to find yourself hungry in a foreign country. If you’ve ever been somewhere the people don’t speak English and had a desire to stop and get a bite to eat, you’ll also know you had to come up with a way to communicate. It’s frustrating sometimes (and sometimes helps bring very interesting menu selections!) to have to work through a barrier like that when you’re hungry and know that the very thing you want and need is right at your fingertips… if only you understood the language.
I’m afraid the same problem faces us with the death of Jesus. The New Testament of course was written almost two thousand years ago, half the way around the world, but by the wonder of translation we are able to have reasonably good versions of the Bible that can help us understand fairly clearly what’s going on most of the time. We are good with straightforward language, a little worse with the more poetic parts.
When the writers talk about Jesus’ death, though, we find a whole host of metaphors waiting for us, ready to fill out a vast picture of the importance of that world-shaking event. We find all kinds of technical terms, words like sacrifice, propitiation, atonement, redemption, reconciliation, and so on. These words and ideas seem far away from the language of our everyday life, far away from our circumstances. We hear these words and think, “Uh-oh – I’m listening to a foreign language – Christian-ese – and I don’t really know what it might mean…but I should, right?”
Again we find ourselves with the sense of being so close to something so vital to our well-being, like the food in the foreign restaurant, but with a huge barrier of words obstructing our access.
We needn’t lose hope that we can at least get some grasp on some of these metaphors, and I hope that today we can get a grip on one of
them especially, one expression of what happened when Jesus died and what it meant for us as a people.
Israel’s Part
It’s important for us to remember before looking at our passage that the whole story of Jesus and its significance for us can’t be cut off from God’s original plan to bless the world through Israel. The promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 is the foundation for this, and remained in people’s minds down through the years. God’s promises to Abraham meant he had a mission for Israel to the whole world, which was unable to be faithfully completed (Romans 3:1-3, 7:7-10), and which came to fulfillment in Jesus the Messiah.
(By the way, this doesn’t at all mean God had one plan for Israel, and then when it failed He came up with another plan. Jesus is not Plan B after Israel was set on the back burner, the interim way of life before God puts Israel back front and center. Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of Plan A. He is the one everything was always pointing towards.)
The Scripture Text
The idea we’re going to look into a little bit is reconciliation, and for this we turn to Ephesians chapter 2, verses 11-18:
Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (which is done in the body by human hands)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
The Wall Then and Now
There was a wall of hostility, Paul says, between Jew and Gentile.
In light of everything we’ve talked about, we can see how that wall would be built up. The Jews, confident in the promises made to Abraham, know themselves to be the people of God, the chosen ones, called to be a blessing to the whole world. When you have that kind of an identity as a people it can easily become more attractive to just lop off the part about blessing the whole world for God. You can start to focus on the part that says, “We are the people of God, we are the chosen ones.” We could look in the book of Amos and see there that the people had to be corrected regarding their view of God’s favoritism toward them and their thinking of themselves as indestructible (Amos 9:7-10).
Sometimes we’re good, too, at picking out the things that sound good to us and lopping off the rest. When I think back to being a child at Christmas time, as shopping season wound down, being told by my mother, “I’d love to give you everything you asked for, you know, if I could.” I might choose to hear that as simply, “I’d love to give you
everything you asked for,” but that wouldn’t change the reality of the situation.
That’s what the Jewish people occasionally would do. The promise of God that “You are my people, chosen to become a great nation and to bless the world” got turned around to, “You are my favorites, chosen to become a powerful nation.”
So there we have the beginnings of this wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile.
In our world there are walls of hostility built up between people all over the place. Last summer when we were in Berlin we took a bus tour and got to see some of the remains of the Berlin wall, one of the world’s great demonstrations of a literal wall of hostility keeping people apart.
But there are smaller walls built up everywhere we look. There are walls between family members, little feuds that turn into rifts, carried on because one person thinks another was unfair or in the wrong. There are walls between neighbours, so that like Wilson on the television show Home Improvement, we don’t even see each other face to face anymore, so insulated have we become inside our own little worlds.
There are walls between races and between the sexes. Men don’t understand women; women are frustrated by men. White people have mistreated black people; black people are suspicious and mistrusting of white people. These are the bigger walls we see in North America, the walls of racism, sexism, and other inequalities and injustices. We might even think of the superiority some Christians feel towards those who are not followers of Jesus.
