Last week we looked at how we should live while we wait for Jesus to return as he promised, to take us to be where he is, because it is obvious that “this world, in its present form, is passing away;”[1] how we should number our days and use the time we have been allotted in the best possible ways, living expectantly and generously in the world. 

This week, Paul writes about how Christ-followers should keep the perceptions of others in mind as we exercise our freedoms in Christ.

Paul is addressing this within the context of eating meat sacrificed to idols.  Since most of us are not familiar with that problem, I’m going to read the text from The Message to help us understand it better.  Hear the word of the Lord: 

 “^1-3The question keeps coming up regarding meat that has been offered up to an idol: Should you attend meals where such meat is served, or not? We sometimes tend to think we know all we need to know to answer these kinds of questions—but sometimes our humble hearts can help us more than our proud minds. We never really know enough until we recognize that God alone knows it all.

 ^4-6Some people say, quite rightly, that idols have no actual existence, that there's nothing to them, that there is no God other than our one God, that no matter how many of these so-called gods are named and worshiped they still don't add up to anything but a tall story. They say—again, quite rightly—that there is only one God the Father, that everything comes from him, and that he wants us to live for him. Also, they say that there is only one Master—Jesus the Messiah—and that everything is for his sake, including us. Yes. It's true.

 ⁷In strict logic, then, nothing happened to the meat when it was offered up to an idol. It's just like any other meat. I know that, and you know that. But knowing isn't everything. If it becomes everything, some people end up as know-it-alls who treat others as know-nothings. Real knowledge isn't that insensitive.

   We need to be sensitive to the fact that we're not all at the same level of understanding in this. Some of you have spent your entire lives eating ‘idol meat,’ and are sure that there's something bad in the meat that then becomes something bad inside of you. An imagination and conscience shaped under those conditions isn't going to change overnight.

 ^8-9But fortunately God doesn't grade us on our diet. We're neither commended when we clean our plate nor reprimanded when we just can't stomach it. But God does care when you use your freedom carelessly in a way that leads a fellow believer still vulnerable to those old associations to be thrown off track.

 ¹⁰For instance, say you flaunt your freedom by going to a banquet thrown in honor of idols, where the main course is meat sacrificed to idols. Isn't there great danger if someone still struggling over this issue, someone who looks up to you as knowledgeable and mature, sees you go into that banquet? The danger is that he will become terribly confused—maybe even to the point of getting mixed up himself in what his conscience tells him is wrong.

 ^11-13Christ gave up his life for that person. Wouldn't you at least be willing to give up going to dinner for him—because, as you say, it doesn't really make any difference? But it does make a difference if you hurt your friend terribly, risking his eternal ruin! When you hurt your friend, you hurt Christ. A free meal here and there isn't worth it at the cost of even one of these ‘weak ones.’ So, never go to these idol-tainted meals if there's any chance it will trip up one of your brothers or sisters.” 

SAILING TOO CLOSE TO THE SHORE

The Christians in Corinth were a rowdy bunch – always arguing about something – and this conflict about whether or not they could eat meat sacrificed to idols had divided the congregation into factions.  You know how some things that shouldn’t matter so much sometimes catch fire and take on lives of their own, causing a lot more trouble than they’re worth.  It’s safe to imagine that there was some sloganeering going on in the church, “Idols aren’t real!”  “No God but one!” and “All of us possess knowledge of God.”  When we reduce the Word of God to one-liners containing only a germ of truth, we discourage critical thinking.

This lack of critical thinking is what Paul is working on – he actually agrees with those in the church who say that idols have no real power and that meat sacrificed to idols is just meat – but he’s trying to get that group to back off, and to exercise a little self-restraint for the good of the whole community of Believers.  He comes down very hard on those who justify their behavior on the basis of theological arguments – even if he agreed with them.[2] 

We Reformed Christians – the mainline denominations in the Western world, especially – should pause and take this to heart.  One tenet of the Reformed faith is what we call “the life of the mind,” – that it is important for everyone to read and understand the Word of God, and that the hard things in God’s Word are not there to be dismissed, but to be wrestled with, in the company of the other saints of God.  Because of this, we necessarily place a high value on education and on discussion of the right interpretation of God’s Word. 

Another essential tenet of the Reformed faith is that “God alone is the Lord of the conscience.”  This is a recognition that all truth is God’s truth, that all knowledge is God’s and all wisdom is found in God; and that matters of God’s truth are revealed to us by the Holy Spirit as we study God’s word and worship and live in the world.  When a Christian’s conscience is violated by being forced, or encouraged, to participate in any behavior that they have come to understand as Sin, then Christian integrity is compromised, and the only recourse available in that circumstance is resistance. 

Both of these tenets of faith are rooted in Scripture and are important pieces for living the Christian life.  Where “the life of the mind” and “God as the Lord of the conscience” go off the rails, though, is when some of those who believe they are highly educated in matters of theology become prideful in their knowledge, and then engage in, or encourage, behaviors that trample the beliefs and understandings of brothers and sisters in Christ whose consciences are bound by God, creating a “fight or flight” situation. 

This is what was happening in Corinth in the first century, and this is what is happening in the Western mainline churches of the twenty-first century.   Paul’s strong admonition is for those who claimed to be “in the know,” to “back off,” because the use of their knowledge is destroying the church, and the faith of their “brothers and sisters for whom Christ [also] died.”  He further points out that this kind of sin against their fellow Christians is in fact a Sin against Christ himself.  It is a serious matter that not only requires correction and self-restraint, but also repentance before God.

Paul has told us before – and you have heard sermons on it when we were reading through the book of Philippians together – that humility is also an essential for a Christian life of integrity; and that before we try to strong-arm – or shame – others into our ways of understanding, we would do well first to pray for that grace and then to put ourselves into the shoes of our Christian brothers and sisters, before we promote our own agendas or insist on uniformity of belief.  That is not to say that everything is ambiguous and that there is no truth, but rather, that all “truth is unto goodness”[3] - truth points us to holiness and the basis of our Christian liberty must be love for God and neighbor.   

Martin Luther put it this way:  A Christian is a perfectly free Lord of all, [who is] subject to [no one].  A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of everyone, [and] subject to all.”[4]

Another problem in abusing our liberties – and cheapening God’s grace – is that our prideful behaviors become examples to new believers, other Christians who are in a different place along the spectrum of Christian maturity, and of course, our own children.

 In Corinth, the newer believers were just coming out of a lifetime of pagan rituals.  Meat sacrificed to idols wasn’t meaningless to them – it did mean something that was deeply embedded in their understanding.   To see their supposedly more knowledgeable Christian brothers and sisters eating this sacrificial meat among their pagan friends was profoundly confusing for them. 

In a similar way, today, for a new believer to come out of a world that is marinated in drug abuse and sexual abuse – and to come among Christians and read the Word of God and hear teaching that such behavior is unworthy of someone who has the Spirit of Christ living in him – and then to see someone in leadership in a church engaging in the same kinds of sin the new believer  is escaping often leads the new believer to think their behavior must not matter after all – that God doesn’t really care, because (in the sound-bite sloganeering of the church), “Grace abounds.”   They may not yet understand yet that it was the grace of God that saved us from condemnation before God, and that it is grace that continues to save us as we fail over and over throughout lives.  When we push the limits of our Christian freedom, others come to think that grace is no more than a “free pass” – and it isn’t long before they fall away from the church and back into their old lives.

It works the same way with our own children who hear their parents tell them how important God is to them, and how important church attendance is, and then drop the kids off but never come themselves; or when our children see us in church every week with our “spiritual faces” on, and then live with us the rest of the week as we yell at them and disparage others in their hearing and behave badly when our “church friends” aren’t around.  They recognize this hypocrisy in us and some of them never get over it, staying away from church all their lives.

There is a sad story in the Old Testament that illustrates this.  It is contained in the annals of the Kings of Judah – you know, in Kings and Chronicles where every chapter starts with “So-and-so became-king-and-did-what-was-right, or did evil, in the eyes of the Lord.”  One family dynasty begins with a King named Uzziah.[5]  The Bible says that Uzziah began as a king who “did what was right and feared God.”  He destroyed pagan altars and rebuilt the gates of Jerusalem.  He pursued and destroyed the enemies of God and for this God blessed him in many ways and Uzziah grew very powerful.

But toward the end of his life, when his power was very great, Uzziah became prideful and arrogant, and believed finally that he was so special to God that he could go into the temple and burn incense himself – a task reserved exclusively for the priests of God.  Uzziah – in his superior knowledge - disregarded God’s authority to dictate the ways that God’s people were to worship, and his sin was against God.

His son, Jotham, succeeded him as king. Jotham also “did what was right” in the eyes of the Lord “just as his father Uzziah had done.”[6]  But remember, Jotham also had the example of his father at the end of his life, having seen him try to change the worship in the Temple.  So Jotham – who lived like a Boy Scout – decided that it would be okay to “make the best of both worlds,” by not bothering to pursue the enemies of God, and by allowing the people of Judah to continue their pagan practices right along with their Temple worship, because in his “superior knowledge of God” Jotham knew that “worship doesn’t really matter.”

Jotham was succeeded by his son, Ahaz.[7]  Unlike his father, Ahaz “did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord…he sacrificed his son in the fires [of Molech] and engaged in the detestable practices [of the pagans].”  By the end of his reign, Jotham had dismantled God’s temple in Jerusalem, gave the furnishings to God’s enemies, and closed its doors.

Uzziah, the grandfather, caught up in the pride of his own power before God, presumed to disregard God’s word as inconsequential to someone as special as he; with the result that his grandson sacrificed his own son in the fire of a pagan God and closed the doors of God’s temple. 

Like Uzziah, are you showing your children that obedience to God’s commands is optional in the life of a Christian?  That worship is where you go when there isn’t something else to do?  Like Jotham, are you living with a foot planted in both worlds, living a life that teaches them the meaning of hypocrisy?  Will our grandchildren follow in the steps of Ahaz?  The answer to these questions rests with us.  For some of us, it is too late to influence our children in the ways of Jesus – our hope lies in the mercy of God acting in their lives.  But for others, there is still time to let God become the Lord of your conscience in the sight of your children.

For the past two weeks most of us have been following the tragedy of the Costa Concordia, the ship carrying 4,200 passengers that ran aground and capsized on the rocks off the coast of Tuscany.  The death toll has reached 17, but is expected to climb higher.  Twice the size of the Titanic, and longer than three soccer fields, the ship weighs in the neighborhood of 45,000 tons.[8]  It is almost unimaginable that it would be possible to die on a ship this large, possessing all the modern safety and navigation features, less than 500 feet from shore.

Part of the scandal revealed by the investigation is that it appears that within the industry there is a culture where management encourages the captains of cruise ships to sail close to shore “when conditions are safe” to show off their ships and their piloting skills in what’s known as a “shore salute,” to please the tourists.  Nevermind that the Italian coast guard and maritime charts consider the only “safe route” to be 1,600 feet further out in the middle of the channel; and that the route – which was taken by hundreds of ships each year – was a computerized route that the captain had to override. 

And after all, hundreds of ships have made the same deviation without a casualty.  All those managers and captains apparently had knowledge and skills superior to that of the coast guard, and years of safe sailing had “proven” that the rules could be disobeyed without the consequence of death.  Except that not everybody graduates at the top of their class, not even ship’s captains, and apparently Captain Schettino was improperly trained and had a series of prior infractions.  He was apparently a “good enough” captain when the computer was controlling the ship; but the encouragement of upper management, and the example of his more skilled colleagues led him to deviate into waters where he crashed on the rocks – and people died because of it.

It is the same for Christians – some of us are better pilots than others and have been able to follow our own routes without running aground.  Some of us have sailed these waters for a long time without an incident that caused harm to ourselves or others.  But there are people watching us, especially other Christians – and we are responsible before God for them and any way that they fall – or abandon the faith – because of our example.  Let us follow Paul’s good advice and stay the course in deep water so that no one who travels with us is lost.

Let’s pray:   Dear God, most of us are smart people and a lot of us have been Christians for a long time.  It’s easy for us to forget where we came from; to remember that we weren’t born Christians, even if we came from generations of believers.  Every one of us had to learn the ways of Christian living, and most of us are still learning.  Some of us are teachers, but even those of us who think we aren’t teachers are teaching by our example.  Squash the pride that rises up inside us when we think we have a lock on the truth; send us a spirit of humility so that we can see ourselves as the blind sinners that we all are and see you as the only source of our wisdom.  Stop us from leading anyone off course because of our arrogance, or in our tendency to run ahead of your leading.  Teach us to walk behind you; to step in the footprints you give us in your Word.  We pray this in the name of our blessed Savior, Christ Jesus.

This morning Paul is answering a question put to him by the Corinthian church.  We don’t know what the question was and we don’t have any documents – like a letter from the Corinthians to Paul – to help us out.   We think that it had to do with their anticipation that the end of the world was coming very quickly – remember, the Emperor Nero was beginning his systematic persecution of Christians – and because of that, people might have been wondering if they should get married, stay married, quit their jobs – or what they should do to prepare for the return of Jesus.  The question is still timely – even today there are people who claim to know when Jesus is coming back, or who are so wrapped up in the anticipation of his return, that they follow date-setters, and even quit their jobs to go out on a hilltop somewhere to wait.  So whatever the specific question was, Paul is speaking here in general terms, regarding how believers should live in the meantime.)  This is what he writes:

“What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.”

SLEEPING ON A WINDY NIGHT

When Paul says “time is short,” he means what the Greek Bible calls kairos time.   There is another time that we’re more familiar with called chronos time – it’s where we get our word, “chronology.”  Chronos time is the sequence of time as it passes, it is the time by which we measure history.  Chronos time is what the people in Corinth were concerned about.   It isn’t hard to imagine what they were thinking:  How many more days or weeks or months do we have until Jesus comes back?  Is there enough time to get married or not?  Maybe we shouldn’t start a family.  Maybe I shouldn’t go to work if I ought to be staying home and praying for the return of our Lord. 

There also would have been people who weren’t concerned about making plans, but who were worried about how much time they had to get their lives in order.  They would be thinking things like:  I need to go apologize to Silvanus…and Miriam…and John…and I’d better clean out the basement and the attic, because I think I’ve still got some silver statues of Venus and Apollo in a box somewhere that I should get rid of…and I need to write a paper setting my slaves free, and I really ought to marry my girlfriend.  I really need more time to get ready – how much do I have?

And then there were no doubt some people who just weren’t ready for Jesus to come back at all.  We all have dreams, and the Corinthians were no different.  I’ve heard young people say, “I want Jesus to come back, but not until I have a chance to grow up and get married,” or “go to college” or “see the world.”  I want Jesus to come back, but just not today, while I’m on this great vacation.  Or maybe slaves would be thinking, “I want Jesus to come back, but if he does, I’ll have lived my whole life on earth as a slave.  I’d like to know what it’s like to be free for a little while before the world comes to an end.”

Those are the thoughts of people who keep chronos time.  People who order their lives around kairos time, though, view life differently.  Kairos time is like saying “the appointed hour” – we say Jesus was born at the “appointed time” – the kairos time – the year, month, day and hour when all things come together in a particular, perfect way.  Kairos time is time in the hands of God.  Kairos time determines the length of our days – when the Psalmist writes, “all the days that were ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be,”[1] he’s writing about kairos time.

I once read a story by Alvin Rogness, past president of Luther Seminary.  When he grew up in South Dakota during the Depression, every spring men would gather in the town on hiring day looking for a farm to work on during the season.  One farmer arrived late and found only one man left standing -- a quiet guy without a whole lot to say.  But when asked, the hired man said that he was a hard worker and could sleep on a windy night.  With no one else to hire, the farmer brought him home.

Everything worked out fine. The farmer had no complaints.  Then, one night, a tremendous storm ripped across the North Dakotan plain.  The wind howled and shook the farm. T he farmer ran out to check on the chickens but they were all locked up on the coop.  He ran to the barn to latch down the window, but they were all taken care of.  He went to find the cattle, but they were all rounded up.  On the way back to the house, he stopped in to check on the hired man who was asleep ... on a windy night.

The truth of the biblical teaching of the second coming of Jesus is not meant to scare you that you might be "left behind," but rather to live your life with expectation so that you are prepared at all times. Some need to make some changes, some are not ready, some can't sleep on a windy night because ... well, because they have left too many things undone and cut too many corners.  But others who live with that expectation that this could be the day, see things differently.[2]

                See the difference between chronos and kairos?  People who live in chronos time lie awake nights – or get up out of their beds and run around checking the windows and doors of their lives.  People who live in kairos time are sleeping soundly because they know that God’s timing is perfect.  

                Paul is advising the Corinthians to live their lives expectantly, but to live their lives.  Yes, get married:  but cherish every day you have together.  Yes, start a family, but remember that God – not you - holds your child’s time in God’s hands.  If you do this, you will worry less about your parenting. 

Yes, get up and go to work and work hard – invent things, start businesses, buy and sell – make lots of money.  But don’t get too attached to your work – or get your identity from your work.  Remember that you belong to God, not to your boss or your clients or your patients.  If you can keep that thought, you can have balance in your life.  And if you lose your job – or your career ends – you won’t lose your sense of self.

And make lots of money and when you do, be sure you hold it loosely.  When Jesus comes back – or if he calls for your sooner – you can’t take it with you, and there are no pockets in a shroud.  In the Kingdom of God you can only “send money on ahead” by using it for good works while you’re alive. 

And by all means, while you’re waiting for Jesus to come back, build things, but let’s not build monuments to ourselves, or build the kind of edifices that will “stand the test of time.”  Whose time?  What size and quality of house do you need?  Can you build anything bigger or more durable than the Roman Parthenon, an architectural wonder built of stone and marble intended to last forever, that is nearly lying in a heap of rubble today?   When we were building our church in Texas, the congregation was hoping to build a beautiful, white-pillared brick building with a tall steeple and shiny wood floors – and I think we would have built it that way, except for the pastor reminding us that “when Jesus comes back, your new building is going to become an ash heap.”

Those who live in kairos time live a simpler life.   Surely you’ve heard of Warren Buffet.  He is the world’s third richest man, worth something like $45 billion.  But he doesn’t live on his own island – he has lived in Omaha in the same five-bedroom house that he bought 53 years ago for $31,000.  His car is 8 years old.  He doesn’t use a cell phone and doesn’t own a personal computer.  His children didn’t go to private schools – he says that he’d outlaw private schools if he could, because then rich people would make the public schools better for everyone.  He has no personal security and there is no fence around his house.  He may not know it, but he’s more of a kairos guy than a chronos guy.

An interesting fact is that Buffet is the child of devout Christian parents and grew up in Omaha’s Dundee Presbyterian Church where his father was an elder.  He apparently learned about frugality and charity in Sunday School and learned it well – not only is he frugal in his personal life, but he has pledged to give away 99% of his personal billions to charity before he dies, not after he dies.  One important thing, though, is that while his parents’ simple Presbyterian lifestyle took root in his life, their faith apparently did not.  Buffet says that he is not a Believer in Jesus, but rather is an “agnostic.”  An “agnostic” is not an atheist – someone who does not believe in the existence of God; an agnostic is one who doubts, who is skeptical about the existence of God, or who believes it is impossible to know God.

Buffet doesn’t explain his unbelief.   He accumulated most of his money from investing in the stock market – which is really nothing more than a game of chance; and it may be that he is too much of a gambler to view his amazing wealth as a gift from God.   Or maybe most of the people he knows are people who are interested in him because of his money – they aren’t there because they want to give him something for free.  That might make it hard for him to imagine the grace of God – that God has a free gift for him.[3]

I’ll close with a story from an interview I heard on television this past week with the Emir of Qatar.  The Emir is the equivalent of a King and Qatar is a tiny country on a peninsula in the Persian Gulf, bordered on the south by Saudi Arabia.  For all its small size, Qatar is the richest country in the world, having the world’s largest production of oil and natural gas.  Its capital city, Doha, is an architectural jewel, and life there is good.  Electricity is free to everyone.  Education – including college and higher education for physicians, scientists and engineers – is also free.  Its colleges are bursting at the seams.  Government workers recently got a 60% raise and policemen and soldiers got a 120% raise.

It seems that the economy of Qatar is a hybrid of 100% capitalism and 100% socialism that works.  While the rest of the Arab world has been melting down this past year in riots that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of citizens and the toppling of other monarchies, the interviewer asked the Emir, “Since you are surrounded by all this violence, aren’t you worried about staying in power yourself?”  The Emir answered, “Not at all.”  His big worry, he said, is that his people continue to “appreciate” what they have – that they not become spoiled and lazy and lose their edge.  Now, of course, the Emir is a human being – and a Muslim – but can you hear the voice of God in that? 

“I give them everything for free and I want them to be motivated by it, energized by it.  I want them to take the good things I have given them and look to the future, to make things even better.”  The people of Qatar belong to the Emir’s kingdom – their every need is provided for; they are free to do anything they want, within the limits of working for the good of everyone.  They are rich, but they don’t hoard, for there is more where that came from.  They have no need for ostentatious shows of wealth, because everyone around them is just as rich.  They are free to be who they are, to live in the moment and look forward to tomorrow, because they will receive another gift from the king.

Kairos time is never long, it is always short, because we have no way of knowing when God’s perfect time is appointed for our own lives or for this world’s age of grace.  People who live in kairos time cherish every day of their lives and the loved ones they share it with, because we are not promised tomorrow.  They don’t leave things unsaid.  People who live in kairos time use their wealth to make chronos time – daily life – better for others.  They don’t accumulate money and they don’t plan to make their children rich – they spread it around God’s fields like the fertilizer it is.  Money is the original manure, isn’t it?  If it’s not making things grow and flourish, it can make us stink.  People who live in kairos time look forward to the return of Christ – they don’t worry about it -  because they’ve left nothing undone that matters, they know time is in God’s hands and God’s timing is always perfect.  It doesn’t matter how windy it gets, because they will still be able to sleep.

Let’s pray:  Gracious God and provider of all good things, we thank you for the gift of time.  Our instinct is to use time as a commodity that expires, so that we trample others as we try to get ahead.  We want to control all of the hours of all of our days so as not to “waste” them.  Teach us, instead, to enjoy time as a pleasant place to be while we wait for your return; to see time as neither too long nor too short, but rather as exactly enough.  Send your Holy Spirit to prompt us: to remind the unsaved to repent, because today – not tomorrow – is the day of their salvation; to remind us to tell our friends and family that we love them; to urge us to leave work early once in awhile because only what we do for you will last; and to give us the desire to live simply so we can sleep well knowing that we have been conduits of your love and provision for others.  We pray this in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus.  

                Here we are again, having just come out of the Christmas season and seven weeks of explanation of the incarnation of God in the body of the infant Jesus.  Now, in the run-up to the Lenten season, the lectionary turns a corner to consider “So what?”  So what that Jesus came?  It’s a nice story, and we believe all the things the Bible tells us about his birth and life and death and resurrection, but really, we’re busy people and it all happened so long ago.  There are other things clamoring for our attention after our long detour through Christmas.  After all, in the incarnation God’s taken care of everything for us, and if God is sovereign, we are free from obedience to the law and grace abounds – so what else could there be for us to attend to?

What else, indeed.  In all of our texts this morning, the lectionary deals with how we belong to God from before our birth – the Psalmist wrote that God “knit me together in my mother’s womb” and that God knows our every word and action.  In the Gospel text, Jesus demonstrated this same ownership and insight when he told Nathanael that he’d seen him sitting under a fig tree before they’d ever met.  When Paul chides the Corinthian church for abusing their freedom with incredibly inappropriate behaviors, he reminds them that they “are not their own; they are bought with a price” – a ransom of Christ’s life - and that the very person of God lives in the bodies that they are abusing. 

There is a response and an obligation to the incarnation that belongs not just to Christians, but to every human being – for while God’s Holy Spirit doesn’t live within unbelievers, God did create everyone who ever lived, and knows all thoughts and sees all actions – and so in the sense of the obligation to obey God’s commands, everyone belongs to God, even non-Christians.  But there is a particular obligation that rests on the Christian because he or she is one with Christ himself -  because first, we share his Spirit, and second, because we share our bodies (not just our spiritual bodies, but our material, physical bodies) with Christ – and when creation is completely redeemed those bodies will be raised incorruptible – pure and whole in the unity of body and spirit intended by God in the original act of creation.[1]

Bishop Tom Wright points out that there is a common tendency among Christians to “regard the Old Testament as a book of fierce legalism and the New Testament as the book of soft options and easygoing inclusivity.  On the contrary.  The New Testament posts the severe challenge: new creation is being launched, and those who follow Jesus are expected to live as members of the new-creation family, models of what the new creation itself is like.”[2]   

“The new-creation life is hard and complex…but the demand is not slackened.”[3]  Take, for example, the matter of divorce.  Divorce was permitted in the Old Testament – it is in the New Testament that God in Christ condemns divorce.  In the 10^th chapter of Matthew, Jesus responds to an inquiry about divorce, by saying that it was the intent of God at creation that “a man must leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife; so that the two become one flesh...they are no longer two, but one flesh. What God has joined, humans must not separate.”  Jesus went on to say that the permission to divorce given by Moses was a temporary dispensation, given because men and women are hard-hearted towards one another.  Jesus wasn’t being cruel, saying “I know you’re hard-hearted and won’t be able to keep this tough law, but I’m going to insist on it anyway,” – what he means is that he is offering us a cure for hardness of heart:  “God overlooked the times of ignorance, but in sending Jesus he is doing a new thing, remaking creation as it was designed to be.”[4]

Through Jesus, God opened up a way of living into a new creation, in which the original intention would be fulfilled.  And that is why nearly every page of the New Testament assumes self-restrained obedience to the standards of God, made possible, though still difficult (Matthew 19:10) by the victory of Jesus on the cross and the power of his Spirit.

So when Saint Paul says "I may do anything I please but not everything I do is good for me.  I may do anything I please but I am not going to let anything master me," he means that, "I am free and yet I am not free; I rejoice in my freedom, and yet I recognize that there are limits to my freedom."  With this inspired insight we come face to face with one of the most critical issues in our world -- and in your life and mine.  How do we interpret and how do we exercise our freedom?  This is an issue that concerns every sincere Christian – and more than that, in some aspects, it is an issue that confronts every citizen, regardless of whether or not they are Christ-followers.

Take the issue of freedom as it appears in connection with our personal living.  An increasing number of Americans have pressed the notion that no one has the right to put any restraints on their liberties. "Don't fence me in" is their catchword. "It's my life, isn't it; if it feels good, I'll do it."

Some time ago, a teacher, writing in a magazine article, wrote of the rejection of discipline, the vandalism and general disorderliness of the students in her large suburban high school.  She quoted one of the seniors as saying, "This is a public school; I can do what I please in it."  Now some of us might respond, "What that boy needs is a good whipping."   That might be, but don’t be so sure about it.  Long before he adopted such an idea, he needed the help and guidance of some older folks who knew the meaning of life.   But instead of getting such help, he probably came under the influence of the sort of people who know nothing of freedom but the dictionary definition that says freedom is "the state of being without physical -- or moral -- control."   The author of that definition wrote, "If that is what freedom is, we ought to get down on our knees right now and pray God fervently for someone to come along and take it away!" Exactly!  We don't get far in this business of personal living before we discover that our liberties must have some controls set about them or life -- both for ourselves and others -- goes to pieces.[5]

                Now note here that I am not talking about just “getting along and being nice.”  In the book Almost Christian: subtitled, What the Faith of our Teenagers is Telling About the American Church, author Kenda Dean writes that in the main, American teenagers have a watered-down faith that she labels, “’Moralistic Therapeutic Deism"--a hodgepodge of self-serving, feel-good beliefs that bear little resemblance to traditional Christianity…Dean places the blame for this theological watering down squarely on the churches themselves.  Instead of proclaiming a God who calls believers to lives of love, service and sacrifice, churches offer instead a bargain-brand religion, easy to use, easy to forget, offering little and demanding less.”[6]   Jesus didn’t die on the cross so we could learn to be “nice.”

And it’s not just young people – they sat at the feet of the self-indulgent adults in their lives who preached God’s grace to them with no expectation of repentance from a life of sin, and then set out to model it for them, because after all “we aren’t saved by works.”  Indeed we are not, but too late we learn that a life of self-indulgence is not a life lived in freedom – it is really the oldest form of slavery.

The question for us to ask is not, “Now that I can do anything I want to do, and don’t have to do anything, how far can I go?”  The question is, "Now that I’m not required to do anything, how then shall I live?" Paul says that we are free, but then warns, "Do not let your freedom be an opportunity for the flesh."  You are free.  How then shall you live? Will it be for yourself or will it be a life that is pleasing to God?[7]

The Book of Titus tells us that the grace of God “teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope – the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”[8]  For some reason we don’t believe that the grace of God is teaching us to say, “no.”  We think that it is our obedience to the law that produces godly living.  We may not necessarily follow the Ten Commandments, but we make up our own rules and regulations. 

But what we think will produce godly living actually does the opposite – the Bible tells us that the power of sin is in the law.[9]  The difference in what the law produces and what the grace of God produces is like the difference between a city dog and a country dog.

A city dog has a good life.  He’s got his own doghouse in the backyard and a bowl of water and he’s fed a couple of times a day.  He’s well taken care of…he can sleep all day if he wants…With all the comforts at his disposal, you’d think the city dog would want to just stay at home – but what does he live to do?  To get outside that fence!

All you have to do is crack the gate just a little and he will be out of there like a shot, and if you chase him, he just runs faster and farther….You might say, ‘What’s wrong with that dog?  He has a great life.’  But the problem is the fence.  He may have a good life in the backyard, but he isn’t free.  All he wants to do is get out.

That’s what happens when we try to live under the law – it feels like we’re inside a fence.  On the surface it might look like we have a pretty good life, but on the inside there’s no freedom.  The harder we try, the more in bondage we feel, and eventually we become like the city dog, living out from under the law, and finding new and incredibly inappropriate behaviors.

By contrast, where is the farm dog most of the time?  On the front porch.  Some days you can’t hardly get the dumb thing to move.  There aren’t any fences.  He’s free to go anywhere he wants, but he stays on the porch.  He is lying on the porch waiting for his master to come out, pet him on the head and take him somewhere in the pickup. 

The country dog has no fences.  He is totally free.  He can run anywhere he wants -- but he stays on the porch.  That’s what the grace of God does in our lives.  Under the grace of God, we have total freedom to do whatever we want.  Even Paul – whom some of you think is so strict – says, “everything is permissible.”  Knowing that we are free, though, doesn’t make us live like the city dog.  It makes us approach life like the country dog.  It is the grace of God that knocks the fences down and enables us to fall in love with our Master.

We are no longer under the law because the law cannot produce the Christian life.  Only the grace of God can do that.  In your own life you have to decide whether you will live under law or under grace.  If you set aside the grace of God to try to gain righteousness for yourself, then Christ died for nothing.[10]  But if you are willing to die to the law, and rest confidently in the grace of God to teach you to say, “No!” and to live a righteous upright life, you will be like the country dog, living totally free and resting at the foot of the Master.[11]  It’s your choice.

Let’s pray:  Gracious God, we thank you for the incredible gift of your mercy and grace.  You made each one of us, you see us and hear us, and you chose us to be transformed into the image of your Son.  There are so many ways we mar your image, grieve your Holy Spirit, and hurt ourselves and others by our words and our actions; and so many ways we get in the way of your transforming work in our lives.  Rid our lives of everything unrighteous that we call freedom but which is really just license to sin.  Teach us to say “No” – not to everything at once – but to every temptation as it comes.  Help us learn to welcome your ways not as limitations, but as the restoration of your good and perfect creation, so that we can model that life to others, especially to our young people.  We pray for the strength of the Holy Spirit, and pray this in the name of Jesus.  Amen. 

                This is the Sunday that the church celebrates the Epiphany of our Lord.  Some people call Epiphany “Three Kings Day” or “Twelfth Day” because it falls on the twelfth day after Christmas and is linked to the visit of the Magi to the Christ child.  The word “Epiphany” means “revelation” or “manifestation,” and the Feast of Epiphany was celebrated by the church for many years before the church began observing Christmas.  In some countries, like Russia and Mexico, Epiphany is still the biggest celebration, and instead of giving gifts on Christmas Day as we do in America, gifts are given on Epiphany, because that’s the day the Magi gave gifts to the Christ child.

                Stars, of course, play a big role in the celebration of Epiphany, because the gospel tells us that it was a star that led the Magi to Bethlehem.  In that neat way that nature sometimes augments the seasons of the church year, on Wednesday of this past week, there were hundreds of meteors to be seen as the annual Quadrantid meteor shower passed by.  The trouble was, the peak viewing time was 4:30 a.m. and it was really freezing out there in the dark.  Some folks got up to give it a look, but only the most dedicated few stayed outside to stargaze for long.

