Next Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. Lent is the time in the Christian year when we journey toward Holy Week, toward Jesus' last days, toward the cross, toward the silent days that follow and finally and ultimately toward the empty tomb.
It is a time of spiritual awareness; a time of spiritual awakening; a time during which we draw closer to God and allow God to draw closer to us.
It is a time of sacrifice; a time when we remind ourselves of the importance of saying, "No," to the things we want, and to remember how to say, "Yes," to Godly things. We practice this by giving up, sacrificing things in our lives, chocolate, Tv, our favorite video game, lunch, meat on Fridays, what ever we feel lead or our tradition suggests we should sacrifice. We then fill the void made by these mundane things with Godly things, Godly practices. If we give up things which cost money we give the money to further the Kingdom of God, or to help those less fortunate than our selves. If we give up something that takes time,we give that time over to God, we spend more time in prayer,reading the Bible or doing acts of charity.
The sacrifice we give also points us to the sacrifice Christ made on our behalf on the cross. Each time we feel the "pain," the "sting," the "desire" for these things we have sacrificed during this time, our minds are directed to the cross, to Christ's passion, to Christ's death. We are reminded that the small amount of discomfort or displeasure we experience on God's behalf for this short time in our lives could never measure up to that which Christ endured on ours. Our sacrifice always points us to his sacrifice, our pain to his pain, our discomfort to his. He suffered that someday all suffering might be put to an end. He died that we might live abundantly. But also he rose that we might one day be risen as well.
These are the thoughts and the themes of Lent which come to most ministers minds. I am sure Christians are looking forward to the beginning of Lent next week. I am sure they are anticipating this time of heighten spirituality and this time of spiritual discipline. And I too am looking forward to the beginning of the Lenten season. In fact the thought that a week from Wednesday we as the Church will have begun our Lenten journey just makes me all excited and giddy inside.
But I have a "dirty" little secret. I am not giddy and excited for fasting and praying and the spiritual journey which we as the Church are about to embark on together, although I am looking forward to all that too. I am excited and giddy because beginning Lent means we are 7 Sundays away from it being warm enough to possibility think of wearing a bright flowered dresses. We are 7 Sundays from daffodils and hyacinths. We are 7 Sundays from lightweight jackets and long walks in refreshing air. We are 7 weeks (well just a little less)from Spring!
When I see the journey of Lent in my minds eye it is a path down which we trod together. When we embark on it is snow covered, flanked on both sides by dark brown bare trees looking cold and stark in the crisp clear winter air, reaching up their stark branches to a greyish white sky. But you can look down the path and see that as we journey along it it will take us away from the snow. A little ways down, the snow will melt. The path itself will become wet and muddy. The clouds in the sky will part and the suns rays will begin to come through, cold at first but slowly warming. Soon there will be buds on the bare trees, and the first of the new grass poking through. Somewhere along the path I will get to kneel down and put my hand in the dark rich earth which has finally been released from its frozen prison, I will lift my hand to my face and breath deeply of the ripe freshness of the earth (to me this is the smell of Heaven on earth). As the path approaches the cross the crocuses are beginning to appear but the journey ends with an empty tomb surrounded by daffodils and hyacinths, willows with long green shoots and trees of all kinds bursting to bud. The is sun and grass and beginning of Spring and the earth bursting forth with light and life and love.
Easter may fall on different calendar days each year, but I know that Easter will always fall on the first Sunday, after the first full moon, after the Spring Equinox. No matter when Easter falls it is Spring.
Yes, the journey of Lent is just as much a journey toward Spring for me as it is a spiritual journey. This is my "dirty" little secret. Lent fills me with pangs of joy because Lent will take me to Spring. But I have decided recently that my "dirty" little secret is not as "dirty" as I once thought. The seasons, all the seasons of the earth are marked by the calendar we follow as the Body of Christ. The Season Easter is Spring and all things new. The long season of Pentecost is the long hot Summer with watermelon, lemonade, kids running free like wild animals free to roam and explore and grow, fall is moving toward All Saints Sunday and Christ the King. Winter begins with Advent and Christmas and stretches long and cold between Epiphany and Transfiguration Sunday.
I have lived 15 years marking church time with the Christian calendar, making my way through life marking Sundays with the events of the life of Christ and the life of the Church. Following the lectionary and the Christian calendar has resulted in me not just merely marking church life by the Christian Calendar, it has resulting me me not merely marking spiritual life by the Christian Calendar, but it has resulted in me marking all of life in this way. The physical seasons are marked by seasons of the Church.
When I became a pastor and choose to move my church through the year using the Christian calendar, my reason was that in this way the Church is marking time using the life of Christ instead of secular celebrations and observances. The Church should mark time using Holy days and Godly celebrations. The Church is not the world, we do not need to mark time the way the world does.
It is a glorious thing to walk with a Body of believers through weeks, seasons, and years marking time in this manner. It shapes us forms us and defines us. But what is more glorious than that shaping, forming and definition extending outside the walls of the church reaching its holy arms into every part of our life. So what is wrong with Lent not only being a spiritual journey but Lent being a journey from winters' cold darkness into Spring's warm glow? My dirty little secret is not dirty and should not be a secret, it could possibly be the whole point in the first place.
The Christian calendar is not simply about the Holy Days and seasons of the church. It is not about changing the colors of the altar cloth on the right Sundays. It is about marking time, our years, our lives with the life of Christ. When we get to the point where the seasons of the Church define our whole lives and not just our spiritual lives, then our lives are truly defined in a completely new way, they are defined by Christ, who Christ is and what Christ came to this earth to accomplish.
The Wonder Filled Day: drawing close to God; thoughts, ruminations, poems, sermons - one woman's wonderful wanderings with Christ
Monday, February 28, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Romans 3:1-20 - Just Stop!
Romans 3:9-20
I was completely lost, well not really. I knew where I was. I could see the place that I was on the map. I could see the place I wanted to be on the map, but I could not see a clear way to get from where I was to where I wanted to be. So as I came to a corner, I saw a man standing there about to cross the street. I rolled down my window and said,”Hey can you help me?” The man smiled at me said, “Sure,” and came over to my window. I showed him my map and asked him how to get to Salis Crossing. He thought for a moment, cocked his head to the side, looked down at my map, turned the corner of his mouth up a little and then looked me straight in the face and said, “Well, ma’am you can’t get there from here.” I was aghast, what do you mean you can’t get there from here. I could see it on the map. It could not be more than 5-10 miles from where we were, but you couldn’t get there from here? I asked him what he meant. And he said, “well the bridge over in Gratton was out, so unless you wanted to go 15 miles back down highway 29 to Stoutan, and take route west 9 over to Old Barrytown and then come back south on Old Barrytown road and that could take you to Salis Crossing, but otherwise there was no way to get there from here.” I looked at the roads he had indicated on my map. I would seriously have to go nearly 30 miles out of my way to go to a place I could clearly see on my map, was only 5 miles away. I thanked the man, rolled up my window and the man headed on his way down the street shaking his head. As I made a right onto the road which would take me to highway 29 I too shook my head, there really was no way to get there from here.
“You can’t get there from here,” is at the heart of what Paul is saying to the people at the church in Rome, here in this passage. He begins with a question “Are we any better off?” And Paul answers by explaining that nobody is better off, both Jews and Greeks, i.e. non-Jews are under the power of sin. You may remember last week that Paul spent a good portion of Chapter two establishing that Jews did not have a privileged position simply because they had been given the law by God. The law could do nothing in and of itself. In essence it was not “free pass.” You all may notice that sometimes when I am preaching I ask the question I think you all are asking. I have to admit it is one of the oldest rhetorical tricks in the book, Paul uses it here. Paul asks on behalf of the people in the church Roman church, “Are we better off?’’ Paul then answers the question he had just asked on their behalf. “No, not at all.” Everyone is under sin. Nothing, not even the law of God frees you from being under sin.
Paul then goes on to elaborate, “There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned aside.” Sin affects all of our lives. No one is immune, no one is free, no one’s life if lived apart from sinful actions. There is nothing we can do.
Nothing can separate us, nothing can stop us, and nothing can inhibit us from our sinful actions. We can work, we can strive, we can attempt to beat ourselves, our bodies, our wills into submission but it won’t work. And to many of us kill our selves attempting and those of us who strive in this manner will die trying and we will die failing.
We simply and truthfully are not righteous and nothing we are in and of ourselves makes us righteous. Being a Jew won’t do it, being a gentile won’t do it, being Christian won’t do. We are not born righteous. Righteous is not something we just are, nor it is something we can create in ourselves. There is nothing we can do, nothing. We can not live right enough. We can not go to enough church services; we can not read the Bible enough. We could live our whole lives without drinking one drop of alcohol, inhaling a single breath of tobacco, or letting even a single solitary unwholesome word pass through our lips or even enter our brain, but we would still remain completely and wholly unrighteous. You can’t train yourself to always react in a kind loving manner to everyone you meet, there are not enough cups of cold water you can give, you won’t speak kind words to everyone 100% of the time, you will not do all the right things at all the right times. You could sell everything you own, you could give up your house, your job and your life here and move to some remote region of the world and live completely selflessly, giving of yourself for them, helping to make their lives better, empowering them to rise above the limits of their situations. You could strive to break the backs of the oppressors. You could spend your whole life living to route out all the broken, hurtful, oppressive systems at play in our world. You could do all that and succeed in truly making this world a better place to work, and live but none of that would make you righteous. There is absolutely no way to live, act, speak in all the ways one would need to live, act and speak to make yourself righteous. There is nothing you can do, nothing you can say, nothing you can change on your own to make you worthy to stand before God.
Paul tells us that we are all silenced before God. We may strive and work to live our lives in a worthy righteous manner. We may look at what we have done, and how we have succeeded to live good lives but, “no human being will be justified,” will be seen as righteous or good, “in God’s sight.” Even knowing all the right things to do and say, all the right ways to live, to give to act, knowing all that does nothing more than to throw in stark relief how painfully and woefully we fail at even attempting to come close to being righteous. We may be able to convince people at work that we are good people, we may be able to appear righteous before the other members at church, we may even be able to fake it enough that our closest friends and family members come to believe that we have succeeded. It is possible that we may convince ourselves that we are doing right by God, by our loved ones and by all those around us, but when the rubber meets the road, when push comes to shove we know that we fail time and time again.
But we think we can do it. We think we can try. And we think that if we try, we just might succeed or perhaps that trying is good enough. It seems that is what most people tend to think after all. “I try to be a good person, and that is all that really matters, right?” “I’m a good person, I don’t murder or steal.” “I to my best and that should be good enough.” But our best is still failing. We might not murder or steal, but we cheat, or lie, or speak words we know are not kind or caring. Seriously in the grand scale of things I have very little more self control than my five year old, I am just more socially adept at knowing when it is socially acceptable to exhibit my failings.
When it comes to being righteous, to being even just “good,” the fact of the matter is that you can’t get there from here. Fallen human beings are just that, fallen, and being fallen means that we are fall far short of what it means to live right lives, we fall short of being kind, loving, and compassionate. We fail at what it means to be righteous any sense of the word. All of us are unrighteous, not just all the bad people, not just the drug dealers, murderers, adulterers and those who talk in at the theater, every last one of us is unrighteous. Paul wants us to be very certain of this fact. We are all in the same boat here. None of us can say we are better off. Not one of us can say there is something intrinsic to who we are or the particular way we live our life which makes us any better than any other person whom we might stand next to here on this earth, no matter who they are. And there is nothing we can do to make ourselves righteous. We can not be good enough. We can not try hard enough. It won’t work. We will still fail, we will still fall short. Our efforts, our strivings, will never get us where we want to be. None of us can get from where we are right now to being righteous. I can’t get there from here. You can’t there from here. There is simply no way that you or I can get ourselves from here to there.
This may sound like a pretty big bummer. This sermon may sound pretty much like a huge downer but it really is a freeing thing to figure out. You can’t try hard enough, you can’t strive long enough, you can’t do it. So stop trying. Stop working so hard. Stop worrying that you will be good enough, stop attempting to measure up. Just stop. Stop working yourself to the bone, stop killing yourself, stop beating yourself up when you realize you are failing. Stop and accept that your work, your effort, your tireless labor is not and will never be good enough and let it go, give in and let yourself off the hook. You are not good enough. You are not righteous. And your efforts to be so are and will always be sub-par.