The Broken Wall
Well, Paul says that the death of Jesus has done something to this dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile. Like the Berlin Wall coming down, the death of Jesus becomes a wrecking ball that is able to destroy all the animosity that exists between people.
When we stand underneath the cross of Jesus, whether Jews or Gentiles, we stand there united in our plight of being sinners. We have all looked elsewhere than God to try to figure out life on our own, have looked proudly for fulfillment in other places; we stand in exactly the same need when we stand together under the cross. The Jew cannot look at the Gentile and say, “I am God’s favorite,” because both are in need of God’s grace. The Gentile cannot look upon the Jew with suspicion and mistrust, because both are in need of God’s grace.
A man we met while traveling told us a story about a very special night in Berlin. He was a musician playing in an orchestra at a concert hall. The audience was staid and serious as the concert progressed, when suddenly the doors opened up and people just started flooding in to hear the music. This was not the crowd that would normally populate this type of a concert hall, not the people you might immediately identify as lovers of classical music, with its tendency toward stuffy suits, black ties, and evening gowns. But their faces betrayed overwhelming joy as they walked in and heard the music. The conductor turned around, and realizing what he was seeing, led the orchestra with even more vigour than he had before. The orchestra, realizing what they were seeing, played stronger, louder, and with more energy. What had happened while that concert was taking place, you see, was that the Berlin wall had just come down. East Berliners, never before able to cross this barrier out of communist East Germany, were finally free to join with the rest of their city-dwellers in enjoying this beautiful music. The breakdown of the wall was truly a cause for celebration.
The breakdown of walls between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, man and woman, that happens beneath the cross of Jesus is also a cause for celebration. Sharing together in our sinful condition, we also share together in our salvation. Jesus’ death for all of us means we cannot in good conscience hold anything against one another.
Paul goes on to tell us that “through Jesus both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father” and that he did it “to create one new humanity out of the two.”
Bringing it all Back
And that’s where it comes back to the very beginning. Through Abraham God promised he would bless all the nations. Over the years of Israel’s history, with its little glimpses of hope, moments when she seemed to understand her mission to the world, through the death and resurrection of exile and return, the full impact of God’s promises to Abraham was never fully felt. In Jesus everything came to a head, to its ultimate destination.
In Jesus’ death and resurrection God’s blessing, promised so long ago to Abraham, finally is realized, as we stand as sinners in need of God’s love as shown us in Jesus. The wall that sin puts up between others and us, between God and us, is broken down in Jesus’ death. What looks like defeat is revealed to be victory. The resurrection will be the ultimate conclusion to this story, that tells us what was really happening all along, but we may turn helpfully now to Colossians chapter 2 and close with another of Paul’s interpretations of the impact of the cross:
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
In Jesus all the hostilities are broken, between other people and us, and most importantly between all of us and God. The patterns of evil that seem to rule this world are shown to be nothing more than shallow tricks trying to sell us an alternative life that is really the way of death. The way of Jesus’ death is shown to be the gateway into true life.
ROCKLAND DR. UNITED BAPTIST CHURCH
Mar. 25, 2007
The Big Language Barrier and the Death of Jesus
It can be tricky to find yourself hungry in a foreign country. If you’ve ever been somewhere the people don’t speak English and had a desire to stop and get a bite to eat, you’ll also know you had to come up with a way to communicate. It’s frustrating sometimes (and sometimes helps bring very interesting menu selections!) to have to work through a barrier like that when you’re hungry and know that the very thing you want and need is right at your fingertips… if only you understood the language.
I’m afraid the same problem faces us with the death of Jesus. The New Testament of course was written almost two thousand years ago, half the way around the world, but by the wonder of translation we are able to have reasonably good versions of the Bible that can help us understand fairly clearly what’s going on most of the time. We are good with straightforward language, a little worse with the more poetic parts.
When the writers talk about Jesus’ death, though, we find a whole host of metaphors waiting for us, ready to fill out a vast picture of the importance of that world-shaking event. We find all kinds of technical terms, words like sacrifice, propitiation, atonement, redemption, reconciliation, and so on. These words and ideas seem far away from the language of our everyday life, far away from our circumstances. We hear these words and think, “Uh-oh – I’m listening to a foreign language – Christian-ese – and I don’t really know what it might mean…but I should, right?”
Again we find ourselves with the sense of being so close to something so vital to our well-being, like the food in the foreign restaurant, but with a huge barrier of words obstructing our access.