                It seems that the stars always shine their brightest when we are shivering alone in the dark.  When you first go outside and look up at that expanse of sky, it just makes you feel alone and small – but then, when we see that first shooting star, our first thought is that we’re not alone in the universe after all.  I almost never imagine that meteors are randomly ricocheting off some exploding planet – when I first see them it seems totally logical meteors are tossed off someone’s hand.

                Meteors always make us smile and give us goose bumps and make us catch our breath.   If we’re not alone, we reach out for our neighbor’s hand and point it out so they won’t miss that flash of glory.  It’s like we’re hardwired to know that stars don’t move unless something extraordinary is happening.

                The Magi knew that something extraordinary was up when they spotted the star of Bethlehem.  We’re not sure whether the Magi were “good guys” or “bad guys.”  The story casts them as good guys.  But the case for being “bad guys” is pretty strong:  we think they came from the region of Iraq, the land of the despised Babylonians, arch-enemies of Israel and the land where Israel was carried into exile. 

We know that because they were astronomers they were considered scientists, but they were also called “wise men” because they were also astrologers – men who decoded messages in the stars.   The Hebrew Scriptures had strong warnings for those who tried to see the future in the stars instead of hearing it from the mouths of God’s prophets, so we can infer that they were most likely pagan idol worshippers.  Without a doubt, any pious Jew would have considered them unclean outsiders.

                Still, the idea that the movements of the stars and planets had influence on the day-to-day lives of human beings was nevertheless deeply entrenched in Middle Eastern culture.   When Psalm 127 says that “the sun will not harm you by day nor the moon by night,” it doesn’t mean that you won’t get a sunburn while you travel – it means that the pagan gods who controlled the stars and planets couldn’t overcome the strength of the God of Israel.   The Jewish historian Josephus recorded that the veil in the temple that separated the Holy of Holies from the inner courts was embroidered with stars; and archeologists have excavated a number of Jewish synagogues that had astrological signs as wall and floor decorations.  Jews may have been forbidden to dabble in astrology, but they understood and respected that Yahweh created the cosmos and controlled the seasons. 

Ancient astrologers believed that rising stars accompanied the birth of kings, so when the star moved closer to Jerusalem, the Magi followed it into the capital of Israel, assuming that it would be where they would find the King of the Jews.  They started asking around and word traveled to King Herod – who called himself the King of the Jews.  Our text says that the news of the purpose of the visit of the Magi disturbed both King Herod and all of Jerusalem.  The people of Jerusalem knew Herod to be a paranoid despot who never hesitated to kill those who aspired to his throne – there was a saying that it was “better to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son,” because Herod had killed his own son when he thought his son might be his rival.

                When he heard about the arrival of the uncommon strangers, Herod called in his own advisors, who told him that  Micah had prophesied 700 years earlier that a great deliverer of the Jews would be born in Bethlehem, a town only about 10 miles from Jerusalem.[1]  When Herod learned this information, he called the Magi to him and told them where they would likely find the baby.  In spite of his words to the Magi, we know that Herod had no intention of going to pay homage to a peasant baby that would take his place as King, and that he had only murder in his heart.  

                Because Herod is such an extreme case, it’s tempting to write him off as just a convenient villainous foil who exists only to inject an edge into the story.  “But in truth, Herod is what I am deep down inside.  As the gentile Magi represent what we all are in an external sense – ‘aliens and strangers to the covenants of God’s promise(s) having no hope, and without God in the world[2] --  so Herod represents what we all are in an internal sense – rebels, ‘following the desires of the flesh…and so by nature children of wrath.’[3]…Herod is Original Sin…the Deep Sin that lives on even in converted Christians and baptized disciples.”[4]

                Both Herod – who was half-Jewish – and the Magi – who were gentiles, heard Micah’s prophecy from the Jewish priests.  “Both Herod and the Magi had a chance.  Both were sinners, both were alienated from God.  Both heard God’s word and so received engraved invitations to the party.  But Herod heard it and did not pursue it.  It is one of the great theological mysteries, that a significant number of God’s own people rejected him, while a considerable number of Gentiles, the people on the outside, accepted him….Herod got the Word; Herod had a chance…but he did not heed it.”[5]  The presence of the Messiah will always require a decision between those who accept him and those who reject him.[6] 

Matthew goes on to say that when the Magi saw that the star had risen again, they did heed God’s Word, and continued to follow the star until it stopped over the place where Jesus lay, and when it did, Matthew wrote that they were “overjoyed.”  Now when I think of three kings being “overjoyed,” I think of dignified men smiling and lifting their eyes to heaven and maybe spreading their arms or clapping their hands.  But the Greek says that they “rejoiced excessively,” and “excessively” is the same word that’s used for a ship that’s being violently buffeted by the wind – it’s as though their joy is being described as a sort of chest bumping, backslapping end zone celebration! 

Then the Magi fell down and worshiped Jesus and gave him their gifts.  “When people are drawn to, find and worship God’s Christ, they also find themselves wanting to bring him their finest resources.  Christmas gift-giving has its origin here.  The first gift-giver is God.  Now the first human gift-givers are Magi.  [The Believer’s] first response to Christ is giving oneself to his honor and service.”[7] 

The story of the Magi is a story of revelation.  God first revealed himself to the Magi in creation – through the stars.  The star raised the question and began their quest.   At first, the star only took them part way, to Jerusalem.  The witness of God in creation can only take us so far – creation speaks of a divine Designer, but doesn’t tell us anything about him – it is an incomplete revelation.  But while they were in Jerusalem, the Magi heard the Word of God from the priests, written in the scrolls.  God’s revelation in Scripture gave them a preliminary answer to their question and preaching encouraged them to press on toward their goal.  Where creation only took them halfway, it was Scriptural revelation that brought them all the way to the person of Jesus, where they worshiped.  Scripture, preaching and Jesus are what theologians call the “three-fold Word of God.”  If you have a friend or relative who doesn’t go to church on Sunday because he says, “I can commune with God on the golf course…or in the deer stand…or in a fishing boat, just as well or better than I can in church” you can use God’s revelation to the Magi to point out the error of their reasoning.

The story of the Magi is a story of the grace of God:  that all human beings come to God dependent not on human will or effort, but on the mercy of God. [8]  The Magi are led to Jesus, not because they sought after God, because the Bible teaches that no one seeks after God[9]; they didn’t find God by spending years studying the stars or riding their camels around the desert.  If the Magi sought God it was only because God’s grace,  prior to all human seeking – but using the external means of the star and the Scripture, seeks the Magi.[10]  Martin Luther wrote that “I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or to come to him.  But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel [and] enlightened me with his gifts.”[11]

And finally, the Magi teach us that God’s grace and the gospel is for everyone; that God is no respecter of persons – he shows no partiality.[12]  The Magi were outsiders because of their undesirable profession, their pagan religion and their race.  In today’s terms, we might characterize them as New Agers, or Moslems or Buddhists; they could be gay or straight; mixed race, or black or Asian; non-Jews, non-Christians, undocumented immigrants, homeless people, or murderous despots.  Drop in the name of the person you dislike the most, the one that you don’t like to encounter, the one who makes you curse when you see them coming, the ones you secretly hope will be kept out of heaven so you can be proven right.   Everyone who has ever been born or will be born can see the star – the breadth of God’s love should surprise us.

Since the coming of Jesus Christ, there is no other source of saving revelation than the ministry of the biblical word of Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the one Word of God,[13] not our personal revelations, not our personal experiences, not tradition, culture or context.  God is not doing any “new thing” that will contradict his written word or the person of Jesus.  No matter what your religion someone is, Jesus is the way of salvation.  If there were “many ways to God” then the words of Jesus in the Great Commission to “go into all the world, baptizing and preaching the gospel and teaching people how to be disciples” would be pointless nonsense. And now the role of the church and the special role of the Christian is to be the star that shines before people, the star that leads them to the Word of God that brings them to Jesus, so that even more people can be “overcome by excessive joy.”

My name is Anna bat Penuel – my name, “Anna” means “grace,” and my father’s name was Penuel - and before I entered into the house that had been prepared for me by the Lord, I lived in the temple in Jerusalem until I was a  very old woman.  At least that’s what I was told – that I was “very old,” I mean.  I didn’t feel “very old,” but I suppose it was true, because every time I saw my reflection in the gold that overlaid the temple doors, I was shocked to see how many wrinkles I had, how grey my hair was and how bent my body had become.

When I lived there, I slept in a small room off one of the outer courts of the Temple.  It was as close as women were allowed to come to the sanctuary, except for when we made our offerings.  I was a prophetess – I’m told you don’t know much about prophets now, but surely you’ve heard of Moses’ sister, Miriam, and Deborah and Hulda – they, and all the other women who were privileged to bring a word from God to God’s people.  For God’s own reasons, God spoke through me from time to time, and I suppose that was why the priests allowed me to remain.  I was a bit of a “draw.”

I suppose you’re wondering how it was that I came to live in the temple at all?  Since I was living among the women, you must have figured out that I was unmarried – or at least, no longer married.   I had been married for awhile as a young girl – I think I must have been about fourteen years old, but since I didn’t have a birth certificate like you do, and all of my relatives who might have known my age had died, I can’t be sure, but I know I was quite young.   My husband, though, was an old man, who died only seven years later.  He’s been gone so long now that I have trouble even remembering his name, let alone his face.

I do remember that I was stunned when he died – I had no parents, no childhood home to which I could return.   We didn’t have much property, but as soon as the tax collectors saw that there was no one who would bring money into my household, they seized what little I had left for Rome – they even took my dowry, the money I had brought to our marriage that was supposed to be mine alone.  My husband had no brothers willing to take me into their homes – without an inheritance I was just another mouth to feed.   Even though we had been married long enough for me to bear several children, I was childless – and my barrenness was considered proof that I would be an unproductive wife for any other man.  Orphaned, childless and widowed by twenty-one – I was truly alone in the world with my whole life before me.

I knew I could never allow myself to be used as a common prostitute, and not even a pagan temple prostitute – I worshipped Yahweh, the God of Israel, not one of the hundreds of gods in the Roman pantheon.  I remembered hearing my husband read from the sacred Torah scrolls that God had a stern warning and a severe penalty for those who mistreated the fatherless and widows[1], and that the Lord is, “A father to the fatherless, and a defender of widows;…that God sets the lonely in families,…provides for the poor;…that our God is one who bears our burdens…and is a God who saves.  The Psalmist wrote that the power of God dwells in his sanctuary, and so I reasoned that if I needed the help and protection of God, then I would take myself to the place where God lived among his people:  In the sanctuary of the temple.[2] 

And so I found myself at home in the temple, a living example to the worshippers who came to give alms for the poor and the widows; and a living rebuke to the priests who took a share of those alms for themselves before doling out a few coins for me and the support of the other women dependent on the temple.  

I made sure that I was there every day on time for the blowing of the shofar in the morning.  I tried not to gossip with the other widows.  I would help where I was permitted and I had the opportunity to speak to the pilgrims when they came to offer their sacrifices.[3]  Even though I wasn’t allowed into the sanctuary, there were balconies on three sides of the Women’s Court, where we could climb up and see down into the Court of the Priests to watch the ceremonies. 

One of the men I would see come every day was named Simeon.  We had passed by each other for years – we’d never had a real conversation – but the acoustics in the temple were very good and I could overhear his conversations with the other men.  In that way, I learned his name and that he had been told by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he laid eyes on the Lord's Messiah.

I didn’t know if that was the truth – that the Holy Spirit had really told him this – but I do know that no one else had come to pray in the temple for as many years as I, except for Simeon – so certainly, he believed it was the truth, and every day he came to pray for the redemption of Israel.[4]

Every day I joined my prayers to his – that Messiah would come and that I would live long enough to see what the Holy Spirit had promised Simeon he would see.  I prayed and fasted for a long time – years and years.  There were days when I thought I would die before seeing the prophecies and promises of God fulfilled.

The morning that I saw the Messiah I was sitting in the balcony looking down into the Court of the Priests, watching as the crowds began to gather, when my eyes were drawn to a father bringing a baby in to be circumcised, accompanied by his young mother.  They weren’t the only parents waiting for a priest, but there was something about the girl that attracted my attention.  To this day, I have no idea what it was, except perhaps the Spirit of God.  

Have you ever looked forward to something and when it finally happened, it was so much more than you anticipated?  Maybe this was your experience at the time of your marriage or the birth of your first child.  I’ve heard a story from an African explorer who discovered a great waterfall:  He had heard from the natives that there was a waterfall located up the river, but he couldn’t understand exactly what they meant.  As he headed upriver, he could hear the roar of the falls for miles before he got there and when he was still five miles away he could see the spray.  He said he could never explain the splendor that fell upon his soul when he saw those falls for the first time.  Suddenly, when he broke out of the brush, right before his eyes, he saw a river that was a mile wide that plunged in a 400-foot plunge in a display of awesome power.  He said that the sight overwhelmed him and he was literally paralyzed where he stood for several minutes. He had known that something was ahead but his discovery was far beyond his wildest imagination.[5]

This is exactly what it was like for Simeon and me.  We knew that the Messiah was coming and we waited and prayed for the day to arrive.   Every time parents brought their children to the Temple we would look at each other, filled with anticipation, and wonder if the next one would be the one spoken of by the ancient prophets. 

Then came that morning when I saw the young couple and heard Simeon’s voice ring up and out and through the temple, carried up to where I was sitting:   “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all peoples.”

As soon as I heard him, I went running to see for myself, and stopped in my tracks:  There was Simeon, an old man holding a six-week-old baby in his arms, with his head thrown back, talking to heaven.  Poor Mary was shaking and Joseph had his arms around her, trying to calm her.  She had heard Simeon prophesy that her child was destined to live a life that would cause others to fear and hate him, because his teachings would tear at the hearts of all who would come to know him; and that her own soul would be pierced with a sword as well. 

None of us understood what was meant by the words Simeon spoke, but they were full of foreboding - my heart went out to this young, hopeful mother – a girl who was no older than I had been when I was first married.  What sadness she would face.

I took a step forward and laid my hand on his mother’s arm – she turned towards me with a shadow across her young face – but she also looked strong.  I knew that she was like me – that she had a patient faith that would help her be strong, whatever lay before her; and that like me, she sought refuge in the House of God.  As she turned away to follow her husband, I said a prayer for her.[6]

 After Mary and Joseph had taken Jesus and left the temple, Simeon’s eyes met mine for what both of us knew would be the last time.  We had waited and prayed to see the promises of God fulfilled, and now that the Messiah had come into the world, we would both prepare to leave it at last.  Just as the birth of Christ split history in two, so had his presence released the two of us from our earthly lives to our new, eternal lives.   It’s the same for you, if you are a believer in Christ:  even though you haven’t laid eyes on Jesus, or held him in your arms, his incarnation – his birth and life and death and resurrection – has divided your life like a sharp sword.  The person you were before Christ came to live in your heart – that person has died with him, and now is raised up with him to eternal life – to salvation.

Listen, everyone - all of you who have been waiting with me for something that we didn’t really understand.  Remember, that I told you when I first met you that my name, Anna, means “grace.”  Well, I forgot to tell you that my father’s name, Penuel, means “face of God.”  Our tribe is the tribe of Jacob’s son, Asher, and the name Asher means “happy.”  And I know you’ve been told that the name Mary and Joseph gave to their child was “Jesus,” and that his name means, “salvation.”  Those names are my story – and they’re your story, too because it is the whole gospel message, the good news in just those four names:  for “by the grace of God, we have beheld with our own eyes the face of God, who is himself our salvation, and that is happy news – good news - gospel.”  That is the Word of the Lord that was given to me to give to the people of God who were alive in the world when Jesus was born, but it isn’t the last word.

There is another Word in your Bible – in one of those books that you call the New Testament, the one called “Hebrews” - God’s Word for you, the people of God who are alive today.  Listen to the Word of the Lord:   “Everyone has to die once, then face the consequences.  Christ's death was also a one-time event, but it was a sacrifice that took care of sins forever.”  And now pay special attention to this:  “And so, when he next appears, the outcome for those eager to greet him is, precisely, salvation.”[7]  Are you patiently praying that God will hasten the day when he next appears?  Are you expectant and eager to greet him when he does?  Are you waiting for him where he dwells? 

My named is Anna bat Penuel.  I am a prophetess and this is the word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

Let’s pray:  Gracious Lord, we thank you for the patience of saints like Simeon and Anna, and we ask that you would make us people of similar faith.  Like Anna, we pray for our faith to increase because of your providential care.  Teach us to seek refuge in your house.  Teach us to depend wholly on you.  And give us many opportunities to share the good news that God has come to us.  We pray this in the name of Jesus, Emmanuel.  Amen.

We’ve had quite a week, weather-wise, what with the snow storm and the cold temperatures.  The weather forecasters said it was going to be a real blizzard so all of the news outlets sent their reporters to Guymon. 

My nephew in North Carolina said that he was watching Fox News and saw a report from Guymon; and I was listening to the radio and heard an AP phone interview with the owners of the Hoot Owl out in Kenton.  For a little while the little town of  Guymon was a pretty important place in the world – not exactly like little town of Bethlehem, I guess, but odd events in odd places often have a broad impact.

The reports from NOAA and other weather forecasters came days before we felt the wind turn or saw the first snowflake.  We didn’t know the hour it would arrive, or where the deepest snow would fall, but we knew the storm was coming, we knew it would take a certain track and we knew there was nothing we could do except wait for it to happen. 

I hope you’ve been listening closely enough through Advent to recognize the Christmas story in that weather forecast.  In our text today, John is like a weather forecaster – he writes that Jesus has always been there with God, that the prophets were sent like weather forecasters to prepare us for his coming, and that when he came on the scene, John the Baptist pointed him out to the people who hadn’t gotten the weather report yet.

Now you need to understand that some people have the mistaken belief that the only reason Jesus existed was to come to earth to die on the cross and save us from our sins; that God created the world in some kind of a defective way, so he needed to send Jesus to earth to fix things, by dying on the cross; and that when Jesus was resurrected, the world was somehow set back on its axis. 

This leads them also to believe that when Jesus went back to heaven that God isn’t mad at anyone anymore or sinning and there’s no more reason to maintain Hell, and we can all breathe easy as long as we believe that it worked.    

But the Bible tells a different story, not just in the New Testament, but all the way through – that the world and humankind in its original created state were declared “good,” by God from the very beginning; that humans were created in the image of God, and because of that were necessarily given the ability to choose to obey God or not. 

That because only God is the source of all knowledge, Adam and Eve, lacked the ability to distinguish between good choices and evil choices.  We have the same problem today:  if we live long enough we learn that a lot of the things we thought were good choices turned out to a bad result, and a lot of the things we thought were wrong choices turned out with a good result.  God’s ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts; his ways and thoughts are higher than ours.[1]  Adam and Eve didn’t make a decision to choose Evil; The decision they made was to disobey God, and by doing that, Sin and Evil were released into God’s good world. 

So yes, God did need to deal with the fallout of Sin in the world, and with our tendency to cooperate with Evil, but not because the world – or human beings – were defective.  But no, God didn’t ponder and wonder to himself what should be done to make things right again, and then come up with this crazy plan to send a baby to earth to fix things. 

No, God knew from the beginning that love came with risks, so as disappointing as it was, God was not surprised by Sin – and he’s not surprised by our sins, either, so we may as well confess.  Jesus is not Plan B - Jesus was present with God in the beginning – Jesus is not a created being, like an angel or a human - Jesus is the very Word of God. 

In the first words of the book of Genesis, we have God speaking creation into existence with his Word.[2]  By Jesus and through Jesus all things that were created were made, the whole universe.[3]    What God did to begin to set things right was put his God’s law into place – and this brings us to another common misunderstanding:  Some people say that God gave the law for humans to follow perfectly so they could save themselves – but set the bar so high that no human was able to keep the law, and the Law failed too.  But that can’t be right because God never sets us up to fail – plus we know that the fully human Jesus – without the aid of his divinity – lived a sinless life and did fulfill the law. 

The reason God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses was so that God’s people could know for certain what governed good choices, and then learn for themselves how to recognize Sin in the midst of all of excuses.  And that worked, as far as it went, but that desire to disobey was still there – that ego that put our own desires above the desires of God;  that human will that plants its feet in opposition to the will of God and raises its bare-armed fist in rebellion – still remained.     

So the giving of God’s law to teach us about Sin was an act of grace.  We have this idea that the God of the Old Testament is somehow a different God from the God we see depicted in the person of Jesus in the New Testament – that there was no grace in the world before Jesus came, but that’s just not true.   Grace is present in every book of the Old Testament, grace is present in the Law of God, and Jesus is the same God as God the Father.  In creation and in the law we have God working right up until the right time came - the opportune moment[4] arrived for Jesus to enter into human history as a “Second Adam”[5] – a Son of God who would not give in to disobedience, but would live with a pure human will tuned to match his desires to the desires of God the Father. 

It was another act of grace for God to come himself to re-create the world that he’d created with a Word, by sending his Word out again – in human flesh – so we could “receive grace in place of grace already given.”  The law was grace given to the Jews through Moses; and now grace is given to the world through Jesus.      

Two weeks ago I pointed out that for us to say that Jesus is the only Way to God is not – as some would say – arrogant and exclusive, but is instead like saying that Jesus is waving his arms and jumping up and down and yelling at us, “Don’t go that way!  Stay away from all those other guys who can’t save you!  Come this way, follow me and live!”  

That’s what John the Baptist was doing in the Jordan River – he pointed Jesus out to the crowd and called out "This is the One I told you was coming after me but in fact was ahead of me.   This is the One who has always been ahead of all of us – the One who had the first word.  The one who was the first Word.”   

There is a very bright star in the constellation known as Orion that is named Betelgeuse (BEE-tel-juice).  The star is sort of pinned to Orion’s shoulder – or rather, Orion’s armpit.  Betelgeuse is a compound word of Arabic origin that is a combination of the word “abēt” meaning “armpit” and the word “al-Juaza” meaning “giant.”  So its name means “the giant in the armpit of Orion.” It’s one of the brightest stars in the sky – 100,000 times brighter than our own sun - but because it’s 640 light years away, it takes so long for its light to reach us that there’s no danger from Earth being toasted by it. 

Astronomers say that the Betelgeuse star has been shrinking steadily since it was discovered.  This year there has been a lot of internet chatter that it’s about to “go supernova” – to explode and disintegrate into space dust.  When that happens, the explosion is expected to cast an even brighter light, but because the light will be diffused by the expansion of the explosion, it will take even longer than 640 light years to reach us.  That means that even though the light from the explosion will be brighter, it will be about 100 times “slower” – with the result that some astronomers think that the Betelgeuse supernova might become a second Sun to the Earth.

The thing is, because Betelgeuse is so far away, scientists don’t know if it’s going to explode into a supernova sometime in the future - or if the explosion has already occurred, and we just haven’t seen it yet, because it takes so long for the light to reach us.                              

This is a good picture of what the gospel writer meant when he wrote that Jesus was “with God” in the beginning…[and] is the light of all mankind…shining in the darkness. 

So John the Baptist had to testify to the light –like an astronomer pointing out the light of a distant star – because even though the light was coming into the world…the world did not recognize the light” – we couldn’t see it yet – only a few of the prophets - like John the Baptist - could see it and recognize it and point it out to us.

And then Jesus came to live among us and now he lives within the hearts of those who believe.  That first Christmas the Light coming into the world was present in a particular child, born to particular parents in a particular place; who grew to adulthood to live and die in a particular way, to save your particular life and the lives of particular people who haven’t even been born yet. 

The birth, death and resurrection of Christ was the “cosmic-Jesus equivalent” of a supernova – an event that changed the configuration of the whole universe, throughout time, from beginning to end - and now the particular light of Christ is diffused throughout the world in the hearts and lives of Christ-followers, like a second sun. 

We complain every year about how it seems like Christmas begins before Halloween – but maybe that’s okay – maybe it’s a teaching moment for us to remember that Christmas really started at the beginning of time; and that God has been working on behalf of humankind since the world was “without form and void”[6], and there was no one even to hear God’s Word. 

The light not only finally reached us in the manger, it is still coming and it is brighter still.  That knowledge should give you hope.  That’s how sure we can be that God is at work on our behalf no matter what has happened in the past, or what it looks like today or what will happen tomorrow.  It gives us confidence that God will redeem all of our bad choices and fulfill all of his promises to us.  That’s why in the Bible we’re always told not to be afraid because God has come to us and is with us and is always coming toward us on a trajectory as sure as a comet flung from a distant star. 

There are no more prophets forecasting the sure coming of the Light – now we are the ones who point him out to those who are still in darkness.  As we move through the world, we’re to bring the Light with us to others who are waiting to see it - just as surely and deliberately as God moved toward us on that first Christmas long ago. 

Let’s Pray:  Lord, your word tells us that you are “the One who is, who was and who is yet to come.”[7] You are outside of our time and space and at the same time inside our human story.  You make your desires known to your people both in your Word and in the person of Jesus Christ, who entered this world like a shooting star from heaven.  You teach us how to choose the good so that we will become like stars in the universe ourselves, shining out among crooked and perverse peoples.[8] Open our hearts toward others so that your light might shine fully wherever we find ourselves. We pray this in the name of Jesus-Emmanuel, our God-with-us.  Amen.

                It is a hard thing to outlive your friends.  My name is Nathan, and I was appointed by God to serve as God’s Prophet to King David.  It was my job to keep God’s servant, David, from error.  Sometimes I did my job well and steered the king according to God’s messages to me; other times I was too late to stop him from making terrible mistakes, like with Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife.  Sometimes, I was just in the nick of time, like when David had grown old and forgetful, and Bathsheba and I had to remind him that before he died he’d promised to anoint his son, Solomon, as the next King.  Too often I sat by his side when he mourned a child.

                Being a prophet is a hard job – but my job was made harder by two things:  I was younger than David, and more bookish than either he or his friend, Jonathan, had been.  I was more cautious in all the ways that David was brash and daring and bold.              

                Jonathan, the son of David’s enemy, King Saul, had been David’s friend in his youth.  Jonathan had fidelity and courage and friendship.  So now we come to my second problem:  I was not only David’s prophet, I was his friend.  Where Jonathan had stood with David on the battlefield against his enemies, I stood with him throughout his adult life during his battles with himself and his family – and there were a lot of them.

                I tried to be a real friend to David.  Kings don’t have too many real friends, you know.  Kings are surrounded by people who agree with them all the time and laugh at all of their jokes.  And then there are the people who are afraid of the king’s power – who will say anything to stay on his good side.  But real friends tell you hard things about yourself – like the time I had to speak to David about his affair with Bathsheba, the wife of his army commander, Uriah, and then having Uriah killed to cover it up. 

                Real friends remind you of the good days too – when you’re feeling down and discouraged, they encourage you by pointing out your virtues and the successes you’ve had in the past and will have again.  When you’re about to do something stupid, they remind you that you’re a better person than that.  And real friends have your back – especially when you’re off your game, or you’re beginning to lose your edge.  They come alongside you and help you out in ways that don’t look like they’re helping. 

                Those kind of real friends are a gift from God.  That’s even what Jonathan’s name meant:  “God gave.”  And my own name, Nathan, means “Gift.”  Both of David’s best friends were “gifts from God,” right down to their names.  God didn’t do that just for David – God will do that for you too.  If you need a true friend, pray to God that he will put that person into your life. 

                And remember that you have Jesus - the friend who is closer than a brother, the one who gave his life for you – standing with you all of the time[1] on the battlefield of your life, steering you according to God’s word, giving gentle correction and coming to your rescue.

                The first time I was called to speak to David, I was new at this prophet stuff.  Like I said, I was young.  When David and I talked together about David’s regret that while he lived in a fine house, the ark of God stayed in a tent, I told him he should just go ahead with his plan and build God a house.  I wanted it to sound like I knew what I was talking about, so I added, “The Lord is with you.”   I thought that sounded official. 

                But that same night, while I was at my evening prayers, the Lord spoke to me with a different word for David:  “You're going to build a 'house' for me to live in?  Why, I haven't lived in a 'house' from the time I brought the children of Israel up from Egypt till now.  All that time I've moved about with nothing but a tent.  And in all my travels with Israel, did I ever say to any of the leaders I commanded…'Why haven't you built me a house of cedar?'

                "Go tell David this:  The God-of-the-Angel-Armies has this word for you:  I took you from the pasture, tagging along after sheep, and made you prince over my people Israel.  I was with you everywhere you went and mowed your enemies down before you.  Now I'm making you famous, to be ranked with the great names on earth.  And I'm going to set aside a place for my people Israel, and plant them there so they'll have their own home and not be knocked around anymore…Furthermore, God has this message for you:  God himself will build you a house!”

                Let me tell you, that was not what I was expecting!  And then I had to go to David the next day and tell him not only had I been wrong, trying to show off, but that God wasn’t going to let him go ahead with his plan.  At least I could soften the blow by telling him about the house God was going to build for him. 

                When I thought some more about it, I realized that even if God wasn’t going to let David build his temple, God was still showing grace to David by letting his son, Solomon, build it in the name of the House of David.  And of course, God was faithful to his promise to David, because Solomon’s Temple became one of the Seven Wonders of the World in its time. 

                That’s the kind of grace and faithfulness God will show to you, too – there is no end to the Kingdom of God in Christ.  Have you made mistakes in your life?  The God who showed grace to David will also show grace to you.  Do you have a prodigal child?  The Lord who was faithful to Solomon for David’s sake is also willing and able to be faithful to your child for your sake.  And God the Father is willing to show grace and faithfulness to us for the sake of his Son, Jesus. 

                Most kings and rich men build monuments to themselves.  The world is full of them.  You have your Trump Tower and your Rockefeller Center – I even heard this week about a place in California called the “Spelling Mansion” – a house bigger than the Taj Mahal and the White House combined.  The attic alone is 17,000 square feet.  It’s owned by a 22-year old.

                The house Solomon built for God isn’t standing anymore.  The house Herod built to replace it is gone too.  The Great City of David is a just hole in the ground.  The enormous stones of the temple and the City of David are just piles of rock now – nobody lives in them.  You can travel to Syria today and in the City of Bosra see the great engineering feats of the fearsome Roman army:  the Roman road and the great aqueducts.  That aqueduct is broken and dry – poor women hang their laundry to dry between its pillars – and children use the road for soccer.   All are ruins.

                But the king of the universe – the one whom God “…raised from the dead and seated at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come”[2] – doesn’t live in a temple or a monument or a cathedral, or even this place:  He’s back in His tent.

                We have to remind ourselves about the Baby of Bethlehem.   Bethlehem:  it means, the “House of Bread.”  Bethlehem:  where the Bread for the World was born, not in a temple, or even in a house, but inside a tent of flesh and bone like ours.  “The Word became flesh and tabernacled – tented – among us.”[3]

                When you know the story of Christmas – the story of the Incarnation - God-in-a-tent makes sense.  Tents are fragile – they’re made of cloth and skins and rope.  Even if they’re made of rip-stop nylon, they aren’t kingly fortresses.  They’re threatened by forces of nature.  Tents can’t keep anyone out who is dedicated to entering.  Babies are fragile too.  Both tents and babies are vulnerable.  Fragility is the price paid for mobility and vulnerability is the price paid for intimacy. 

                God was willing to pull up stakes to travel from heaven to earth, and once on earth, to travel with us, to be buffeted by the winds of life and time and the Panhandle.

                Since Jesus came to live among you, and was crucified, died and was buried; and then was resurrected and ascended into heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit of Jesus to tabernacle – to camp out - in you, in your physical body, your tent.

                It is no longer you “who live, but Christ who lives in you.”  If you are a Christ-follower, you have been crucified with Christ and now it’s no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you.  The life you now live in the body, you live by faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave himself for you.[4] 

                And while you may only be a fragile, vulnerable tent for the Spirit of God now, you are nevertheless “living stones, being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood”[5], “a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”[6]  I didn’t understand these things when I was speaking to David – I didn’t learn them until after I stood in the presence of God.

                We may not be kings like my friend, David, but we, too, are tempted to make our plans without God – to run ahead without consulting him – and to build our lives in our own way.  We need a history lesson as much as David did.  We, too, need to be reminded about where God found us – maybe not in a field with sheep, but in places like bars and lives with no future and states of mental confusion - and what we would be (or not be) if not for God’s grace and faithfulness in sending Jesus to us to live in the spiritual house he is building for us, and out of us. 

                Once a year at Christmas we need the reminder that Jesus came to earth and, like Abraham’s nephew, Lot, pitched his tent “outside the gates of Sodom,” a place that was under the judgment of God,[7] just like the world was before that first Christmas.  And in the same way that God destroyed the walls of sinful Sodom, in his death and resurrection, Jesus destroyed the power that had walled humanity up inside its prison of Sin. 