Take a deep breath and breathe in the freedom of knowing that when you wake up tomorrow you don’t have to try, you can just look at God and admit what God already knows, that you can’t do it, and you give up trying. You can wake up tomorrow and see that God does not require you to run a race you are forever loosing. You can stop trying. And when you do so, don’t panic. You will not be failing at being a “good person” any more or less than you were when you were running as fast as you could in that hamster wheel of making yourself righteous trying get somewhere that the wheel simply could not get you.
Stopping is not easy. Letting go of trying is hard. It is a lesson which does not come naturally to us. We are breed, nurtured, raised and programmed at every turn of our life to believe that we can try hard enough, that we can be good enough, that we can do all the right things, say all the right things and live in the right way and doing so will make us the people we need to be, that doing so will make us the people God wants us to be. But doing, trying, striving, to be righteous is not something WE can do.
I remember the moment that this truth came to me. I was a religion major. I had striven to be a Godly person since I was 6. I had known since I was 13 that God had called me to be a pastor. I had spent all of my memorable life, trying to live right. I did everything I could do to be a good Christian. I was always afraid that I was doing was not good enough, that there would be something in my life which would be seen as less than holy in the eyes of other Christians or worse the eyes of God. I worked, I prayed, I strived, I read my Bible, I did all the things I was told to do. I had personal catalogues of how many times I had read through the Bible, as well as each book of the Bible. I had book where I kept track of when I did my devotions. I knew how many times in the last three years I had skipped them. I kept records of all sorts of things about my spiritual life, so I could somehow quantify and qualify how righteous I was, how holy I was, but no matter how much I worked, no matter how hard I strived, now matter how good I thought I was, I knew that I failed, in fact because of my lists I knew exactly how often I failed. I was a Christian, I loved God, I wanted to be the person God wanted me to be and I was going to do EVERYTHING within my power to make myself that person.
And here I was, I was a sophomore at ENC, I was in Dr. Braaten’s Old Testament class. I don’t remember what we were talking about, I don’t remember the context of the revelation at all other than the classroom and that it was bitter cold outside, but I remember the bright dawn that broke into my life when I realized, that I COULD NOT be good enough. My efforts were truly in vain. I was failing because there was nothing I could do but fail. No matter how hard I tried, I would always fail. If there was nothing to do but fail, then there was nothing I could do. It was this bright freeing moment, when I realized that I did not need to try because in trying I would always fail. I could not make myself righteous. Nothing I did would work. No matter how many times I banged my head on that wall, I would not find myself on the other side. All I would ever do was give myself a headache. Stopping trying, stopping the striving, stopping attempting to make myself something I am not, was and continues to be one of the hardest things I have ever done as a Christian, but it seriously was the best thing I have ever done as well.
Paul tells us that we are all under the power of sin. Paul tells us that none of us are better off. And Paul tells us there is nothing that WE can do about it. So there is nothing to do but give up. There is nothing we can do but throw the towel in and stop trying.
My guess is that for many of you this is perhaps the strangest thing you have ever heard in a sermon in your life. Stop trying to be righteous. Isn’t being a Christian about being righteous? Isn’t being a child of God about living the way that God calls us to live? Isn’t being in relationship with God about loving God and neighbor? And my answer is Yes. But, you can’t do it. You simply can’t. Give up at attempting to be a good person. Yes. Stop trying, stop working. And come back next week and hear how you can be what you can’t make yourself be.
I was completely lost, well not really. I knew where I was. I could see the place that I was on the map. I could see the place I wanted to be on the map, but I could not see a clear way to get from where I was to where I wanted to be. So as I came to a corner, I saw a man standing there about to cross the street. I rolled down my window and said,”Hey can you help me?” The man smiled at me said, “Sure,” and came over to my window. I showed him my map and asked him how to get to Salis Crossing. He thought for a moment, cocked his head to the side, looked down at my map, turned the corner of his mouth up a little and then looked me straight in the face and said, “Well, ma’am you can’t get there from here.” I was aghast, what do you mean you can’t get there from here. I could see it on the map. It could not be more than 5-10 miles from where we were, but you couldn’t get there from here? I asked him what he meant. And he said, “well the bridge over in Gratton was out, so unless you wanted to go 15 miles back down highway 29 to Stoutan, and take route west 9 over to Old Barrytown and then come back south on Old Barrytown road and that could take you to Salis Crossing, but otherwise there was no way to get there from here.” I looked at the roads he had indicated on my map. I would seriously have to go nearly 30 miles out of my way to go to a place I could clearly see on my map, was only 5 miles away. I thanked the man, rolled up my window and the man headed on his way down the street shaking his head. As I made a right onto the road which would take me to highway 29 I too shook my head, there really was no way to get there from here.
“You can’t get there from here,” is at the heart of what Paul is saying to the people at the church in Rome, here in this passage. He begins with a question “Are we any better off?” And Paul answers by explaining that nobody is better off, both Jews and Greeks, i.e. non-Jews are under the power of sin. You may remember last week that Paul spent a good portion of Chapter two establishing that Jews did not have a privileged position simply because they had been given the law by God. The law could do nothing in and of itself. In essence it was not “free pass.” You all may notice that sometimes when I am preaching I ask the question I think you all are asking. I have to admit it is one of the oldest rhetorical tricks in the book, Paul uses it here. Paul asks on behalf of the people in the church Roman church, “Are we better off?’’ Paul then answers the question he had just asked on their behalf. “No, not at all.” Everyone is under sin. Nothing, not even the law of God frees you from being under sin.
Paul then goes on to elaborate, “There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned aside.” Sin affects all of our lives. No one is immune, no one is free, no one’s life if lived apart from sinful actions. There is nothing we can do.
Nothing can separate us, nothing can stop us, and nothing can inhibit us from our sinful actions. We can work, we can strive, we can attempt to beat ourselves, our bodies, our wills into submission but it won’t work. And to many of us kill our selves attempting and those of us who strive in this manner will die trying and we will die failing.
We simply and truthfully are not righteous and nothing we are in and of ourselves makes us righteous. Being a Jew won’t do it, being a gentile won’t do it, being Christian won’t do. We are not born righteous. Righteous is not something we just are, nor it is something we can create in ourselves. There is nothing we can do, nothing. We can not live right enough. We can not go to enough church services; we can not read the Bible enough. We could live our whole lives without drinking one drop of alcohol, inhaling a single breath of tobacco, or letting even a single solitary unwholesome word pass through our lips or even enter our brain, but we would still remain completely and wholly unrighteous. You can’t train yourself to always react in a kind loving manner to everyone you meet, there are not enough cups of cold water you can give, you won’t speak kind words to everyone 100% of the time, you will not do all the right things at all the right times. You could sell everything you own, you could give up your house, your job and your life here and move to some remote region of the world and live completely selflessly, giving of yourself for them, helping to make their lives better, empowering them to rise above the limits of their situations. You could strive to break the backs of the oppressors. You could spend your whole life living to route out all the broken, hurtful, oppressive systems at play in our world. You could do all that and succeed in truly making this world a better place to work, and live but none of that would make you righteous. There is absolutely no way to live, act, speak in all the ways one would need to live, act and speak to make yourself righteous. There is nothing you can do, nothing you can say, nothing you can change on your own to make you worthy to stand before God.
Paul tells us that we are all silenced before God. We may strive and work to live our lives in a worthy righteous manner. We may look at what we have done, and how we have succeeded to live good lives but, “no human being will be justified,” will be seen as righteous or good, “in God’s sight.” Even knowing all the right things to do and say, all the right ways to live, to give to act, knowing all that does nothing more than to throw in stark relief how painfully and woefully we fail at even attempting to come close to being righteous. We may be able to convince people at work that we are good people, we may be able to appear righteous before the other members at church, we may even be able to fake it enough that our closest friends and family members come to believe that we have succeeded. It is possible that we may convince ourselves that we are doing right by God, by our loved ones and by all those around us, but when the rubber meets the road, when push comes to shove we know that we fail time and time again.
But we think we can do it. We think we can try. And we think that if we try, we just might succeed or perhaps that trying is good enough. It seems that is what most people tend to think after all. “I try to be a good person, and that is all that really matters, right?” “I’m a good person, I don’t murder or steal.” “I to my best and that should be good enough.” But our best is still failing. We might not murder or steal, but we cheat, or lie, or speak words we know are not kind or caring. Seriously in the grand scale of things I have very little more self control than my five year old, I am just more socially adept at knowing when it is socially acceptable to exhibit my failings.
When it comes to being righteous, to being even just “good,” the fact of the matter is that you can’t get there from here. Fallen human beings are just that, fallen, and being fallen means that we are fall far short of what it means to live right lives, we fall short of being kind, loving, and compassionate. We fail at what it means to be righteous any sense of the word. All of us are unrighteous, not just all the bad people, not just the drug dealers, murderers, adulterers and those who talk in at the theater, every last one of us is unrighteous. Paul wants us to be very certain of this fact. We are all in the same boat here. None of us can say we are better off. Not one of us can say there is something intrinsic to who we are or the particular way we live our life which makes us any better than any other person whom we might stand next to here on this earth, no matter who they are. And there is nothing we can do to make ourselves righteous. We can not be good enough. We can not try hard enough. It won’t work. We will still fail, we will still fall short. Our efforts, our strivings, will never get us where we want to be. None of us can get from where we are right now to being righteous. I can’t get there from here. You can’t there from here. There is simply no way that you or I can get ourselves from here to there.
This may sound like a pretty big bummer. This sermon may sound pretty much like a huge downer but it really is a freeing thing to figure out. You can’t try hard enough, you can’t strive long enough, you can’t do it. So stop trying. Stop working so hard. Stop worrying that you will be good enough, stop attempting to measure up. Just stop. Stop working yourself to the bone, stop killing yourself, stop beating yourself up when you realize you are failing. Stop and accept that your work, your effort, your tireless labor is not and will never be good enough and let it go, give in and let yourself off the hook. You are not good enough. You are not righteous. And your efforts to be so are and will always be sub-par.
Take a deep breath and breathe in the freedom of knowing that when you wake up tomorrow you don’t have to try, you can just look at God and admit what God already knows, that you can’t do it, and you give up trying. You can wake up tomorrow and see that God does not require you to run a race you are forever loosing. You can stop trying. And when you do so, don’t panic. You will not be failing at being a “good person” any more or less than you were when you were running as fast as you could in that hamster wheel of making yourself righteous trying get somewhere that the wheel simply could not get you.
Stopping is not easy. Letting go of trying is hard. It is a lesson which does not come naturally to us. We are breed, nurtured, raised and programmed at every turn of our life to believe that we can try hard enough, that we can be good enough, that we can do all the right things, say all the right things and live in the right way and doing so will make us the people we need to be, that doing so will make us the people God wants us to be. But doing, trying, striving, to be righteous is not something WE can do.
I remember the moment that this truth came to me. I was a religion major. I had striven to be a Godly person since I was 6. I had known since I was 13 that God had called me to be a pastor. I had spent all of my memorable life, trying to live right. I did everything I could do to be a good Christian. I was always afraid that I was doing was not good enough, that there would be something in my life which would be seen as less than holy in the eyes of other Christians or worse the eyes of God. I worked, I prayed, I strived, I read my Bible, I did all the things I was told to do. I had personal catalogues of how many times I had read through the Bible, as well as each book of the Bible. I had book where I kept track of when I did my devotions. I knew how many times in the last three years I had skipped them. I kept records of all sorts of things about my spiritual life, so I could somehow quantify and qualify how righteous I was, how holy I was, but no matter how much I worked, no matter how hard I strived, now matter how good I thought I was, I knew that I failed, in fact because of my lists I knew exactly how often I failed. I was a Christian, I loved God, I wanted to be the person God wanted me to be and I was going to do EVERYTHING within my power to make myself that person.
And here I was, I was a sophomore at ENC, I was in Dr. Braaten’s Old Testament class. I don’t remember what we were talking about, I don’t remember the context of the revelation at all other than the classroom and that it was bitter cold outside, but I remember the bright dawn that broke into my life when I realized, that I COULD NOT be good enough. My efforts were truly in vain. I was failing because there was nothing I could do but fail. No matter how hard I tried, I would always fail. If there was nothing to do but fail, then there was nothing I could do. It was this bright freeing moment, when I realized that I did not need to try because in trying I would always fail. I could not make myself righteous. Nothing I did would work. No matter how many times I banged my head on that wall, I would not find myself on the other side. All I would ever do was give myself a headache. Stopping trying, stopping the striving, stopping attempting to make myself something I am not, was and continues to be one of the hardest things I have ever done as a Christian, but it seriously was the best thing I have ever done as well.