We needn’t lose hope that we can at least get some grasp on some of these metaphors, and I hope that today we can get a grip on one of
them especially, one expression of what happened when Jesus died and what it meant for us as a people.
Israel’s Part
It’s important for us to remember before looking at our passage that the whole story of Jesus and its significance for us can’t be cut off from God’s original plan to bless the world through Israel. The promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 is the foundation for this, and remained in people’s minds down through the years. God’s promises to Abraham meant he had a mission for Israel to the whole world, which was unable to be faithfully completed (Romans 3:1-3, 7:7-10), and which came to fulfillment in Jesus the Messiah.
(By the way, this doesn’t at all mean God had one plan for Israel, and then when it failed He came up with another plan. Jesus is not Plan B after Israel was set on the back burner, the interim way of life before God puts Israel back front and center. Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of Plan A. He is the one everything was always pointing towards.)
The Scripture Text
The idea we’re going to look into a little bit is reconciliation, and for this we turn to Ephesians chapter 2, verses 11-18:
Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (which is done in the body by human hands)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
The Wall Then and Now
There was a wall of hostility, Paul says, between Jew and Gentile.
In light of everything we’ve talked about, we can see how that wall would be built up. The Jews, confident in the promises made to Abraham, know themselves to be the people of God, the chosen ones, called to be a blessing to the whole world. When you have that kind of an identity as a people it can easily become more attractive to just lop off the part about blessing the whole world for God. You can start to focus on the part that says, “We are the people of God, we are the chosen ones.” We could look in the book of Amos and see there that the people had to be corrected regarding their view of God’s favoritism toward them and their thinking of themselves as indestructible (Amos 9:7-10).
Sometimes we’re good, too, at picking out the things that sound good to us and lopping off the rest. When I think back to being a child at Christmas time, as shopping season wound down, being told by my mother, “I’d love to give you everything you asked for, you know, if I could.” I might choose to hear that as simply, “I’d love to give you
everything you asked for,” but that wouldn’t change the reality of the situation.
That’s what the Jewish people occasionally would do. The promise of God that “You are my people, chosen to become a great nation and to bless the world” got turned around to, “You are my favorites, chosen to become a powerful nation.”
So there we have the beginnings of this wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile.
In our world there are walls of hostility built up between people all over the place. Last summer when we were in Berlin we took a bus tour and got to see some of the remains of the Berlin wall, one of the world’s great demonstrations of a literal wall of hostility keeping people apart.
But there are smaller walls built up everywhere we look. There are walls between family members, little feuds that turn into rifts, carried on because one person thinks another was unfair or in the wrong. There are walls between neighbours, so that like Wilson on the television show Home Improvement, we don’t even see each other face to face anymore, so insulated have we become inside our own little worlds.
There are walls between races and between the sexes. Men don’t understand women; women are frustrated by men. White people have mistreated black people; black people are suspicious and mistrusting of white people. These are the bigger walls we see in North America, the walls of racism, sexism, and other inequalities and injustices. We might even think of the superiority some Christians feel towards those who are not followers of Jesus.
The Broken Wall
Well, Paul says that the death of Jesus has done something to this dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile. Like the Berlin Wall coming down, the death of Jesus becomes a wrecking ball that is able to destroy all the animosity that exists between people.
When we stand underneath the cross of Jesus, whether Jews or Gentiles, we stand there united in our plight of being sinners. We have all looked elsewhere than God to try to figure out life on our own, have looked proudly for fulfillment in other places; we stand in exactly the same need when we stand together under the cross. The Jew cannot look at the Gentile and say, “I am God’s favorite,” because both are in need of God’s grace. The Gentile cannot look upon the Jew with suspicion and mistrust, because both are in need of God’s grace.
A man we met while traveling told us a story about a very special night in Berlin. He was a musician playing in an orchestra at a concert hall. The audience was staid and serious as the concert progressed, when suddenly the doors opened up and people just started flooding in to hear the music. This was not the crowd that would normally populate this type of a concert hall, not the people you might immediately identify as lovers of classical music, with its tendency toward stuffy suits, black ties, and evening gowns. But their faces betrayed overwhelming joy as they walked in and heard the music. The conductor turned around, and realizing what he was seeing, led the orchestra with even more vigour than he had before. The orchestra, realizing what they were seeing, played stronger, louder, and with more energy. What had happened while that concert was taking place, you see, was that the Berlin wall had just come down. East Berliners, never before able to cross this barrier out of communist East Germany, were finally free to join with the rest of their city-dwellers in enjoying this beautiful music. The breakdown of the wall was truly a cause for celebration.