                And today – in these Last Days - he’s pitched his tent among the ruins of our lives, while construction continues on the house that Jesus said had “many rooms” - the one that he’s building for us – so that he can come and take us to live with him where he is.[8] 

                I’m a better prophet than I was when I was young – but this is still a mystery, even to me.  Maybe you can figure it out. 

                Let’s Pray:  Faithful God, we praise you for your covenant promises that sustain us with light in a world that can sometimes be dark and frightening.  We praise you for your faithfulness, and for your faith in us, that through the power of your Son, we might someday be fit to live with you, even as Jesus has made us fit for him to live in us.  Help us to ponder these mysteries the same way that Mary pondered the miracle of her child in her heart.  We pray this in the name of Jesus, God Immanuel.  Amen.

It was such a change to wake up on Saturday morning to see all those trees covered in white from the freezing fog the night before – it reminded me of what Narnia looked like after the evil White Witch cast a spell on it and froze everything for 100 years, called “The Long Winter.” Her name in the book was Queen Jadis, and her evil goal was to kill all of the descendants of Adam and Eve. 

Of course, that’s not what happened in Guymon on Friday night, but it’s still true that until one winter night 2,000 years ago, the world in fact lay in the grip of a “Long Winter,” until Jesus was born into that dark chill  – the one whose death and resurrection would overcome our “Long Winter” – it was a day foretold by the prophet Isaiah and welcomed by the Virgin Mary with songs – a joyous day, not only for the whole world, but for the whole universe.

The third Sunday of Advent is the day we light the third Advent candle, the pink one called the “Joy candle.”  This Sunday is sometimes called “Joy Sunday” and that is our emphasis this morning.  When people are happy, they often sing – and the Old Testament and Gospel readings this morning are both songs – the Song of Isaiah and the Song of Mary (sometimes called by its Latin name, “Magnificat”).

                Songs are our response to joy – that’s what congregational singing is supposed to be about – John Calvin wrote that singing is a kind of prayer, and that singing “inflames the heart…to praise God…and to meditate on his works in order to love…honor and glorify him.” 

                Isaiah’s song announces that after generations of enslavement and exile of God’s people, their salvation, justice and restoration have been ordained by God and are on the way.  Those who had been without hope heard a word that God was on the move to bind up their broken hearts, to set the prisoners free, comfort those who mourn and bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes.  But as good as this news was, not everyone responded to it – not everyone in exile heard this announcement and so some remained without hope.  Some ignored him in the way that people have always ignored God’s prophets. 

                Mary’s song announces that salvation and justice and restoration have arrived at last – it is the first proclamation of the gospel – preached by Mary - and no one is there to hear it except her cousin Elizabeth and the baby who leapt in response to it in Elizabeth’s womb.  That same baby, John, grew to manhood and preached repentance in response to the gospel that he heard before he was born. 

                Later, when the baby who was the gospel was born in a manger, only some came to see – again, not everyone responded to the angels’ songs.  The shepherds and the wise men from the orient were there, but others ignored it.  Still others, like Herod – and later the temple authorities – tried to destroy the gospel child.

It always works that way with the gospel – it was like yesterday when a group of us rang bells in front of Wal-Mart to raise money for the work of the Salvation Army.  Some folks responded to our bells by putting money in the red kettles – but some folks ignored us and walked right by.  Either way, we spoke to everyone, told them God blessed them and that we wished them a Merry Christmas, whether they gave us money or not.  It’s a good picture of how the Gospel message is there for everyone, but not everyone will respond - and that their response is not our responsibility. 

It was also pretty cold out there on Wal-Mart’s hill – like I described how Narnia was under the curse of the White witch; like it was in Bethlehem when the world was under its curse.  And I’m pretty sure that everybody heard our bells – it was so cold that we kept ringing them even when there was no one in the parking lot to hear them.  The gospel gets preached a lot of the time when there’s nobody there to hear.  But just because nobody’s listening doesn’t mean that the universe has stopped proclaiming the good news.  

The world has been in this situation before.  After the barbarian Goths, Vandals and Huns sacked Rome, killed or exiled the educated class and burned most of the libraries, Europe was plunged into a thousand-year period that we call “the Dark Ages.”  During that time Irish monks withdrew into their monasteries, salvaging what books they could, studying the Scriptures and making copies of everything.  When it was safe to venture outside the monastery walls again, they sent missionaries throughout Europe to found new monasteries – with schools – to bring knowledge and Christianity back to the people again – to announce God’s crown of beauty instead of ashes…to rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the…ruined cities long devastated for generations.”  Europe began to recover and the lost knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans was found again.

                This lesson should not be lost on us because it can happen again.  Just because it might be that no one is listening to the gospel message where we are right now, doesn’t mean that our preaching, preparation and learning are in vain.  In the Book of Second Timothy, Paul predicts that there will come “a time where people will not put up with [teaching] of sound doctrine.  Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”  People will find people to teach them popular ideas that they want to hear, instead of the Truth of God’s word.    But the Bible also says that, “The days are coming when [God] will send a famine through the land – not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.”[1]

                So how are you preparing yourself so that when one day the world will be so starved for the Word of God that they will come looking to you to feed them?

Every other week or so I have a conversation with someone who claims to be an atheist or an agnostic.  In general terms, they all say they reject God because they have some conflict with their reason or logic.  I always marvel at that because what is reasonable or logical about turning down hope and healing?  What is logical or reasonable to seriously considering turning down a crown of beauty in order to pour a bucket of ashes over your head?  Do people seriously mean that they would voluntarily stay in a prison of their own making when their cell door is opened and their shackles are removed?  There is nothing reasonable or logical about this, and yet the world is full of people who do just that when they reject the gospel message.

Often those who reject the announcement of the good news of the risen Jesus say they don’t like the “exclusive” claims of Christianity, especially the part in John’s gospel where Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life and no one comes to the Father except by me.”[2]  There are even some Christian theologians who are so committed to religious pluralism that they either claim that Jesus never said this, or if he did say it, he didn’t mean it the way it’s historically been understood:  That Jesus is the Son of God, that his Word is Truth, and that accepting this is the only way to eternal life.

Those who don’t want to believe that Jesus is the only Way say that they reject this truth because it is “exclusive.”  Exclusive, though, isn’t bad when what you’re being excluded from is death.  Exclusive isn’t bad when what’s being excluded are all of the ways that end in death, promoted by those who make claims for make-believe Gods.  The “exclusive” claims of Christ only exclude false religions – they never exclude people of sincere hearts who come seeking after God – everyone is welcome to follow Jesus, but sadly, not everyone will.   

This claim of exclusivity is easier to understand if we think of it this way:  Imagine being in a shopping mall, standing in front of dozens of stores with flashing neon signs, on three different levels, selling false beliefs and religions.  They all have fancy packaging and they are being sold by lots of attractive people – but all they’re offering are empty promises, like piñatas filled with rocks instead of candy.  But there is one store that has a hand-lettered sign that says “The Way, the Truth and the Life.”  No fancy packaging, no hype.  And instead of beautiful girls in tight blouses and mini-skirts, there’s this crazy guy out in front of the store wearing a T-shirt that says “Jesus” and he’s jumping up and down yelling, “Don’t go anywhere else, come over here!  Those guys will steal your money, they’ll waste your time, and you’ll end up with nothing but an empty wallet.  They’re selling fake crowns set with costume jewels made out of paste, but I’m giving away Truth for free.  You can come over here and get the real deal, a real crown of beauty.”  

Or maybe it would help to think about Jesus as a scout in the woods:   he was sent on ahead of us to bushwhack the trail.  We’re coming along behind him and it’s getting dark and we can’t see the path – and there’s a cliff out there in the dark.  There are a bunch of other guides out there who are trying to get us to go in the way they’re pointing.  The thing is, their way leads to the cliff, but we don’t know it.  And while we’re standing there wondering which way to go, Jesus is shining a light and waving his arms and yelling for all he’s worth, “Don’t go that way!  Turn towards me!  If you go that way you’ll die!  I’m the Way.  Let me lead you home!”

                In the history of Christianity in Japan there was an event in October of 1619 when the Emperor ordered fifty-five Christians of both sexes and of all ages – including children of five or six years old – to be burned alive in a dry riverbed.  Their executions were carried out before 30,000 Christian witnesses who were supposed to be frightened into recanting their faith.  It didn’t work out the way the Emperor had planned, though, because when the flames were lit, and the martyrs had said goodbye to the onlookers, the onlookers began to sing Mary’s Magnificat, and continued to sing it until the suffering of the last victim ended: 

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.  For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.  And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.  He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.  He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever."

That’s the song, the announcement of the good news:  the right path to eternal life is that One right over here; the real Savior is the guy in the Jesus T-shirt, and even if you’re about to go down in flames, we can still sing gospel praises.  Sometimes that song gets drowned out by the white noise of life – the busy-ness, the deadlines, the worries and all the junk we let fill our heads so we don’t have to worry about the busy-ness, the deadlines and the worries – and it seems that it’s especially muffled by the white noise of Christmas itself:  the extra busy-ness, the extra deadlines and the extra worries, all accompanied by Christmas carols and bright lights. 

If you listen intentionally though, you can hear the voices of Isaiah and Mary and the Christmas angels and the Irish monks and the Japanese martyrs, all singing in harmony.  The way of the gospel song is a way of joy, even when it’s heard in the cold of a sinful world, the darkness of an unknown path, or the flames of a consuming fire.

Let’s Pray:  God of joy, our souls do magnify you and our spirits do rejoice in you because you have remembered us in the struggles of our lives.  Bind up our hearts, set us free – rebuild and renew us – so that we in turn can take a message of compassion to those who suffer in the same ways we have.  Let each one here bring the message of the gospel as a gift this Christmas season to someone who is waiting to hear it sung to them.  We pray these things in the name of Jesus, God Emmanu-el, God-with-us.  Amen.  

Last week I told you about the ruins of a bombed out church that had been “burnt to the glory of God” during World War II in November, 1941.  This Wednesday marks the 70^th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, so I’ve been thinking some more about war.   I’m going to do some shameless borrowing from Chuck Colson’s book The Faith that the Tuesday night Acapulco group is reading together.   If you are in that group, and have already read this story, just bear with me for a bit.

In it, Colson tells the story of the invasion of Normandy, which took place on June 6, 1944, three years after the attack on Pearl Harbor that drew America into the war.  The invasion was “the first successful opposed landing across the English Channel in nine centuries,” and it guaranteed the outcome of the war in Europe.   Movies like Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers have given subsequent generations a picture of what it was like, but of course nothing can adequately communicate the horror of what it was like for the allied forces to storm that beach.

The preparation for the invasion began a whole year before.  To give you some idea of the scope of this event, and the scale on which it was mounted, “more than 150,000 troops were committed to the initial invasion, employing 6,900 vessels, 4,100 landing craft, 12,000 airplanes and 14,000 attack sorties.”

The allies “designed armored vehicles that included “swimming” Sherman tanks, mine-clearing tanks, bridge laying tanks and road-laying tanks….two artificial harbors were even towed across the English Channel and placed at Omaha Beach….Within two weeks of the invasion, the British landed an additional 314,547 men, 54,000 vehicles, and 102,000 tons of supplies…the Americans put ashore an additional 314,504 (and I am precise about the number – and not just estimating - because each represents a life placed at risk for others), 41,000 vehicles and 116,000 tons of supplies. 

“An underwater pipeline… was constructed to deliver fuel from Britain to the invading forces…10,000 tons of bombs were dropped…”   During the first hours of the landing the casualty rate was more than 50% because there was nothing between the troops and the German guns.  A second wave of  troops had to make their way to shore amid blood, gore and floating corpses.  Over the next weeks, the US would count over 129,000 killed, wounded or missing.  The British lost 11,000 men and Canada another 5,000 – 155,000 in all.  

“The invasion of Normandy was so massive and successful that it allowed the allies to turn every counterattack thereafter into another victory…and the evils of Hitler and fascism would be conquered.”[1]

I told you that long story to give you some idea of what the Prophet Isaiah was talking about when he prophesied  “a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.” And why John the Baptizer came preaching that the people should repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of their sin, because “one more powerful than I” is coming. 

Now we who live in the light of Christ may still not have a good grasp of the scope and scale of the invasion by Heaven onto the shores of earth.  We have trouble imagining that the struggle with sin is a war – a real war, as Paul writes, “… not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”[2]  It’s difficult to imagine that the preparations for the invasion took thousands of years from Adam’s fall into sin in Eden before the “attack” in Bethlehem. 

The Hebrew Scriptures were compiled from the stories of the lives of both the faithful and the faithless, and written in the blood of the prophets sent by God.  God’s chosen people had to be trained to follow the law; and then be carried into exile twice in order to learn to obey.  The time of the invasion had to be right – God’s perfect timing – “in order to be massive and successful enough to allow every counterattack thereafter to be turned into another victory, so that the evils of Satan and Sin would be conquered.”

Today, we have largely lost the language of sin and war in church.  But like we remember churches “burnt to the glory of God,” and D-Day and Normandy, from time to time we should remember the war with God. 

It can be jarring to hear the language of war used to describe the condition of the world and the relationship of humanity to God .    This is time of year when everything is sparkling and we dress our babies like angels and sing of “Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild.”   But the fact is that the unbelieving world is at war with God, and the baby born in a  Bethlehem manger is the same God whose anger sent Israel into exile, and is the same God whom the writer of Hebrews describes as “a consuming fire.” [3]

I spent some time looking for a good description of how God felt about the world when he began to plan the invasion.  I had the most luck in Amos.  The word from God given to Amos dealt with the annihilation of the warring people and nations surrounding Israel who killed or captured the innocent and led them off into exile and slavery.   And then he spoke directly to God’s chosen people, the Jews, and prophesied that they would be destroyed for rejecting God’s laws -  partly because of what they’d done, but more because of who they were – they were God’s people and by rejecting God’s laws, they defiled his name.  The judgment on God’s people was to be worse than the judgment on the nations who did not know God. 

                God said through Amos, “I hit you with earthquake and fire, left you devastated like Sodom and Gomorrah.  You were like a burning stick snatched from the flames.  But you never looked my way.  You continued to ignore me.  All this I have done to you, Israel, and this is why I have done it.  Time's up, O Israel! Prepare to meet your God!"[4]  And it gets worse:  as angry as God was with those who actively rejected God’s laws, the wrath he reserved for the complacent was greater – those who were unconcerned about it all, who were secure in their comfort zones, who just looked on while the world around them went to hell – those are the ones he said he would punish first.[5]  That is how angry God was – it was a real war and we were on the losing side.

                God’s judgment came to Jerusalem when it was overrun by the armies of Babylon, the city was destroyed and 15,000 people were taken into captivity.  And then, 70 years later, we hear the voice of God again, in the mouth of Isaiah, saying, “Comfort, comfort my people…  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,  and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed,  that her sin has been paid for… In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.  And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all people will see it together.”  Enough!  It’s over!

Five centuries after this, John proclaimed the news about Jesus in some of the very same words, “Prepare the way of the Lord.  Make a straight way in the desert for him.”  Like the prophet of old he urged people to make a venture of faith – if we want the comfort of God, we need to prepare for it. 

Repentance for what one has done is a necessary factor of the biblical equation of forgiveness, but it needs to be worked to its conclusion.  You can’t live with guilt without end.  Parents and children and husbands and wives often do not understand this and go on forever reminding that spouse or child or parent of some long-past sin.  They use words like, “You always…” and “That’s just like the time you…” did whatever.  This kind of unforgiveness destroys both relationships and the people in them.  I have counseled couples where one spouse or the other has nursed a real or imagined transgression by the other for more than 30 years. 

Parents make a similar mistake when they try to discipline their children by grounding them not for a day or a week, but “until I say otherwise.”  And then there are the people who beat themselves up for their past sins, going over and over them in their memories, reliving the regret and pain of things that happened years ago, that they have long repented of, and  which God has long ago forgiven.    There has to be a time when we say, to others – and to ourselves - “Enough!  It’s over!  Cry to her that her iniquity is pardoned.” [6]

There are hills and valleys and rough places in our lives that are barriers to God working in any of us that need to be leveled and smoothed before we are ready to meet God.  They may be rocky relationships or broken friendships.  They may be quick tempers and moody valleys that are unpredictable and hazardous.  We need to take charge of whatever it is that produces the turmoil and pressure and anxiety in us.  Perhaps there is substance abuse that needs to be admitted is out of control.  There is no better time than now to begin work on straightening out a disordered and aimless life.   “Enough!  It’s over!” 

But just because their punishment was over, didn’t mean that their struggle was ended.  Like wounded soldiers and malnourished prisoners of war trailing home after the armistice, the exiles still had a 720 mile walk home from Babylon to Jerusalem.  The road home from Babylon to Jerusalem was a road of hills and valleys, sandy desert and rough ground; intense heat in the summer and bitter cold in the winter.   What happened to “Comfort, comfort?” and “Enough! It’s over!”  Nothing about that trek sounds anything like comfort.

The way “Comfort” is used in this scripture has lost its meaning for today.  It doesn’t mean “comfortable,” or even “soothe” the way we would say we “comfort a crying child.”  The meaning here is “to make one strong.” 

“Strengthen, strengthen my people – be strong, my people.”  That’s pretty different isn’t it?  “Enough!  It’s over! Be strengthened!”  The war with God was ended, their captivity was over, but they needed to be strong to get home.

Now think of your prayers – how often we pray to “change” a situation, or ask for a miraculous healing for ourselves or someone else.  What we want is for it to go away, but often it doesn’t – certainly there are spontaneous healings, but we can’t say they’re the “norm” because then they wouldn’t be miracles.  But what if there’s a “miracle of strengthening?”  How wonderful when God makes us strong enough to bear the burdens of our lives as we journey home.  That kind of miracle happens all the time. 

To be strong to bear one’s burdens doesn’t sound like much of a miracle – but God’s “comfort” doesn’t mean the situation will become easy.  The war may be over, but the alcoholic still needs the strength to take it one day at a time.  The battle might be won, but some of us  need the strength to live without a loved one who has died.   There might not be anyone shooting at us anymore, but many have been wounded, coping with a disability, bearing pain, loving someone who is hard to love.  All of that is difficult to do.  But to this God says, “Don’t be afraid…behold your God comes with strength,…and reward…and vindication…he will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms, and he will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those that are with young.”[7]

So  there is a way for us to prepare from the places where God is absent in our lives, to the place where God is present – it is a way of distance; the barriers are not hills and valleys, but strongholds of sin; there are no generals who have taken us captive, but there are people and things that both oppress and enslave us and turn us from the ways of God and the path home.  The war is over, but it is along the road home that God speaks comfort and strength to us.

Let’s Pray:  Father God, you love us too much to leave us to ourselves – your Word says that you will discipline those whom you love.  We can’t move forward until we understand that we have to create a straight path between ourselves and you.  We have to get past all of the human-generated obstacles that stand between us.  We ask for the supernatural strength that brings both the comfort and healing that will clear the way and then sustain us as we face the future.  We have seen how you invaded the world, and now we ask that you invade our lives and guarantee the victory.  In the name of Jesus, we pray.  Amen.

There is a magnificent, modern cathedral in Coventry, England.  As you enter the sanctuary, you have to step over some words written in large brass letters embedded in the floor, and you can’t avoid reading them.  The words read, “TO THE GLORY OF GOD THIS CHURCH BURNT, NOVEMBER 14, 1941."

Now “To the glory of God” is one of those phrases that we put in the frames of stained glass windows, or put on furnishings that are dedicated for use in the church.  If someone donates, say, an organ, the plaque on the organ might read, “Dedicated to the glory of God and in memory of John Smith.”  So how can that be said about the ruin of a beautiful cathedral?   You can see the ruins of the tragedy right there beside the new modern cathedral – the burned out shell of what was once a glorious medieval gothic church burned to the ground by fire bombs during a wartime air raid.  

That air raid was certainly no "act of God," nor was the destruction of that great church viewed at that time as being "to the glory of God."  It was considered a tragedy to be mourned not only by the City of Coventry and the English people, but by people around the world.  The work and skill and devotion and artistry that had literally taken generations to produce the gothic church took only one night to destroy.  Its burned ruins are a mute reminder of what happens when a world wanders so far from God.

So how could anyone say, "To the glory of God this church burnt?"  One of the caretakers in the new cathedral had this to say about it:  He said that had it not been for the destruction and what followed it, "we would have just one more old cathedral, beautiful to be sure, but probably not well used at all except to be visited by tourists."

But since the day it burned, Coventry Cathedral has become an ecumenical center where thousands of Christians representing many denominations and people of other faiths, speaking a variety of languages, come to pray and work for world peace.  It wasn’t the destruction of the cathedral that glorified God – it was what God called forth from the ashes and rubble; the work of a great church that was transformed and refined, beginning with that terrible night.

The passage that I just read from Isaiah, where the prophet is calling out to God, was written after the Jews had returned to Israel from the Babylonian captivity.  The burned ruin of Solomon’s temple was still not restored and stood as a daily reminder of defeat and destruction and of people taken off to a foreign land into a bondage that lasted three generations.  There was almost no one left alive who remembered what life had been like before they were conquered.

Their ruined temple was also symbolic of a deeper, more personal devastation.  It was a time of sadness, and of dejected and empty spirits.  There was no inspiration among the people.  There was no sign from God and everything seemed hopeless.

Life among the ruins can be pretty grim.  It was into this situation that Isaiah spoke, recalling how the people were led out from an earlier time of bondage in Egypt, when God had made himself known in earthquakes and water from rocks, the parting of oceans and pillars of fire.  And that’s what he prayed: "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down ..." Do it all again, Lord! Do something new with us. Make something of this mess, this rubble and these empty people!”[1]  

There’s plenty here for us to identify with.  We live in a country that’s not old enough to have any ancient ruins, and when an historic building falls into disrepair, we restore it.  Whenever there’s a fire or some other catastrophe like an earthquake, we’re quick to clean up the rubble.  We don’t like reminders of disasters or mistakes - even our memorials are shining architectural symbols of triumph and not reminders of failure or destruction.

Our “ruins” tend to be portable – the kind of ruins we have to carry around with us because of the choices that we make in our personal lives, the selfish and sinful choices that have sad consequences.  Sometimes our ruins are the scars of tragedies, like a divorce, or sickness or the death of a loved one.  We live in the skeletons of those charred ruins, sometimes throwing something over them to camouflage them while we move around in the world, like putting siding on rotting wood; sometimes putting up a new wall all around it so nobody can see in – but never quite getting around to tearing down the ruins on the inside; and no matter how we cover up, our infrastructure is weakened and we can still smell the smoke.

There was a poignant article in the New York Times yesterday, where a columnist asked people over the age of 70 to send him what he called “Life Reports” – little essays in which they evaluated their own lives.  He’s received over 1,000 responses that he’s been posting on his daily blog.   A woman named Gilda wrote about losing her husband:   “the loneliness will never disappear.  To take care of the cold, empty nights, I have substituted an electric mattress warmer and a large pillow to hug, to take the place of my beloved.”  Robert writes about the birth of his firstborn son; and then fast-forwards to the image of when he had to place the ashes of that 35-year-old son into a mahogany box and put them in a grave alongside those of his parents.  One workaholic described the time his six-year-old son brought home a family portrait from school – the father wasn’t in it, but the dog and cat were. 

Some weren’t so sad, but still described difficult lives.  A woman from New Jersey wrote that her marriage “wasn’t a love match for either one of us.  But we made a good family and stayed together until he died at 81.”  And some were able to integrate the ups and downs of life into gratitude:  “I’m handling my symptoms of Parkinson’s well – my life is full: love shared with friends and family and a good dog, along with various projects that keep my time occupied.  How fortunate I am that I can count both my ex-husbands as friends, as we now share a different kind of love from and for me.”[2]

These are the kinds of ruins that will smell like smoke for a long time.  We can’t bring glory out of such ruins by ourselves – we need God to do it.  We need God to “be God” for us – to tear open the heavens and come down and do what we could never do for ourselves.  But as much as we want God to repair us instantly, we find that God wants us to wait awhile longer, because for some reason – known only to the Divine – waiting makes us stronger, better, more compassionate and more faith-filled people.  Waiting makes us long for God.

God said, “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.”[3]  So the ancients waited, and “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his son.”[4]  In other words, we had to wait for God to get the world ready for Jesus.  Now we have to wait for God to get us ready.[5]

Only a few of us think of a believer as one who waits for God.  In the Bible God takes the initiative at a time when it seems like we can only wait. We must wait, as Israel waited in exile. The waiting of Advent prepares us for the angel chorus that announces the birth of our Savior.  Without the waiting our hearts aren’t sensitive and our appetites aren’t ready.  Waiting changes our eyes.  Before their waiting, Israel saw Babylon as their problem.  But during their time of waiting, they came to see that they were the problem and Babylon was only the setting.   The more time we spend waiting, the clearer the reasons for our problems can become if we are attentive and watchful.

The Chinese people are famous for their patience.  When Chinese farmers plant a bamboo tree seed, they water and fertilize it, but the first year nothing happens.  The second year they water and fertilize it, and still nothing happens.  The third and fourth years they water and fertilize it and still nothing happens.  The Chinese are patient – we would have given up watering it at the end of the first year.  The fifth year comes and they water and fertilize it and sometime during the course of that fifth year, during a window of only about six weeks, that Chinese bamboo tree will grow ninety feet.   

The question that follows from this is:  Did it really grow ninety feet in six weeks?  Or did it grow ninety feet in five years?  The obvious answer is that it grew ninety feet in five years, because if they had not applied the water and fertilizer each year there would have been no bamboo tree.[6]

This is the kind of waiting we are asked to do while we wait for the Lord’s return.  Not the passive waiting of quitting your job and sitting on a hillside someplace in Idaho gazing at the sky and waiting for the mothership.  Not even the passive waiting of sitting in a pew week-to-week.   Not the passive waiting of sitting quietly in the pain of our ruins.

The waiting we are asked to do is the waiting a farmer does before the crop appears -  the tilling and fertilizing and weeding and watering; the kind of waiting a fisherman does while he sits in the boat mending his nets or tying his flies while he waits for the fish to bite. 

Because we aren’t just waiting for something to happen – we are waiting for Someone to come, and while we wait, we are getting ready to receive Him.  The whole world is waiting for that Someone - but not all of them know His name is Jesus, and not all of them know that there is hope present in their waiting.  Those are the people who are waiting for you – to come to them amid their ruins – to point out the reason that you haven’t given up and neither should they, is because God holds their future in His hands.  This is the work of the church: to embody the light of God in ways and deeds that bring personal light into someone’s personal darkness. [7]

God will be faithful to the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever that is coming true.  Stay awake.  Be present.  The hidden is about to be revealed and our ultimate exodus is unfolding.[8]

Let’s Pray:  Patient Lord, there are many things that we have done to mess up our lives and our world and sometimes we despair – especially in this season when our Christmas carols and television commercials and stores tell us that everything is bright and shiny – because we know it isn’t – and we know that just buying another television or getting a good deal on a waffle iron isn’t really going to make the ruins of our sinful lives magically disappear, no matter how we wrap it up.  While we prepare for the celebration of your Son's coming among us as a babe in Bethlehem, help us to remember that we’re also getting ready for his coming again in glory to set everything and everyone right.  In the meantime, give us opportunities to bring your light to others.   We’re amazed and encouraged by your faithfulness and we praise you for it.  In Christ’s holy name,  Amen.

If you’ve been down in the basement, you’ve seen the felt calendar on the wall that the Godly Play curriculum uses to mark the cycles of the church year.  There is a big yellow arrow that moves around from Advent to Easter to Pentecost and on through the year to Christ the King Sunday, the last week of the church year, before we enter Advent again. 

We are in the last few weeks before we begin - during Advent - to remember the events surrounding the first Advent – the birth of Jesus, the incarnation of God among us.  But first the lectionary texts turn our attention to the Second Advent, the day that Christ will come again.  To help you catch up…

We’ve been working our way through Paul’s letters to two of the earliest churches in Europe:  The church in Philippi and the church up the road in Thessalonica.  The congregations of each of those new church developments were made up of people who were mostly gentile – non-Jews – and almost completely pagan. 

We learned that they paid a personal cost when they decided to follow Jesus – that they were shunned by their families, ridiculed by their friends, ostracized in the marketplace and in business.  They became targets of the government for not participating in Caesar worship, the pagans for not participating in the community’s idol worship rituals and the Jews for believing that Jesus was the Messiah.  They were learning how to live together in peace, and what it meant to be a disciple.  It’s hard enough for us to try to do that and we were all either born into the church, or born into a Christian culture.   And all of this was occurring while their founding pastor, Paul, was away from them, alternately running for his life or sitting in prison. 

Paul sent letters to encourage the Christians in Thessalonica and today the subject turns to a question that has been raised by the church.  The members of the church understood that Jesus was going to return to earth and

would rescue them and take the church to be with him.  When that happened, evil governments would be overthrown

and all of their suffering would be over. 

The pagans feared death more than anything – they called it the “long sleep” – and it was the king of terrors.  Part of the attraction of Christianity for them was the teaching that taught that in his resurrection, Jesus had conquered death and his followers would too.  The Thessalonican Christians used to be pagans themselves, and their fear of death was still strong.  And now the problem had arisen that their family and friends were scoffing at their belief in the return of Christ, and their hope of eternal life.

Because if Christ was coming, why didn’t he return now, when their need was so great?  Some of their friends had also died – what was going to happen to them when Christ returned?  These unanswered questions and unrelenting ridicule were stealing their hope and taking a toll on their ability to endure their harassment. 

In his introduction to First Thessalonians in The Message, Eugene Peterson writes, “The way we conceive the future sculpts the present, gives [meaning] to nearly every action through the day.  If our sense of future is weak, we live listlessly.  Much emotional and mental illness and suicides occur among men and women who feel they ‘have no future.’” 

So the thought that Jesus might not return in their lifetimes, and that their loved ones who had died were lost to them forever had created a hopeless listlessness that was dogging the new Christians and weakening the church.

This fear is not unique to the first century – it is a real contemporary fear for many people in the world today.  Some people – mostly atheists - don’t believe that there is anything beyond this life except unconscious darkness.  This is hopeless on its face. You can tell this by the by the way that some, who believe that this life is all there is, engage in so many destructive behaviors that damage themselves and others, as though there are no future consequences to their behaviors. 

There is a growing belief – even in among Christians – in reincarnation.  Reincarnation is the belief that when someone dies they are reborn over and over again into this life, either paying for their bad acts by returning as some lower life form like a pig; or cycling upward into a higher social class, an improved physical form or an improved material state and ultimately, into a higher spiritual form.   The particular hopelessness of reincarnation is that the ultimate goal is to shed both one’s physical body and one’s personality – so there is no hope of being reunited with loved ones who have died.

There are people who seek to avoid death altogether by simply outpacing it.  This contemporary phenomenon is most obvious in the health, wellness and longevity industry.  Never have there been so many ways to shed weight, build muscle, bear children after menopause, run marathons in your 90’s.  The idea among the true believers goes far beyond ordinary healthy living to the belief that our souls are housed in bodies that are mere machines that we can keep running almost forever as long as we run far enough, work out long enough and often enough and take the right supplements and hormones, and have the right plastic surgeon.  

Probably the most obvious 21st-century effort to thwart the “forever-ness” of death involves the family of baseball legend Ted Williams.  There are competing facts about the circumstances of the disposition of his body after he died in 2002, but everyone agrees that he and his children made a “family pact” to have their bodies cryonically frozen after they died, so they would be able to be together in the future, when they believed that science would advance to a point where they could be resuscitated.  The bodies of Ted, and his son, John-Henry who died in 2004, are frozen and stored at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. 

To all these beliefs, the Bible plainly states, “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”[1]

In contrast to this, the great statesman and Christian believer Winston Churchill planned his own funeral.  He chose the hymns and wrote the liturgy for a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral.  After the benediction, he had arranged for a bugler high in the dome on one side of St. Paul’s Cathedral to play “Taps,” the universal signal that the day is over. 

But when that was finished, there was a long pause, followed by a bugler on the other side of the dome, who played “Reveille”, the signal of the beginning of a new day.  It was Churchill’s way of communicating that while we say “Good night” here, it’s “Good morning,” up there!