Paul tells us that we are all under the power of sin. Paul tells us that none of us are better off. And Paul tells us there is nothing that WE can do about it. So there is nothing to do but give up. There is nothing we can do but throw the towel in and stop trying.
My guess is that for many of you this is perhaps the strangest thing you have ever heard in a sermon in your life. Stop trying to be righteous. Isn’t being a Christian about being righteous? Isn’t being a child of God about living the way that God calls us to live? Isn’t being in relationship with God about loving God and neighbor? And my answer is Yes. But, you can’t do it. You simply can’t. Give up at attempting to be a good person. Yes. Stop trying, stop working. And come back next week and hear how you can be what you can’t make yourself be.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Lambert or a Wolf in a Sheepskin?
Romans 2:17-29
I am going to begin this morning by telling you two stories about sheep. And as we look at the text this morning I want you to keep these two images in your head. The first one is a little known Disney short called “Lambert”
On a warm night there was a herd of sheep asleep out in the pastures, when a stork came by carrying a number of brand new bundles for the expectant mama ewes who lay peacefully asleep. One by one the little furry bundles made their way their way among the ewes, curled up and fell asleep alongside of the warmth of their mama. In the morning each ewe was overjoyed to find their brand new baby lamb asleep by her side. All of them were perfect picture of white fluffy cuteness save one. One of them was not white at all, in fact he was not so much fluffy as he was fuzzy, and he was not what you would call white, he was more, well yellow, and in fact he did not resemble a lamb at all. His tail was too long and his feet were too fuzzy and the problem with his whiskers was that he had whiskers at all. The truth of the matter was the stork had made a horrible mistake and was not suppose to drop this particular baby off in the field at all, but instead was suppose to drop him in the African jungle because he was in fact not a lamb at all but really a lion cub. But his mama would hear none of this, he was her baby lamb and she loved him no matter how strange he was. She named him Lambert.
Lambert grew up alongside of the lambs in his herd. He learned to butt, he learned to Baa, and he learned to fear the wolf, who was always stalking the herd looking for to make a meal of an inattentive sheep or a wayward lamb who wandered to far from the herd. And as he grew his differences were apparent to his playmates. As he grew it was readily apparent that his tail was too long, his wool was too hairy, his color was too yellow and instead of a sturdy pair of horns he grew a long fluffy brown mane and sometimes when he attempted to baa it came out more like a roar and as children are wont to do, his playmates teased him and made fun of him for being different. Poor Lambert was the recipient of every childhood prank and the brunt of every mean spirited joke. Lambert often came home to his mother dejected and sad because he was not accepted among the other young rams.
Then one evening the wolf got brave and attacked the herd while they all peacefully slumbered on the hillside. He scattered the sheep, chasing one after another until he corned Lambert’s mother. Lambert was running scared just like the rest of the herd, trying to find a place to hide, to get away from the wolf, when he heard the frighten bleat of his mother as the wolf approached her. Lambert turned to see the wolf about to make a meal of his beloved mother and instead of running in fear, as he had been, he turned and placed himself between his mother and the hungry wolf and let out a might unsheeply roar. You can imagine the surprise of the wolf when instead of finding a dinner he found a raging lion and immediately turned and ran never to be seen by that particular herd again. From that time on Lambert, the sheepish lion was an accepted and even celebrated member of the herd. (This story is taken from the 1952 Disney short “Lambert the Sheepish Lion”)
The second story is one you have perhaps heard before. There once a wiley hungry wolf who no matter how hard he tried was unable to properly sneak up on a herd of sheep and get himself some dinner. Then one day when he went down to the river to get himself a drink and there on the river bank white and glistening was a sheep skin. The wolf saw it and immediately thought up a plan. He took the skin and fashioned himself a disguise to allow him to appear to be a sheep. The next day, he donned his new sheep clothes and went down unhindered among the flock and was able to lure a sheep away from the flock and make for himself a dinner of her so he was no longer hungry. He did this for quite sometime until the shepherd realized what he was doing, caught him and put an end to the wiley wolf.
We have two characters in these two stories, we have Lambert who looks like a lion (and quite frankly is a lion) but is truly a sheep in all ways that matter, and the wolf who looks like a sheep but is truly a wolf no matter what he appears to be. I want you to keep these two characters in mind as we begin to look at this passage this morning.
Paul in this passage is speaking to certain Jews or a stereotype of a Jew, who see that due to their relationship to God through the law have a privileged position among those who believe. Paul argues that having the law in and of itself does nothing. The law does not grant relationship with God. Paul points particularly to circumcision which is the physical sign of the covenant given by God to the people of Israel. Paul says the physical sign means nothing in and of itself unless it actually has meaning and bearing upon the life of the one who bears the sign. Neither the law nor the sign of the covenant will do anything for you in the end unless there is real inward change in your life. You can have the law but unless you live the law and allow the one who has given the law to you change who you are at your core than neither the law nor the outward sign of the covenant matter.
This understanding if the inefficacy of the law is not usually something we struggle with today as Christians. As far as I know none of us are of Jewish descent and then therefore do not see the Law of Moses as something given to us and our ancestors. We make no claims to salvation based on heritage or lineage. So it is easy to nod and smile understanding that the law and covenant given to the Israelites by God do not give Jews a special place in the eyes of God regardless of what their actual relationship with God is like.
The law itself is not under attack here though. God gave the law to the people. The Jewish people just failed to live up to the law and failed to share the relationship the law gave them to God with others. The Jewish people were given the law and chosen by God so that hey may be a nation of priest to all peoples of the earth, that is they were the ones who were suppose to bring the people of the nations around them into covenant relationship with God by teaching them about who God is. Even at the very beginning God called Abraham so that through him all the nations of the world may be blessed. But they did not reach out and share the love and relationship God gave to them with those of the nations around them. They instead, cut themselves off from those who did not believe. Instead of inviting those around them to come to know the one true God of the universe, they used their belief in God as a barrier which separated them from those who did not believe as they believed. Instead of allowing the law to embrace all peoples and to bring all peoples into an understanding of who God is, they used that law as boundary which set them apart and as a wall on which they stood and were able to look down on all the foolish pagans all around them who did not know to worship God and live the way God called for them to live. The law which was something which was suppose to light the way and give instruction as to what it meant to live as a people of God was instead a barrier and a wall allowing the people to see themselves as better and more privileged than others.
Paul is addressing a Jewish mindset in this passage but he is speaking to us non-the-less. We as modern non-Jewish Christians we struggle just as much with our versions of “the law” as the early Jewish Christians and the Israelite people before them. We might not see the Torah as a privilege we have that others do not nor do we live by it so that we can see ourselves as a cut above the rest of the world. But most of us whether we realize it or not live by a set of rules, which we see as the standard by which all Christians should live. We, like those to whom Paul is speaking here, stand on this standard and look down on all those who fall short of the standard. The standard does not need to be elaborate to be used this way. It does not need to include 600 laws derived and redacted upon from scripture like many first century Jews did, it can be something as simple as, “I don’t drink, smoke or chew and I don’t hang with those who do.” Paul is not speaking to the goodness or badness of drinking or smoking but what Paul is speaking to is the superiority held over others by those who live by these standards and way these standards are lorded over others.
Paul speaks to this kind of understanding of scripture and the standards which we see set up in scripture. Paul is not saying that living in a Godly manner is not something a Christian will do, but Paul is saying that having the standards of God and the ability to live by them is not what allows us to be in relationship with God.
Paul tells those in the church in Rome that you may have the law, you may know and understand what it means to live the way God wants you to live, you may think that you can lead and teach others but you can’t in reality you are blind and are foolish, unlearned and therefore not qualified to teach. You think you understand, but you don’t. You may know the law, you may be circumcised. You may have read the manual and know it backwards and forwards, you may know what a good Christian should do and not do, you may be baptized but all this is worthless. All these things are outward signs of the covenant but the covenant is not an outward thing. It is inward, it is spiritual it deals with a person’s heart, who they are at the core of their being. The covenant must be written on your heart. You must bear an inward sign of the covenant not just an outward sign of one.
The difference is the difference between Lambert and the wolf. The wolf had all the outward signs of being a sheep. He looked like a sheep, he smelled like a sheep, he may have been able to baa like a sheep but underneath, inside, he was still a wolf. He was not a sheep. Lambert on the other hand looked like a lion but really he was a sheep. He acted like a sheep, he lived with the sheep and deep down what mattered to him were the same things that mattered to the sheep. Lambert had the good of the sheep always at heart, but the wolf was actually a threat to the sheep. We need to be more like Lambert than the wolf.
The concern is who we are inwardly. We may be able to put on Christian clothing. We may be able to look like a Christian, we may say all the right things and do all the right things but unless our hearts and our inward lives are changed eventually who we are inwardly will come to bear. God is not calling for us to be able to do all the right things. God is not calling for us to be able to say all the right things. God is calling us into a relationship. God is calling us into a relationship which will forever change who we are and our lives, much like being married or having a child. It is the kind of relationship which completely changes how you live your life.
When you get married or have a child, what you can and can not do changes, your priorities change, and your whole life changes. When you get married, who you spend you time with changes. It changes what you can and can not do with other people. You have to consider the other person in almost everything you do from when you get up in the morning, where you put your clothes, and what you eat for dinner. When you are married and making decisions about all these things, you have to consider the other person. Preferences, wants and desires are all run through the filter of the relationship. Everything in your life is influenced by this other person who is now in your life.
Likewise when you have a child everything changes. Suddenly every aspect of your life is seen in light of this new little person in your life. It is truly amazing how such a small person changes every aspect of your life, from how much sleep you get, to when you eat and when you can go out with your friends. I can remember the first time this really struck me. Cidra was probably 3 months old. Mike was at fencing and I had a friend over to watch movies. We decided we wanted ice cream. We got our shoes on, grabbed our purses and were on our way out the front door when suddenly we both remembered that Cidra was asleep in the other room. We could not just run out and get ice cream; someone had to stay home with the baby. Still I do not live my life the same way I did before I had the girls. My life is completely changed.
It is the same when you choose to follow Jesus, when you choose to live the way God calls you to live it is not just a surface change. It is not simply about following a set of rules, coming to church, reading your Bible and doing and not doing all the right things. That would be like simply putting on a sheepskin and calling yourself a sheep. It is about entering into relationship with the God of the universe, learning to love God and be loved by God. This is not like any relationship you have ever been in and it is a love like none other, it is a relationship more profound than marriage and a love that changes your life greater than the love of a child. It is a relationship which changes you at your very core, it does not merely change what you do, what you say and how you live your day to day life, but it changes who you are at the very core of your being, relationship with God is able to make you something you are not. Lambert really was sheep, in all the ways that truly mattered. He lived like a sheep, he ate like a sheep, he cared for the things that sheep cared about, feared the very things a sheep feared, the relationship he had with his mother ultimately changed who he was at his core, he became something he would otherwise be unable to be.
As Christians is it easy to get caught up in the rules the standards and begin to think that they are what makes us who we are. The rules and the standard can be a sheepskin which we put on to allow us to look like a Christian, so that we can fit in among the other Christians. They can even become a sense of pride, a boundary we use to segregate ourselves from those around us, and a wall on which we stand from which we are able to look down up on all those lesser humans who refuse to love God the way we love God. But our love is not really a love for God but is a love for the rules and the standards which God has laid down which show us and guide and allow us to live the way God called us to live.
We are not called to follow as standard. We are not called to follow a set of rules. Christians do live differently than other people. There are things we do; there are things we don’t do. Our words, and our actions are different than many who do not choose to love God, it changes our entire way of living. But we are not called to love a way of living. We are called simply to love; to love God, and to love one another. And that love changes who we are, changes how we live, it changes everything. It is not the standard, the rules, the way of living that makes us who we are, it our love for God. Simply following the rules, living a lifestyle, changing your actions is like the outward sign of the covenant. Living a life which stems from our love for God is living out of the inward sign of the covenant. The difference between being the wolf or being Lambert is what was in each one’s heart, what was going on in the inside. Lambert was a sheep at heart and the wolf no matter how well dressed he was, was still a wolf at heart. As Christians we are to have the love of God at the heart of who we are, changing us and making us into the people of God.