The breakdown of walls between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, man and woman, that happens beneath the cross of Jesus is also a cause for celebration. Sharing together in our sinful condition, we also share together in our salvation. Jesus’ death for all of us means we cannot in good conscience hold anything against one another.
Paul goes on to tell us that “through Jesus both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father” and that he did it “to create one new humanity out of the two.”
Bringing it all Back
And that’s where it comes back to the very beginning. Through Abraham God promised he would bless all the nations. Over the years of Israel’s history, with its little glimpses of hope, moments when she seemed to understand her mission to the world, through the death and resurrection of exile and return, the full impact of God’s promises to Abraham was never fully felt. In Jesus everything came to a head, to its ultimate destination.
In Jesus’ death and resurrection God’s blessing, promised so long ago to Abraham, finally is realized, as we stand as sinners in need of God’s love as shown us in Jesus. The wall that sin puts up between others and us, between God and us, is broken down in Jesus’ death. What looks like defeat is revealed to be victory. The resurrection will be the ultimate conclusion to this story, that tells us what was really happening all along, but we may turn helpfully now to Colossians chapter 2 and close with another of Paul’s interpretations of the impact of the cross:
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
In Jesus all the hostilities are broken, between other people and us, and most importantly between all of us and God. The patterns of evil that seem to rule this world are shown to be nothing more than shallow tricks trying to sell us an alternative life that is really the way of death. The way of Jesus’ death is shown to be the gateway into true life.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Why Did Jesus Have to Die? sermon series
We'll be starting a short sermon series this Sunday, leading up to Palm Sunday, called, "Why did Jesus Have to Die?" In preparation for that, some thoughts:
Usually we are accustomed to thinking of Jesus' death mainly in terms of "sacrifice" and "substitution," and maybe "reconciliation" (I am thinking of the giant chasm separating us from God in the Billy Graham organization's literature). These are very important (perhaps sacrifice is even the central one), but they are not the only ways the Bible has of explaining Jesus' death to us.
Usually we are accustomed to thinking of Jesus' death mainly in terms of "sacrifice" and "substitution," and maybe "reconciliation" (I am thinking of the giant chasm separating us from God in the Billy Graham organization's literature). These are very important (perhaps sacrifice is even the central one), but they are not the only ways the Bible has of explaining Jesus' death to us.
******************************
As our sacrifice, Jesus was also dying as our representative, as humanity itself. He took our weakness and sin upon himself, but not just in a substitutionary way - in a representative way as well. That means that Jesus didn't just die so that we could avoid death. "It is rather that Christ's sharing (our) death makes it possible for (us) to share his death" (James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle). We don't avoid dying, but we experience Christ's death, which also means we experience resurrection! *****************************
Another little-discussed (in our circles anyway!) biblical metaphor for Jesus' death is "conquest of the powers." Colossians 2:15 says: "He stripped off the rulers and the authorities, exposing them to public disgrace, leading them in triumph in him." Paul here pictures the cross itself mocking the powers that used to control our lives: sinfulness, worldliness, etc. Upon becoming Christians, and throughout the Christian life, we can sense this release from these powers: we no longer have to live the way we've been accustomed to living, constantly making self-destructive choices about our lives! We should remind ourselves of Col. 2:15 from time to time.*****************************
p.s. I haven't been keeping up with the "weekly devotional thoughts" I mentioned in one of the first posts, but we'll see if I can get settled into a little more consistency as spring quickly approaches...
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Sadness and Joy
Two weeks ago we lost a special member of our congregation. Our friend Holly Moore had only been diagnosed with cancer a little over a month before he passed away at the Chalmers hospital. Many of us got to share treasured times with Holly and Louise and the rest of the family during his hospital stay, and Holly will definitely be missed. He was a great worker around the church and was an ambassador of real joy in the Lord both at church and during his illness. Holly's testimony of God's grace and provision in hard times and his complete trust in him for everything he needed in life was an example to all of us. I know I'm going to miss Holly, but it's such a joy to know that he is with the Lord right now and that we will one day all be joined together again in the resurrection and the new heaven and earth.
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