“The Christian faith has always been characterized by a strong and focused sense of future, with belief in the Second Coming of Jesus as the most distinctive detail.  From the day Jesus ascended into heaven, his followers have lived in expectancy of his return.  He told them he was coming back.  They believed he was coming back, and we continue to believe it.  For Christians, it is the most important thing to know and believe about the future.”[2]

The way Paul describes it to us is with the sounds of shouting angels and trumpets blaring, and Jesus with the hosts of heaven riding on the clouds in his glory, and then there’s that wonderful picture of those who are in Christ being snatched up – not snatched away from life by death, but snatched up from death to life by Jesus – just as he promised! 

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; the one who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”[3] 

Paul says in verse 14 that we “believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”  Because we believe in the resurrection of Jesus, therefore we have hope because we believe in his promise that he will come again and bring those who have died to be with him – and with each other – forever.  “When a man steps out of his own grave, he is anything that he says he is, and he can do anything he says he can do!”[4]  The resurrection wasn’t some divine party trick like a rabbit pulled out of a hat for a sign that Jesus is God.  The resurrection began something new that will only be completed when Jesus returns in glory. 

Sometimes we get tangled up in the questions and the timetable of the second coming.  Christianity has always been plagued by date-setters like the Millerites during WWII and more recently by Harold Camping.  We ask questions like, “Does the sound of the trumpet wake the dead, or does it just precede them?”  and “What happens to those who go up in the air?” Questions like that miss the point – they reduce Paul’s language to something like production directions for a halftime Superbowl show.[5]  Instead, the picture he’s trying to give to the Thessalonican church – and to us – is a picture of power – real power and who it is who has it. 

The point is that Jesus is the one with the power, not evil governments, not your oppressors, not your enemies, not your sickness, not your circumstances, not Satan, and not even death.   The one who stepped out of his own grave is the one to believe, the one to bet on, so to speak.  Do you know of anyone else who has done that?  Do you know of anyone else who has ever even pretended to do that? 

And it is not that the power is ours, so much as the power belongs to the one to whom we belong –

we who are in Christ and those who die in Christ have no power of our own.  We cannot, on our own, beat death. 

We cannot on our own, raise ourselves to new life.  But we will be raised to new life, because we are in Christ, who has been raised to new life, and is the one who goes before us, who is our guarantee.   The dead in Christ live because He lives. 

The one who makes us so certain of our resurrection – and here I am not speaking of a mere resuscitation like Ted Williams’ family is hoping for  but a resurrection, with a new body, a new breath life, given as a gift of God – the one who makes us so certain of our resurrection that we can call death sleep – a temporary state,  a place where we can rest safely and peacefully (knowing that death is not the end), until we are raised, by Christ, in Christ, to triumph over our last Enemy, Death.  Those who die in Christ are the Church Triumphant!

Later on, when Paul says that Christians don’t mourn as “those who have no hope,” he doesn’t mean that Christians don’t cry and grieve over the deaths of their loved ones.  He doesn’t mean that we are supposed to stuff our feelings and take a deep breath and say things like “at least she’s no longer suffering” or “he’s looking down on us from heaven,” or even that our loved ones are “in a better place with Jesus.” 

He means that those who have no hope – those who are not in Christ – will mourn forever, because there is no possibility – no hope - of their being reunited with their husbands and wives, their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and their children and friends.  There is a boundary that separates believers from non-believers, but there is no boundary between the living and the dead for those who live and die in Christ.

So a Christian’s grief is tempered by the knowledge – the certain hope – that there is coming a day that doesn’t just end the world, but is instead a day of new beginnings, a new heaven, a new earth, a new you and a new me, reunited in life with the ones who preceded us in death.  

Paul puts the death of believers in the context of the story of what God is doing in the world.  “God is on the move, dynamic, never static, never stale, always striving, always stirring up new possibilities.  The new thing that the coming of Christ brings it not based on what has come before or what is possible…rather it is the creation out of nothing, the genuinely new, the unexpected surprise, more than we can ask or imagine.  The second coming of Christ brings the impossible, turns a rock into a pool of water and makes a way where there is no way.”[6]

“The practical effect of this belief is to charge each moment of the present with hope.  For if the future is dominated by the coming again of Jesus, there is little room left on the screen for projecting our anxieties and fantasies.  It takes the clutter out of our lives…”[7] and enables us to live in responsive freedom – it leads to lives marked by healthy optimism and courage.

Now you might be thinking that this is all well and good, but it has been a long time since Jesus told us he was coming back.  It didn’t happen in the lifetime of the Thessalonians, or of Paul, or my mother and father and brothers.  I don’t know if it will happen in my lifetime or not, but I hope so, and it colors the way I think, and save money and give money and spend money and approach sickness, and live in a world full of sin and evil.  Like the Thessalonians, we want to believe, but we wonder what’s taking so long.

Peter addresses that question in the third chapter of 2 Peter beginning at verse 3, when he writes, “…in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, ‘Where is this ‘coming’ he promised?  Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.’  … But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.  Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.   But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare….But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.”

God is patient – but he is also faithful to fulfill his promise.  We are closer to that day than when Paulo wrote this letter and everyone here is closer to that day than we were when we first believed.  The Bible says, “Look up, be watchful for your redemption is at hand.”[8]  “Therefore encourage one another with these words.”

Let’s pray:  Faithful God, we long for the day when you will put everything right again – our sinful selves, our fallen world.  You said through your prophet Ezekiel that when you rescue your people you don’t do it for our sake, but you do it for your sake and the glory of your name.  We will get right to the shoreline before you part the waters.  We say with all the saints in the last day, “Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus,” and take your rightful place as ruler of the new heavens and new earth, for your glory and not ours.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Most of you know that Reformation Day comes around every year on October 31. While the rest of the western world is focusing on Halloween, Christians all over the world are celebrating the eve of All Saints Day when we remember the saints of God upon whose shoulders we stand. 

In addition to that, Reformed Christians are also celebrating Reformation Day, the day when we remember our Protestant roots, that began on October 31, 1517, when a monk named Martin Luther nailed a document to the door of the chapel at Wittenberg University, listing 95 ways that he believed the medieval Roman Catholic church had strayed from scripture and the faith “that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.”[1]

So as we approach the celebration of our Protestant beginnings, we have been looking at Paul’s letters to the Philippians and to the Thessalonians to see what life was like for the earliest Christians in the first European churches.  By examining the beginning of the Christian church, we can measure for ourselves whether or not we have grown in the “faith once for all entrusted to God’s holy people”, or strayed from that same faith; and whether or not we know what we believe well enough to face adversity when it comes.

The key things we’ve learned regarding our response to the Gospel message is that we should work toward sharing the same humble mindset as Jesus and become servants to all, because nothing we own or achieve is more valuable than the gift of faith and coming to know Christ more intimately; that having the same mindset as Jesus brings with it the same opposition that Jesus was met with, because the message of Jesus Christ is countercultural; and when Christians start to live out those beliefs there is often a personal cost. 

With regard to living together in a Christian community, we’ve learned that wherever there are people, conflict is inevitable, but that leaders need to be clear in their understanding and likeminded in their goals.

And with regard to our witness, we’ve learned that the whole world is watching our behavior, and that we have a responsibility to ensure that the ethics we ascribe to, and the Jesus we model, is as true to the “faith once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” as we can manage in our time.

When Timothy brought his report on the Thessalonians back to Paul in Athens, he must have told him that in Paul’s absence that there were “little foxes with flaming tails”[2] running through the struggling church.  When I say “little foxes with flaming tails,” it’s taken from the story of Samson in the book of Judges.  Samson wanted to take revenge on his Philistine enemies, so he caught 300 foxes and tied their tails together in pairs.  Then he tied a burning torch to each pair of tails and set them loose to run through the Philistine grain fields, to burn up the crop.  So to say that the church was being attacked by “little foxes with flaming tails” means that Paul’s enemies in Thessalonica – and there were many – were working together to destroy the church by setting doubts in the minds of the new Christians, about Paul’s reputation, the worth of their new faith and the cost to their personal lives.  They were being distracted from standing shoulder-to-shoulder and contending for the faith, because they were so busy putting out fires.     

So in this part of his letter, Paul turns to pointing out that while he, Timothy and Silas lived among the Thessalonians, they had spoken God’s word to them boldly, even though they’d known they would attract trouble.

One of the ways attorneys, judges and juries determine who is telling the truth in court is when a witness testifies in a way that works against his or her own self-interest.  Under the protection of the 5^th amendment to the United States Constitution no one can be forced testify against themselves – the criminal burden of proof is always on the prosecutors, and criminal defendants are protected from self-incrimination.  So when a criminal defendant waives his 5^th amendment rights and testifies to his activities with regard to a crime, in spite of the possible consequences, that testimony carries great weight with regard to its value as truth.

This is what Paul is doing – he’s telling the Thessalonians that before the missionary team came to them, they got beaten up and thrown in jail in Philippi for preaching the gospel; and that even though they knew it was going to cause them trouble again in Thessalonica, they preached the same message again, loudly and boldly, not beating around the bush, or being in any way sneaky.  Because Paul, Timothy and Silas were willing to bring the wrath of the Thessalonian establishment down on their heads – and they did – so therefore, the church should believe in the integrity of the message they preached.

And then Paul gives two reasons for the missionary team’s motivation for being willing to put themselves in harm’s way like that:  first, they weren’t trying to please people, they were instead trying to please God; and second, they love the people as parents love their own children.

I know a lot of people watch a whole host of popular television preachers, and some of those preachers are better than others.  Some of them preach a little Jesus and spend a lot of time asking you to send them a lot of money so they can send you a prayer cloth.  Others preach almost nothing except that God wants you to be rich and healthy, and if you want them to show you how, send them some more money.  Some are nothing more than motivational speakers.  They want you to buy their book.  The way Paul would view them is the same as he wrote he viewed the preachers that were flushed out during one of his imprisonments, who were boosting themselves at his expense.  He wrote that there were “[Some who] preach Christ insincerely, out of selfish ambition, supposing they can make trouble for me…(and then he goes on to say,) But what does it matter?  The important thing is that…whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached.” [3]

And here he contrasts himself and his friends, by pointing out that they never cared about popularity and they never asked for money for themselves, they never freeloaded.  And because they didn’t care about being popular, and weren’t worried about keeping their jobs, again, this is evidence of the truth of their message:  they didn’t have to preach any of the things they did. 

This is the reason that underlies why Presbyterian ministers are members of the presbytery instead of being members of the church.  It’s also the reason that Presbyterian ministers are called by God and affirmed by the presbytery and the church – instead of being hired by the church.  Ministers are paid by the church, because as Jesus said when he sent out the seventy-two missionaries, “The worker deserves his pay.”[4]  But the presbyteries set the minister’s minimum wage, so that if a congregation disagrees with the preacher’s message, a congregation is prevented from “muzzling the ox who is treading out the grain.”[5]

I’ve been speaking of clergy, but the same is also true for every believer – we must all live and speak to please God, regardless of the earthly consequences.  The late preacher Adrian Rogers said, “It is better to be divided by truth than to be united in error. It is better to speak the truth that hurts, and then heals, than falsehood that comforts, then kills. It is not love, and it is not friendship, if we fail to declare the whole counsel of God.  It is better to be hated for telling the truth than to be loved for telling a lie.  It is impossible to find anyone in the Bible who was a power for God who did not have enemies and was not hated.  It's better to stand alone with the truth than to be wrong with a multitude.  It is better ultimately to succeed with truth than to temporarily succeed with a lie." 

As to their second motivation, Paul wrote that the evangelists had come to love the Thessalonians very, very much.  So much that they became completely vulnerable with those they were trying to reach with their message – if your Bible says they were “gentle” among the Thessalonians, what it means is that they became as harmless and vulnerable as orphaned infants among them.  Their hearts were an open book. 

 At the same time, they spoke to the converts in the same loving and encouraging way that good fathers speak to their own children, sharing their insights and showing them how to walk in a way that is becoming to God and attractive to others.

All throughout this portion of the letter, Paul uses the words of family to express the relationship among the new believers and between the evangelists and the converts:  The evangelists became like orphaned infants, they were like fathers and mothers to those they loved like their own children; and those children were also their own brothers and sisters.  This has been the understanding of the church since the beginning:  if God is our Father in heaven, then that says something about the us – we who are Christians are the children of God. And if we are children of God, then we are brothers and sisters to one another.  And if Jesus is the Son of God, Jesus is our brother, too.

This is just a brief explanation of what underlies the meaning of the words we toss off as “church family.”  For the early church – and for the church in many parts of the world today – to become a Christian meant to lose your family ties. 

In India, Hindus are forbidden by national law, from converting to Christianity; and in 1999, an Australian missionary named Graham Stains and his 10 and 8 year old sons were burned alive in their car outside their church in Orissa, India.  Sharia law, which is the government law wherever Islam is the majority religion, forbids conversion from Islam to Christianity on pain of death.  I’ve told you before about Yoursef Nadharkhani who is still in an Iranian prison for what his judges say was his conversion from Islam to Christianity.  Buddhists in Japan, India and Burma actively persecute Christians.  In Israel, any attempt by a gentile to proselytize a Jew away from his or her faith carries a five year prison term.  Frequently, when a Jew converts to Christianity, his or her family treats them as though they have died, including going into mourning.

It is a terrible cost to lose one’s family under any circumstances – and how wonderful for the Thessalonian Christians whose pagan or Jewish families had rejected them, to hear the words of Psalm 27: “Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me”; and the words of Jesus, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”[6]  When you are without a mother, what a joy to know that the Godly women in your church will become as mothers to you.  What a relief to the fatherless to know that Godly men of the church will protect and mentor you.  What a comfort to the lonely and the widowed and the divorced to know that your brothers and sisters in Christ will include you and care for you when you have no one else.  We as a church must cultivate the practice of valuing those who are our mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and children because of the suffering and sacrifice of the flesh and blood of Christ, as much as we value those who are our own flesh and blood, because this pleases God.

We have to cultivate it, because it isn’t easy for us to see people who don’t look like us or speak like us or eat or smell or behave like us, as members of the same family.  God understands this, but God also expects us to put our fears aside, throw out our prejudices, and become as harmless and vulnerable before them as orphaned infants; as nurturing as their mothers, as encouraging as their fathers and as loyal as their brothers and sisters, whether their families are here or far away. 

Jesus left his family to become a helpless infant among us, to nurture us and encourage us and as for loyalty, to lay down his life for us.  Jesus experienced the pain of being rejected by his Father when he took all of the sins of the whole world upon himself for our sake.

This is the humble servant Jesus we are to model to the watching world.  It’s what God expects of us; and this will please God as nothing else will.   

     We are continuing to spend a few weeks in Paul’s letters to two of the churches that he founded in Europe – his “home church” at Philippi and for another month or so we’ll look at the church down the road in Thessalonica.  The letter to the Thessalonians is probably the earliest Christian writing in the New Testament – it was written before the gospels – so if we put the New Testament in chronological order, the first letter to the Thessalonians would be the first book, written nearly 10 years before the first gospel.

     To help you orient yourself, remember that Philippi is a community of the Roman Empire located on a heavily-travelled road called the Via Egnate, and Thessalonica is about 100 miles from Philippi on the same road.  Thessalonica was located on a hill in northern Greece on the Eastern side of the Mediterranean Sea.  It was an important seaport and had a naval station.  If Philippi was an agricultural economy a lot like Guymon, maybe Thessalonica could be compared to Norfolk, Virginia. 

     Thessalonica was a provincial capital where the provincial governor lived.  Like most seaports, it had a lot of diversity – you could go to the market or the tavern or an inn and find people and products from all over the world.  Like all communities with a global connection – and in that respect, I suppose they would be like Guymon or any other city coping with the stresses of living with multiple cultures – the people who entered Greece at Philippi also brought their values and their religions with them. 

     Thessalonica was a home to two mystery-religion cults, the cult of Dionysius – the Romans called Dionysius by the name Bacchus – who was the god of wine and wild orgies, a god of chaos and non-conformists; and Orpheus, who was worshipped as the god of medicine, poetry and song; both of which were fertility cults.  These gods established a culture in Thessalonica as a sort of hybrid of Las Vegas and San Francisco – good times, good fun and plenty of free sex.

     Just because it was the earliest letter written to a church, that doesn’t mean that Thessalonica was the first church founded by Paul, it’s just his earliest writing.  Luke tells us in the book of Acts that Paul and Silas came to Thessalonica shortly after founding the church at Philippi.  It may be that the church at Philippi thought of the Thessalonican church as a daughter congregation, because they sent them financial support more than once while Paul was there.

     Luke writes that when the missionary team of Paul, Silas and Timothy first came to Thessalonica, they went to the synagogue and began to teach about Jesus and several prominent Jews came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus and that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.  And just like any religious institution, when the power of the leaders is threatened, the leaders of the synagogue became jealous. 

     The synagogue leaders stirred up some loyalists into a mob, and they headed for the house of a man named Jason, where the evangelists had been staying.  They didn’t find Paul, Silas or Timothy at home, but they did find Jason, and they dragged him and some of his friends out of his house and brought them to the magistrate.  They told the officials that “[the men] who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here…and Jason has welcomed them into his house.”  They went on to charge that the missionaries were defying Caesar by saying that there is another king named Jesus.  The officials made Jason and his friends post bond, and they let them go – we don’t know if they ever went to trial, or if the charges were dropped when Paul and Silas left town – but Paul, Silas and Timothy left town that night.

     They went down the road to a sleepy little town called Berea, where the people were more open to the gospel.  When the Bereans heard that the Thessalonian Jews were coming after them, they sent Paul off to Athens, and Silas and Timothy stayed behind. 

     Paul tried on two occasions to get back to Thessalonica, but both times something hindered him – whether it was the Enemy blocking his way or the Holy Spirit redirecting him, we aren’t told; so Paul sent Timothy to Thessalonica to bring him a report on how the church was coming along.  Timothy brought Paul a good report, and this letter is Paul’s response, beginning with a long series of thanksgiving prayers for the way that the Thessalonian Christians were standing steadfast in their new faith, even though they had experienced antagonism from the local religious leaders among the Jews and the pagan cults, as well as the government-required Emperor cult that worshipped Caesar as a god. 

      In our time we complain that the culture is encroaching on the church, and lament how difficult it is for Christians to live lives that remain distinct from the surrounding culture – but the Thessalonian Christians were truly countercultural in a way that a straight stick highlights the bent stick.  We might complain about an athletic association that schedules games on Sunday mornings, employers who ask us to work on Sunday or teachers who assign homework on Wednesday evenings – but the Thessalonians were attacked in a much more holistic way. 

     We know why the Jews would have persecuted them, but the adherents to the Bacchus cult would have objected to the Christian characterization of Jesus Christ as the offering for the sin of the world; the divine one whose blood paid the sin debt for humans; and as such is the liberator of the world from the curse of its oppression by sin; and because of this, human beings can have peace with God the creator of the universe, and need no longer live in fear. In addition to that, the Christians now believed that they were empowered by the Holy Spirit and that they would live forever in eternity.

      Those who worshipped Bacchus claimed that it was wine that liberated people from their self-consciousness and oppression and fear; that it was Bacchus who empowered his followers and that the blood offerings made to Bacchus by his worshipers enabled communication with the dead. 

     Those who worshipped Jesus now believed the testimony of the disciples that Jesus was sovereign over all creation – that he walked on water, stilled the storm, changed water into wine, fed the multitudes and rose from the dead.  They believed he had cast out demons and healed the sick.

     Orpheus worshippers claimed that it was he who charmed all creatures through his music and singing, and that he could divert the course of rivers.  They believed he created medicine, and that he was one of the few Greek heroes who had power over Hades.

     And finally, instead of worshipping Caesar as king, they now named Jesus as their sovereign Lord. 

     Do you see the problem?  The Thessalonian Christians had to indeed turn their whole world upside down in order to believe that Jesus is God, Lord over all creation, King, Savior, Priest and Healer.  When they managed to get their own minds around the fact that everything they had been taught to believe up to that point was wrong; and that changing their allegiance from Caesar to Jesus carried a penalty at the point of a sword; and that not only did they need God to transform their lives by renewing their minds, but in having their lives transformed and renewed, they were clearly saying to everyone they knew, everyone they did business with, the people they used to worship with; everyone they knew – and some of their relatives - who got drunk every night at the temple of Bacchus and slept with a temple prostitute; friends they loved who were sick and sacrificed to Orpheus for healing; the man in the market they used to chat with while buying meat from him that  had been sacrificed to the pagan gods; their children’s former friends, who now made fun of their children or shunned them – to become a Thessalonian Christian must have been as life-changing as falling through Alice’s rabbit hole.

            Because of this – because of their suffering in the midst of enormous cultural temptation and religious and social persecution people were talking about the Christians, not only in the city of Thessalonica, but on the ships at the docks, and in the temples at their feasts, and up and down the Via Egnatia as they traveled through other towns.  Everybody knew what Thessalonica was like.  Everybody knew what the Thessalonican Christians would be facing.  And everybody was amazed.  The Thessalonians became legendary throughout Greece.  How could they have changed so completely?  How did they change the habits of a lifetime?  What is it that keeps them hanging on while they live with such constant torment?  Paul wrote that he didn’t need to tell anybody else about the Thessalonian church – that wherever he traveled, people told him about the Thessalonians.

    Paul goes on to validate their election to salvation by listing the qualities exhibited by the Christians in Thessalonica – he can see their good works, that are initiated by their faith; he points out their labors of love that are the fruit of their faith; and he encourages them in their endurance that is inspired by the hope they have – not in Bacchus, Orpheus or Caesar, but in our Lord Jesus Christ, the true and living God for whom we wait. 

     Paul commends them too, for becoming models to the other Christians throughout Greece, disciples for others to imitate, because they are the real deal.  Our text says that they became models by imitating Jesus in enduring suffering, and by imitating Paul, who had lived among them to show them what life in Christ was like, who showed them what he calls “his gospel” – the gospel of his life.

      And this brings us to the point of application for us today.  In the Thessalonian culture, where there were many choices of gods, worldviews and temptations, choosing any one of them or all of them, was socially acceptable.  The only one not socially acceptable was Christianity, and so they were persecuted.  Today’s church finds itself in a similar situations, with a culture with an even greater number of gods, worldviews and temptations, all of which are socially acceptable, including Christianity, to one degree or another.  But we are not persecuted because unlike first century Thessalonica, nobody cares. 

     When a first century Christian proclaimed Truth counter to the culture, the Christians were killed.  In Western Christianity of the 21^st century, a Christian who proclaims Truth is not killed – why bother if nothing really matters and everything is acceptable?  But we are laughed at by the culture – or accused of being unloving, narrow minded bigots - and that, sometimes even by the church, as it seeks to be relevant, and God help us, likeable.

     The pressure to conform to the world in order to be liked – in order to be seen as smart, progressive, inclusive and affirming – is a more subtle pressure than the Thessalonians faced, but it is at least as pernicious, for it is the kind of pressure that does not destroy from without, but from within.    

     It has to do with what Jesus – and what ethic – we choose to model; and as I said, if there are dozens of “flavors” of Christianity to choose from, how do we know that the One we’re imitating is the original, and not some faded copy so far removed from the original that we can barely make out the features?  How do we know that the ethic we’re imitating is the ethic of Jesus?  How do we know if the ethic of Paul – or Peter or James for that matter – squares with the ethic of Jesus?  And if the world is telling us that it doesn’t really matter anyway, why worry about proclaiming the truth, why worry about what model and ethic we’re imitating – why put ourselves through it? 

     The revelation of God – how we know the Jesus we’re modeling is the God in Christ and not god in Jesus-the-good-teacher or the Mormon Jesus, or the Jesus knock-off of the day, is the three-fold Word of God.  The only thing we are given is the Word of God as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, the Word of God as revealed in the Scripture; and the Word of God as revealed in proclamation – preaching – based on the written Word of God and inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. 

      It’s as though you had a circle with three arrows, each pointing to the one ahead of it on its curve:  The Old Testament are just words on a page without the event of the birth of the person of Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ is just another good teacher without the words on the pages of Scripture that attest to his divinity.  The words of a preacher are just a speech unless it’s a proclamation of the life of Christ attested to in the Scripture.  But the words of a preacher become the very Word of God when those words are based on the Scripture and enlivened by the Holy Spirit that resides in the preacher and in the hearer, and only insofar as it is a Word of God that proclaims Jesus Christ.

     Imitating anything less than that Jesus will not sustain you, will not empower you to endure until the day of His coming, and will not enable you to stand in the Day of Judgment.  That is the Jesus that Paul told the Thessalonians (and us) about - that is the Jesus who is our hope and who will rescue us from the wrath of God – that Jesus only, and no other.

     Let’s pray:

     Father God, you have shown us what is good, and have given us your Holy Word in your Son, and in your Holy Scripture; and have given us your Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds and enable us to understand your written Word.  You have warned us that “whoever causes one of these little ones who believes I me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.”  Lord, may it never be.  Make Jesus real enough to us through your word and your Spirit, and make our lives stressful enough, that in our endurance and our love and our hope, we too will become legendary Christians.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen. 

This is our last week in Paul’s letter to “Paul’s home church” in Philippi.  I call it Paul’s home church because although he was not a native son of Philippi, these were the people with whom he shared a likeminded-ness about Christian faith and practice, and the Philippians were the people who supported his mission with their finances as well as their prayers.  They visited him in jail and brought items for his support and comfort. 

Like all churches, the Christians of Philippi had to occasionally deal with conflict.  In the beginning of his letter, Paul has sort of “walked around” this issue of conflict, writing in general terms, plowing the ground so to speak – rather than naming the conflict directly.  This is a good strategy for almost every disagreement – we should clearly identify the underlying issues from all possible angles before we try to deal with the people involved, and not react with a knee-jerk approach.  We should think things through.

In the Old Testament, Nehemiah was famous for this approach.  He was living as a Jew in exile in Persia when he heard that the remnant of the Hebrew people who remained in Jerusalem were in “trouble and disgrace,” and that the walls of the city had broken down.  When he learned of this, Nehemiah fasted and prayed for several days and then presented his case to the Persian king, who granted him permission to go to Jerusalem and see what could be done about it.  When Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem, he didn’t stride into the city gates with an arrogant “fixer’s” attitude; and he didn’t make speeches that laid blame at the feet of anyone in particular.  Instead, he spent a few days quietly assembling a small group of men who rode around the city with him at night, examining the problem, inspecting the walls, and discussing how rebuilding might be approached.

What Nehemiah did physically, Paul has done on paper.  He has heard of the conflict in Philippi from his visitor from that congregation, Epaphroditus; he began by reminding the believers in Philippi that it is their unified support that has helped him advance the gospel, even though he remained in chains in Caesar’s prison; he refocused them on their purpose as a church, as God’s people, and set out a vision of a future that is greater than the trials they were presently experiencing. 

Then, in light of this “higher vision,” he tells them that they should look to Jesus as their example – that they should become servants to one another – so that an individual’s or special interest group’s promotion of self-interest doesn’t affect the unity of the church.  He bluntly tells them to “knock off their complaining” and instead to act as mature Christians, thinking about what lies ahead and concentrating on attaining the goal at the end of the race of faith.

And after laying this groundwork and setting their vision, Paul moves on to name the problem:  A disagreement between two important female leaders in the church, Euodia and Syntyche.   Think about this for a moment:  first, it is important to name the problem.  Our ordinary preference for self-preservation and conflict avoidance most often leads us to ignore a problem and hope it will go away.  Sometimes we allow our own penchant for sinful behavior to deter us from the high ground of calling something the sin that it is.  Sometimes we don’t want to embarrass people by pointing out that what they are doing is not only self-destructive, but destructive of the body of Christ.  Whatever our motivation for disengagement, this kind of denial and inaction only allows conflict and destructive behaviors to calcify, and our silence implies our affirmation.

Second, remember that this letter is being read by Epahproditus to the whole Philippian congregation together in open worship.  How would you like to be Euodia or Syntyche, probably sitting on opposite sides of the room, maybe surrounded by your various supporters, thinking that you can get in and out of the house without speaking to each other, and then hear your name read out loud as someone who is an example of the type of conflict that Paul is counseling against?  I would die a thousand deaths! 

Some commentators even suggest that the woman named Lydia whom Luke wrote about in Acts 16,  might be one of the women mentioned in this letter.  Lydia was a large city and Thyatira was a neighborhood of Lydia where purple cloth was made.  Because of this, when we read about Lydia in the Greek version of the Acts verse, we can’t tell if it’s a woman named Lydia who is from Thyatira, or if some woman named Lydia just “sells purple cloth [made in] Thyatira.” 

 “Lydia,” then might be more of a Greek surname.  For example, someone might be known as “Euodia from Lydia” the way we might say, “Edna from Guymon.”   But regardless of whether one of these women is a founder of this congregation or some other leader, the women are Paul’s “co-workers” who have “contended at [his] side in the cause of the gospel.”  

It is unlikely that Paul is concerned that a couple of the church’s leaders are disagreeing about something inconsequential, like the color of the carpet in the sanctuary – it is more likely that it is a more serious disagreement that is causing significant upheaval within the congregation, resulting in major repercussions, that has the congregation taking up sides and threatening the unity of the church.  If you have ever been part of such a division within a congregation, you know that it is very stressful and exceedingly painful. 

Ordinary conflict resulting from life together in a congregation is to be expected, but division in leadership is quite serious and to be avoided whenever possible.  It doesn’t mean that leaders have to agree on everything, but they are expected to be “likeminded,” sharing the same vision and the same goals and using the same sources, guides and authorities in their decision-making, leadership and teaching.  Leaders should all tow the ropes of the church in the same direction.

It is a lack of this “likemindedness” – a lack of shared sources, guides, authorities and vision among the leaders of the Protestant church of the last fifty years that has brought about the serious upheaval in the Western church that we are experiencing today. 

            Clarity about these sources, guides and authorities have always been a hallmark of the church.  Reformed Christians wrote Confessions – statements of orthodoxy forged by Christ-followers living at particularly challenging times in history.  Believers wrote these Confessions to help them distill their common understanding of right belief and practice, in order to further the unity of the church and advance the gospel during confusing times or times of persecution. 

For example, the Scots Confession sets out the marks of the “true church” - the way we can know and recognize if a body of worshippers is a true church of Christ, or a cult or some other sect.  According to this Confession, the ‘’true church” is "where the Scriptures are rightly preached, the sacraments are rightly administered and discipline is uprightly ministered..."   

When leaders become divided on what it means to “rightly preach the Scripture,” or “rightly administer the Sacraments,” (for example, baptizing in the name of “Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” rather than, “Father, Son, Holy Spirit and Mother Wisdom,” as I found on one church’s website this week); or when church leaders  fail to “uprightly minister discipline,” by ignoring, tolerating and even celebrating and affirming sin in their midst, it is not just a matter of two viewpoints “agreeing to disagree” – rather, the identity and the very existence of the body of Christ is threatened.  Likemindedness and peace between leaders is critical.

In his absence, Paul asks his “true companion,” Syzugus, to take the initiative and help these leaders in Philippi reconcile and make peace between them.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called God’s children.”[1]  Peacemakers are those who out of their love for God do everything they can for the good of everyone they meet.   We are all called to be peacemakers, but those of you who have been part of this congregation for a long while know those among you who are especially gifted as peacemakers, and this is the kind of person that Paul is calling on to help settle this dispute. 

Having made this point, though, a peacemaker is not someone who lacks all conviction, tolerates everything and gives all ground in order to maintain peace at any cost.  A big reason that well-intentioned people don’t always get along is because they care.  They care passionately about many things – their families and friends who are lost and friends who are saved; they care about the church and about the eternal truths of the Christian faith.  I agree with a Presbyterian friend who says he “would die for the truth of Scripture and the truth we know as Jesus Christ.  Give me a sword, and I’ll stand for the ‘faith once delivered’ and the precious Christian heritage that God has graciously given me.

“And therein is the problem.  The only places where one is willing to fight are the places where one cares.  And the more one cares, the more one is willing to fight and die.”[2]

A second reason we can’t agree is ego.  Remember the missionary partnership between Paul and Barnabas?  Steve Brown points out that in Acts 11, there was a revival in Antioch and the church in Jerusalem sent Barnabas to check it out.  Barnabas became overwhelmed with the work and sent for Paul to come and help him as his assistant. For the next two chapters, they are referred to as “Barnabas and Paul.”

Then, Paul was supernaturally anointed while on Cyprus, and from then on, leadership is reversed and the Bible refers to them not as “Barnabas and Paul” but as “Paul and Barnabas.”  This continues until the point when Paul and Barnabas have their major blowup over whether or not to take John Mark on their next missionary journey.  From that point on, Paul and Barnabas could no longer work together.  Whatever John Mark may or may not have done to set Paul off, the issue was not John Mark – the issue was ego.  We don’t know if Paul lorded it over Barnabas or if Barnabas was bent out of shape, but the issue was ego.  Look for self-interest and you’ll know where the problem is.