I am going to begin this morning by telling you two stories about sheep. And as we look at the text this morning I want you to keep these two images in your head. The first one is a little known Disney short called “Lambert”
On a warm night there was a herd of sheep asleep out in the pastures, when a stork came by carrying a number of brand new bundles for the expectant mama ewes who lay peacefully asleep. One by one the little furry bundles made their way their way among the ewes, curled up and fell asleep alongside of the warmth of their mama. In the morning each ewe was overjoyed to find their brand new baby lamb asleep by her side. All of them were perfect picture of white fluffy cuteness save one. One of them was not white at all, in fact he was not so much fluffy as he was fuzzy, and he was not what you would call white, he was more, well yellow, and in fact he did not resemble a lamb at all. His tail was too long and his feet were too fuzzy and the problem with his whiskers was that he had whiskers at all. The truth of the matter was the stork had made a horrible mistake and was not suppose to drop this particular baby off in the field at all, but instead was suppose to drop him in the African jungle because he was in fact not a lamb at all but really a lion cub. But his mama would hear none of this, he was her baby lamb and she loved him no matter how strange he was. She named him Lambert.
Lambert grew up alongside of the lambs in his herd. He learned to butt, he learned to Baa, and he learned to fear the wolf, who was always stalking the herd looking for to make a meal of an inattentive sheep or a wayward lamb who wandered to far from the herd. And as he grew his differences were apparent to his playmates. As he grew it was readily apparent that his tail was too long, his wool was too hairy, his color was too yellow and instead of a sturdy pair of horns he grew a long fluffy brown mane and sometimes when he attempted to baa it came out more like a roar and as children are wont to do, his playmates teased him and made fun of him for being different. Poor Lambert was the recipient of every childhood prank and the brunt of every mean spirited joke. Lambert often came home to his mother dejected and sad because he was not accepted among the other young rams.
Then one evening the wolf got brave and attacked the herd while they all peacefully slumbered on the hillside. He scattered the sheep, chasing one after another until he corned Lambert’s mother. Lambert was running scared just like the rest of the herd, trying to find a place to hide, to get away from the wolf, when he heard the frighten bleat of his mother as the wolf approached her. Lambert turned to see the wolf about to make a meal of his beloved mother and instead of running in fear, as he had been, he turned and placed himself between his mother and the hungry wolf and let out a might unsheeply roar. You can imagine the surprise of the wolf when instead of finding a dinner he found a raging lion and immediately turned and ran never to be seen by that particular herd again. From that time on Lambert, the sheepish lion was an accepted and even celebrated member of the herd. (This story is taken from the 1952 Disney short “Lambert the Sheepish Lion”)
The second story is one you have perhaps heard before. There once a wiley hungry wolf who no matter how hard he tried was unable to properly sneak up on a herd of sheep and get himself some dinner. Then one day when he went down to the river to get himself a drink and there on the river bank white and glistening was a sheep skin. The wolf saw it and immediately thought up a plan. He took the skin and fashioned himself a disguise to allow him to appear to be a sheep. The next day, he donned his new sheep clothes and went down unhindered among the flock and was able to lure a sheep away from the flock and make for himself a dinner of her so he was no longer hungry. He did this for quite sometime until the shepherd realized what he was doing, caught him and put an end to the wiley wolf.
We have two characters in these two stories, we have Lambert who looks like a lion (and quite frankly is a lion) but is truly a sheep in all ways that matter, and the wolf who looks like a sheep but is truly a wolf no matter what he appears to be. I want you to keep these two characters in mind as we begin to look at this passage this morning.
Paul in this passage is speaking to certain Jews or a stereotype of a Jew, who see that due to their relationship to God through the law have a privileged position among those who believe. Paul argues that having the law in and of itself does nothing. The law does not grant relationship with God. Paul points particularly to circumcision which is the physical sign of the covenant given by God to the people of Israel. Paul says the physical sign means nothing in and of itself unless it actually has meaning and bearing upon the life of the one who bears the sign. Neither the law nor the sign of the covenant will do anything for you in the end unless there is real inward change in your life. You can have the law but unless you live the law and allow the one who has given the law to you change who you are at your core than neither the law nor the outward sign of the covenant matter.
This understanding if the inefficacy of the law is not usually something we struggle with today as Christians. As far as I know none of us are of Jewish descent and then therefore do not see the Law of Moses as something given to us and our ancestors. We make no claims to salvation based on heritage or lineage. So it is easy to nod and smile understanding that the law and covenant given to the Israelites by God do not give Jews a special place in the eyes of God regardless of what their actual relationship with God is like.
The law itself is not under attack here though. God gave the law to the people. The Jewish people just failed to live up to the law and failed to share the relationship the law gave them to God with others. The Jewish people were given the law and chosen by God so that hey may be a nation of priest to all peoples of the earth, that is they were the ones who were suppose to bring the people of the nations around them into covenant relationship with God by teaching them about who God is. Even at the very beginning God called Abraham so that through him all the nations of the world may be blessed. But they did not reach out and share the love and relationship God gave to them with those of the nations around them. They instead, cut themselves off from those who did not believe. Instead of inviting those around them to come to know the one true God of the universe, they used their belief in God as a barrier which separated them from those who did not believe as they believed. Instead of allowing the law to embrace all peoples and to bring all peoples into an understanding of who God is, they used that law as boundary which set them apart and as a wall on which they stood and were able to look down on all the foolish pagans all around them who did not know to worship God and live the way God called for them to live. The law which was something which was suppose to light the way and give instruction as to what it meant to live as a people of God was instead a barrier and a wall allowing the people to see themselves as better and more privileged than others.
Paul is addressing a Jewish mindset in this passage but he is speaking to us non-the-less. We as modern non-Jewish Christians we struggle just as much with our versions of “the law” as the early Jewish Christians and the Israelite people before them. We might not see the Torah as a privilege we have that others do not nor do we live by it so that we can see ourselves as a cut above the rest of the world. But most of us whether we realize it or not live by a set of rules, which we see as the standard by which all Christians should live. We, like those to whom Paul is speaking here, stand on this standard and look down on all those who fall short of the standard. The standard does not need to be elaborate to be used this way. It does not need to include 600 laws derived and redacted upon from scripture like many first century Jews did, it can be something as simple as, “I don’t drink, smoke or chew and I don’t hang with those who do.” Paul is not speaking to the goodness or badness of drinking or smoking but what Paul is speaking to is the superiority held over others by those who live by these standards and way these standards are lorded over others.
Paul speaks to this kind of understanding of scripture and the standards which we see set up in scripture. Paul is not saying that living in a Godly manner is not something a Christian will do, but Paul is saying that having the standards of God and the ability to live by them is not what allows us to be in relationship with God.
Paul tells those in the church in Rome that you may have the law, you may know and understand what it means to live the way God wants you to live, you may think that you can lead and teach others but you can’t in reality you are blind and are foolish, unlearned and therefore not qualified to teach. You think you understand, but you don’t. You may know the law, you may be circumcised. You may have read the manual and know it backwards and forwards, you may know what a good Christian should do and not do, you may be baptized but all this is worthless. All these things are outward signs of the covenant but the covenant is not an outward thing. It is inward, it is spiritual it deals with a person’s heart, who they are at the core of their being. The covenant must be written on your heart. You must bear an inward sign of the covenant not just an outward sign of one.
The difference is the difference between Lambert and the wolf. The wolf had all the outward signs of being a sheep. He looked like a sheep, he smelled like a sheep, he may have been able to baa like a sheep but underneath, inside, he was still a wolf. He was not a sheep. Lambert on the other hand looked like a lion but really he was a sheep. He acted like a sheep, he lived with the sheep and deep down what mattered to him were the same things that mattered to the sheep. Lambert had the good of the sheep always at heart, but the wolf was actually a threat to the sheep. We need to be more like Lambert than the wolf.
The concern is who we are inwardly. We may be able to put on Christian clothing. We may be able to look like a Christian, we may say all the right things and do all the right things but unless our hearts and our inward lives are changed eventually who we are inwardly will come to bear. God is not calling for us to be able to do all the right things. God is not calling for us to be able to say all the right things. God is calling us into a relationship. God is calling us into a relationship which will forever change who we are and our lives, much like being married or having a child. It is the kind of relationship which completely changes how you live your life.
When you get married or have a child, what you can and can not do changes, your priorities change, and your whole life changes. When you get married, who you spend you time with changes. It changes what you can and can not do with other people. You have to consider the other person in almost everything you do from when you get up in the morning, where you put your clothes, and what you eat for dinner. When you are married and making decisions about all these things, you have to consider the other person. Preferences, wants and desires are all run through the filter of the relationship. Everything in your life is influenced by this other person who is now in your life.
Likewise when you have a child everything changes. Suddenly every aspect of your life is seen in light of this new little person in your life. It is truly amazing how such a small person changes every aspect of your life, from how much sleep you get, to when you eat and when you can go out with your friends. I can remember the first time this really struck me. Cidra was probably 3 months old. Mike was at fencing and I had a friend over to watch movies. We decided we wanted ice cream. We got our shoes on, grabbed our purses and were on our way out the front door when suddenly we both remembered that Cidra was asleep in the other room. We could not just run out and get ice cream; someone had to stay home with the baby. Still I do not live my life the same way I did before I had the girls. My life is completely changed.
It is the same when you choose to follow Jesus, when you choose to live the way God calls you to live it is not just a surface change. It is not simply about following a set of rules, coming to church, reading your Bible and doing and not doing all the right things. That would be like simply putting on a sheepskin and calling yourself a sheep. It is about entering into relationship with the God of the universe, learning to love God and be loved by God. This is not like any relationship you have ever been in and it is a love like none other, it is a relationship more profound than marriage and a love that changes your life greater than the love of a child. It is a relationship which changes you at your very core, it does not merely change what you do, what you say and how you live your day to day life, but it changes who you are at the very core of your being, relationship with God is able to make you something you are not. Lambert really was sheep, in all the ways that truly mattered. He lived like a sheep, he ate like a sheep, he cared for the things that sheep cared about, feared the very things a sheep feared, the relationship he had with his mother ultimately changed who he was at his core, he became something he would otherwise be unable to be.
As Christians is it easy to get caught up in the rules the standards and begin to think that they are what makes us who we are. The rules and the standard can be a sheepskin which we put on to allow us to look like a Christian, so that we can fit in among the other Christians. They can even become a sense of pride, a boundary we use to segregate ourselves from those around us, and a wall on which we stand from which we are able to look down up on all those lesser humans who refuse to love God the way we love God. But our love is not really a love for God but is a love for the rules and the standards which God has laid down which show us and guide and allow us to live the way God called us to live.
We are not called to follow as standard. We are not called to follow a set of rules. Christians do live differently than other people. There are things we do; there are things we don’t do. Our words, and our actions are different than many who do not choose to love God, it changes our entire way of living. But we are not called to love a way of living. We are called simply to love; to love God, and to love one another. And that love changes who we are, changes how we live, it changes everything. It is not the standard, the rules, the way of living that makes us who we are, it our love for God. Simply following the rules, living a lifestyle, changing your actions is like the outward sign of the covenant. Living a life which stems from our love for God is living out of the inward sign of the covenant. The difference between being the wolf or being Lambert is what was in each one’s heart, what was going on in the inside. Lambert was a sheep at heart and the wolf no matter how well dressed he was, was still a wolf at heart. As Christians we are to have the love of God at the heart of who we are, changing us and making us into the people of God.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
John 1:29-42 - Come and See
John 1:29-42
I don’t know where Jesus was heading that day. I don’t know what he had on his agenda. I don’t know where his day planner told him he should be or by what time he was suppose to be there but on this day, Jesus was going about whatever it was he had set out to do as he was going merrily about his day, he was interrupted by John the Baptist, who decides that at this particular moment as Jesus walks by would be a great time to declare to all those within hearing distance who it was John believed Jesus to be.
I don’t know if you have ever spent much time comparing the 4 gospels and how they relate the story of Jesus to their readers and now to us, but each one tells us about Jesus in a different way. Many of them will tell us the same the same event in Jesus’ life but they will tell us about the event in Jesus’ life in a different way. Now the first three gospel writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke tend to be fairly similar to one another but John, John’s telling of the life of Jesus is quite different than the other three. The other three pretty much begin their retelling of Jesus’ life with narrative, while John begins with a theological exposition about Jesus being the Word of God. All the other writers let us figure out who Jesus is as the story of Jesus’ life unfolds but John, there is no mystery, there is no surprise, John gets straight to the punch line and then tells us the conclusion we are to come to before he even introduces the story’s main character. He begins by telling us who Jesus is and then gives us the events of his life which show us how it is he came to this conclusion.
John’s narrative begins with John the Baptist explaining that he is not the messiah but that the messiah would come after him. Then John the Baptist tells us, who is actually the messiah. John looks up and sees Jesus passing by and declares that although he himself is not the messiah but merely the one who comes before preparing the way, this man right here passing by just now is the Messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He then gives an explanation as to why it is he has come to this conclusion. He knew Jesus was the messiah because God told him that the one on whom he saw the Spirit of God alight like a dove would be the messiah and John saw the Spirit alight on Jesus, therefore Jesus must be the messiah, God’s anointed.
Once John knows to whom he has come to make the way for, he cannot keep the information to himself. It is almost as if he has to make sure everyone he knows,
knows that Jesus is the messiah. Because the very next day, he hijacks Jesus’ day again. He is standing around, (it seems that in John’s gospel, John the Baptist has a lot of time on his hands) with two of his disciples and Jesus is walking by once again, having nothing better to say than what he said last time, he tells his two disciples to look, here is the lamb of God. At this point John’s disciples must have understood what this cryptic phrase meant, or perhaps they figured if they went and checked him out, John would stop bothering this poor man as he walked by every day. So they left John and began following Jesus.
Now this is kind of strange. Here Jesus is just going about his business and two days in a row his cousin calls out to those around him telling all who will listen that here Jesus is the lamb of God and now two of his followers are now following him, so Jesus turns to them and asks them a simple question, “What are you looking for?”
And these two disciples being ever so good at understanding and quite good at following simple instructions and having the ability answer basic questions, completely fail to answer Jesus’ question by avoiding it all together and asking him another question, “Where are you staying/abiding?” Since they were already in the game of not answering each other’s questions clearly and precisely, Jesus answers by telling them to, “Come and see.” So they followed Jesus to his home to go and see. They must have liked what they saw because not only did that stay with him thyat day and ten choose become his disciples but one of them, Andrew went to get his brother Simon, to tell him he needed to come and see this guy, he believe to be the Messiah. Simon then in turn, comes to see this Messiah his brother had found. Immediately Jesus sees him and tells him that his name is no longer Simon, but will from hence forth be Cephas which when translated is Peter. So as we conclude the narrative we are looking at this morning Jesus now has his first three disciples, the last of which will be a pivotal figure, not only in his life and ministry but in the founding and building of the church.
When I began my sermon, I was going to look at what it meant for Jesus to be the Lamb of God, but as I worked my way through the passage this week. I kept coming back to the latter part of the passage when these two disciples decide to leave John, baptizing by the river and follow Jesus. Jesus asks them as very good question, “What are you looking for?” And it seems all they want to know is where it is that
Jesus is living at this point in his life.
Although it does not come across well in English, when they ask him where it is that he is staying or some translation use the word abiding, what they are actually asking Jesus is a much more complex question. Thing is translating something from one language to another is always a tricky process. Words in one language often times have meaning and connotations which are nearly impossible to carry over into another language. Sometimes in order to get the full picture of what one seemly simple word means in one language you need a whole sentence to explain it, when you translate that one word into another language. The word used here in Greek is not so easy to bring into English. The word which is translated, “staying” or “abiding” actually means two things at the same time when John uses it here in this passage.
The first meaning is fairly simple; Andrew and his friend are asking Jesus where is the location of the place where Jesus is living. But on another level they are also asking Jesus, “What is at the center of your being?” “What is it that defines who you are?” “What is at the core of all who you are?” Which then makes Jesus’ answer to them all the more interesting; Jesus does not tell them what it means for him to be the Messiah. Jesus does not explain to them about being the Son of God or even give them a brief description about what his purpose was here on earth. Instead, Jesus turns to them and simply answers “Come and see.”
So they went with him to see. Jesus took him to where he lived and by spending the day with Jesus they saw who he was. They were convince by what they saw in Jesus, they saw in whom he abided, they saw what was at the center of his being, they caught a glimpse of who Jesus was and what he was up to and decided they wanted to be a part of it, that wanted what Jesus had, they wanted to center who they were in the one whom Jesus was centered. In short they wanted to be like Jesus, so they choose then and there be become his disciples.
But it did not stop there. Andrew was so impressed by what he saw in Jesus that he sought out his brother and decided it was pertinent for Simon to also come and see where Jesus abided. Jesus was not just another rabbi, he was not just another teacher or a prophet he was the real deal, he was the one they had been seeking for and it was evident in who he was, it was evident in how he went about his life, it was evident in all he did and all he said. It was evident and he wanted his brother to come and see what he saw.
I don’t know why you are here this morning. I could fool myself into thinking that you have come here this morning because you have figured out what an great speaker I am and that that you came here this morning just to hear what amazingly profound wisdom I would bring before you this morning, and if that is the reason you came this morning, I am a little more than flattered that you think so highly of my speaking abilities. But let us be realistic, we all come to church on any given Sunday for our own reasons. Some of them are good and noble reasons, of us are here for some more self serving reasons and sometimes we get up, get ourselves ready and find ourselves within these walls out of habit and little more. We have, for whatever reason, found ourselves within these walls, listening to this sermon this morning, standing with John on the street and hearing him say, “Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
There are several places we can be this morning, when it comes to this passage. We might be among those who are simply here this morning. We came because it is a good place to be. Our friends are here. We have always gone to church. We like church, but there is not much more to it than that. We are bystanders in a way, just there on the street, or by the river or where ever it was when John looked up and pointed Jesus out that day.
We are here. We have heard John’s testimony. John is telling us that right here, is Jesus is the messiah, God’s anointed, the one who was God and was with God, and the Word of God and with the Creator when the earth’s foundations were laid, here is the one who came to take away the sins of the world.
Here we are, just minding our own business, going about our lives and suddenly we see Jesus, someone points him out to us. Someone tries to explain who he is. Perhaps, what they have to say to us makes sense, perhaps it does not. We find ourselves wondering to ourselves, “What does it mean that Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world? What is this person talking about?” Or perhaps, they speak words about Jesus and suddenly the whole thing makes sense.
Either way, we find ourselves looking up and seeing this Jesus for the first time. He is right there passing by, what do we do? Are we like these two disciples who have heard the witness of John and figure that this Jesus is someone worth checking out? Do we see this man, this teacher, this messiah and want to tag along to see what he is all about? Perhaps we don’t even know why we are going to check him out, but something about him, something about what is said about him, something attracts us and we find that we are interested, that we want to see what this man is all about. We want to know what it means for him to be the messiah. We don’t completely understand the idea of him taking away the sins of the world, but sounds pretty interesting.
So some of us are choosing to go check this Jesus fellow out for the first time this morning, but there are others of us who have already been checking him out. We have already decided he is worth checking out. And as we have checked him out. We have listened to what people have to say about him, followed him around for a while. Spent some time getting to know him, trying to understand what he is all about, coming to an understanding of who he is, and what is at the center, the core of all that he is. As we have come and seen, we find that we like what we see. We want to be more than mere observers, we want to be a part of what he is all about. We want to follow him, learn from him, and learn to be more like him. We have seen who he is, we have seen what he is all about, and we want more, we want be disciples.
But being a disciple is not like being an observer. It more than simply coming and seeing. Choosing to be a disciple is the choice which moves us from watching and observing, to doing. Choosing to be a disciple is the choice which moves us from coming and seeing, to going and doing. From watching the actions of others as they go about the work of the kingdom, to being people who are participating in the work of the kingdom. It is the choice to embrace the one we have been observing, to follow his example and to seek to live as he lived, to speak as he spoke, to love as he loved, to learn from his teachings, from his life and from who he is and seek to be a person who is like him, to be moved by the one who moves him, to have at the center of our beings the same God of love, mercy, justice and forgiveness who is at the center of who Jesus is. And then have that change, that choice move us forward to go and do the his work in this world.
You see there is more to following Jesus than just showing up and listening. There is more to following Jesus than coming and seeing. Once we have seen once we know who Jesus is we must then choose to stay, and not only to stay but to do as Andrew did and be moved to action by what we have seen, moved to action by who we have seen, to participate in the work and the ministry which God is doing here on this earth and do our best to share with those around us who it is in whom we have come to believe. To invite those whom we love and those whom we encounter in our day-to-day lives to come and see what we have seen, to come meet the one we have chosen to follow, to come to know what we have come to know.
This passage is a circle. It begins with John saying, “Look!” Which causes these two to go and see who it was John was calling for them to behold. They went and saw and who they saw and it changed them. Who they saw caused them to choose to follow, to choose to be disciples and in turned caused Andrew to then go and invite his brother to come and see and Simon heeds his brother’s invitation and chooses to come and see for himself who this Jesus, messiah is, bringing us full circle so to speak.
As people who here this morning we are somewhere on this circle; we may be at the top of the circle, with someone calling to behold the Messiah, with Jesus asking us to us to come and see, we may be somewhere along the circle observing, “seeing” what there is to see, judging for ourselves what we think of this Jesus, messiah person, we may be among those who have chosen to follow Jesus, to be his disciples and as such there is nowhere else to go, but be changed by what we have seen, infuse our lives with who Jesus is, and what Jesus is all about and then like John and Andrew invite those around us to come and see, to come and learn, to come so that they may know what we know, so that they may know who we know and also be changed by who he is.
I don’t know where Jesus was heading that day. I don’t know what he had on his agenda. I don’t know where his day planner told him he should be or by what time he was suppose to be there but on this day, Jesus was going about whatever it was he had set out to do as he was going merrily about his day, he was interrupted by John the Baptist, who decides that at this particular moment as Jesus walks by would be a great time to declare to all those within hearing distance who it was John believed Jesus to be.
I don’t know if you have ever spent much time comparing the 4 gospels and how they relate the story of Jesus to their readers and now to us, but each one tells us about Jesus in a different way. Many of them will tell us the same the same event in Jesus’ life but they will tell us about the event in Jesus’ life in a different way. Now the first three gospel writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke tend to be fairly similar to one another but John, John’s telling of the life of Jesus is quite different than the other three. The other three pretty much begin their retelling of Jesus’ life with narrative, while John begins with a theological exposition about Jesus being the Word of God. All the other writers let us figure out who Jesus is as the story of Jesus’ life unfolds but John, there is no mystery, there is no surprise, John gets straight to the punch line and then tells us the conclusion we are to come to before he even introduces the story’s main character. He begins by telling us who Jesus is and then gives us the events of his life which show us how it is he came to this conclusion.
John’s narrative begins with John the Baptist explaining that he is not the messiah but that the messiah would come after him. Then John the Baptist tells us, who is actually the messiah. John looks up and sees Jesus passing by and declares that although he himself is not the messiah but merely the one who comes before preparing the way, this man right here passing by just now is the Messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He then gives an explanation as to why it is he has come to this conclusion. He knew Jesus was the messiah because God told him that the one on whom he saw the Spirit of God alight like a dove would be the messiah and John saw the Spirit alight on Jesus, therefore Jesus must be the messiah, God’s anointed.
Once John knows to whom he has come to make the way for, he cannot keep the information to himself. It is almost as if he has to make sure everyone he knows,
knows that Jesus is the messiah. Because the very next day, he hijacks Jesus’ day again. He is standing around, (it seems that in John’s gospel, John the Baptist has a lot of time on his hands) with two of his disciples and Jesus is walking by once again, having nothing better to say than what he said last time, he tells his two disciples to look, here is the lamb of God. At this point John’s disciples must have understood what this cryptic phrase meant, or perhaps they figured if they went and checked him out, John would stop bothering this poor man as he walked by every day. So they left John and began following Jesus.