A third reason we can’t get along is that we can’t agree.  We lack trust in a sovereign God who works in process to bring glory to himself and blessing to his people.[3] 

 We do know that John Mark left Paul on the first missionary journey, and Paul refused to give John Mark a second chance.  Barnabas insisted on taking John Mark with them, so Paul went off with Silas and Barnabas went in the other direction with John Mark.

The story has a good ending – it takes almost ten years, but in his letter to the Colossians, Paul refers to John Mark as his “fellow laborer” and in 2 Timothy, Paul tells Timothy to bring John Mark with him because “John Mark is very useful in ministry.”  Paul had been wrong and Barnabas had been right.  John Mark is an illustration of second chances…and Paul, who repeatedly came to his senses, didn’t trust God enough to see that God could do the same for John Mark.

Our self-interest and self-preservation brings us into conflict with others who are equally concerned for themselves.  Without God, we each see the world in a different way.  When we gain the world’s peace, it is a selfish peace.  The world’s peace is relief from violence – but eliminate the violence and we are still left with a life of strife, decay and death, just minus the violence.  Once our survival is assured, this selfish peace degenerates into spiritual dullness, where we are no longer sensitive to the things of God and the welfare of others.

Jesus said that the peace He gives is not the same peace the world gives;[4] His peace transcends understanding, and Paul says, rejoice in it.  When you receive the peace of God – if you know you’ve been loved by God – then it’s surprising how much you can in turn love people who disagree with you.

Three hundred and fifty years ago, Thomas Watson was a Puritan minister with strong Presbyterian leanings, who was excommunicated and imprisoned because of his dissenting views from the English Anglican church.  He wrote, “God the Son is called the Prince of Peace.  He came into the world with a song of peace:  ‘On earth peace…’ He went out of the world with a legacy of peace:  ‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.’  Christ’s earnest prayer was for peace; He prayed that His people might be one.  Christ not only prayed for peace, he bled for peace: ‘Having made peace through the blood of his cross.’ He died not only to make peace between God and humans, but between man and man.  Christ suffered on the cross, that He might cement Christians together with His blood; as He prayed for peace, so he paid for peace.”

            And so says Paul:  “The Lord is near…in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

This is our third installment in what will be four weeks in Paul’s letter to the Philippian Church.  Our first week we wandered around the town and got to know the people in Paul’s “home church”; last week Paul taught us that when there is conflict in the church, we should look to Jesus as our example of humility, remembering that Jesus had emptied himself in order to become a servant to all – and that he accomplished this obedience as a human being and so can we.

This week Paul reminds us that before he met Jesus on the Damascus Road, he lived a life that was outwardly a success.   Then, as now, people put a lot of stock in credentials – they want to know how you were raised, where you went to school, whether or not you have advanced degrees, who you know – “who’s your daddy?”  And you’ll remember that in most of Paul’s letters, he spent considerable time reminding the churches that just because he came along after the Twelve disciples who were chosen by Jesus to walk with him before the resurrection, that he, too, had seen Jesus in the flesh after the resurrection, that he too, had been chosen by Christ to be an apostle to the Gentiles.  

We think that what was happening in Philippi is that the people Paul calls, “barking dogs” and “religious busybodies,” were trying to convince the church to keep the letter of the Jewish law.  So here, Paul doesn’t remind them that he is an apostle, too, like he did in his other letters – here, Paul reminds them that if you want to keep score on who was the better Jew, that they couldn’t beat him.  When he says that he was “circumcised on the eighth day,” he is pointing out that even his parents helped him keep the law from his infancy.  He is able to say that he is a Jew from the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin.  By the time of Paul, most Jews had lost track of their genealogical records, but he knew his family tree back to Benjamin, the youngest son of Jacob.  When he wrote that he was “a Hebrew of Hebrews,” he meant that even though he and his parents were Roman citizens, they spoke Hebrew at home, a language many Jews lost when they immigrated to another country.  He was a Pharisee, a member of the strictest moral sect of Judaism.  Paul was no complacent pew-sitter Jew.  He was a diligent, dedicated, active Pharisee – so active, that he undertook to eradicate the Christian sect from Judaism. 

When he says that he was a persecutor of the church, he meant that he quit his day job as a tentmaker, got himself appointed as an envoy from the High Priest in Jerusalem, and then used his personal resources to travel around the Middle East looking for Jewish Christ-followers, whom he believed were desecrating Judaism.  His charge was to kidnap them and bring them back to Jerusalem to be tried for blasphemy, a crime punishable by death.  There is no direct evidence that Paul killed anyone himself, but he was certainly present at complicit in the stoning death of Stephen in Jerusalem; and as the ranking official in charge of the contingent of men sent out under his command by the high priest, would certainly have been present – or perhaps even ordered – the deaths of others.  When he stood before King Agrippa, he testified that he put many Christians in prison and voted for the death penalty.[1]  The Book of Acts records that after his conversion experience, before he came to be trusted by the church, that the Christians called him “the destroyer.”[2]  Paul was a really good Jew.

But then he goes on to say that all of those things that he used to be so proud of – all of the things he’d been taught from birth were the most important, valuable things; all of what he thought he had going for him  – he now regarded them as garbage.  Some of your translations may say, “rubbish,” but the sense of the Greek word that Paul used is manure, “dog dung.”

Could we do that?  Can you imagine taking stock of all of the things that you would say today are evidence of your success in life – your family tree, your education, your career or business, your house, your cool car, maybe you have a nice diamond engagement ring, or you’ve inherited a big piece of property, or accumulated a nice portfolio.  Maybe you have pictures of yourself standing with a governor or a congressman, or even shaking hands with a president.  Think of all the things you are most proud of, the things you surround yourself with when you want to feel good about yourself – can you imagine calling it all dog dung?   Saying so is one thing, but can you imagine actually believing that it is all dog dung? Could you walk away from all of it – not just give some of it away, or convince yourself that if you really had to, you could give it up, (but thank God you don’t have to yet) – could you really do it? 

And if you could do it, what would it take to make you do it?  You know, I can preach this stuff all day long, but I can’t change what you value; only you can do that.  I was talking with a friend yesterday and remembered a boy that I had in truancy court once.  He was about 14 years old and came from Eastern Europe – I think Romania.  He’d been absent from school and was spending his time running numbers for a local bookie.  When I told him he had to go back to school, he said that his English wasn’t good enough to pass his English class and that his parents couldn’t help him because they didn’t speak English at all.  So I told him to come by the court every day after school and I would help him with his homework for awhile.  I also called all of his teachers and explained his situation and what my plan was, and got them to promise that if he turned in all of his work, and if it earned a passing grade of 70, that they would pass him for the course.

So we worked on his homework and turned it all in and that semester he passed.  The next semester he was back in truancy court.  I was frustrated with him and asked him why he’d thrown away all of the momentum he’d worked so hard for last semester.  He said that he made good money running numbers and that he didn’t make any money when he was in school.  He wanted to make money – that was what he valued – and I couldn’t make him value education.  His horizons were too limited, and he wanted instant gratification.  He couldn’t see that he was hanging onto dog dung and missing out on the real prize.

And that’s the point.  Do you only value what you can count?  Albert Einstein said that, “Not everything that can be counted, counts; and not everything that counts can be counted.”  When you add it all up, does the sum total zero when you measure it against “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus as [your Lord]?   Do you get that you could lose everything tomorrow:  Your family, your business, your portfolio, your home, your status, your reputation – but that the one thing you can’t lose is Jesus?  The one thing you can’t accomplish is Jesus?  The one thing you can’t earn is Jesus?  Do you count all the other stuff, but take Jesus for granted?

You know, we tend to think of dramatic conversion stories as occurring in the lives of people who were leading really junky, awful lives – people who were prostitutes and addicts; people who are living lives that they can’t climb out of because they’ve sunk so low. 

But Paul’s biography is different – he had a great life he was proud of.  So he’s not talking to junkies and bums and losers – he’s talking to people like you and me, the people who really don’t have any particular, pressing need in our life for a Savior.  I’ll be there are even people in town who’d think they’d have it made if they could be like you.  Comfortable people are the hardest to reach, because they think that they’ve already attained the perfection that’s possible in this life, and to that they’ve added a self-complacency that says “Since Christ has saved me, there’s no need for any further effort”?  Do you think that you are now in full possession of the Christian life and nothing more is required of you but to remain as you are?  Paul wasn’t under this delusion. 

He said, “Not that I have already obtained [all of the things found in Christ]…or have already arrived at the goal…but I press on” to obtain the prize that awaits at the end of this race of life.  He said that he “forgets what is behind him” and “strains toward what is ahead”: he stays focused on the goal, he doesn’t turn his head to look behind him to see where he’s been, or what he’s done, or who is gaining on him – that would slow him down.  He wants the prize of knowing Christ, knowing the power of his resurrection, participating in his suffering and finally gaining resurrection from the dead. 

There is a young man in Iran who is right now forgetting what is behind him and straining on toward what is ahead.  His name is Yousef Nadarkhani, and he is 35 years old.  His wife’s name is Fatemah and he is father to Daniel, aged 9 and Yoel, aged 7.  Yousef is a Christian pastor who leads a house church network in the city of Rasht, a city about the size of Amarillo, in the Caspian mountains of Northern Iran. Yousef was arrested last October because he went to his children’s school to object to the school requiring Christian students to study the Muslim Qur’an.

He was sent to the Lakan prison and spent his first month in solitary confinement, charged with apostacy – the renouncing of the faith of Islam.  The thing is, Yousef was never a Muslim and he did not convert to Christianity as an adult.  He has been a Christian since he was a child.  He was tried and when he was convicted, the court said that it was because he had to have been a convert because his parents were Muslims.  They sentenced him to death in June, and this past Monday, September 26, his appeal failed. 

Under Sharia law, an apostate has three days to recant to avoid execution – to take back his blasphemy by returning to Islam.  He was been brought to court on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and each time he was asked to recant.  During the last hearing on Wednesday, he responded, “You ask me to recant.  Recant means to return.  What do you wish me to return to?  The blasphemy that I was in before Christ?”  The judges responded, “To the religion of your ancestors, Islam.”  Youself replied, “I cannot.”

The death sentence can now be carried out at any time.  Christians all around the world have been appealing to the Iranian ambassadors in their countries to intervene.  Billy Graham’s son, Franklin Graham, issued a statement asking where the outrage was in the United Nations for this violation of human rights.  On Friday the State Department issued its statement condemning the judgment and the White House issued a statement calling for his release.  In response to this worldwide outcry, the Iranian press has reported that Yousef’s charge and conviction have been changed from apostacy to rape.

What has Yousef had to “count as dog dung”?  When he counted the cost of following Jesus, what added up to zero for him were his church, his wife, his children and his life – they are the things that he counts  for nothing compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ and straining on toward the goal, the prize, the upward call.   Matthew's Gospel tells us, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 

This week pray that God will remember Yousef and that in his mercy God will work a miracle on his behalf; that he will be released and restored to his family and church as a witness to the power of God.  And pray that if it is not in God’s plan for Yousef’s life to be spared, that he will continue to face his death in such a way that his death will also be a witness to the power of God in resurrection.

On this World Communion Sunday, it’s appropriate that all Christians should stand shoulder to shoulder and recognize our dependence upon God as God comes to us in Jesus Christ.  We are all, as Christians, dependent upon the broken and poured-out life of our Savior for the sustenance of our souls.

Today we stand with our fellow Christians, brothers and sisters around the world,

• those who worship freely and openly and those who worship in hiding,
• those who walk freely and those who have been imprisoned for their faith,
• those who sing aloud and those who, out of fear, dare not raise their voices,
• those who laugh and those who weep,

We stand together with all of our sisters and brothers and we declare and celebrate our dependence upon the one we call Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.

This is our second week in Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi.  We spent considerable time last week learning about Philippi, the kind of community it was, the kind of church it was, and the struggle that the church had to deal with in the larger Roman culture.  If you weren’t here last week and you’d like to know those details, I’ll remind you that you can get a paper copy of the sermon on the literature table by the office door; or you can go to the church’s website and either link to a readable on-line text or to an audio recording of the sermon.

The short version of what we learned is that Philippi is surprisingly like Guymon – about the same size, situated on a windy plain, with a similar agricultural economy and similar diversity; and the church at Philippi is surprisingly Presbyterian in that it was a small, but prosperous, congregation made up of teachers, business people and other professionals. 

Paul had a close and friendly relationship with this congregation – he might have considered it his “home church” – and he wrote this letter from jail to let them know that his ministry continued even though he was limited in his movement; that he wasn’t afraid and that he didn’t want them to be afraid either. 

In last week’s text, he emphasized the importance of living as good examples in the community by telling them to “Conduct [them]selves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.”  He urged them to “stand firm in one spirit, contending as one…for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose [them],” exhibiting unity in the face of enemies who would subvert the gospel.  Finally, he tells them not to “be frightened,” about what might happen to them if they continue in the faith, because for Christians, to be appointed to suffer persecution for the faith is a grace that we receive – a gift of God – in the same way that faith itself is a gift of God. 

Immediately after writing to them how they ought to conduct themselves, this week Paul begins with the word, “Therefore,” and goes on to expand on what “living a life worthy of the gospel” looks like.  

First, he tells them they should be “like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.”  It won’t do to have every individual pulling in a different direction – it will pull the church apart.  Next, he instructs them to open themselves to looking after the interests of others, before looking out for their own rights and interests.  “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.”  Be humble, not prideful or grasping.

The Christian community can’t achieve or maintain unity if individuals pursue their own courses.  Unity requires each one to share a concern for the common good because though we are many, we are one.  We do not work or witness singly, but communally.  This makes for uncomfortable reading for 21^st Century Christians who value independence and are accustomed to asserting our rights. 

Paul doesn’t declare that each Christian can do what they want, nor does he offer a list of rules and regulations to govern our thoughts and behaviors.  What he does suggest is that we can only live confident lives of faith because the gospel is constantly at work in our lives, transforming us day by day, and the presence of the God the Holy Spirit in our lives constantly working within us.

When we continue in this Spirit-inspired living, it will begin to corrode the caliche of self-interest that overlays so much of our lives.  The Spirit prompts thoughts that chisel their way through that self-interest so they can work their way out into our actions and speech towards others. [1] 

There will always be discord and conflict within the church – churches that try to turn a blind eye and avoid conflict are unhealthy places to be.  But Paul is saying that our church family is the place where life in the Spirit teaches us to deal with conflict in ways that build up rather than tear down. 

 When the good of the church, the furtherance of the gospel and love for Jesus are first in our thoughts – then we will find it easier to adopt an attitude of humility, and we will be less likely to make a big deal out of asserting our own rights.  We will take a step back from things to decide whether or not they really matter in the long run.  We will avoid ratcheting up conflicts in order to preserve the unity of the church.  We will not be the first one to take offense – that’s a huge thing. 

I urge you as your pastor:  do not look for an offense in every offhand comment, do not be someone who gets their feelings hurt because you think people in churches are supposed to be more “loving” than other people; and I would even urge you not to take offense when offense is actually intended.  It is not important or helpful for you to have the last word.  This is especially important for young people who often delight in seeing how much blood they can draw – but before we scold our children for their insensitive remarks, and the way they ratchet up conflict and drama, we would do well to remember that it is largely a skill learned from their parents. 

But if Jesus has first place in our hearts, then the welfare of the others whom Jesus loves will become important to us too.  Paul is in effect saying, “if Jesus could do it, then you can do it too.”    

To help them remember how Jesus lived, Paul draws their attention to a commonly-known hymn of the early church.  It’s as though he writes down the words of this hymn as a memory-aid for what he’s trying to teach them.  We do it today for our own children when we teach them little songs to learn the names of their body parts – “Head, shoulders, knees and toes.”   We do it every week when we sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow…” to remind ourselves of God’s benevolence towards us.  Other repetitive parts of the liturgy – like the Apostles’ Creed - help us remember other things about God that we should remember.  So here, Paul is doing the same thing:  “Remember this hymn so you can remember how you’re supposed to act toward one another.”  

            The words of the hymn say that Jesus, “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the …nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.   And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death…on a cross!”

This is how God always relates to us:  He makes the first move, He makes the first bow toward us.  All of God’s acts, blessings and delights in creating are for others.  He is God “on high” but he is never remote.  He is God “over all” but faithfully and dramatically invested in life on earth. 

In Jesus, everything God did on earth, he did in love.  God in Christ – God in his human likeness – still remains true to his divine nature, all the way to his death.  Jesus didn’t grasp for God’s power the way that Adam did.  Jesus truly manifests the image of God in the flesh.[2]

This past summer there was a television show called, “Undercover Boss.”  Each episode featured a high-ranking executive or the owner of a corporation - like Roto-Rooter, Frontier Airlines, Choice Hotels or 7-11 Stores - going undercover as an entry-level employee in their own company.  

The executives altered their appearance and assumed an alias with a fictional back-story.   They would then spend a week working “undercover,” working in various areas of their company’s operations, where they would be exposed to a series of predicaments or special problems that their employees have to deal with on a regular basis. 

While they work through these problems, they also get to know the people who work for their company, learning about their personal challenges.   At the end of their week the executives return to their corporate headquarters and resume their true identities.  At the end of each show the bosses revealed their identities to the employees they worked with and gave them a reward like a promotion or a raise.[3]

Like an “undercover boss,” God came to earth to live and work among us in the person of Jesus, in a body like ours, dealing with our human struggles.  When we look back on this, we know after-the-fact that Jesus was really the “powerful executive, the undercover boss,” and we think that He must have known that He only has to tough it out as a human being for a little while; and that he has all of this special knowledge as God and special protection from God, so he can face all of our human trials in a way that is impossible for us, because, after all, we are only human.  We have this idea that when Jesus lived a sinless life and took the punishment of death for our sins, that “because He’s God, it wasn’t as hard for him as it is for us.” 

But here Paul is telling us that thinking that way is nonsense – that God is not only Immanuel-God-With-Us, but is God who came to us as a servant, who poured himself out until he was empty of all self-interest, and made himself nothing.  He did this himself and he did it voluntarily as a free choice, for the express purpose of placing himself completely in the service of all humanity.  There has never been a more radical humbling.  It was not forced on Jesus, nor was it compelled by circumstances.  And as if God becoming a human being wasn’t humiliating enough, Jesus humbled himself to the farthest point that he could go – he submitted to death itself for the sake of both God and humanity. 

  Paul goes on to say that in response to his completely human humble obedience, God “exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

God humbly bowed himself to us in Jesus, but at the end of time everyone who ever lived will bow their knees to him.  The cosmic Lord, the one before whom Christians will stand at the last judgment will not be some spiritual vapor or an angel, but will be the person who walked the roads of Palestine and talked to the people of Israel.  We will bend our knee to someone with a hometown, a family, a trade and disciples.  And everyone – all creation – the angels in heaven, the people on the earth and the demons under the earth will pay homage to Jesus Christ, a man of Galilee.[4] 

God in Jesus is a human being, just like us.  He got tired, he sweated, he got sunburned, he experienced hunger and thirst, and if he got a splinter, it hurt.  Before he could learn the Scriptures he inspired, he had to learn to read. When he was an adolescent, the Word of God who spoke the Word of God, and who spoke the world into existence had a voice that cracked and changed. 

It is the human person Jesus to whom we are to look to as our pattern for living:  He was completely like us in his humanity and it is possible for us to have an attitude of humility toward others that is completely like his.  It is not intended that we become “like God,” rather, that we will become “completed human beings,” like Jesus. 

The fundamental principle of Christian life that was true for Jesus is true for all of us:  The path to exaltation goes through humiliation.  In the Kingdom of God when we give ourselves up for others, we gain God’s pleasure. 

This is we are to do as Christians when we face conflict:  Give up your rights; don’t insist on them.  With Christ as your example, lay aside your rights and absorb your wrongs.  Replace selfishness with humility and trust God to vindicate you.  That is the mind of Christ.[5]  Jesus did it and so can we.

                This morning we’re going to begin a series in Paul’s letter to the Christians who lived and worshipped in Philippi, a small community in Greece, in about the year 50 AD, 20 years or so after the resurrection of Jesus.  Because we have four weeks to look at this letter, I’m going to take some time this morning to give you an historical sense of what Philippi was like, as well as some understanding of what Paul’s relationship was to the church there.

                Something that surprised me is how much first-century Philippi was like Guymon.  Like us, Philippi is located on the Plains of Philippi where strong winds blow.  We’re the county seat on the highway, and Philippi was on a busy trade route known as the Via Engnatia, the equivalent of our Hwy. 64.  Because they operated like a county seat of the Roman Empire, Philippi had its share of businesspeople and professionals and enjoyed general prosperity.

It had an agricultural economy like ours; the land was very fertile and they grew a lot of corn.  There was also a gold mining industry in the nearby mountains.  Archeologists estimate that the population of the town in 50 AD was between 10,000-15,000 people – just like Guymon.   And just like Guymon, it was a pluralistic culture – by that I mean that while Philippi was a Macedonian town, it was populated not only by Greeks, but also by Thracians, Romans and other ethnicities who traveled the trade routes, so during the course of a given day they would encounter people from all over the world, and hear lots of different languages.

What we know about the church there we learn from this letter, and from the 16^th chapter of the Book of Acts and a few remarks that Paul makes in his second letter to the church in Corinth.  At the beginning of Paul’s second missionary journey, he and his friend, Silas were traveling around in what is now Turkey.  When they got to Antioch, they wanted to push north toward the Black Sea, but Luke records in Acts 16:6-7 that the Holy Spirit prevented them from going there.  We don’t know why, or what the Holy Spirit did to thwart their travel plans, but they headed west to Troas.  It was on that leg of the journey that Paul had a “night vision” – a “night vision” is different from a dream; Paul was probably praying and fell into a trance – and while he was praying he saw a “man from Macedonia” who beckoned to him and said, “Come over and help us.” 

That’s one of the things I like about these stories of Paul – he was a pretty insecure guy – the Holy Spirit is always having to come to him and tell him “not to be afraid,” to “buck up” because whatever it was that was happening that looked like a disaster was part of God’s plan.  And Paul needed the Holy Spirit to speak plainly to him because, like us, he wasn’t so good at discerning what God’s will for him was  - so the Spirit prevented him from doing some things and herded him in particular directions, and here, the Spirit comes and speaks plainly in a vision.  Lest we think that “night visions” are the things that only happen to apostles, missionaries to the Middle East tell stories that even today Muslims will walk into their offices and say, “Jesus came to me in a dream and told me he was the true God.” 

So Paul and Silas pressed on to Greece.  They had been preaching in synagogues on the way, but Philippi didn’t have one – it usually takes a minimum of 10 Jewish men to start a synagogue, and if Philippi didn’t have one, that meant that the Jewish population was nearly non-existent.  So on the Sabbath Paul went to the river where he found a group of women reciting prayers, led by a woman named Lydia, a successful cloth merchant.  Lydia listened to Paul’s message and became converted, along with her whole household – and she and her family became the first Christians in Europe.  That Paul didn’t first ask Lydia and the other women to go and get their husbands so he could talk to them first, is another testimony in Scripture that the gospel message was always preached to women as well as men; and that both Jesus and Paul treated women as equal to receive not only the gospel message, but also equal to serve.     

Paul had rather a lot of trouble in Philippi – politically, it was a thoroughly Roman community; there was even a sizeable population of centurions who had retired there – the equivalent of a large American Legion for vets.  So Paul and Silas drew a lot of attention to themselves as they preached the message among the Roman pantheon of Gods that Jesus is the One True God. 

On top of that, Paul cast a demon out of a fortune-telling slave girl who was badger them, which angered her owners because now they couldn’t make money off her telling the future anymore.  Her owners went to the magistrate and had Paul and Silas thrown into jail.  It was during this imprisonment that an earthquake shook open the jail cell door.  The jailer was about to commit suicide because he was sure that all the prisoners had fled, but Paul stopped him and told him that all the prisoners were still there.  The grateful jailer asked Paul and Silas how he could be saved, and he and his household also became Christians, along with Lydia and her household.

So we know the church in Philippi – the first in Europe – had Lydia and her household, the jailer and his household; two men, Epaphroditus and Clement, and two women named Euodia and Syntyche.  The greeting in Paul’s letter speaks of at least two overseers and two deacons, and we can assume their families, of a spouse, a couple of children and a couple of household slaves were in the church as well.  So we can estimate that the church that Paul addressed in this letter had somewhere between 35 and 50 members.  From the description of Lydia as a prosperous businesswoman, and from later inscriptions found in house churches that identified some other members as a physician, an architect, a businessman and a centurion; along with the fact that the church at Philippi is the only church that the Bible records supported Paul’s missionary journeys financially – we can discern that the church members of Paul’s time were mostly middle and upper class property owners.  So:  Philippi is Guymon and the church in Lydia’s house is Presbyterian!

We know that Paul visited the Philippians several more times on other trips - and because the tone of this letter is not one written to correct false teachings or bad behavior, like the letters he wrote to Galatia and Corinth, but is instead chatty and encouraging – most scholars believe that Paul had a special pastoral relationship with the Philippians: he loved them and they loved him.  When Paul wrote to Philippi, he didn’t waste ink listing his credentials as an apostle so they would acknowledge his authority and receive his correction like he did in his other letters.  He just wrote about how much he loved them and missed them and wanted to be with them.

The occasion for this letter is a visit from Epaphroditus, who brought Paul a gift from the church to encourage him while he was in jail.  We aren’t sure where Paul was in jail, or what the charge was, because he was in jail a lot:  in Jerusalem, in Philippi, in Caesarea, twice in Rome and probably at least once in Ephesus.  The letter is partly a thank-you note, and partly to give them news of his situation, along with an encouragement that even though he is in prison, his imprisonment is encouraging the local Christian community to witness with more boldness – in this way, his chains are advancing the gospel.  

This is important news for the Philippians because they are a new church following a God that is new to them and antagonistic to their friends and neighbors.  Converting from being a pagan like everyone else, to become a Christ-follower is affecting the social standing of these upper-class Roman citizens.  And it’s probably affecting their business relationships – lots of business gets done today at social events, and it was no different in Philippi.  Their pagan friends would invite them to come to a party during a festival honoring the Egyptian goddess Isis – why wouldn’t the Philippian Christians attend?  Are they insulting the Isis-worshipers?  And if they did attend, they didn’t eat the meat served up for dinner that had been sacrificed as an offering to Isis a few hours before.  How rude is that?

So these new Christians had put their professional and social reputations on the line.  We have records that some endured ridicule for being “atheists” because the Christians only had one God instead of dozens of household gods.  We also know that they were accused of being traitors to Rome – the reason Rome had a pantheon of Gods was to cover all their bases – part of being a good Roman citizen involved sacrificing to all the gods they could think of, in order to keep the Roman empire safe from its enemies.  So when Christians prayed to a single God, the pagans thought the Christians were traitors who wanted Rome to be defeated.      

This was probably the kind of news that Epaphroditus had delivered with his gift to Paul.  The Philippians were hanging on, but it wasn’t easy for them.  It is mostly easy to be a Christian in the United States where we can assemble and worship in freedom, but this is about the only place it is so.   We have silly little episodes in the news about people not being able to wear cross jewelry on the job, or not being able to have Bible studies in the factory lunchroom.  But it’s still illegal to fire you for being a Christian in this country.  It isn’t that way in Moscow – I remember meeting teachers who lost their jobs in the public schools because they were attending an evangelical church instead of the government-approved Eastern Orthodox Church.   In China today, Christians attend government-sponsored churches on Sundays, but worship in secret in house churches.  It is illegal for a Christian to proselytize in Israel. 

In 1994 in Denmark, a pastor was jailed for preaching the first chapter of Romans.  In 2004 a pastor in Sweden was jailed for a month for preaching a similar sermon.   Again, in 2008, a Canadian pastor was fined $5,000 for writing a letter to the editor of the newspaper that contained scripture that was deemed to be “hate speech.”  Russia and China are no surprise.  That it is costly to preach the truth in the “open societies” of Denmark, Sweden and Canada in the twenty-first century should make your blood run cold.  It is easy for us to be Christian, at least for now.  It was not easy for the Philippians.   

And then, when the Philippians heard that Paul was in jail, they were not only worried, they would have been humiliated.  In the same way that Jesus’ disciples must have felt when they saw him crucified like a common criminal, the Philippian Christians must have been ashamed to hear the news of Paul’s imprisonment – and maybe even wonder if they had put their faith in a weak God, or even a God who didn’t really exist.  Because if God isn’t able to keep Paul from being thrown in jail, maybe he’s not a God worth believing in, and what good is that?  Maybe we’re putting ourselves at risk for nothing.

There is a story from a few centuries later of a young disciple who was being held in a prison with other Christians awaiting her turn in the arena with the wild animals.  She had just given birth and had the infant with her.  It was common among the Christians awaiting martyrdom to “trade places in line”, so to speak, so that some might live a little longer, while others – more prepared to die – died in their place.   When it was the young mother’s turn to go into the arena, she handed her child off to another woman and started out, only to be stopped by a man who volunteered to take her place, so she could continue to care for her baby.   She declined his offer and said to him, “If my God is not enough of a God to take care of my child, then neither is He a God worth dying for.” 

So Paul sends this letter back to those people he loves at Philippi.  They would have received the letter when Epaphroditus came to worship after arriving home from his task.  They would have gathered around him in Lydia’s living room and shushed the children and watched as he unwrapped the scroll and broke its seal.   Here was a word from a man – their friend – who said he had seen the face and heard the voice of Jesus.  Here was a word from someone who had gone to jail in their town for exorcising a demon from a local girl – perhaps, like Mary Magdelene, whom Jesus healed of seven demons, the girl became a disciple too – maybe she was there listening to the letter with the others – a person who bore in her body and mind the physical evidence of the transforming and healing power of the gospel.

As Epaphroditus read, they hear Paul’s words of love, and then they heard this new thing:  that Paul is rejoicing in jail!  He is glad for his imprisonment and eager to find out if he will live or die, because either way, he wins.  How can this be?  “’For me to live is Christ and to die is gain’…if I go on living in the body, then I will get to come and see you again, which will be wonderful!  And if I die, I get to be with Christ, which is even better!”  Have you had that moment yet?  We have some older saints in our midst who have lived long and happy lives because of their love for Jesus.  I’ll bet if you got them to sit down with you over a cup of tea they’d tell you what it’s like being torn between wanting to stay here with their loved ones or going on to finally be with the Lord at last after a lifetime of waiting.

And then, remembering that the Philippians, too, were surrounded by opposition in a community hostile to the gospel, he tells them that “whatever happens,” – whether Paul lives or dies, or if they are arrested too – they may not see him again, but they have each other.  He is explaining to them what it means to be the church together:

“Conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.”  “Conduct yourselves,” means to “do your duty,” “be a good citizen.”  Paul is telling them to live in mutuality and interdependence, to cooperate in a way so each person can attain his or her highest potential, while helping others to do the same.  “Be responsible citizens in the Kingdom of God.”

                Then he tells them to “stand firm in one spirit, contending as one…for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you.”  “Stand firm” is a military term for a line of soldiers standing back to back, protecting each other while resisting the enemy.  When the Roman army did this, this kind of formation was virtually impenetrable.  This is the kind of unity the church must exhibit in the face of the enemies who would subvert the gospel.  And what they are to contend for is not victory on the battlefield, but the preservation of the Christian faith. 

                When Paul says they are to do this “without being frightened,” the word he uses is in reference to horses that were timid and shy easily.  The Philippians shouldn’t let themselves be stampeded because they are afraid of what might happen if they continue in the faith.   Paul seems to assume that for a Christian, suffering for the gospel is not only a normal occurrence, but is a gift of God – a grace that is granted on behalf of Christ, the same way faith is a gift from God.

                I wonder when the church in America will receive our gift of suffering.  Paul’s words to the Philippians are a good word to us too – live a life worthy of the gospel…stand firm…contend as one for the faith…do not be frightened.  Even though we are not experiencing persecution today, we need to live this way – living virtuous lives that honor the price Jesus paid for us…standing firm, making disciples, not leaving anyone behind…and doing it all to preserve the faith intact that so many before us have died to do.  This is a worthy goal, and if we learn to live this way now, when we are judged ready to accept our gift of suffering, we will be ready to receive it without being afraid – because we will have been in training so we too can say, “For us to live is Christ and to die is gain.” 

                Alleluia Christ is risen indeed!   

Whenever there is a conflict in the church, as the PCUSA is currently experiencing, we can be pretty sure that Paul is going to have something to say about it – or sometimes, Paul is even “behind” the conflict.   It stands to reason – Paul wrote nearly a third of the New Testament: 13 of its 27 books, all of which are letters to the church explaining what it means to live life as a Christ-follower.  

In the same way that people misunderstand God and blame God for things that God didn’t do or never said, people also often misunderstand Paul’s thinking or twist his words.  His friend Peter wrote that, “[Paul’s] letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.”   Here Peter is not suggesting that Paul’s writings are too complicated or too hard to understand or wrong – only that “ignorant and unstable people” find them so challenging to the life they want to lead according to their own desires, that they have to distort Paul’s meanings in order to keep on sinning the way they want to.

Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright wrote this corrective of the typical Christian’s understanding of where Paul was coming from.  He said, "A large number of Christians have assumed that the foundation of Paul's thinking goes like this: He spent the first part of his life trying to keep the rules of his religion, and then discovered not only that he couldn't but that the rules weren't the point.  God didn't want rule-keeping, he wanted 'spontaneity.' God had forgiven him all his rule breaking, in and through Jesus Christ, and was now giving him his Spirit, who would produce the fruit without all that horrible moral striving."  

          The correction Bishop Wright offers is that Paul believed that when the church's focus on the meeting of personal moral standards results in "huge fights" within the church, that it’s a "sign that something has gone wrong" within the community of faith because, you see, "Christian virtue is a team sport.”  

In other words, there is such a thing as a Christian lifestyle – a lifestyle marked by an ethic of virtue, motivated by love of neighbor and cultivated – taught, learned and practiced – within a community of faith.  The fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – are the result of virtue in a believer that is cultivated by life in the Spirit.  

The fruit of the Spirit – over and against the lusts of the flesh – are not gifts of God that merely appear when we quit trying to live an upright life according to the Scriptures.  I think we could all agree that especially, “self-control” is something that takes a lifetime to learn and acquire.  Even if self-control was a gift of God, why would we need self-control except to help us curb our bad impulses – what the Bible calls “sin”?  

It was Paul who was behind that other great conflict in the church, the 16th century Protestant Reformation.    The Protestant movement was built on the crisis of conscience that formed in the heart and mind of an Augustinian Monk named Martin Luther, who, after his study of scripture – in particular, Paul’s letter to the Romans –, could no longer accept the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on how one is saved.  When he was tried by the Pope for heresy, he said that it is unsafe to violate one’s conscience and the plain teaching of scripture. Here are his exact words,

“Unless I am convinced of error by the testimony of Scripture or by manifest reasoning, I stand convicted [convinced] by the Scriptures to which I have appealed -  [and unless] my conscience is taken captive by God's word, I cannot and will not recant anything;  for to act against our conscience is neither safe for us, nor open to us.”  

Luther was right in placing his conscience captive to God’s word.  In the end, that is all the Christian has on which to base his moral and theological conclusions.  Paul claims that sin is plainly visible to the ordinary human, not in any way obscure or finely nuanced.  In his letter to the Galatians, Paul wrote that the “works of the flesh are plain:  The people of God sinned, not just by their actions, but because they did not follow their hearts in doing what was plainly right.” 

So having this right understanding of Paul – not the Paul of “the grace-covers-your-unrestrained-and-unrepentant-sin” crowd; nor the Paul of the “straighten-up-and-fly-right-or-burn-in-hell” crowd – but the Paul whose ethic of life in Christ involves a lifelong struggle to reckon our flesh as dead while at the same time constantly relying on the presence of the Holy Spirit to produce enough love in us for Christ and neighbor, that we will fulfill the law by not sinning against either of them – that will help us to understand this morning’s text. 

 Because without this understanding, the two parts of this text from Paul’s letter to the Romans seem to stand in opposition to each other:  In the first section, Paul says – as did Jesus before him – that when we act in Christian love towards our neighbor – and our enemies too by the way – we are fulfilling all of the requirements of the Law.  Then in the second section, Paul reminds us that judgment day is near and it’s time to straighten up, to obey God’s laws against the “deeds of darkness,” which Paul enumerates here as “orgies and drunkenness…sexual immorality and debauchery …dissension and jealousy” and elsewhere in Romans, 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians as, “greed and depravity…envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice; gossip, slander, and those who are God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful, who invent ways of doing evil; who are disobedient to their parents, having no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.”  To this he piles on patricide (murder of parents), practicing homosexuality or incest, slave trading, lying, teaching false doctrine, being an idol-worshipper and swindling.  If Paul doesn’t touch upon the sin that you struggle with, then you can pencil whatever it is in the margins of your Bibles.

The good news is that Paul also says, in his letter to the church at Corinth, “and such were some of you”  – past tense.  Redeemed.

 
What does redemption entail?  Is it just a “get out of jail free” card for the next life?  Or does it offer real hope for changed lives in the here and now?  I’ve heard no one in the church making the case that idolaters, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, slanderers, or robbers are beyond transformation.  But now we have singled out sexuality as immutable - unchangeable.  Really?  Then what should we say to the Tiger Woods of the world when they come into our churches at the point that they are beginning to deal with their compulsive sexual patterns?  Do we have no hope to offer?  What a tragedy it would be – and how unloving - to exclude a whole range of dysfunction from the transformational power of the gospel!  We must not do this, but instead offer the transforming power of the whole gospel to those who want it. 

Living the Christian life is a struggle – some days a friendly wrestling match, other days a full-on battle – but always a struggle between the desires of our flesh, the temptation to be conformed to the world and the pull of the culture; and what we know to be the desire of God that we experience a renewed mind and a transformed life; that we begin to live as citizens of Heaven while we live on earth.  Part of that struggle is that we are not to bless what Scripture condemns; we are not to celebrate those things that God will redeem.  We are to put aside our “deeds of darkness” and put on the armor of light – put on Christ – and learn to live in the light of the eternity that grows nearer every day.For those of us in the 21st century, words like “deeds of darkness,” “armor of light,” and “putting on Christ,” can seem like merely a poetic way of describing some vapid, lifeless literary understanding of what has been done for us in some invisibly internal way by the grace of God.  We don’t have a clear sense of the struggle, the physical and mental strength and conditioning required to put aside deeds of darkness, to acquire that armor of light for the battle, and to clothe ourselves in the righteousness of Christ, rather than in the filthy rags of our sinful nature. In the earliest baptismal rituals of the church there is a vivid picture of this struggle.  

The church was experiencing persecution, so there was a three-year period of training – a catechumenate – during which time the church not only taught the new believer the basics of the faith, but also made a determination whether or not a person was exhibiting that transformed life Paul speaks of.  There was a list of certain occupations and behaviors that people had to quit before being baptized, including being a pimp, an actor, a gladiator or charioteer who participated in the arena games or who attended the games for entertainment; an executioner, a soldier in Caesar’s service, those engaged in sexual impurity, enchanters and astrologers and interpreters of dreams and men who have mistresses instead of a wife.   

So you can see that from the earliest days of the church, Christian orthodoxy has always expected a different standard of behavior from the rest of the world, in all areas of life, from how believers made a living, to what kind of recreation and entertainment they participated in, and always, there was an expectation of sexual purity.  The church expected believers to engage in a struggle, expected believers to have their minds renewed, and anticipated transformation of their lives.

On the night before their baptisms, the men and women held separate prayer vigils.  Then at the first light of dawn, “when the cock crowed,” they removed all of their clothing and jewelry and the women let down their hair.  The men and women were baptized separately and in the dark because they were led into the water nude.  The one baptizing would ask the person being baptized questions according to the Apostles’ Creed:  “Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?" and when the one being baptized answered, "I believe," he or she would be plunged into the water.  

When they were raised up out of the water, they would be asked, “Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and died, and rose on the third day living from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, the one coming to judge the living and the dead?" When they answered, "I believe," they would be plunged into the water a second time.  

After the final question, “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit and the Holy Church and the resurrection of the flesh?" the person being baptized was held under the water until they began to struggle for air – only then would they be raised out of the water, gasping for air, gulping huge breaths like newborn babies, symbolizing the death of their old self in the waters of judgment, and their new life by the breath of the Holy Spirit.  Afterwards, they were dressed in white robes, symbolizing the “putting on of Christ” and were led out of the darkness of the baptismal chamber into the sanctuary of a church crowded with fellow believers and blazing with the light of hundreds of candles – the armor of light - as they had their first communion among the saints.    Isn’t that a great picture of the dramatic change that occurs when we are saved?

Paul says that up to now we’ve been sleeping, but now it’s time to wake up and remember that we’re living “in a delay between Christ’s two advents - the coming of the kingdom of grace and the coming of the kingdom of glory.  This time in between advents is like a stay of execution.” Before Jesus came, we’d been judged, convicted and doomed to die for our sins, our deeds of darkness.  But after Jesus paid our sin debt on the cross, we entered an age of grace that precedes the final judgment that will occur with the return of Christ in glory.  “...the delay of Christ's return in judgment creates a space in history for repentance and faith in Christ." 

This time between advents is not the time to live carelessly, but instead, intentionally.   “[We] do not drift toward Holiness...We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”    

A life of virtue and character after one comes to faith in Christ, is the result of intentional actions, motivated by love and empowered by the Holy Spirit.  The night is nearly over – the day appointed by God the Father for the return of his Son in glory is almost here.

 Time to wake up and get dressed in the protective armor of light as we ready ourselves to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ on the last day.Alleluia, Christ is risen indeed.  Amen

A NEW THING

            As I said to you last week, I spent Wednesday through Saturday in Minneapolis with 2,000 other Presbyterian pastors, elders, executive presbyters and General Assembly staffers, as representatives of 800 churches from every state and three foreign countries worshipped, prayed and studied together. 

We were addressed by the PCUSA Moderator and the Stated Clerk – the two highest elective offices in our national body – as well as seminary presidents and Bible scholars.  The atmosphere for the two days of the Gathering was electric – there was a strong sense of expectation and a sense that God might be doing a new thing to revive and renew the Presbyterian Church.

On the first day, one of the presenters read this letter from the General Assembly:

“Dear Friends and Brethren:

The aspect of divine providence, and the extraordinary situation of the world, at the present moment, indicate, that a solemn admonition by the ministers of religion and other church officers in General Assembly convened, has become our indispensable duty . . . A solemn crisis has arrived, in which we are called to the most serious contemplation of the moral causes which have produced it, and the measures which it becomes us to pursue . . . Formality and deadness - not to say hypocrisy - a contempt of vital godliness, and the spirit of fervent piety -  a desertion of the ordinances [the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper], or a cold and unprofitable attendance upon them, visibly pervade every part of the Church, and certain men have crept in amongst us, who have denied, or attempt to explain away the pure doctrines of the gospel; to introduce pernicious [harmful, fatal] errors …which have, within a few years since, been embraced by deluded multitudes . . . God hath a controversy with us – Let us prostrate [fall face down] ourselves before him! Let the deepest humiliation and sincerest repentance mark our sense of national sins; and let us not forget, at the same time, the personal sins of each individual, that have contributed to increase the mighty mass of corruption.” [1]

            Pretty stern stuff, isn’t it?  The thing is, those words were from a letter written to the churches by the General Assembly in 1789, 222 years ago!  From the beginning of the church it has always had to re-assess, re-group and re-form.  At first, not all 12 of the disciples believed in the resurrection of Jesus.  Then during the next 60 years, the leaders of the church disagreed and argued about whether or not gentiles – non-Jews – had to undergo circumcision in order to become a Christ-follower.  The church in Corinth had to be corrected by Paul because they were getting drunk at the Lord’s Supper and eating all of the food before the poor people arrived to share; they were sexually promiscuous and incestuous; and there were arguments among the teachers. 

            The church battled paganism among their people and argued about the divinity of Jesus and what books should be included in the canon of scripture.  The people complained that their baptisms by corrupt priests must be invalid.  The church tried to prevent the translation of the Bible from Latin into the common vernacular so that every person could read it for themselves.  For a time during the 15^th century, the church had two competing Popes, one in Italy in Rome and one in Avignon, France.  By the 16^th century the Roman Catholic Church had become so corrupt it was literally selling salvation door-to-door in exchange for money to built St. Peter’s Basilica.  When Martin Luther and John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli led the Protestant Reformation in Germany, France and Switzerland, one of the main reasons we have a divided Protestant church was because the three of them couldn’t agree on what happened to the bread and the wine in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.

            Denominationalism took root in the New World over things like educational requirements for the clergy, speaking in tongues, forms of baptism and the organizational structure of churches. 

            I digress into this history lesson, so that you will understand that 1) there is no “pure and perfect church” except the church that receives its righteousness from Christ Jesus; 2) the church is a reflection of imperfect human beings struggling with what it means to live faithfully as they follow Christ; and 3) it has been ever thus.  The shift that is happening in the church now is nothing new – it is only overdue.  Whenever there has been a sexual revolution, at least part of the church shows up as a conscientious objector.  

            But it is our responsibility to hand off a church to the next generation that is as true to the faith as we can deliver it.  So it is incumbent upon us not to hide our heads in the sand, but to tackle the hard questions with the understanding that the answers – and the road forward – might be different than what we expected.  But nothing will be resolved or accomplished by not showing up.

Those who attended the Gathering were there for many reasons.  Some where there to find out what all the fuss was about.  Some were there to find out if it was possible to go forward in a church that claimed to be connectional, yet had become divided by two very different theologies and two ways of interpreting scripture.  Others came intending to remain in the PCUSA, but didn’t fully understand what that meant to have to minister among such significant differences.  Still others came to gain a clearer understanding of what their options were if pastors or congregations decided to separate from the PCUSA. 

            This diverse group agreed that they wanted to be faithful to God; that they shared a love of Reformed theology, how it was a distinctive way of living as a Christian disciple; that they honored the heritage of the Presbyterian Church; that their unity is in Christ, and that the PCUSA of the 21^st century is broken.

            Cindy Bolbach, an elder and corporate attorney who until 2012 is the Moderator of the 219^th General Assembly – she is the “public face” leader and spokesperson of the church – addressed the group and told this story about the remodeling of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

“The Pentagon was built during wartime in 1941.  It took just about 17 months to construct the Pentagon from scratch.  But because it was built so quickly, it was poorly built and so it underwent remodeling and renovation - a process that took 17 years.  One of the general contractors said that they had to take the building apart and put it together again, with 20,000 people sitting in it. 

The building had to be stripped down to concrete columns and rebuilt from slab to ceiling,  yet all the while it still had to operate as the Defense Department headquarters 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Constructed for an era of manual typewriters, the Pentagon needed to be entirely reconfigured to meet modern communications and technology demands.   On top of all of that, the Sept. 11 attack in the middle of the renovation, highlighting major safety deficiencies. …

The contractor said it was like taking apart a black-and-white TV and putting it back together again as a state of the art Hi-Definition color flat screen, without missing any of your favorite programs.”

The Moderator went on to compare the state of the 21^st century PCUSA as a “black and white klunker” that needs to be renovated and remodeled into a Hi-Def flat screen while still being the church and bringing people to Jesus.

            It was a great illustration, but the people present at the Gathering disagreed over the ways in which the church was broken and what could be done about it.  A survey by the Barna Research Group has pinpointed the top five reasons why Americans choose a church.  Of the 22 factors named, eight emerged as the top reasons for selecting a church.  In order of importance, these are the eight reasons:

            Theological beliefs.  What this particular church thinks about God and how they view how the world works.  This is why I say ideas have consequences – ideas form the way you live your lives.  So if Theological Beliefs are the Number One reason that people choose a church, then we should consider the debate that is happening in the denomination today – and coming to the right conclusions – to be of utmost importance.

            The next one is how much people care.  Is your faith and your church important to you?  Do you care if people are won to Christ?  Do you engage your friends because you want to share your life here with them?  Do you care about the mission and ministry of the church enough to make room for it in your schedule and in your wallet?

            Then there is quality of the sermons.  I do the best I know how to make them interesting, challenging and relevant but I can’t make you stay awake or listen attentively or in expectancy of what word God might have for you today.  I will keep doing my best, but you’ll need to do your part.

            Then there is friendliness to visitors.  We get this right about half the time.  We like each other a lot, and some of us only see each other on Sunday.  But I know that there have been people who came and went without being noticed; and that some people sit alone in the pew without others coming to join them.  I would challenge you to make a point of speaking to someone you don’t know before you speak to someone you do know.

            The next is help to the poor and disadvantaged.  Now as a Christian, I would put this one at the top, even with theological beliefs.  I would not want to belong to a church without a mission.  I would expand this, though, beyond just having mission projects that we finance or “hit and run” – it is more important to have a “missional imagination” – to think imaginatively about how we can bring value to our immediate neighborhood and to the global church.  There are some who believe that local mission is more important than global mission, but the Bible teaches that both have priority – God is a global God and the 21^st century Christian relates to the world in a more and more global way.

            The next two are quality of children’s programming and how much you like your pastor!  I can’t think of anything to say to that one!  The one that came in dead last, though – was denominational affiliation. 

            For years now we’ve been living in a “post-denominational” world.  The labels of “Catholic,” “Methodist,” “Lutheran,” “Episcopalian” and “Presbyterian” have lost their meaning and importance.  The unchurched people we are trying to reach have no concept of denominational differences.  I have had several encounters with people who think “that long word that beings with a ‘P’” must be “Pentecostal.”  There are others who ask me if “Presbyterians are Christian?”  What does a name like, “First Presbyterian” say to the community?  If there’s not a “Second Presbyterian” in town, I’d say it sounds pretty arrogant.  And as far as being a name that communicates who we are and what believe, did you know that of the 13 Presbyterian churches in Cimarron Presbytery, 12 of them are named, “First Presbyterian”?  The odd one out is in Kingfisher and it’s name is “Federated Presbyterian”, whatever that means.  I know we didn’t mean this to happen, but to an unchurched person seeking a church, there is nothing informative or attractive about a church that names itself “First.”  Maybe we should be thinking about how we can better communicate who we are to a community that really doesn’t know.

The church – the PCUSA and all of its congregations – need to constantly examine how it’s being the church in the world.  Having our Bible study outside the church in the Acapulco Restaurant is one way that we can show the community that discipleship and study can be fellowship. 

Did you know that every time I get my hair cut, the young women who work in the salon save up their spiritual questions to ask me?  I usually get my hair cut on Mondays – their slow day – and while I’m there we have what amounts to a Bible study.  The last time they asked me to just tell them some stories about the women in the Bible.  Those young women almost never go to church – their husbands aren’t supportive of that – but they have a spiritual hunger strong enough to be willing to be discipled while they work. 

            This is the kind of imagination we need to cultivate.  We need to take our gifts out of the church and into the world.  We need to be smiling and kind and extra courteous – people that others want to know – but don’t expect them to come to you, go to them.  Maybe we need to rent a store front and clean it up to be used as some kind of mission center during the week and then have an informal worship service there on Sunday mornings.  You know me, I’m full of ideas, but what are your ideas?  How can we resource and equip you to do the things that God is inspiring you to do?

            I want to close with this story:

‎"On the third day of Creation, just before all forms of life were about to multiply, the Holy One said to his creatures: 

'I see that what some of you treasure most is survival, while what others yearn for most is adventure. So I will give you each a choice. If what you want most is stability, then I will give you the power to regenerate any part you lose, but you must stay rooted where you grow. If, on the other hand, you prefer mobility, you may also have your wish, but you will be more at risk. For then I will not give you the ability to regain your previous form.' 

Those that chose stability we call trees, and those that chose opportunity became animals." [2]

            The church’s default has always been stability – we’d rather be a tree.  It’s not a bad thing to be a tree – trees are useful - but really, when you think about it, trees are most useful when they’re cut down and used to build something.  But even then, the wood is static and immobile.  This little parable says that living creatures represent opportunity.  True, there is more risk involved, but there is also more life involved.   And if we are animals, we won’t have the ability to regain our previous form.  We can grow larger, but we can never grow smaller.  We can grow smarter, but we won’t grow more ignorant.  We can live in community, but the community will forever change us and we will forever change the community.

            The church can choose to be a tree and live a static life of stability and survival, or we can take a deep breath and choose opportunity, risk and growth, understanding that – unlike a tree - the way the animal will look in the future won’t exactly resemble the way the animal looked in the past. 

            You pick. 

Our gospel text this morning has Jesus asking the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”  Peter is commended for answering, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  And then along comes Paul in his letter to the Romans, and challenges us, “So what?”  So what if Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God?  What does it mean to say “Jesus is Lord?” 

Here in the United States we don’t live under dukes and princes and kings – we don’t call anyone, “Lord” – and by and large, we’ve forgotten what that means.  The world has certainly forgotten, and the church has always struggled with what it means to call Jesus, “Lord.” 

Jesus obviously thought that an accurate understanding of who he is was important.  It is SO important that his disciples crafted the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, and a number of others, so that the church will not stray too far from the Jesus who is Lord and create a billion personal Gods – all named Jesus – that suit us in the moment. 

So every couple of weeks we stand and recite together what orthodox Christianity has believed for more than a thousand years when we recite in the Apostles’ Creed that we believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord. 

Maybe you think it isn’t all that important to understand that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God – if that’s so, I guess you could be a Mormon, because Mormon doctrine teaches that God is a resurrected human being who has wives in heaven and Jesus was the first baby born in heaven, before his brother, Lucifer. 

The Bible teaches that the blood of Jesus shed on the cross atoned for the sins of the world.  Mormon teaching is that it was the blood that Jesus sweated in the Garden of Gethsemane that atoned for sin, and there are no crosses in any of their buildings.  

The Bible teaches that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone and not by our good works, and yet Mormon teaching is that each individual is saved not by the finished work of Jesus on the cross, but by his or her own good works.

Or, if it doesn’t matter to you that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, you could be a Jehovah’s Witness.  According to their edited and revised Bible, the New World Translation, the firstborn of God was not Jesus, but was the Archangel Michael.  After humanity fell from grace because of sin, Michael was re-created as the human being Jesus, who was tortured on a stake.  The Bible teaches that Jesus was resurrected from the grave in a physical body.  For the Jehovah’s Witness, when the human Jesus died, he stayed dead, and was re-created for a third time as a Spirit who now lives in heaven.  There is room in the Jehovah’s Witness heaven for 144,000 individual saints, the last of whom were born after 1935 and are alive on earth today.  A Jehovah’s Witness gains heaven through good works, but it is possible to lose your place – so the only way for a Witness to enter heaven is to beat out one of his brother-or-sister Witnesses.

Then there are the Unitarians.  Christians make a big deal out of a difficult-to-understand doctrine we call the Trinity, a foundational doctrine of the church.  Unitarians – “uni” meaning “One” – don’t believe in a Trinitarian God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The Unitarians are part of a group that broke away from the Congregationalist denomination back in 1825, because they thought the Congregationalists were wrong about the Trinity. 

“Those who left the Congregationalists with the Unitarians did not immediately become non-Christian.  Many of them showed a greater resemblance to the character of Christ than did many of the Trinitarians who remained in the Congregational church.  Nevertheless, in setting aside the foundational doctrine of the Trinity, a doctrine that is inextricably joined to other foundational doctrines, they made a choice that so destabilized their overall Christian teaching that set them on a course toward what they have now become – something quite apart from Christianity.  Check out the Unitarian-Universalist website if you want to see just how far apart they are.”[1]

I don’t tell you these things to mock the beliefs of groups so we can feel superior.  I do, however, want you to understand that ideas have consequences far beyond basic disagreement. 

In all three of these examples, the people involved dismissed the Bible as authoritative – in the case of the Mormons, they added to it with the Book of Mormon, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses edited and revised it into what they call the New World Translation.   The Unitarian Universalists draw on the a variety of traditions in addition to Christianity, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Humanism and even atheism.

Paul says that the only way to prevent being overcome by deception, is for those of us who call Jesus “Lord” to understand what the will of God is.  We cannot understand the will of God unless we first submit our wills to his, and then to learn his ways through the Scriptures.  The Bible is not an answer book – there are many questions that are not even posed in scripture – the Bible reveals who Jesus is.  When we get to know Jesus better, then we are able to filter the things of the world and have perspective on the questions of life. 

God is known in God’s acts – and we formulate our answers to the questions of our lives – and live our life in ways that are pleasing to God by knowing the characteristics and attributes of God; the way God has acted in the past; the finished work of Jesus on the cross; the redeeming work of God in history; and the goal of the establishment of the Kingdom of God.  We learn those things from the Bible.

The thing is, though, that not everyone who calls him- or herself a Christian has submitted to the Lordship of Jesus, and allowed the Holy Spirit and the word of God to renew their minds and transform their lives.  When our minds are renewed, it means that we change our thinking about sin – we repent of what scripture calls sin and our lives become transformed as we become new creatures in Christ. 

The problems arise when we try to change our lives by simply keeping to a lifeless moral code instead of allowing our lives to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.  When Paul lists the behaviors he associates with "the flesh" in the vice list in the fifth Chapter of his letter to the Galatians:  sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like [and then warns] that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God,” he is giving examples of "what happens when humankind turns in on itself and away from God...the roads which do not lead in the direction [of the coming kingdom]...the ways people on earth keep the life of heaven at arm’s length [boxed up inside the church and restricted to Sunday mornings]...and so declare by their behavior that they want to keep earth just the way it is, in its present corrupt and decaying form."[2]

I told you a month or two ago that the PCUSA – the denomination to which this congregation belongs – had removed its ordination standards from its constitution.  Some of the language that was removed read that “Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained and/or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament.”[3]  

By removing that language, the way has been opened to the ordination of people who are engaged in sexual activities outside of marriage between a man and a woman.  The issue, though, is not simply about sexual ethics – what’s at stake is much, much more.  Removing the standards for ordination destabilizes foundational doctrines of the church, including our understanding of God’s grace, the nature of sin and the meaning of repentance, forgiveness, transformation and sanctification.[4]   

Both camps in this disagreement are reading the same Bible.  The group that is promoting doing away with the ordination standards is doing so on the basis of their belief that the Bible’s teachings on sin are merely the outmoded cultural teachings of men and not the word of God.  Sin has been redefined to accommodate the culture, in exactly the way Paul wrote in our text today when he warned against our thoughts and behaviors being conformed to the patterns of this world.  

Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright says that there is plenty of blame to go around, when he wrote that, “One of the ironies in the story of Western theology...has been the way the 'liberal' tradition, which used to pride itself above all on clear, rational thinking, has quietly been taken over by emotivism, not the least in the area of ethics.. Meanwhile, the 'conservative' tradition, which used to pride itself on carefully articulated ethical as well as doctrinal stances, has often been so worried about the danger of 'works righteousness' that it has turned a blind eye to the nature of moral understanding and effort upon which Paul is doing his best to insist, and has effectively ruled out virtue before it begins, lest people should suppose themselves to be contributing to their own salvation. No wonder that, when we try to debate key issues, we find ourselves in a dialogue of the deaf."[5]

            Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., imagined how Paul might write to American Christians on the matter of living virtuous lives in submission to the will of God.  This is how it goes:   

“I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the midst of an un-Christian world. That is what I had to do. That is what every Christian has to do. But I understand that there are many Christians in America who give their ultimate allegiance to man-made systems and customs.  They are afraid to be different.  Their great concern is to be accepted socially.  They live by some principle such as this:  “It must be alright because everyone else is doing it.”  For so many of you Morality is merely group consensus.  In your modern sociological lingo, the mores are accepted as the right ways.  You have unconsciously come to believe that Right is discovered by taking a sort of Gallup poll of the majority opinion.  How many are giving their ultimate allegiance this way.

But, American Christians, I must say to you as I said to the Roman Christians years ago, “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  Or as I said to the Philippian Christians, “Ye are a colony of heaven.”  This means that although you live in a colony of time, your ultimate allegiance is to the Empire of Eternity.   You have a dual citizenry; you live in both time and eternity; both in heaven and earth.  Therefore, your ultimate allegiance is not to the state, not to the nation, not to any manmade institution.  The Christian owes his ultimate allegiance to God, and if any earthly institution conflicts with God’s will, it is your Christian duty to take a stand against it.  You must never allow the transitory evanescent [vanishing, fading away] demands of manmade institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.”[6]  Let me read that last sentence to you again.

And so – because ideas have consequences, words matter, behavior matters, a faithful witness of Jesus Christ to the world matters - on Thursday and Friday this week I will be in Minneapolis at a gathering known as The Fellowship of Presbyterians.  There are 2,000 pastors and elders registered, representing hundreds of Presbyterian congregations.  We are going to worship and pray together, and discuss how we can be faithful to the church in submission to the lordship of Christ; and whether our unity in Christ requires us to remain in fellowship with those whom we name as brothers and sisters in Christ, but whom we believe to be caught in the serious error of preaching a different gospel.  

Jesus told Peter and the other disciples that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the church.  This is commonly misunderstood that the church will withstand attacks by Satan, as though we are to sit quietly behind the sturdy walls of Mother Church as Satan’s flaming darts are turned away by some holy force field.   This isn’t what this verse means.  The Gates of Hell are to be stormed by the church – we are to march on the Enemy’s troops and compounds wherever we find them, even when they are camped in our midst.  The language of war has passed out of favor among theologians –  Onward Christian Soldiers has long been edited out of our hymnbooks.  But when the gospel forcefully advances against the lies of Hell – when the church rushes toward its enemy and not away – we have Jesus’ own word that the battle is ours because He has won it for us.

So I will go to Minneapolis, and I would ask that you be in prayer for us during the coming week, and do not be overly concerned about the future of the church.  This is not the first time the church has become conformed to the world – G. K. Chesterton wrote that “at least five times in history the church has gone to the dogs, and every time it did, the dogs died.”  You can pick your own list of five, but I would suggest the state church established under the Emperor Constantine; the several Crusades against Islam, the Spanish Inquisition, the corruption of the medieval Roman Catholic church; and the capitulation of the German Christians to the Nazi party.  Each time it seemed that the church was digging its own grave and was set for extinction, but the church is in God’s special care, even when it goes off-track.

Theologian Os Guinness reminds us that out of corruption came the Reformation of the 16^th century.  But there was an earlier day when the enemies of God had planned another grave to try and hold another body captive.  It turned out, though, that the “cross of Christ was the devil’s mousetrap.”[7]  “In spite of all the forces arrayed against the Christian church, whether seen or unseen, grave-digging has been a somewhat less than certain business for the Evil One ever since the resurrection.  Therefore, in the words of the most constant refrain in all the scriptures, ‘Have faith in God.  Have no fear.’  God is greater than all, and he may be trusted in all situations.”[8]

    When Jesus was making his points in the parables of the Kingdom, he was talking not only to his disciples, but also to a crowd of others, like the Pharisees, the priests and whoever else wandered by. 

     In the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, the disciples were there, but there were also 20,000 others on the hillside.  But this story is different – this miracle of the calming of the storm is that it was a miracle worked for the disciples alone.[1]  This is a miracle for the Twelve and for you and me.

     The text says that Jesus had gone off to pray and sent Peter and the other disciples off to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.  It’s now about three o’clock in the morning and a sudden storm has come up and the disciples have their hands full trying to stay afloat. 

     Isn’t it always three in the morning when things go wrong?  Your baby has a fever and the drugstore is closed.  The fire alarm in your hotel goes off.  You’ve taken a wrong turn out in the country and you’re trying to get back on the right road and you get a flat tire in the middle of nowhere with no cell service. 

     And even when it’s not three in the morning, when the storms of life spring up, it may as well be.  It seems like we always get caught by surprise – you think you’re doing a good job, and then one Friday afternoon you get laid off or fired.  One day you’re a happy spouse and the next you’re holding divorce papers in your hands.  Your life becomes chaos.

      It’s the same for the church – we know how to do things like Sunday school and vacation bible school and Christmas, but we get caught off guard when things go off track – like when the church at Perry burned this spring; or when a beloved member dies.  It messes with our faith. 

     When we lose sight of the familiar and the decks become wobbly underneath us and the salt spray stings our eyes, the faith that was large enough and strong enough to get us this far, begins to look small – almost like no faith at all – and fear begins to get a grip on us. 

     The disciples are hanging on for dear life when Jesus shows up, walking toward them on the water, and they freak out.  Now this is no surprise because anyone would be worried and afraid if they saw something like that.  Jesus tells them to calm down, but it doesn’t have much effect.  It’s not that they’re afraid of Jesus, but this Jesus is not what they’re used to seeing. 

     This is a “3 a.m. Jesus,” showing up where he “shouldn’t be” doing something he “shouldn’t be doing.”  Instead of calming the disciples down, his appearance really makes it worse.  Sometimes that’s how Jesus shows up when we need him, looking for all the world like a worse disaster than whatever it is we’re facing.

      It isn’t until later that we understand that Jesus was in the broken axle that kept us from being on the freeway where a deadly accident happens, only you’re not there because you’re in a garage waiting for repairs. 

     I’m pretty sure the church in Perry didn’t see Jesus in the fire that destroyed their church until after they regrouped for their Easter worship.  So when the “3 a.m. Jesus” turns up walking on the tops of the waves, the disciples all miss the point and start screaming about ghosts. 