Now this is kind of strange. Here Jesus is just going about his business and two days in a row his cousin calls out to those around him telling all who will listen that here Jesus is the lamb of God and now two of his followers are now following him, so Jesus turns to them and asks them a simple question, “What are you looking for?”
And these two disciples being ever so good at understanding and quite good at following simple instructions and having the ability answer basic questions, completely fail to answer Jesus’ question by avoiding it all together and asking him another question, “Where are you staying/abiding?” Since they were already in the game of not answering each other’s questions clearly and precisely, Jesus answers by telling them to, “Come and see.” So they followed Jesus to his home to go and see. They must have liked what they saw because not only did that stay with him thyat day and ten choose become his disciples but one of them, Andrew went to get his brother Simon, to tell him he needed to come and see this guy, he believe to be the Messiah. Simon then in turn, comes to see this Messiah his brother had found. Immediately Jesus sees him and tells him that his name is no longer Simon, but will from hence forth be Cephas which when translated is Peter. So as we conclude the narrative we are looking at this morning Jesus now has his first three disciples, the last of which will be a pivotal figure, not only in his life and ministry but in the founding and building of the church.
When I began my sermon, I was going to look at what it meant for Jesus to be the Lamb of God, but as I worked my way through the passage this week. I kept coming back to the latter part of the passage when these two disciples decide to leave John, baptizing by the river and follow Jesus. Jesus asks them as very good question, “What are you looking for?” And it seems all they want to know is where it is that
Jesus is living at this point in his life.
Although it does not come across well in English, when they ask him where it is that he is staying or some translation use the word abiding, what they are actually asking Jesus is a much more complex question. Thing is translating something from one language to another is always a tricky process. Words in one language often times have meaning and connotations which are nearly impossible to carry over into another language. Sometimes in order to get the full picture of what one seemly simple word means in one language you need a whole sentence to explain it, when you translate that one word into another language. The word used here in Greek is not so easy to bring into English. The word which is translated, “staying” or “abiding” actually means two things at the same time when John uses it here in this passage.
The first meaning is fairly simple; Andrew and his friend are asking Jesus where is the location of the place where Jesus is living. But on another level they are also asking Jesus, “What is at the center of your being?” “What is it that defines who you are?” “What is at the core of all who you are?” Which then makes Jesus’ answer to them all the more interesting; Jesus does not tell them what it means for him to be the Messiah. Jesus does not explain to them about being the Son of God or even give them a brief description about what his purpose was here on earth. Instead, Jesus turns to them and simply answers “Come and see.”
So they went with him to see. Jesus took him to where he lived and by spending the day with Jesus they saw who he was. They were convince by what they saw in Jesus, they saw in whom he abided, they saw what was at the center of his being, they caught a glimpse of who Jesus was and what he was up to and decided they wanted to be a part of it, that wanted what Jesus had, they wanted to center who they were in the one whom Jesus was centered. In short they wanted to be like Jesus, so they choose then and there be become his disciples.
But it did not stop there. Andrew was so impressed by what he saw in Jesus that he sought out his brother and decided it was pertinent for Simon to also come and see where Jesus abided. Jesus was not just another rabbi, he was not just another teacher or a prophet he was the real deal, he was the one they had been seeking for and it was evident in who he was, it was evident in how he went about his life, it was evident in all he did and all he said. It was evident and he wanted his brother to come and see what he saw.
I don’t know why you are here this morning. I could fool myself into thinking that you have come here this morning because you have figured out what an great speaker I am and that that you came here this morning just to hear what amazingly profound wisdom I would bring before you this morning, and if that is the reason you came this morning, I am a little more than flattered that you think so highly of my speaking abilities. But let us be realistic, we all come to church on any given Sunday for our own reasons. Some of them are good and noble reasons, of us are here for some more self serving reasons and sometimes we get up, get ourselves ready and find ourselves within these walls out of habit and little more. We have, for whatever reason, found ourselves within these walls, listening to this sermon this morning, standing with John on the street and hearing him say, “Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
There are several places we can be this morning, when it comes to this passage. We might be among those who are simply here this morning. We came because it is a good place to be. Our friends are here. We have always gone to church. We like church, but there is not much more to it than that. We are bystanders in a way, just there on the street, or by the river or where ever it was when John looked up and pointed Jesus out that day.
We are here. We have heard John’s testimony. John is telling us that right here, is Jesus is the messiah, God’s anointed, the one who was God and was with God, and the Word of God and with the Creator when the earth’s foundations were laid, here is the one who came to take away the sins of the world.
Here we are, just minding our own business, going about our lives and suddenly we see Jesus, someone points him out to us. Someone tries to explain who he is. Perhaps, what they have to say to us makes sense, perhaps it does not. We find ourselves wondering to ourselves, “What does it mean that Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world? What is this person talking about?” Or perhaps, they speak words about Jesus and suddenly the whole thing makes sense.
Either way, we find ourselves looking up and seeing this Jesus for the first time. He is right there passing by, what do we do? Are we like these two disciples who have heard the witness of John and figure that this Jesus is someone worth checking out? Do we see this man, this teacher, this messiah and want to tag along to see what he is all about? Perhaps we don’t even know why we are going to check him out, but something about him, something about what is said about him, something attracts us and we find that we are interested, that we want to see what this man is all about. We want to know what it means for him to be the messiah. We don’t completely understand the idea of him taking away the sins of the world, but sounds pretty interesting.
So some of us are choosing to go check this Jesus fellow out for the first time this morning, but there are others of us who have already been checking him out. We have already decided he is worth checking out. And as we have checked him out. We have listened to what people have to say about him, followed him around for a while. Spent some time getting to know him, trying to understand what he is all about, coming to an understanding of who he is, and what is at the center, the core of all that he is. As we have come and seen, we find that we like what we see. We want to be more than mere observers, we want to be a part of what he is all about. We want to follow him, learn from him, and learn to be more like him. We have seen who he is, we have seen what he is all about, and we want more, we want be disciples.
But being a disciple is not like being an observer. It more than simply coming and seeing. Choosing to be a disciple is the choice which moves us from watching and observing, to doing. Choosing to be a disciple is the choice which moves us from coming and seeing, to going and doing. From watching the actions of others as they go about the work of the kingdom, to being people who are participating in the work of the kingdom. It is the choice to embrace the one we have been observing, to follow his example and to seek to live as he lived, to speak as he spoke, to love as he loved, to learn from his teachings, from his life and from who he is and seek to be a person who is like him, to be moved by the one who moves him, to have at the center of our beings the same God of love, mercy, justice and forgiveness who is at the center of who Jesus is. And then have that change, that choice move us forward to go and do the his work in this world.
You see there is more to following Jesus than just showing up and listening. There is more to following Jesus than coming and seeing. Once we have seen once we know who Jesus is we must then choose to stay, and not only to stay but to do as Andrew did and be moved to action by what we have seen, moved to action by who we have seen, to participate in the work and the ministry which God is doing here on this earth and do our best to share with those around us who it is in whom we have come to believe. To invite those whom we love and those whom we encounter in our day-to-day lives to come and see what we have seen, to come meet the one we have chosen to follow, to come to know what we have come to know.
This passage is a circle. It begins with John saying, “Look!” Which causes these two to go and see who it was John was calling for them to behold. They went and saw and who they saw and it changed them. Who they saw caused them to choose to follow, to choose to be disciples and in turned caused Andrew to then go and invite his brother to come and see and Simon heeds his brother’s invitation and chooses to come and see for himself who this Jesus, messiah is, bringing us full circle so to speak.
As people who here this morning we are somewhere on this circle; we may be at the top of the circle, with someone calling to behold the Messiah, with Jesus asking us to us to come and see, we may be somewhere along the circle observing, “seeing” what there is to see, judging for ourselves what we think of this Jesus, messiah person, we may be among those who have chosen to follow Jesus, to be his disciples and as such there is nowhere else to go, but be changed by what we have seen, infuse our lives with who Jesus is, and what Jesus is all about and then like John and Andrew invite those around us to come and see, to come and learn, to come so that they may know what we know, so that they may know who we know and also be changed by who he is.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Jeremiah 23:1-6 - Christ the King
Jeremiah 23:1-6
I. Coming to an understanding of the text
The people were disenchanted. Things did not look good. They looked to their leaders and their leaders lead them astray. Where they had been promised prosperity, they found only want. Where they had been promised peace, they found only turmoil. Where they had been promised better times to come, they found that things only seemed to get worse and worse. They had been promised so much had dared to dream of change but all they saw was more of the same or worse. They were defeated their future looked bleak. They had looked to their leaders to give them what they needed to survive and their leaders lead them astray.
It is to these disheartened, disenchanted, distraught people whom God speaks this morning and whereas the people are lost in the misery of the chaos and turmoil of their day, God is infuriated. God is livid. How dare the leaders of God’s people do this to those whom God loves! God had warned the people when they had called for a King, so they could be like all the nations around them, that having a King would be no end of heartache for them and the people, like a child who desires to eat the whole cake all at once and finds a way to eat it in spite of repeated warnings from the loving adults in her life who all told her that eating the whole thing will give her a bellyache, Israel demands to have a King. Now the King and the other leaders of the people of Israel, having not heeded the repeated warnings which God has given to them, have ensured the beginning of the end for the nation as a whole. The nation is in a mess and the people have nobody to whom they can turn. Their King has failed them, and their leaders have failed them. They are lost, they are sheep without a shepherd, actually worse they are sheep with shepherds who have lead them astray, taken them directly into harms way, have turned on the sheep and scattered them. And God pronounces judgment on them for doing so.
God will not stand by and continually allow this to happen to the people whom God loves. God stands up and says, “This will not continue to happen, not on my watch, not while I am still God around here.” And God speaks to the people and makes a promise to them. God promises that all though the flock will be scattered to the nations, God will gather them back up and bring them back to the land. Although they may go into exile, God will not allow exile to be the final word, they will be returned to the land which God had given to them.
God will bring them back. God will gather them up and bring them back to where they belong. Although, they may be few when they return they will be fruitful and multiply. “Be fruitful and multiply.” This is a phrase you may recognize from Genesis. In the beginning after God sat down in the dust of the newly formed earth, reached in to the earth and formed the first humans, looked at them, blessed them pronouncing them good, set them in the garden, the first thing God told them was to “be fruitful and multiply.” God is not merely restoring them but God is promising to restore them back to whom they were created to be. Things would not simply be better but thing would be completely, absolutely and finally set right.
But not only does God promise to set things eternally right, but God promises to give them a real shepherd, a shepherd who shepherd’s the way a shepherd should. God will not mess around with these shepherds who take the sheep into harm’s way. God will not longer allow for shepherds who instead of gathering and protecting, scatter and neglect. God will not tolerate shepherds who destroy when they should be protecting. Instead God will raise up for them new shepherds. But God will not just raise up any ole shepherds, but “the day is coming,” God says, when God will raise up a righteous Branch the stump of the grand tree which once was the house of David. This will be a new kind of King, not just a shepherd who knows how do to his job but this will be a ruler who will save the people, and allow them to live in safety. There will be peace, there will be prosperity, and things will be set right. Not merely made better, not merely made tolerable but right, once and for all truly right.
II. Applying the Text
Today as we celebrate Christ the King Sunday, we are thinking about the kind of King Jesus is, we are thinking about the rule of God, about the reign of Christ, the kingdom of Heaven which is and which will one day be. Today is a big day in the yearly life of the church. Today marks the end of the church year, next week; the first week of Advent is the first Sunday of new church year. This next week is the week in between times.
It kind of reminds me of Lewis’s wood between the worlds. Many of you may be familiar with Chronicles of Narnia, especially since the first two books have already been made into movies with the third, coming out in just a few short weeks. I have read the books of this series more times than you all would care to know, that is the way I am with books I like, I read them over and over again to gaining new and deeper insight into them each time I read them (I know I am a nerd). Anyway, my favorite of the books since I was four years old and my parents read it to me for the first time, has always been The Magicians Nephew. What has always fascinated me about this book is the Wood between the Worlds. Via magical means the two children of this book find themselves in a wood which is really nowhere. It is place which is in between places, once there, if you know how, you can get from there into any world you want, but the place itself is both apart of all those worlds and not a part of any of them at the same time. It is nowhere and everywhere. It is quite simply and plainly in between everywhere. It is both here and there and at the same time neither. Not hard to figure out why such a place would capture the imagination of a four year old and continue to have a hold of that same girl’s imagination three decades later.
The week we are entering is very similar. It is the week between years. It is both part of the year which is just ending and a part of the year which is about to begin and at the same time a part of neither. We begin this week celebrating the Kingship, the lordship, the eternal reign of Jesus Christ and end the week celebrating the anticipation of the coming of Christ. So in many ways it is a week of the already and not yet, where the end of one year has come but the next has not yet really come. We celebrate the eternal kingship of Christ and anticipate a kingdom which has already come but has not yet really come. This week in so many ways is exactly where we are living. It is where we are, between the celebration of the eternal kingship of Christ and the celebration of our anticipation of Christ’s coming. Christ has come, the kingdom of Heaven is at hand, yet we are waiting, longing, anticipating for Christ to come and for Christ’s kingdom to be revealed. Now is the time between times, when we have tasted who Christ is but have not yet fully tasted what it means for the kingdom to have truly come.
As Christians when we hear God speak about a king from the line of David who will come to deal wisely with God’s people, who will execute justice and righteousness in the land and hear about lives being restored to the created ordering, we can not help but think about Jesus Christ. But at the same time our attention can not help but turn to the fact that although Christ has come, we are not yet living in a world where justice and righteousness are the rule of law. We are not living a world where all things have been restored to their created goodness, we do not see peace, we do not see a world which reflects the promises made here in this passage, but we are living in a world which has seen the coming of Christ, were there are glimpses of these things. We live in world where we can see the shadows of the righteousness, peace and justice which will be; shadows which let us know what is to come, but as of yet is not.
Just as this passage causes our Christian minds to see the life, message and purpose of Christ in the promise of the shepherd King whom God promises to the people, this passage draws our minds eye to a reality which has yet to come, a reality we are not yet living. Along with a King who shepherds with justice and righteousness, a King who gathers and protects we are promised a world where all things are restored to the way they should be, a world, which is returned to the goodness and rightness, which was seen at first creation, but we do not live in that world. Instead we live in this broken twisted world, where all too often heartache and chaos reign.
We, like the people of this passage, live in a world where our leaders fail us and lead us astray. We live in a world were we are scattered, abandoned and neglected. It seems as if neither righteousness, nor justice can be found anywhere. In too many ways we are the sheep in this passage. And God promises us something. God promises us a shepherd who loves, a shepherd who protects, a shepherd who provides leads and will shepherd as a shepherd should. God promises a King who reigns, not like any earthly king for his own good, to please his own self but instead promises a king who rules justly and with righteousness.
Just as this week is the week between times, we are living in a time between times; we are living in a time when we are looking for the King who will come and at the same time rejoicing in the King who has come. Just as Christ the King Sunday is a Sunday which anticipates the anticipation celebrated in the season of Advent, we can see this passage and see how it anticipates Jesus, the King who had not yet come, but live in a world where Jesus has come, while we continue to anticipate the world which the king who has come and will come again will usher in.
III. Conclusion
So the old saying of Advent goes, “Christ has come, Christ will come again, “ we are living in this time between times, anticipating a world where all things will be set right, but even still we begin to lives which are set right. We see within our lives, as we allow ourselves to be transformed into the likeness of Christ we can in our actions, reactions and interactions bring glimpses of the kingdom which is yet to come into the reality of this world. As we attempt to live as Christ would live, love as Christ would love in our daily lives, each time we succeed we bring the justice and righteousness King of this passage to reign in this unjust and unrighteous would. Every time we reach out and right a wrong, make just what is unjust, we allow the kingdom of God, the reign of Christ the king to make shadows in this world, shadows which allow people all around us to catch glimpses of the one who will come, of the life which can be, of what it will mean when one day all things will be set right, when one day all things will be just; when one day all things will be restored to the goodness of creation.
So as we celebrate the Reign of Christ today, the Kingship of Jesus, let us live that kingship in our own lives. Let us bring the kingship of Christ to bear in how we live our lives. Let us live as if Christ reigns, let us live as if Christ is King. Let us live justly, let us live rightly. Let us allow God to use us to make right the wrongs, let us where we see unjustness make justice in this world. We do this by living as Christ would live, loving as Christ would love. We do this by speaking words of kindness where harsh words would be easier. We do this by responding with grace and forgiveness where it would be easier to respond in judgment. We do this by giving to those who are in need, by loving those who are unloved and by bringing fairness to a world which is anything but fair.
Christ the king Sunday is not just a day on which we think about what it means that Christ is king. It is not just a day one which we think about what life will be like when the Lord truly reigns in this world, is it day which calls us to live the kingship of Christ each and everyday, in every moment, each time we see another human being, each time we have a chance to interact with those around us we have a choice, we can choose to react as if business is usual, in the ways we are most inclined to act, or we can choose to act as if love was the law, as if justice was the only option, in short we can choose to act as if God’s kingdom has already come, instead of merely wishing it so.
I. Coming to an understanding of the text
The people were disenchanted. Things did not look good. They looked to their leaders and their leaders lead them astray. Where they had been promised prosperity, they found only want. Where they had been promised peace, they found only turmoil. Where they had been promised better times to come, they found that things only seemed to get worse and worse. They had been promised so much had dared to dream of change but all they saw was more of the same or worse. They were defeated their future looked bleak. They had looked to their leaders to give them what they needed to survive and their leaders lead them astray.
It is to these disheartened, disenchanted, distraught people whom God speaks this morning and whereas the people are lost in the misery of the chaos and turmoil of their day, God is infuriated. God is livid. How dare the leaders of God’s people do this to those whom God loves! God had warned the people when they had called for a King, so they could be like all the nations around them, that having a King would be no end of heartache for them and the people, like a child who desires to eat the whole cake all at once and finds a way to eat it in spite of repeated warnings from the loving adults in her life who all told her that eating the whole thing will give her a bellyache, Israel demands to have a King. Now the King and the other leaders of the people of Israel, having not heeded the repeated warnings which God has given to them, have ensured the beginning of the end for the nation as a whole. The nation is in a mess and the people have nobody to whom they can turn. Their King has failed them, and their leaders have failed them. They are lost, they are sheep without a shepherd, actually worse they are sheep with shepherds who have lead them astray, taken them directly into harms way, have turned on the sheep and scattered them. And God pronounces judgment on them for doing so.
God will not stand by and continually allow this to happen to the people whom God loves. God stands up and says, “This will not continue to happen, not on my watch, not while I am still God around here.” And God speaks to the people and makes a promise to them. God promises that all though the flock will be scattered to the nations, God will gather them back up and bring them back to the land. Although they may go into exile, God will not allow exile to be the final word, they will be returned to the land which God had given to them.
God will bring them back. God will gather them up and bring them back to where they belong. Although, they may be few when they return they will be fruitful and multiply. “Be fruitful and multiply.” This is a phrase you may recognize from Genesis. In the beginning after God sat down in the dust of the newly formed earth, reached in to the earth and formed the first humans, looked at them, blessed them pronouncing them good, set them in the garden, the first thing God told them was to “be fruitful and multiply.” God is not merely restoring them but God is promising to restore them back to whom they were created to be. Things would not simply be better but thing would be completely, absolutely and finally set right.
But not only does God promise to set things eternally right, but God promises to give them a real shepherd, a shepherd who shepherd’s the way a shepherd should. God will not mess around with these shepherds who take the sheep into harm’s way. God will not longer allow for shepherds who instead of gathering and protecting, scatter and neglect. God will not tolerate shepherds who destroy when they should be protecting. Instead God will raise up for them new shepherds. But God will not just raise up any ole shepherds, but “the day is coming,” God says, when God will raise up a righteous Branch the stump of the grand tree which once was the house of David. This will be a new kind of King, not just a shepherd who knows how do to his job but this will be a ruler who will save the people, and allow them to live in safety. There will be peace, there will be prosperity, and things will be set right. Not merely made better, not merely made tolerable but right, once and for all truly right.
II. Applying the Text
Today as we celebrate Christ the King Sunday, we are thinking about the kind of King Jesus is, we are thinking about the rule of God, about the reign of Christ, the kingdom of Heaven which is and which will one day be. Today is a big day in the yearly life of the church. Today marks the end of the church year, next week; the first week of Advent is the first Sunday of new church year. This next week is the week in between times.
It kind of reminds me of Lewis’s wood between the worlds. Many of you may be familiar with Chronicles of Narnia, especially since the first two books have already been made into movies with the third, coming out in just a few short weeks. I have read the books of this series more times than you all would care to know, that is the way I am with books I like, I read them over and over again to gaining new and deeper insight into them each time I read them (I know I am a nerd). Anyway, my favorite of the books since I was four years old and my parents read it to me for the first time, has always been The Magicians Nephew. What has always fascinated me about this book is the Wood between the Worlds. Via magical means the two children of this book find themselves in a wood which is really nowhere. It is place which is in between places, once there, if you know how, you can get from there into any world you want, but the place itself is both apart of all those worlds and not a part of any of them at the same time. It is nowhere and everywhere. It is quite simply and plainly in between everywhere. It is both here and there and at the same time neither. Not hard to figure out why such a place would capture the imagination of a four year old and continue to have a hold of that same girl’s imagination three decades later.
The week we are entering is very similar. It is the week between years. It is both part of the year which is just ending and a part of the year which is about to begin and at the same time a part of neither. We begin this week celebrating the Kingship, the lordship, the eternal reign of Jesus Christ and end the week celebrating the anticipation of the coming of Christ. So in many ways it is a week of the already and not yet, where the end of one year has come but the next has not yet really come. We celebrate the eternal kingship of Christ and anticipate a kingdom which has already come but has not yet really come. This week in so many ways is exactly where we are living. It is where we are, between the celebration of the eternal kingship of Christ and the celebration of our anticipation of Christ’s coming. Christ has come, the kingdom of Heaven is at hand, yet we are waiting, longing, anticipating for Christ to come and for Christ’s kingdom to be revealed. Now is the time between times, when we have tasted who Christ is but have not yet fully tasted what it means for the kingdom to have truly come.
As Christians when we hear God speak about a king from the line of David who will come to deal wisely with God’s people, who will execute justice and righteousness in the land and hear about lives being restored to the created ordering, we can not help but think about Jesus Christ. But at the same time our attention can not help but turn to the fact that although Christ has come, we are not yet living in a world where justice and righteousness are the rule of law. We are not living a world where all things have been restored to their created goodness, we do not see peace, we do not see a world which reflects the promises made here in this passage, but we are living in a world which has seen the coming of Christ, were there are glimpses of these things. We live in world where we can see the shadows of the righteousness, peace and justice which will be; shadows which let us know what is to come, but as of yet is not.
Just as this passage causes our Christian minds to see the life, message and purpose of Christ in the promise of the shepherd King whom God promises to the people, this passage draws our minds eye to a reality which has yet to come, a reality we are not yet living. Along with a King who shepherds with justice and righteousness, a King who gathers and protects we are promised a world where all things are restored to the way they should be, a world, which is returned to the goodness and rightness, which was seen at first creation, but we do not live in that world. Instead we live in this broken twisted world, where all too often heartache and chaos reign.
We, like the people of this passage, live in a world where our leaders fail us and lead us astray. We live in a world were we are scattered, abandoned and neglected. It seems as if neither righteousness, nor justice can be found anywhere. In too many ways we are the sheep in this passage. And God promises us something. God promises us a shepherd who loves, a shepherd who protects, a shepherd who provides leads and will shepherd as a shepherd should. God promises a King who reigns, not like any earthly king for his own good, to please his own self but instead promises a king who rules justly and with righteousness.
Just as this week is the week between times, we are living in a time between times; we are living in a time when we are looking for the King who will come and at the same time rejoicing in the King who has come. Just as Christ the King Sunday is a Sunday which anticipates the anticipation celebrated in the season of Advent, we can see this passage and see how it anticipates Jesus, the King who had not yet come, but live in a world where Jesus has come, while we continue to anticipate the world which the king who has come and will come again will usher in.