     Easier to believe in ghosts than in God I guess – easier to believe they were being haunted than to believe the truth that the One who only a few hours before fed 20,000 people with five loaves and two fish could also trample on the waves, command the wind and calm the storm. 

     It’s the same for us – it’s easier for us to believe that divorce is inevitable than to believe that the One who created the universe out of nothing can put our marriage back together.  It’s easier to believe that there’s no hope for recovery than it is to believe that the Creator of your body would heal it. 

     It’s easier to fear death than it is to understand it as an open door to resurrection and eternal life.  It’s easier to believe that as a church we’re too few, too tired, too old, too traditional, too-whatever, than it is to believe that God can fill our sails with a fresh wind of the Spirit. 

     When Jesus comes to you in your chaos, it is his presence that is real and revealed in material ways – and it is the chaos that is rendered vaporous, immaterial, ghostly and powerless.  The presence of Jesus should always cause us to re-evaluate what we’re seeing and experiencing through the lens of faith, to determine what is real and what is just our mind playing tricks on us, paralyzing us with ghostly “what-ifs.”

            Then there is Peter – the disciple who isn’t afraid to say what we’re thinking; the one who operates at “top speed,” acting before he thinks – he’s the one who pulled out his sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Malchus in the garden when Jesus was being arrested.  Peter falls asleep when Jesus asks him to pray; Peter swears he will never desert Jesus, but denies him in the courtyard. 

            Peter is just like all of us, full of faith and full steam ahead when the water is calm; distrustful and almost faithless when the waves are breaking over the bow.

     So if Peter doesn’t believe that the “3:00 a.m. Jesus” is the Jesus that he knows, how is he going to get Jesus to prove it?  I would’ve said something like, “If you’re really Jesus, stop the storm and make the sun come out.  If you’re Jesus, you prove it.” 

     But Peter takes it up a notch – he knows that he – Peter - can’t walk on water.  Peter was a fisherman – he’d probably fallen overboard a few times – we know the Bible said that he could swim, and like all of us, Peter knew that the reason he had to swim was because he couldn’t walk on water – nobody could.  So I guess he figured that Jesus walking on the water wasn’t nearly as convincing a miracle as Peter walking on the water! 

     So he yells over the wind, “Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water.”  Jesus says, “Come,” and Peter gets out of the boat.  I always wondered about that – did Peter even think that he might drown if it wasn’t Jesus?  Most of the time we tell this story as though Jesus was testing Peter’s faith, but it seems like it’s more a story of Peter testing Jesus. 

     Matthew doesn’t tell us how far Peter got, whether he took twenty steps or two, but it doesn’t matter, because the one that really counted was the first one, wasn’t it?  Remember that scene in the Indiana Jones movie where he has to cross a deep ravine with an invisible bridge?  That first step is always the hardest one, the biggest test.

     And then Peter saw the wind, and began to realize that this was over-the-top, even for him…and then he began to sink and shouted out, “Lord, save me!” as Jesus reached out and fished the fisherman out of the water and back into the boat.  Peter started out of the boat not so much in faith as in doubt:  “Lord IF it’s you…” thinking that he would prove Jesus if he could walk on water too – but Peter’s moment of belief came when he began to sink and cried out, “Lord, save me!” 

     The faith we claim when we are safe inside the boat, or successful on top of the waves is weak – but when we are mired in doubt, at the end of the road, about to sink like a stone and facing inevitable failure, that is where our real faith is revealed – it reveals not only how much faith we have, but in whom we have faith. 

     And the faith we display is strengthened in the midst of our helplessness.  The promise of God is that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”[2]

     If we don’t get out of the boat, how will we know it’s Jesus?  Methodist Bishop Will Willimon writes, “If Peter had not ventured out, had not obeyed the call to walk on the water, then Peter would never have had this great opportunity for recognition of Jesus and rescue by Jesus.  I wonder if too many of us are merely splashing about in the safe shallows and therefore have too few opportunities to test and deepen our faith. 

     The story today implies that if you want to be close to Jesus, you have to venture forth out on the sea, you have to prove his promises through trusting his promises, though risk and venture.”[3]

     I think “the reason that we seem to lack faith in our time is that we aren’t doing anything that requires it.”[4] 

     That’s one of the reason ministers wart  their congregations to leave their comfort zones and try to lead a Bible study for adults, or teach Sunday School for children, or go on a mission trip, or serve in a soup kitchen – we’re used to hearing “I can’t do that,” “I’m not gifted for that,” “I don’t feel called to that.”  Don’t feel called?  Does the voice of your pastor and your Christian friends not sound like a call to you?  Do you think that God is going to send you a vision or an anonymous note or burn the face of Jesus on your morning toast so you’ll know you are called? 

     He could, but that’s rarely how a call works – sometimes your very resistance to these requests is evidence that you’re called.  When how to get out of it is the only thing on your mind, the only thing taking up your energy – and yet the Holy Spirit in your pastor and in your Christian friends and family has got them lined up to say, “Please do this.” 

     Of course you’re not ready.  Peter wasn’t “ready” to walk on water – he wasn’t “gifted” to walk on water.  It is in your being “not ready” and doomed to failure where God grows the little faith you have.

     And then Jesus says, “Why did you doubt?”  We aren’t sure what he means:  Why did you doubt it was me?  Why did you doubt you could walk on water?  Why did you doubt when you were walking on water? 

      It might even be all of that.  Doubt is always with us – it’s like an overlay on our faith that needs to be peeled back like the skin of an onion so that faith can shine through.  That’s another thing that taking risks of faith does – it rubs the doubt off a little at a time, until there is more faith showing than doubt.

John’s gospel records that Jesus said that, “…whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than [I did].”[5]

      We shouldn’t imagine that this means that we, as Believers in Christ, should think of ourselves as miracle-workers for God, although there are plenty of high-profile religious types doing just that, calling themselves apostles and prophets today. 

     If we thought that, we would just have faith in ourselves and our own gifts and abilities.  No, Jesus said, “whoever believes in me” will do such great things.

     This story says that “whoever believes in me just a little,” has enough faith to be empowered to do great things.  Jesus says that Peter has only “a little” faith – we can’t tell from the text if Jesus was scolding Peter for doubting, or smiling at him and slapping him on the back – I guess whichever way you read it will say more about you than it says about Jesus.

     But it is the “little faith” that reveals this as a Kingdom of God story. 

     We bring the little and God multiplies it to “great.” 

     Just a little mustard seed takes over the field. 

     Just a little gospel yeast is enough to bake a loaf of Kingdom Bread.  Just a few loaves are enough to feed a multitude – you only need to bring what you have to Jesus when he says, “bring them here to me.” 

     Just a little faith is enough to walk on water – you only need to bring the faith you have to Jesus when he says, “Come – bring yourself to me.” 

EASTER EYES 

Grace and peace to you from our resurrected Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the first of those who will be resurrected from death to eternal life, who lives and reigns with the Holy Spirit at the right hand of God the Father!  Alleluia! 

The people of God have always preserved their history in the telling and retelling of the stories of the events of their lives lived in covenant with God.  Before the stories were written out in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek New Testament, these accounts were transmitted orally; literally family stories told around the campfire.

The tradition persists in the Middle East today, where you can go into the coffee shops and bars of Damascus or Ammon and the evening’s entertainer is not a singer or a stand-up comedian, but instead is a local storyteller, relating the sagas and romances of history to rooms full of people who know the stories at least as well as the storyteller does.  As the storytellers recount the evening’s offering, the audiences participate with whooping, hollering and booing in all of the right places, and shouting out corrections when the storyteller gets something wrong or leaves something out.

Professional historians will tell you that these kinds of oral histories are amazingly accurate and consistent – it’s not like the old game of “Telephone” where things get slightly changed over time, until the story bears no resemblance to its original state.  Because these stories are “owned” by the community, the community has a stake in ensuring their accuracy and continuity, and everyone participates in their preservation because everyone knows the stories and those who tell them are held accountable by everyone else in the community.

Christ-followers continued to carry the stories of belief this way until the New Testament books were assembled into the Bible we rely on today.  The gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - are collections of the oral histories of the early Christian community, written on the hearts of Believers, and set down on paper by men inspired by God.  But we still think it’s important to tell and re-tell the stories of the lives of the people of God lived in the new covenant, so at certain times of the year we continue to retell the stories of the Nativity of Jesus, his baptism, the Resurrection and Pentecost, the birth of the church. 

John’s gospel is a record of the accounts of three eyewitnesses to the resurrection:  Simon Peter and “the other disciple, whom Jesus loved,” and Mary Magdelene.  Simon Peter and the other disciple didn’t see the risen Christ, but drew some conclusions from the empty tomb.  Mary drew an erroneous conclusion from seeing the empty tomb, and even after eventually laying eyes on Jesus, she still got it wrong – until Jesus spoke her name.    

Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright said, “When you read the Easter story—from Mary thinking Jesus' body has been stolen, to Peter's confusion, to the rest of the disciples not understanding Scripture—you could hardly get more misunderstandings into a couple of paragraphs if you tried.

“The point is, of course, that Easter has burst into our world, but our minds and imaginations are too small to contain it.  [So] we do our best to put the ocean into a bottle and fit the explosive fact of the Resurrection into the possibilities [and categories] we already know about.  

“At one level the continued puzzlement of the disciples is a mark of the story's authenticity.  (Who wants to look that stupid in print for posterity?  You and I would edit that stuff out.  Because the gospel-writers left it in, it gives the account credibility.)

“As one leading agnostic scholar has put it, it looks as though they were struggling to describe something for which they didn't have adequate language.”[1]

The three disciples really struggled to make sense of the evidence of the empty tomb and the discarded shroud.  Those are the things that any one of us could have seen if we’d been there – it’s called “circumstantial evidence.” 

The conventional wisdom, particularly among non-lawyers, is that circumstantial evidence is generally less reliable than eyewitness testimony, and that a case with only circumstantial evidence is weak, while the testimony of an eyewitness makes for a stronger case.  But eyewitness testimony is only sometimes helpful, because the thing about eyewitness testimony, is that people see imperfectly; people remember what they saw only in part, or they highlight only the things that are shocking, unusual or important to them; and people see in context: in other words, in their memories they categorize what they see according to what is familiar to them. 

That’s one of the reasons why Mary and Simon Peter and their friend all saw the same things, but understood them differently at first.  It’s one of the reasons why the church that was born on Easter morning locked itself away in a room for days, thinking and praying about the meaning of the things they had seen and experienced.   

The details of Mary’s visit to the tomb include the fact that she set out in the dark to take a treacherous walk in a world of no flashlights or no street lamps – why would she risk it?  What was the rush?  One guess I could take is that the love of Christ compelled her to come and not to wait.  She had much to be grateful for - the Bible says that Jesus delivered her of seven demons.  This time in the dark – when no one else was likely to be at the tomb, would be her time to mourn privately, and a time for her to serve her master by caring for his dead body.

When she saw that the stone was removed from the entrance to the tomb, she ran to tell Simon Peter and the other disciple that Jesus’ body had been stolen.  Resurrection never entered her mind – grave-robbing was a common crime of the day, and it was this context that led Mary to the wrong conclusion. 

John then wrote that Peter and “the other” disciple – “ran” to the tomb.  Who runs to a grave?  Nothing was going to change if they strolled in a few minutes later.  What would they have been thinking that would cause them to race to the tomb like that? 

The other disciple outran Peter and arrived first – you have to wonder if Peter was running more slowly because he was weighed down by the guilt of having denied knowing Jesus on the night when he waited beside the fire in Pilate’s courtyard.  Or maybe the other disciple – the one whom Jesus loved – got there first because he – like Mary - was propelled by love.    

I don’t discount the church tradition that John himself was the disciple identified in his gospel as “the one whom Jesus loved,” but I’ve always wondered whether “the other disciple”, “the one whom Jesus loved,” might have been Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, whom Jesus raised from his tomb not long before his own death.  My reason for thinking that, is because in that story, Lazarus is described as “the one [Jesus] loved like a brother,”[2] and at the tomb of Lazarus the Jews from Jerusalem who had come down to mourn Lazarus commented on Jesus as he wept at the tomb, “See how he loved him.”[3]   And finally, we know that after he was called from the tomb that Lazarus continued as one of Jesus’ disciples.[4]

And if the “other disciple” was Lazarus instead of John, that might explain why he ran so fast to see if Jesus had been freed from his tomb the way Jesus had freed Lazarus from his own tomb; and it could explain why he didn’t step into the tomb right away when he outran Peter – what kind of sick feeling would memories of your own death give you? 

And someone who had had to be unwrapped from his shroud and head wrapping with the help of others[5] would likely think it especially noteworthy that Jesus’ shroud had merely collapsed empty where he’d been laid, with his headscarf lying beside it.  Our gospel reading this morning says that when the other disciple finally stepped into the tomb and saw the wrappings, “he…believed.”    

So for me these are interesting things to ponder, but whether it was Mary, Peter and John or Mary, Peter and Lazarus, what they had in common was love for their friend and master, Jesus.  But in spite of their common love, and their eyewitness accounts, they came to faith in a resurrected Jesus at different times and in different ways. 

Mary loved Jesus, in his humanity.  On that first Easter morning she saw the evidence of an empty tomb, and laid eyes on the person of Jesus himself – she practically tripped over him - but didn’t believe in his resurrection until she heard him call her name.  A lot of us are like Mary:  we have a lot of knowledge about Jesus, we know what the Bible says about him, and we might have a great admiration for him; we might have even had a dozen divine encounters with the Holy Spirit in the course of our lives, but still we don’t have faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior until we hear him speak our name.  His sheep know his voice.  

And whoever the “other disciple” was, the text says that he was someone who saw the evidence and believed right away, but didn’t understand what it meant.  Those of us who are like the “other disciple” recognize the truth of the gospel when we see it – or hear it – but we don’t understand the impact of that in our lives, we don’t understand how to respond to that truth immediately.  The way to faith for such people is to spend time with other believers, worshipping and reading and discussing the scriptures, and allow their understanding to grow over time.

Simon Peter – the disciple who’d been singled out by Jesus as a leader, the one who’d spent the most time with Jesus, the one who’d been present at the Transfiguration and seen Jesus in all of his divine glory but still didn’t grasp what it meant – Simon Peter’s response was true to form.  Once again he allowed himself to be confused by what he was seeing – maybe he even refused to believe his own eyes – or maybe his mind just had no point of reference for what he was seeing, no way to draw conclusions.  Like Mary and the other disciple, Peter loved his human friend, Jesus – but he didn’t know what to think about a Jesus who was more than human; he had no categories for that. 

How could any of them have known what they were seeing?  Resurrection was something that happened at the end of history.  And even if they understood that their dead friend was alive, how could they understand what it meant?  How can we?  Our categories are no better than theirs – science can resuscitate someone newly dead, but inconsistently; and no doctor or scientist claims to be able to resurrect someone already buried.

How could they know that “with the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, a shock wave…rattled through the world, so that despite appearances, (in spite of the ongoing presence of disease and violence and suffering and death), the world is in fact a different place, full of new possibilities that were previously unimagined.”[6]  The Christian gospel is not some wishy-washy, lukewarm concoction of ethical teachings for milquetoast followers, or a set of moralistic rules and regulations for people whose fun we label “sin.”

“Christianity is not offered up as one truth among many, or as one version of a single truth common to all.  Real Christianity…is both the truth that makes sense of all other truths, and the truth that offers itself as the framework within which those other truths will find their meaning.”[7] 

The truth of Christianity is the context – it is the category – for thinking about and understanding everything that happens in the world, not the other way around.  We don’t measure Christianity by the things that happen around us – we don’t understand God through the lens of 9-11, or earthquakes and tsunamis, or wars or the deaths of the people that you love.  We measure those things, and think about and understand those things through the lens of Christianity, through the lens of resurrection; through the lens of a God who loves us, and who came to us and entered into and endured our human condition with all of its limitations and temptations; a God who set himself up to die in order that we might live eternally. 

The great theologian Karl Barth said this about Easter:  In Easter God says to us, “…let us celebrate and see what I can do.  See what I have done and accomplished, while you, living your lives in utter seriousness, put knowing expresses on your faces and spoke smart judgments…now look what has happened in the meantime and rejoice: ‘Christ is risen!’  This is Easter:  what God has done, while we human beings ran our own ways with our hard, thick heads; while we with our little hostilities and foolishness soured life for ourselves and others; while we worshipped money and waged war and suffered distress in this dark world, a world full of questions, enigmas and difficulties:  This is Easter:  That in the midst of all that, on the third day Jesus Christ rose from the dead!  And now we are invited to share a little in this and to be glad in the great joy of God in heaven…that God is stronger than human sin…stronger than fate…stronger than all the powers of the devil…stronger than death…stronger than religion and the church!...God is stronger!  The rulers and those in power are defeated; in Christ the victory of God has broken in over them!  Resurrection!  This is the word that Jesus has spoken once and for all…this is the word heard at the grave of Jesus!  God is stronger!..An old world has collapsed and in Christ a new world has opened.”[8]

Friends, God is stronger!  Christ is risen!  Let yourself be drawn into the victory that we celebrate today!

          And it IS an intrusion – in the same way that we want to skip the waiting of Advent and get directly to the excitement of Christmas, we want to skip hearing about the betrayal of Holy Week and the agony of the cross and go straight to the rabbits and colored eggs and little children in new clothes with handfuls of flowers, and songs with lots of Alleluias in them.

          Matthew wrote that when Jesus entered Jerusalem, everyone in the crowds who were present to celebrate the Passover had a single question:  “Who is this?”

          Some people thought they already knew:  they had heard Jesus was a good teacher or maybe even a prophet.  Others thought he was a faith healer.  A few thoughtful students of prophecy had concluded that he was the promised Messiah, the Son of David; and they were half-right, except that they believed that the Messiah had arrived to set them free from the yoke of Roman oppression.  They were all following a different Jesus.

          Most people today still do the same thing.  We follow the Jesus we believe is “useful” to us – the Jesus of our own construction, a Jesus who removes obstacles in our lives, a deliverer who follows our instructions about the way we want to be rescued and the course our lives should take.

          It’s important that we understand that Jesus didn’t come to earth to suffer and die so that we could get into the right college, marry the right person, raise our children, help us stop smoking or whatever it is we need Jesus for at the moment.

          So instead of interpreting the scriptures on the passion week of Christ, and giving you an application for your life, we’re going to read the scriptures to you and let you work out your own application with “fear and trembling.”   We all need to answer the question, “Who IS this?” for ourselves.  

            This story of the healing of the man born blind, and its aftermath, is more than a miracle story – only two sentences of its 41 verses deal with the blind man’s healing.  It is a story that we have heard so many times that some of us might have quit listening because we know the story so well. 

            We Christians often talk in shorthand, giving nicknames to Bible stories that aren’t always accurate.  For example, we all know the story we call the Prodigal Son, but the story is really about a Prodigal Father.  We call this the story of the “Man Born Blind” to distinguish it among the five accounts of Jesus healing a blind person; but it’s really a story about false assumptions, prejudices and fear, sin and grace, outcasts and evangelism – we just don’t readily see it, because of the cataracts that clouds our spiritual sight.

            I said there were five stories about blind people, and it has been suggested that the origin of denominations occurred when the healed blind men all met each other.[1]  At first they talked about the miracle of receiving their sight, but as they talked about how Jesus had healed them, they discovered significant differences.  For some, the healing came with simply a touch from Jesus.[2]  Another boasted that he had enough faith so Jesus didn’t have to touch him to heal him.[3] Another said that Jesus not only touched him, but spit on his eyes.[4]  Our friend in John’s gospel felt really embarrassed to admit that Jesus had mixed his saliva with dirt and put the mud on his eyes and then told him to go and wash.  Since each one thought his healing was “normal” and better than the others, they divided into the “Spittites” and the “Non-spittites”; the “Muddites” and “Non-muddites”; the “Touchites” and the “Non-touchites” and denominationalism was born!

            And I think that John’s “Spittite” was the first Presbyterian, because he didn’t seek Jesus out, he didn’t  ask Jesus to heal him and Jesus didn’t ask him to repent.  It was all something that originated with God:  Jesus found him, decided to heal him and did heal him, and the blind man’s belief came in response to God’s action.  Predestination, election and sovereign grace:  This guy is a Calvinist!

When Jesus and the disciples came upon the blind man, the disciples asked Jesus why he was blind.  In ancient Judaism, there were two prevailing attitudes about physical defects, both from Scripture.  One was that the person’s disability was the result of the sin of a parent or grandparent that was being “visited upon [their descendants] unto the third and fourth generations.”[5]  The other view was that the birth defect must have been the result of sin committed by the child in the womb!  Ezekiel 18:20 says, “A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child; the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be his own.”

            We do this still today, don’t we?  We weigh peoples’ sins and argue about whose fault it is that a person finds him- or herself in a situation of suffering.  We become Christian Hindus in our appeals to Karma.  Because Hindus believe in reincarnation – living life over and over again -  Karma is the Hindu teaching that suffering in the present is the direct result of some bad act committed in a previous life.  If a Hindu interferes with someone’s suffering by healing them, then the person’s suffering will be incomplete, and he will have to suffer through his next life again.

So what I call a “Christian Hindu appealing to Karma” is someone who sees a drug addict suffering from the physical effects of needing a fix, or sees poor people making unhealthy choices in the grocery store or spending their welfare dollars in a liquor store, and we say things like, “Well, they brought it on themselves.  Why should I help?  My interfering can’t save them.”  We claim for ourselves the privileges of defining sin and dispensing grace.

            That’s why the idea of Karma appeals to us – it makes so much sense.  It puts suffering into a neat little box of “You did it, you own it,” “You do the crime, you do the time.”  When everything is self-inflicted there is no need for favoritism or forgiveness or grace, only justice.   We would be right there alongside the disciples asking Jesus “whose fault is this, the blind man’s or his parents’?” 

            And with them we hear Jesus say, “Neither.”  Jesus is able to identify the source and nature of all of our sins – remember the story of the Gerasene Demoniac where Jesus identified the source of the man’s behavior as demon possession?[6]  Or the Woman at the Well, when Jesus told her he knew about her multiple husbands and her current affair?[7]  There are too many kinds of sin and evil to spend a lot of time on the specifics – Sin and Evil are givens – they just are what they are: a resistance and opposition to God in whatever form they take.  And sometimes, he says, a man is just born blind. 

            But this particular man’s blindness is going to be used to show God’s Providence in the world.  You know, we most often think that the blessings of God only come to those who believe, and it’s usually because we hope that if we do everything right – if we pray right and go to church enough and read our Bibles and give to the poor – that God will bless us.  We stop short of imagining that God is going to “waste” a blessing on an unbeliever – an unrepentant sinner. 

            Do you hear how illogical that is (that God wouldn’t bless unrepentant sinners)?  We forget Paul’s words in Romans that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”          Blessing unrepentant sinners with God’s love is what God does. 

            So Jesus gives the man his sight.  I don’t say he “restored” his sight, because there had never been any sight that was “lost” that could be restored.  This is an act of creation – God creating something out of nothing.  Stop for a minute and think about that. 

            If you were “lucky” enough not to be born a Christian, you’ll know what I mean when I say that living life in the world as an Unbeliever is to life as a Believer, in the same way that life on the moon is to life on Earth.  It’s like two different planets.  “Born again,” is a great metaphor for new life in Christ because what is more different than life in a dark womb and life in the fresh air under a blue sky? 

            And when that moment of being touched by God occurs – it does not necessarily translate simultaneously into a moment of belief in God.  That’s why the blind man can’t tell the priests who it was who healed him – he can only tell them what happened to him.  “Some guy put mud in my eyes and told me to go and wash and now I can see.  Even I don’t know what I think about that.”  

            The other thing that happened is that his neighbors, friends and family don’t recognize him.  If his name was Rufus, those people only know Rufus as a blind man.  They don’t have a mental category for a man named Rufus who can see. 

            Again, we do similar things.  How many times do we just write people off because “that’s just the way they are, they’ll never change”?  How many people do we not attempt to help because we think it’s impossible for them to change because we’ve known them all their lives and they’ve always been this way?  Who do you know that you have given up hope for, who have you quit praying for, who would you not recognize – or trust – if he or she showed up on your doorstep with a changed life?  My list is pretty long…

            And if these people did show up with a changed life, what kind of a testimony would that be to the power of God? 

            The blind man tells his story over and over again in response to the questions of the Pharisees, but he doesn’t seem to convert anyone.  He even makes the Pharisees angry – but in each telling of his story we see his own faith grow.  He moves from “This is what happened, but I don’t know who did it,” to “I don’t know his name, but he is a prophet,” to “Only God can open the eyes of the blind,” and finally, “Lord, I believe.”

            This is why it is important to tell your own faith stories – you might convert some, you might not – but you will grow in faith and understanding every time you do. 

            I grew in faith and understanding when I learned to defend my beliefs in a liberal seminary where there were only a few people who shared my beliefs.  I don’t know if I changed any minds, and they might still disagree with me, but they couldn’t disagree with my story because it was my story, not theirs. 

            When I worked in the hospital, I grew in faith and understanding because I had to defend my faith to people who disagreed with me because they either knew too many people who were suffering, or they were suffering themselves. 

            I’ve heard that the biggest benefit of the “door knocking evangelism” of the Jehovah’s Witnesses is the growth of understanding and commitment it fosters in the people who do it; and I’ve heard of a Mormon bishop who said that those shirt-and-tie missionaries on their bicycles don’t convert many people, but very few of those who have been on a mission ever drop out of church.[8]

             So think about what God has done for you and write it down in an order that makes sense.  Then practice it and go tell it to somebody – you don’t need to know your Bible cover-to-cover and you don’t need to be leading a perfect life.  You only need to be able to say to someone who asks why you are the way you are, “I don’t know about your life, but this is what happened to me.”  And believe me, if your life has been impacted by your faith, and you are not hiding behind the doors of your home and church, but are in the world and truly engaging with and relating to the people that you meet; and your responses to the trials and crises of life are the responses of a person of faith, you will look as strange to an unsaved as an alien from another planet and they will ask why you are the way you are. 

            And if you are experiencing suffering yourself and have not been healed in spite of a strong faith and earnest prayer, remember that the point of this story is not the miracle – what motivated the miracle was not the man’s blindness, or his suffering or his prayers, but the need to make God’s work manifest.  God’s work may be manifested in divine healing, but it can also be manifested in living faithfully without healings or with disabling conditions.[9]

            Providence is not a Christian explanation of history and suffering:  “Providence is a confession by those who are given the eyes of faith, that in particular events God works in, around and through the things that [are opposed to God, in order] to accomplish God’s purposes.”[10]

            Confess Jesus – don’t explain him.  And you will find that the Christ you knew when you came to faith long ago is far less amazing than the Christ you know today.

            Presbyterians never volunteer to do anything – we say we are “called” by God to come to a certain church; our careers are supposed to be vocations to which we are called by God; we are called in different seasons of our lives to service in different ministries, or on community boards, or as teachers, missionaries, elders and Ministers of Word and Sacrament. 

            Being called by God involves a sense of pull in your heart – being “warted” so to speak by the Holy Spirit until we prayerfully – or more often, irritably - turn and ask, “What now?”  Calls are usually confirmed by others, as when you are approached by another Christian who points out that there is something that needs your special gifts, talents or skills.  So a call of God to do anything or go anywhere is a three-way conversation between the Holy Spirit, yourself and the church. 

            We give a lot of lip service to the idea of “being called” but we really don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.  We tend to just get up in the morning and head out; we complete the assignments given to us by our teachers and the chores given to us by our parents; we clock in at work and do what our supervisor tells us to do; we might go to college if that’s what our parents expect us to do – but we just don’t wonder much if we are called to do any of those things, or if God is truly calling us to do something else.

            One of the truths about being called by God is that when God calls you to do something, God will equip you to do it.  Remember, when Moses was called to convince Pharaoh to let the Hebrew people go from their enslavement in Egypt, Moses had a speech impediment, so God sent Moses’ brother, Aaron, along to speak for him.  Solomon didn’t feel qualified to lead Israel, so God gave him wisdom.  If God calls you to the mission field, he will also provide the funds for you to travel and carry out your ministry.  God can make you smart enough for him to accomplish whatever it is God wants to do through you, and provide the means for it, if you will set aside your personal agenda and trust Him.

            Nobody knew that before God called Abraham to leave his home, his family and friends, and set out across the desert to a place that God would show him.  Nobody had ever thought to trust God before.

            And few of us think about what it means to trust God even today.  Americans often think of themselves as the “first” to do almost everything.  Life in America is like having a new beginning every day.  It is embedded deep in our common psyche that when we mess something up, our first response is to say, “Oh well, tomorrow is another day.”  If failure happens, we don’t believe that it has come to stay, because there will be another chance to make it right, another opportunity around the corner, or just over the horizon. We only have to try again.

            We read the Bible the same way – as though being the people of God began with us and the salvation of our individual souls.  We think that the Old Testament is the moralistic history of dead civilizations, if we think of it at all.  If in our personal lives we mess up something that God wants us to do – like when we lie instead of tell the truth, or steal – our confidence in our personal salvation makes us quick to forgive ourselves, instead of appropriating the truth that Jesus has obtained our forgiveness through the cross – because we believe that tomorrow is another day.

            So if we think the story of salvation starts with us, why should we care about Abraham?  We aren’t like the first-century Jews, finding our identity in Abraham, taking pride in our ancestry and gaining our confidence there.  We gentiles are a hybrid people – most of us know our grandfathers’ name, and maybe our great-grandfathers’ name – but if we can trace our heritage back much farther, it’s probably because genealogy is our hobby, not because we think it affects how we live our lives today.  If anything, we are apt to forget the past and the checkered histories of our ancestors, because, as I said, our default is to think that it is our specialness and our personal relationship with Jesus that is the beginning and the end of who we are in Christ. 

            “Me, mine; us, our, we” make up the spiritual boundaries of our lives.   

But the Bible teaches differently:  The Bible says that God told Abraham five times what God would do for him.  It amounts to Abraham hearing a voice that said, “Hey you over there!  Pay attention.  I know you’ve been worshipping idols, and making up a bunch of little gods so you can have someone to ask for what you can’t provide for yourself, and someone to blame when things go wrong.  Beginning now, those days are over.   I will make you into a great nation,…I will bless you;…I will make your name great…I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” 

            The call of Abraham – a pagan idol worshipper steeped in the sins of his culture - as the first of what will become known as the People of God has been called “the most momentous address since the creation of the world.”[1] It was revolutionary – 4,000 years ago no one had a sense of individualism; there would have been no concept of a personal salvation.  You were what you were because of the land where you lived, the tribe into which you were born, and the traditions of your ancestors.  To be asked to leave family, friends, tribe and land to journey as an alien and foreigner, a stranger in a strange land, was inconceivable.  It was like being asked to go off and die.  And for whatever reason that Abraham believed God, for that instant in time, he did believe – he trusted that the promises of God were true – or at least enticing – and it was counted to him as righteousness.[2]

            Christians often think that the law came first and that somehow “it didn’t work right” – as though God would create anything that “didn’t work right” – and that when we figured out this “grace thing in Jesus”, we somehow got it “right.”  But the truth is that grace came first, came before the law was given.  There was no Torah for Abraham, no Ten Commandments.  God loved and called Abraham before he took a single step in God’s direction. 

This is something that had never been heard of before, except at the creation of the universe:  In creation, God called into existence things which did not before exist[3]  - and in the call of Abraham, God again called into existence something which did not before exist – Abraham and Sarah, a sort of spiritual Adam and Eve - the gifts of God for a people of God, and a person to receive those gifts of grace who would become the first, the father of all who believe.  This is the gospel, the “good news” of the Old Testament.  (Don’t let anyone deceive you into believing that the Hebrew Scriptures are no longer relevant – there is a picture of the grace of God in Jesus prefigured on almost every page.)

Adam and Eve had tried to set themselves above God and then refused to answer him when he called, “Where are you?”  In their sin, they became the enemies of God.  For their sin, they were pushed out of the Garden into the wilderness, to try to build cities and nations with their own hands.  

But Abraham and Sarah, even though they were sinful people, did answer when God called out to them.  They submitted themselves to God’s leading, setting out from their city voluntarily to become wandering desert nomads, trusting in God’s promises that he would make them into a great nation, give them a land and a name and make them a blessing to the whole world – and Abraham was called “God’s friend forever.”    The call of Abraham and Sarah is the beginning of our redemption.

But by the time of Christ, men like Nicodemus had forgotten that.  By the time God sent Jesus to live among humans, humans had decided that it was necessary to keep faith where it “belonged,” lodged in the pedigree of the “children of Abraham,” housed in the Jerusalem temple.  Faith was no longer sent to be carried to the whole world, faith was meant to be hoarded by the Jews who kept the law and who made frequent sacrifices.  By then, being a child of Abraham meant not that you were part of the Great Family of Faith, who trusted in the promises of God, but rather, that you were graded on how well you kept the law.

By the time Nicodemus came to visit Jesus in the middle of the night people like him had gone back to obtaining their identity from the land where they lived, from their tribe and from the traditions of their ancestors.  Even though he was steeped in the trappings of religion, he was as godless a pagan as ever Abraham had been.

And the advice that Jesus gives Nicodemus is the same thing God told Abraham: “Start over.”  Start over, beginning now. Take a step of faith.  I will give you a do-over, a rewind, a reload, a spiritual mulligan.  Be born again, born from above, born anew.  This is a new genesis and you can become a new creation.[4]

Nicodemus replies something the effect that what Jesus suggests is, “Easier said than done.”  Who here would have said anything different?  Asking someone to be “born again” is the “Continental Divide” of Scripture.[5]    

Nicodemus was a Pharisee – someone who had built a lifetime on the foundation of who he was and what he did for God.  Having Jesus tell him to stop doing was like Jesus telling him to give up and die.  Just like Abraham leaving his tribe was like telling him to die to who he was.  Just like telling us that trusting in Jesus, “dying to self” and living for others is the only way to God.  Give up your striving, quit trying to make a future for yourself, die and be resurrected in Christ – be born again.

They go together, Abraham and Nicodemus.  Both men represent two ways of beginning anew.  Nicodemus inhabited a world defined by what he did, and God in Christ tells him to “trust in the promises of God.”  Abraham inhabited a world defined by his trust in the promises of God, and God told him to “go and do.”  Both of them are like all of us and all of us are like both of them, all the time.  Trusting leads to doing; doing leads to more trusting.

God set out on his own journey when he called Abraham; God went first and Abraham followed.  God ate meals with Abraham, stood in the doorway of his tent, sat with him under the Oaks of Mamre, listened to him complain about his circumstances, and allowed him to express his disbelief.  Through all of that God called Abraham his friend. 

In Jesus, God set out on another journey – he left heaven and came to where Nicodemus and all of us live.  He ate meals with the disciples, he appeared in the doorways of their homes, he sat under trees and on the beach with them and he listened to them whine and complain and argue and he called them his friends – and he journeyed with them all the way to the cross.

Eugene Peterson, a Presbyterian pastor for 50 years and the translator of The Message paraphrase of the Bible, tells of going to the desert of the Negev – “Israel’s barren, featureless, endless wilderness.”  There are no mountains, no rivers, no trees – (sounds like he’s describing our prairie, doesn’t it?)  The Negev is not a popular destination.  He wanted to get a sense of the place where so many of the Bible’s stories are set, where Abraham and Jesus journeyed.  He didn’t drive or travel by tour bus, he walked for ten days.  He said that “the Negev is probably the least likely piece of geography” to choose if you want to form a people of God to “bless all the families of the earth.” 

He wrote that he walked because his guide insisted, saying, “You don’t get this by taking pictures.  You have to make the trip on foot.  You acquire the biblical story mostly through your feet and only peripherally through your eyes and ears.  The way is made by walking.”

If you are following God’s call, you may not have traversed the Negev, but you have walked in other deserts, the kinds of places we might call “godforsaken” and where the people are either god-less or ungodly - where people go to die.  Churches are those kinds of places, full of Godless or ungodly people in various stages of dying to themselves as they learn to live into their baptisms and follow Jesus.  When you first start to walk in the desert – or the prairie – you don’t think there’s anything to see.  And our impression of the church is that the people inside are no different from the people who don’t call on the name of Jesus.  You have to walk in those deserts for awhile, you have to spend some time inside with the people of God and “bit by bit, detail by detail, the emptiness of the desert begins to show a fullness” that you didn’t expect.[6] 

Following the call of God is like that – you’ll think you’re being asked to die – and you are; but it is only in dying to ourselves that we can be raised to new life.  We will acquire the biblical story – the knowledge of what it means to be the people of God, answering his call and following his footsteps – mostly through our feet and only peripherally through our eyes and ears.[7]   “The future is shaped not simply by the God who makes the promises, but also by the way that we respond.”    

            It’s always good to tell your family’s history to the next generation.  It helps us to remember who you are and where you came from.  And if everybody else has died, you get to tell it your way! 

            Telling the family story is a way of sharing an experience by sharing a memory; it’s a way of keeping people alive by remembering and speaking their names; and it’s a way to explain to your children why you are the “way you are,” and why some of what they will become is inevitable, because of who they are and where they came from. 

            Genesis is the family story of the people of God.  It explains who we are and why we are the way we are, and why our children do the things they do in spite of our best parenting – they simply can’t help it.    

             As I was reading our family story again in preparation for Ash Wednesday, I was meditating on what it meant that our common ancestor was created from dust.  Now that we know about the Big Bang and exploding supernovas, some physicists would say we were created from stardust.   The name “Adam” is a play on words of the Hebrew word “adamah,” that means “earth” (not the planet, the dirt), and an Aramaic word that means “made.”  That makes Adam, the first human being, maybe an “Earthling” but really more of a “mud baby.”

            Being made from dirt shouldn’t have been much of a problem - Adam and Eve lived in a garden, after all, which is all about dirt (we only think it’s about plants) – and Adam had the task of cultivating and keeping the garden.  In return for his work, Adam and his wife could eat the fruit of the garden, except for the fruit of a tree in the middle of the garden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Gardening in Eden wasn’t the backbreaking job it can be today.  Creation was still perfect and there weren’t any thorns or weeds.  But still, it’s hard not to get dirty when you’re gardening – and they did get dirty. 

            Gardens are full of crawly things, it was inevitable that a dusty snake would turn up, and sure enough, Adam and his wife Eve first bit on temptation and then bit on that forbidden fruit, and then – all Hell broke loose.  Because they had disobeyed what God had explicitly told them and chose to believe Satan, and put their own desires above God’s desires, Adam and Eve began to experience spiritual death, and soon after, physical death:  Sin had entered the world. 

            God expelled them from the garden to protect them from eating of the Tree of Life and having to live like dirt forever.   Their punishment for their disobedience was that pleasant work would become hard labor – thorns and weeds would infest the ground and it would no longer be easy to harvest fruit; and women would harvest the fruit of children only after the hard labor of birth.

            So that is why we are the way we are – why we’ve always had a “taste” for things that aren’t good for us and why life can be so hard; and why no matter how hard we scrub, there’s always a spot of dirt somewhere and dust seeps in through our closed doors and windowsills.  It’s why just as soon as the cleaning lady leaves our spiritual houses after church on Sundays, the place is full of fingerprints again in no time at all.  It’s in our spiritual genes, so to speak.

            The Old Testament spills a lot of ink explaining to us what things God considers to be unclean and what God means when God commands us to be clean.   If God really wanted us to be clean, you have to wonder why God made us out of dirt.  If God is all about purity of heart and mind, body and soul, how is it that He made us out of dirt and then commands us to be clean?  Sounds like a set-up to me… 

            A lot of us work hard at trying to be clean.  We think that if we can pile up enough money and stuff, if we can get enough education, if we can just get off the farm and into a city with nice paved streets, if we can stand next to someone that is less good-looking than we are – that be will be far enough away and up high enough so the dust can’t reach us; and when God sees us next to that ugly person we will look good.  But it seems like no matter how far or how high we go there is always something waiting to knock us down again, and roll us around in the dust until the image of God that we bear is indistinguishable from the polluted and cursed earth.  

            But the God of Dirt is also the God of Water, and He follows us around, leading us to water over and over again, until finally we quit focusing on the dirt and the washing and the watering hole and look up to see the fountain that’s the Source of the water. 

            And if we stand in the water that flows from the Rock, from the tears of God and the side of Christ, the dirt won’t stick. 

            Listen to the voices of our relatives speak across the years:

            Our ancestor Joel said, “Rend your heart…not your garments.  Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.”  Hang around the water. 

            Our ancestor Isaiah said, “…call, and the LORD will answer; …and he will say: Here am I.”  If you hang around the water, “you will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.”

            And Paul tells us to “Be reconciled to God [for] God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God…I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.”

            Hear our brother Jesus say, “Repent and believe the Gospel.”   “Change your life and believe the Message.”[1]

            When “you've found you don't have to listen to Sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God… you will find a whole, healed, put-together life - right now - with more and more of life on the way!    You can keep working hard for sin your whole life and your pension will be Death.   But God's gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.”[2]

            The Divine Gardener is working the dusty powder and turning it again into rich soil – good dirt, “God dirt.”  It is no longer we who till and plant and harvest among the thorns, it is God who does the heavy lifting,  and we – the well-watered People of God – who bear the fruit.  

            These are things we shouldn’t forget – tales we should tell, to keep them alive and potent – for they are the stories of where we came from, who we are and who we are becoming.   “From dust we were and to dust we will return.”[3] 

             Matthew’s text about the conception and birth of Jesus is a controversial subject for us.  Our tendency is to get caught up in the details of biology and reduce the miracle of birth to mere ethics.  Our modern conversations about the creation of life take the shape of:  should birth be prevented by artificial birth control?  Is abortion permissible for a Christian and should it be legal in our society? 

                 We decry teenage pregnancy, but with little result:  one out of every 10 teenage girls is pregnant; and each year in America 600,000 babies are born to single mothers. 

                 Surveys estimate that before age 20, 70% of females and 80% of males are sexually active; and television gossip shows and movie magazines can’t wait to tell us which celebrity is getting married, divorced or committing adultery; teasing us to guess “who’s the father?” of any number of celebrity babies; and showing us airbrushed magazine photos of the nearly naked stomachs of famous mothers of various ages.

                 How are we in the 21^st –century – a time when sexual promiscuity is not only routine, but even to be expected – how are we to understand the Gospels’ soap-opera story of a virginal teenager who literally wakes up to find herself pregnant and her Dudley Do-Right fiancé who had nothing to do with it?  It’s easy to make the jump to a supermarket tabloid headline:  “Teenage Virgin Names God as Child’s Father!  Vatican Issues Denial; NASA Says Vision Was Routine Weather Balloon.”   

                 I know it sounds like I’m mocking the scripture – and I would never do that – but part of the danger of living in a time like ours is that it’s so easy – especially for those born after 1970 or so - to assume the world has always been this way – and it has not.   

                 The things I have just described you could not be more different from the time in which Mary and Joseph lived.  It’s our prideful tendency to think that our ways are somehow more enlightened than the ways of the first century; but clearly, for anyone who has ever tried to negotiate the rules of dating and marriage of the last 100 years, our modern ways are confusing, demeaning and destructive. 

                 People of the Old Testament took a woman’s virginity seriously.  Both family and society valued a virgin, and virgins were so important to the life of the community that, although conquerors killed other women, they let the virgins live.[1]

                 Brides were expected to be virgins; they dressed in a special way, in robes with long sleeves, and sometimes a veil.[2]  There were large financial penalties for families who falsely claimed that a daughter was a virgin; and if a man falsely swore that his bride was not a virgin, he had to pay her father for slandering her name.[3]  Finally, if a bride turned out not to be a virgin, the penalty for her was death by stoning in front of her father’s house.[4]

                 So now we can see what Mary and Joseph had to deal with:  Mary’s pregnancy was an incredible scandal, a genuine tragedy for her and for her family.  Abandonment by Joseph was the least of Mary’s troubles, since she alone faced the death penalty.  And then there was her story about the Holy Spirit – who would ever believe that, then or now?  Even in the first century, people knew where babies came from. 

                 Why didn’t Mary hide?  Why didn’t she have an abortion? – they knew how to do those 2,000 years ago too.  Why did Joseph keep her as his wife when he could have understandably and easily divorced her?  Or why didn’t she and Joseph just run away and start a new life where no one knew them? 

                 Because both Mary and Joseph had the promises of God through the prophets and the voice and presence of the angel Gabriel that Mary would “conceive and give birth to a son, and [would] call him Jesus; [and]  He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; The Lord God would give him the throne of his father David, and he would reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; in a kingdom that would never end.”[5] 

            And to Joseph, “do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit   She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

                 Nothing about death or divorce; only affirmation and promise – first they believed, then they trusted and then they obeyed. 

                 Maybe when you hear that, this miracle story will begin to make sense to you.  Because that’s the kind of miracle all Christ-followers should be familiar with:  The faith that we have is a gift of God, given to us through the Holy Spirit – in the same way that Jesus is God Incarnate – God-in-the-Flesh; through the gift of God, like Mary,  we, too, have the Holy Spirit Incarnate in us. 

                 First we believed that; then we trusted in the promise; and now we obey God’s leading – that’s the miracle of the Christian’s life.   It’s what Mary and Joseph did.

                 The first word we all breathe when we first see a newborn is “miracle,” - even if we’re uncomfortable with the word “miracle” in our world of in vitro fertilization, cloning and surrogacy - because we recognize that whatever it is we might do with chemistry in a laboratory, all scientists know that there is a breath of life - a divine spark - that they have nothing to do with and can’t duplicate - a barrier that science has yet to breach.

                 If you have been a Presbyterian – or even an American – for very long, you will have come across someone who says that he or she doesn’t believe in the virgin birth;  especially people who need to reduce every miraculous element to something with a natural explanation. 

                 These are the people who, when they read about Jesus walking on the water will claim that he was only stepping under some conveniently-placed stones; that the calming of the storm was a mere coincidence; changing the water into wine was a practical joke of the kind that people perform at wedding receptions; and the parting of the Red Sea and the Jordan River had to do with tides and flood stages. 

                 There are the people who treat the Bible as though it were a science text; and others who think the Bible and science are in conflict.  But both miss the point:  The Bible is not concerned with explaining the existence and order of the universe, the origin of life or human life.  The Bible deals primarily with God and God’s plan for human redemption.

                 Science seeks to understand the world’s operations based on accounts that involve the members of the universe – you, me, the elements and the laws of physics – all of that we could call “members of the universe.”  But God is not a “member” of the universe, God is the source of the universe. 

                 God doesn’t perform the functions that the members of the universe perform, as though sticking a divine finger in the ocean to stir up a hurricane.  Rather, it is God’s power that keeps all the various members of the universe in existence as they perform their natural functions.[6]  

                 The best description of this is the way Paul puts it in the first chapter of Colossians when he writes of Jesus that “in him all things were created:  things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” 

                 John Turkevich was both a chemist and a priest, and he pointed out that it is not difficult for a Christian to look at nature’s order and in it recognize God’s power, wisdom and goodness.  He said that “God is a God of very large numbers.”  What he meant by that, is that in a universe of astounding size and age, humanity exists between the immensely large and the immensely small. 

                 That the creator of such a massive universe, intricate in its detail, should be aware of us, even with a personal care, does not arise from nature itself, but is found in the incarnation of God in Jesus.  It is by and through the Word of God that all things are made;  God - whose mind is manifest to us in very large numbers in the cosmos - is also present to us humanly and personally in Jesus Christ.[7]

                 People who reduce miracles to whatever it was that happened, and however it was that it happened, focus so narrowly on what is unanswerable - and therefore fruitless - they miss the point and power of the Gospel miracles. 

                 Miracles are hard to believe in – and they should be, or there would be nothing miraculous about them.  Everyone struggles with miracles – even the disciples who were present with Jesus and saw multiple miracles with their own eyes had trouble believing what they were seeing. 

                 But if indeed there is a creator-God, then, there is nothing illogical about the possibility of miracles.  Where God is present, miracles are “normal” occurrences.[8]  Science is only equipped to test for natural causes and cannot speak to any other cause.  But because God is supernatural and not natural, science has no credible choice here but to stand down. 

                 The case for Jesus being merely human is very weak; the gospel texts – indeed, all of the New Testament documents as well as the early extra-biblical sources - are considered to be historically reliable, Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code  fictions notwithstanding.

                 Living so long after the time of the incarnation, with a knowledge of the resurrection, and so accustomed to the church’s teaching that Jesus is the Son of God, we often do not think of Jesus in terms of his full humanity or realize what is involved in the incarnation.[9]

                 Whether we are educated, liberated 21^st- century people or not, we who believe are in possession of the miracle of the birth of Christ.  So what is the message and the power of the miracle of the virgin birth?  Martin Luther said there were three wonders associated with it:  “The first is that God should become a man; the second is that a virgin should bear a child; and the third is that Mary believed.  And the greatest is that Mary believed.”

                 That God was born as a human from the womb of a virgin ensures that human beings can claim no credit for this advent.  Jesus is not a human product resulting from love or lust.  God used a human woman to bring his Son to the world.

                 And if the conception of Jesus was a divine act of the Holy Spirit, then as Paul wrote, God was in Christ.[10]  The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, which means that from the moment of his conception Jesus was God’s Son, truly divine, begotten of God, as the Nicene Creed says, “very God of very God.”             

                 To say that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of a virgin means that Jesus did not merely take on a shape or an appearance of a human being as just something to be exploited.  He is not God wearing a human body or a “half God-half human” combination.   It means that Jesus is fully God, all of the time, and completely human all of the time.”  It means that in his resurrected state Jesus remains fully God and fully human, even as he is now in the presence of God the Father, his human, resurrected DNA is also in the presence of God forever. 

                 Knowing that that is true for Jesus’ DNA means that it is also true for our DNA, as we are spiritually present  with God because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit;  and as it will be, when in our resurrection bodies we will be physically present with Jesus. 

                 To say that Jesus is fully human means that he experienced everything that we experience, from hunger and thirst to loneliness, fear and pain.  God knows what it actually feels like to be alone; to be poor; to live on the margins of life.  God knows what it feels like to touch and laugh and love within the frailty of our bodies and the limitations of our humanity.

                 To claim that Jesus is fully divine – fully God – means that we don’t have to strive to get to God, because God loves us enough to come to us.  We don’t have to pray the “right way” or stand up and sit down the right number of times in a worship service, or sing the “right” “songs to get God to pay attention to us.

                 That Jesus is fully human means that his crucifixion for our sins was a valid sacrifice in substitution for our own deaths; He died as a human being for the sins of humanity.

                 To say that he is the fully divine Son of God means that because he was sinless, his sacrifice in substitution for our own deaths was effective for our salvation in a way that a mere human could never achieve.

                 Yes, the virgin birth matters:  The infinite God became an infant; the Word became flesh.  The spiritual became physical, eternity became timely, the ultimate became the intimate, the divine became human and holiness became sin.  Without this miracle, Jesus was only a teacher and a prophet , the man on the cross would just be a martyr and humanity would still be lost in sin.[11]

                 With Mary and Joseph and the prophets we call him Emanuel – God-with-us. 

                 God with you.  How does knowing that change the way you live your life?

                 Joy to the World – the Lord is come!

JOHN:  It sounds like they’re having quite a time upstairs, doesn’t it?  Better not let them see you, Andrew[1], one of us in Herod’s dungeon is enough.

Andrew, I need a favor:  Go and find Jesus.  Start at Bethany, at the home of Lazarus and his sisters – if he’s not there, they’ll know where he is.  When you find him, ask him this – exactly this – say:  “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”[2]  And then come straight back and tell me what his answer was.  And don’t let Herod’s guards or the priests see you!

My God, what if I have it all wrong?  What if he isn’t the Messiah?  After a lifetime in the wilderness, what if I just want to see the Messiah so badly I just picked him, just anointed him myself?  What if he’s just my cousin and nothing more?

But I know what I saw and heard.  When the word of the Lord came to me to begin baptizing to prepare the people to receive the Messiah, it was as though God himself spoke into my ear. 

“There, there he is – the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”[3] 

And later, when he came to me for baptism, there was the dove and the voice:  “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well-pleased.”[4]

Surely I can’t just have been hungry, or hallucinating in the heat, or dreaming.  But I have to know for certain.   I had to ask.

 So.  Here I am, locked up alone in this prison, when just a few days ago I was knee deep in the Jordan with temple priests lined up to be baptized.  They think they can force their way into the Kingdom of Heaven by collecting points – that’s the only reason they came to me – just in case there was more fire insurance flowing through the Jordan around my ankles than there was in the holy water in their temple fountains.  Snakes!  All of them!  And Herod is the chief snake!

You don’t think I’m in prison for preaching righteousness to the poor Galileans do you?  Nobody cares about that or them.  No, I’m in prison for preaching righteousness to a king and his concubine – and no one gets by with that for long.  I’m surprised it took them so long to come for me.

You know about it don’t you?  How Herod divorced his wife, and then seduced and married his sister-in-law, Herodias , the wife of his half-brother Philip?  He calls it a marriage, but it is not lawful!  Herod is king over a nation Holy to God Almighty, and this is the example he sets:  he and that adulteress not only live in sin, they do so openly and call it a marriage blessed by God! 

Can you hear the party upstairs?  All the music and the laughing?  It’s Herod’s birthday celebration.  He has invited all the important people – the ones he needs to make him look respectable, and the ones who need him in order to look like legitimate businessmen instead of the thieves they are; and the ones who need to do business with him and his Roman cronies to maintain their lifestyles on the backs of the people they oppress.

And Herod didn’t just have an eye for his brother’s wife – I hear that now he’s panting after her daughter, Salome.   She’s only a child -  not yet 12 I think - but I heard the guards talking about how the queen is planning to let her little princess dance like a paid street walker at this stag party her husband is hosting.  She’ll be paraded around half-dressed before his drooling friends, like a bone dangled before hungry dogs. 

It will likely please her evil mother to finally have a chance to marry her off to one of those drunken old fools, so Salome will be out of the house and Herodias won’t have her competition for her husband’s fantasies.    

Herod’s hold on his women is weak, but his grip on the throne isn’t that strong, either.  Rome expects him to keep order in Palestine, especially in Jerusalem, but the people are restless and impoverished by the Romans.   Herod has to rule with an iron hand, or it will all break apart and take him down with it. 

He pretends to respect the Jews and their religion – his father even pretended to be a Jew – but his only interest in the Messiah is his fear that the people will rise up and follow him as king, and that Herod himself will be murdered.  He is so hated that he is almost completely without protection, even from his own guards.

It is my mouth that put me here – my mouth and the will of God.  My parents told me that my birth was announced by the Angel Gabriel and that when my father expressed his doubt that they could have a child in their old age, the angel shut his mouth and he was unable to speak until after I was born. 

I guess all of those words he was unable to speak while I was in the womb were stored up in me until I began to preach repentance – and once I began to preach, I couldn’t stop.

My mother told me that when she was pregnant with me, that her relative, Mary, came to visit her, carrying Jesus in her womb.  My mother said that when Mary entered the room I jumped inside of her and she was filled with the Holy Spirit and began to testify that Mary was the mother of our Lord, the Messiah.[5]  I guess I’ve been testifying about Jesus since before I was born.

Do you know what I’m talking about?  All of you who call yourselves Christ-followers?  You know that you have the same Holy Spirit of God living inside you, the one I received at birth so that I could fulfill my mission.  If you have the same Spirit that I do, don’t you find it hard to stop speaking about your Lord Jesus to anyone who has ears to hear? 

Truly, you don’t?  Well, that will give me something to think about during these long hours in jail…

Maybe it is just me…O God, I pray I have it right…what could be keeping Andrew….?

You tell me that you celebrate the birth of the Messiah in the winter and call it Christmas?  That’s odd. But I’ve also been told that you give one another gifts to celebrate?  What kind of gifts?  Oranges?  A goat?

What’s an IPod?  A Wii?

What about the poor people in your community, how do they celebrate Christmas?  Do you give them gifts as well? 

Maybe you don’t know them all – but just this week I met several of your poor friends.  There was a young woman with five children and no husband who came asking for help with food because she hadn’t been able to work because she was sick.. 

Another woman who was pregnant with her second child came asking for help with the rent because her husband had been laid off.  When she heard you would pay the rest, she broke down and cried. 

Then there were Michael and Jessica.  He was 21 and she was 19.  They were beautiful young people, trying to get home from Georgia to California, and I could tell they’d had a long trip.  They’d spent the night in their car in the Wal-Mart parking lot, and she was limping because she’d hurt her foot falling off her skateboard trying to have a little fun.  They looked like adults, but they were really just kids. 

 Your pastor made him call his mother while they were here and tell her they were okay.  Jessica said there was no one she could call.  They got some help with some gasoline and a weather report for their drive over the mountains.  He had all kinds of questions about what a Presbyterian was.  He’d never heard of one.  When your pastor prayed with them before they left, they both cried.

I don’t know what an IPod or a Wii is, but somebody explained to me what a gift card is.  I think they’re amazing!  All you have to do is take some money down to a store like Wal-Mart and they credit it to this smooth little rectangular thingy.  And then when you give it to somebody, they can buy whatever they need with it – food, or a sweater or toys for their children.  That’s amazing!

If we’d had something like gift cards in Jerusalem I wouldn’t have been telling people to give away their old coats – I would’ve told them to go put some money on some gift cards – maybe something really meaningful like $50 or $100 on a single card - and then to just go around town doing their daily business, and when they found someone who looked hungry or poor, they should just give them a card and tell them “Merry Christmas from Jesus to you.”  I’ll be that would feel great!

You know, giving to charity is a good thing – supporting organizations that help others is important.  Your church needs your offering to help your congregation respond to God’s leading in this community.  But there’s nothing – and I mean nothing – that replaces being able to look someone in the eyes and tell them God loves them.  Or to receive a hug from a grateful parent.

And by the way, your ministers are a lot better bunch than the temple priests.  I heard that your Ministerial Alliance is collecting food and packing it into boxes to be delivered to the poor.  The ministers turn in the names of people they know – this isn’t some kind of free-for-all giveaway – and one day next week some desperately poor families will open their doors and receive a holiday meal in a box handed to them by a Christian person who looks them in the eyes and tells them “Merry Christmas from Jesus to you.”  You could do that.  Sister Deborah can tell you when it is.

Wow.  We had nothing like that.  I met a woman from Persia last week – you call it Iran now.  She told me that your America is the greatest country in the world – that she had travelled all around the world, and only in America do people open their homes, their hearts and their hands to help people in need, even though they might be complete strangers.  She said that this is not part of the culture of any other nation on earth.

So maybe you did hear me preach, even though you’re halfway around the world and 2,000 years removed from the day I talked to the people in the water.  You look like your feet might even be wet. 

Maybe I’m not wrong about Jesus – maybe I did get it right…

Wait, I think I see Andrew coming back!  Yes, that surely is him!  Andrew!  Andrew!  Over here!  What did he say???

SALOME:  Mother! Your husband is pleased with my dance!  Herod said he would give me anything I wanted, up to half his kingdom!    For what should I ask?

HERODIAS:  Go back to Herod and tell him this – and make sure everyone at the party hears you, dear.  Say:  “Give me the head of John the Baptist…on a platter!

JESUS:   Go and tell John what you hear and see:  the blind receive their sight and the lame walk; lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have good news preached to them.  And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.[6]

JOHN:  Really, Andrew?  That’s really what he said?  The one who comes after me is mightier than I – why, I’m not even worthy to carry his sandals.[7]  From now on, He must increase but I must decrease.[8]

Is it time?

JESUS:  "What did you expect when you went out to see him in the wild?  A weekend camper?   Hardly.   What then?  A sheik in silk pajamas?  Not in the wilderness, not by a long shot.   What then? A prophet? That's right, a prophet! Probably the best prophet you'll ever hear…

"Let me tell you what's going on here: No one in history surpasses John the Baptizer; but in the kingdom he prepared you for, the lowliest person is ahead of him.  

For a long time now people have tried to force themselves into God's kingdom. But if you read the books of the Prophets and God's Law closely, you will see them all converging in John, teaming up with him in preparing the way for the Messiah of the kingdom.  Looked at in this way, John is the 'Elijah' you've all been expecting to arrive and introduce the Messiah.

 "Are you listening to me? Really listening?

             An odd thing happened the other day – I had a whole string of appointments – a morning full of them – but none of them showed up.  They didn't call and cancel, they just didn't show up!  Every so often I would poke my head out of my office door but there wasn’t anybody waiting in the hall.  It was really frustrating.

             When I get frustrated, I eat. I don't recommend it, but I do admit it.  So, after the fourth appointment failed to appear, my frustration level peaked, so I put on my jacket, headed out the door and made my way the block or so downtown to find a snack.

            My first stop was going to be at Coffeyville inside the Golden Crowne.  A latte and some of their pumpkin bread have a way of making everything okay, you know?   But the store was dark and the door was locked and the sign read, “Closed.”  I looked through the window, and sure enough, nobody was there. 

             I walked to the corner, and looked down the street thinking that I’d go to The Bricks instead, but when I got to their door it was closed too.  And so was E² next door.  It was really strange.  I looked across the street toward Panhandle Printing and could see that it had their “closed” sign up too.

            And the weirdest thing was the streets. It was mid-morning on a Thursday, and the streets were almost bare. This was usually prime time for delivery trucks and folks running errands.  Because of Christmas it usually seems like the UPS truck is everywhere.  Because it was Thursday there was usually a line of poor folks waiting on the doorstep over at the Methodist Thrift Store, but nobody was there either. 

            Well, by now my frustration was being overcome by my curiosity. Something must be going on, maybe over at the Activity Center.  I cut over to the Methodist Church, thinking that I could catch Pastor Barry and find out what was going on.  But when I got to the church, the office doors were locked.  This time, though, instead of a “Closed” sign, there was a note on the office door that read, “Gone to Sunset Lake.” 

             That was all it said, “Gone to Sunset Lake.”  No other explanation.  So I decided to go there too – maybe I could find out what was going on.

             I went back to my office and got my car keys and got into my car and started driving to Thompson Park.  But I was still hungry, so I backtracked through the drive-through at McDonald’s and picked up a couple of burgers – I got two because I didn’t know how long this was going to take - and some fries for my lunch.

            I drove to the park on Sunset and when I got near the police station, traffic came to a halt.  I’d never seen a traffic jam in Guymon before, and for sure, never expected to see one on Sunset except during Pioneer Days!   After waiting for almost half an hour without moving, I decided to take one of the side streets over to our house and just walk to the lake.

             As I was walking down the road to the Park I ran into some of the folks that I’d been missing all morning – the road was packed with pedestrians.  It looked like a rock concert!  Another odd thing was that as I overhead the conversations of the other people, it seemed like the people going into the park weren’t sure what they were going to see, and those coming back up the road were only saying things like, “Wow!” and “Awesome!”   Whatever it was we were going to see, it sure seemed like it was going to be worth the walk.

             It was one of our early winter days that started out cold and gets pretty warm as the day went on.  I had on a sweater and a jacket, and I was getting warm from the walk, so I took off my jacket and tied it around my waist, so my hands were free to carry my lunch.

             The lower parking lot was full of cars and people so I walked to the lot near the new playground.  The road was lined with cars that people had parked in a hurry – it looked like the streets around a Saturday garage sale.  Most of the people were lined up on the shore near the water, so I went that way too.  I recognized a few people from Guymon, but I didn’t know most of the people there.  I remember the cars parked on the roadside had license plates not just from Oklahoma, but from Texas and Kansas too. 

             That’s when I saw you:  Remember, we kind of waved and nodded a little?  And then I saw him. 

             My first thought was that he was a mousy sort of guy.   I mean he looked mousy, or really, I guess it was ratty.  Remember the homeless guy who bicycled around town for a few months last spring?  He looked a little like him – a little wild and a little crazy.

            He was standing knee-deep in the water near that little bridge that crosses the stream where the city fills the lake.  He looked like a wet rat, standing out in there with his clothes and his hair just hanging off him soaking wet.   I remember thinking:  This is what all the fuss is about?  People have closed up their stores and restaurants to see this nutjob? 

             He was busy talking to someone, and every minute or so he would shout something to somebody on the shore.  There was a line of folks taking off their shoes and socks on the shore.  Somebody would wade out into the water and he would dip them into the water and then motion for the next person to come. 

             You and I stood there next to each other, not really sure what to do next.   And then he stopped, and he turned and walked a little down the shore line and faced the crowd that we were standing in.  Right down in front were a couple of men I didn’t know, but they were wearing black shirts with white clerical collars.  I figured they were ministers or maybe priests, and since I didn’t know them, I guess they were from out of town.

             One of the ministers stepped forward like he thought it was his turn, and the river rat let it fly.  "You bunch of snakes! Who told you to come down here and run from the wrath of God?"  And then he waited like he really expected the poor guy to say something. 

             That one minister had one foot on shore and one in the water and didn't know which one he should stand on.  It was pretty funny and a lot of us were smiling because of his balancing act.  And some folks were whispering about how it was nice to hear somebody ragging at a minister for a change, since the ministers were usually ragging on them.  I was glad that I was only standing there with you and didn’t know anybody else.

            &