III. Conclusion
So the old saying of Advent goes, “Christ has come, Christ will come again, “ we are living in this time between times, anticipating a world where all things will be set right, but even still we begin to lives which are set right. We see within our lives, as we allow ourselves to be transformed into the likeness of Christ we can in our actions, reactions and interactions bring glimpses of the kingdom which is yet to come into the reality of this world. As we attempt to live as Christ would live, love as Christ would love in our daily lives, each time we succeed we bring the justice and righteousness King of this passage to reign in this unjust and unrighteous would. Every time we reach out and right a wrong, make just what is unjust, we allow the kingdom of God, the reign of Christ the king to make shadows in this world, shadows which allow people all around us to catch glimpses of the one who will come, of the life which can be, of what it will mean when one day all things will be set right, when one day all things will be just; when one day all things will be restored to the goodness of creation.
So as we celebrate the Reign of Christ today, the Kingship of Jesus, let us live that kingship in our own lives. Let us bring the kingship of Christ to bear in how we live our lives. Let us live as if Christ reigns, let us live as if Christ is King. Let us live justly, let us live rightly. Let us allow God to use us to make right the wrongs, let us where we see unjustness make justice in this world. We do this by living as Christ would live, loving as Christ would love. We do this by speaking words of kindness where harsh words would be easier. We do this by responding with grace and forgiveness where it would be easier to respond in judgment. We do this by giving to those who are in need, by loving those who are unloved and by bringing fairness to a world which is anything but fair.
Christ the king Sunday is not just a day on which we think about what it means that Christ is king. It is not just a day one which we think about what life will be like when the Lord truly reigns in this world, is it day which calls us to live the kingship of Christ each and everyday, in every moment, each time we see another human being, each time we have a chance to interact with those around us we have a choice, we can choose to react as if business is usual, in the ways we are most inclined to act, or we can choose to act as if love was the law, as if justice was the only option, in short we can choose to act as if God’s kingdom has already come, instead of merely wishing it so.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Celebrating in the Rubble Pile - Haggai 1:15-2:9
About 70 years before Haggai gave this message, the country of Israel was absolutely and utterly destroyed. The nation had been conquered. Everything of value was taken away. The sacred items were taken out of the temple and carted off as war booty. The Temple itself was completely demolished, not one stone remained upon another. The people were also carted off and taken into exile. They were forced to live out their lives as foreigner in a foreign land.
Then, about 20 years prior to this passage, the King of Persia allowed the Israelites to return to Israel. This was cause for much rejoicing. It had been about 70 years. These people had spent their whole lives dreaming about returning home. They were exhilarated. They joyfully made the journey back to Israel. The world had been set right. They were going home. The sun was brighter, the bird songs more lovely, and the breeze smelt sweeter; well that was until they cleared that last hill which separated them from the land of beauty and bounty of which they had spent their lives dreaming and did not see the lush rolling hill country fertile and bursting with the bounty of the land and beautiful cities which would cause those of their captors to pale in comparison. Instead, they saw barren fields over grown with soil which looked as if it would refuse to yield anything. They saw the burnt out shells of what were once their grand cities and rubble piles which had once been their ancestral homes. When they returned they found their homes and their cities destroyed by war. The land was barren and desolate, burned, un-worked and practically wild from being left for nearly a century. Nothing was as it had been.
Where there had once been a rich prosperous country there was just a broken shell of a country, which had been conquered, looted and left in a state of perpetual disrepair by the invading forces.
Not only that, even though they were allowed to return to their land it was still not their land; not really. They were no longer a self governing country; they were no longer a sovereign nation. Persia had placed a governor over them to rule them. As far as the government went being home was the same as being in exile. They were still under Persian control, living by Persian law, but now instead of living like this in a far off land, as they had while in exile, save they were doing it in their own land.
They arrived and everything was much the same as it had been right before they had left, completely and utter destroyed. So they did the only thing they could do, they started to rebuild. They set to work rebuilding their homes, their cities and working to make the ground fertile again.
About a month before Haggai brought this message, the people had begun to rebuild the temple. This was a long and arduous process. First, they had to clear out all the rubble, they had to sort the useable stones from the ones which were destroyed beyond repair, then they had reshape the usable stones and finally they had to find enough new ones, only they could they set to actually rebuilding the temple. Things were slow going and they were not making very much progress. It was nearly a month into the temple rebuild project and it still looked like a gigantic rubble pile.
You may have noticed that the passage gives a very specific date as to when Haggai gave this message to the people. The scripture tells us that the Word of the Lord came to Haggai on the 21st day of the month of Tishri, which would have fallen on Oct 17th of the year 520. This date is given because the day on which Haggai was given this message to take to the people of God is important. When Haggai stands up to address the people, it is the last day of the Festival of Tabernacles. The Festival of Tabernacles is a festival which always happens in the Fall, in mid to late October, even to this day. It is one of the most important festivals in the Jewish calendar. Festival of Tabernacles, also called the festival of booths or Sukkoth, is the one of the seven festivals which God instructs the people to celebrate. The festival of Tabernacles is the time during which the People of God celebrate how God had taken care of them in they traveled in the desert, as well as being a harvest festival thanking God for God’s provision, it occurred right after the last Harvest had been taken in. It was a time to celebrate how God had taken care of God’s people for yet another year, as well as celebrating the promise of how God would continue to take care of them for the year to come, which a bountiful harvest showed them.
I want you to imagine this scene with me. The people, they are standing in the midst of the rubble of what use to be the temple, they have started rebuilding the walls from reshaped/misshapen stones which they have collected, the walls are sad and sagging and in places they keep falling down, even as they attempt to rebuild them. Beyond the crumbling walls of the temple they can see the half built houses, which they put together in hast simply so they could have somewhere to live. These sad, sagging, structures make up the grand city of Jerusalem, which is then surrounded by a wall that is crumbling at its’ best and no-existent at it’s’ worst.
Here they are surrounded by the basically empty shell of the grand city, which once was, celebrating how God has taken care of them by providing a harvest and looking back celebrating how God had taken care of them all the years they wandered in the desert. But [pause] the problem is, there was no harvest; the crops had failed. There is no bountiful harvest for which they can celebrate God’s care and see the promise of how God will continue to care for them into the future.
Things look bleak. Here they are back in the land flowing with milk and honey and not only is there no milk and honey but there is no harvest, there is no temple and as they look at the rubble and destruction all around them they feel as if they are never going to be able to rebuild. It is hopeless.
In the midst of the destruction, in the midst of the rubble, in the midst of the hopelessness, God has a message for them. God says, “Remember the former glory of the temple?” The people look around them at the ram shackled temple all around them and it is really kind of hard to imagine the temple which had once stood in this very place. Very few, if any, of those who had been originally carted off into exile, would still be alive after being exiled for nearly 70 years. The people who stood in the ruins what was once the splendor of Solomon’s temple had merely heard about the temple and its former glory from their parents and grandparents. They had grown up on the stories of their homeland, Jerusalem, and the glory of the Temple which stood at its heart, much like many of us grew up on fairy tales.
None-the-less, God tells them to look at the temple around them. Thing is what was all around them looked like nothing. It was a rubble pile. It was not a temple. But where they saw a pile of rubble God saw a temple. God was calling them to see what God saw. To see with new eyes to catch a glimpse of the vision God had for them. Gods says to them, “I am with you – with me – there can be a temple where there is no temple.”
God is the God who made something out of nothing. God spoke the universe into existence after all. In the beginning there was nothing and God made something but here, here God at least has some stones from the former temple with which to begin.
In the midst of the hopelessness Haggai is given a message of hope, “God is with you and when God is with you can do what seems impossible. With God with you, you can rebuild this temple. Not only that, but just as the nations carted everything which had once made up the grand glory of the temple; all the gold, all the lamps, all the plates, goblets, God says those same nations would come and fill the temple again. Not only will the temple be rebuilt but it will be even better than it was before – God will take the rubble and make it even more beautiful and more spectacular than before.
Side note – Eventually they do rebuild the temple and in the end the temple which Herod would complete, which is an refurbishment of the one they were now building, was bigger, and by some estimations better and more spectacular than Solomon’s temple.
Too many times our lives can be compared to the rubble in which the Israelites were standing. And here we are, on yet another Sunday, called to rejoice in who God is and how God takes care of us. But sometimes when we look at the rubble in our lives, it is hard to see God. It is hard to see how God is taking care of us. We look around at the devastation, at the chaos, at the pain and the heartache and we cannot see how God could be a part of this at all. We look around and simply can’t see God. The bills are mounting. Our health or the health of those we love is not good. The children don’t always behave as well as we would like. No matter how often we do it, or how hard we try to stay on top of it the laundry seems to always need to be done. Things at work are not going well. Our relationships are not what we want them to be, it seems as if our spouse is slipping away from us. We are not as close to our parents or our grown children as we would like. Perhaps those relationships seem beyond repair. There is death and brokenness all around us. So many things in our lives are going wrong. Our lives are torn apart. We are surrounded by rubble, chaos and destruction. And, it is hard to celebrate God’s provision for us when it is hard to see how God is providing.
But God has a message for us this morning! God is calling for us to remember, to remember how God has provided in the past. God has a message of hope, hope for us as we find ourselves in the hopelessness of our lives, “Have you heard the stories of what I have done for other people? Do you remember how I have provided for you in the past? Can you see what I have done before? Can you see what is around you?”
Your life is not what you had hoped it to be, it is not how you wanted it to be. You had a dream of what it would be. You followed God and thought you were following God to the land flowing with milk and honey and instead you find yourself here (where ever here is). And here is not what it was crack up to be. You look around you and all you can see is chaos and destruction. Everything is a mess. It is a pile of rubble. So many things are going wrong. You feel like there is no way out. You are wondering how things can ever be good again.
God sees your life. God sees the pain, the hurt, the concerns, the rubble and the junk pile. But God wants you to know that God is a God who can take the junk and the rubble pile you feel your life is and turn it into something spectacular. God promises to be with you in the chaos, in the hurt. God promises to stand with you in the rubble, in the junk pile. God will be with you and work alongside of you as you rebuild your life. It won’t be easy. It may even collapse in on itself again. But God can assure you that someday, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow you will look around you and see your life as the glorious thing God sees.
With God with you, spectacular things will happen. With God with you, even God can make the impossible possible. You might be standing in the middle of a mess but know that even in the mess God is with you. Even when things look a bleak and bad as they can possibly be, God is with you and God promises that even though things might look insurmountable now, things will get better – take heart– God is with you, God has been with you and God will continue to be with you.
Then, about 20 years prior to this passage, the King of Persia allowed the Israelites to return to Israel. This was cause for much rejoicing. It had been about 70 years. These people had spent their whole lives dreaming about returning home. They were exhilarated. They joyfully made the journey back to Israel. The world had been set right. They were going home. The sun was brighter, the bird songs more lovely, and the breeze smelt sweeter; well that was until they cleared that last hill which separated them from the land of beauty and bounty of which they had spent their lives dreaming and did not see the lush rolling hill country fertile and bursting with the bounty of the land and beautiful cities which would cause those of their captors to pale in comparison. Instead, they saw barren fields over grown with soil which looked as if it would refuse to yield anything. They saw the burnt out shells of what were once their grand cities and rubble piles which had once been their ancestral homes. When they returned they found their homes and their cities destroyed by war. The land was barren and desolate, burned, un-worked and practically wild from being left for nearly a century. Nothing was as it had been.
Where there had once been a rich prosperous country there was just a broken shell of a country, which had been conquered, looted and left in a state of perpetual disrepair by the invading forces.
Not only that, even though they were allowed to return to their land it was still not their land; not really. They were no longer a self governing country; they were no longer a sovereign nation. Persia had placed a governor over them to rule them. As far as the government went being home was the same as being in exile. They were still under Persian control, living by Persian law, but now instead of living like this in a far off land, as they had while in exile, save they were doing it in their own land.
They arrived and everything was much the same as it had been right before they had left, completely and utter destroyed. So they did the only thing they could do, they started to rebuild. They set to work rebuilding their homes, their cities and working to make the ground fertile again.
About a month before Haggai brought this message, the people had begun to rebuild the temple. This was a long and arduous process. First, they had to clear out all the rubble, they had to sort the useable stones from the ones which were destroyed beyond repair, then they had reshape the usable stones and finally they had to find enough new ones, only they could they set to actually rebuilding the temple. Things were slow going and they were not making very much progress. It was nearly a month into the temple rebuild project and it still looked like a gigantic rubble pile.
You may have noticed that the passage gives a very specific date as to when Haggai gave this message to the people. The scripture tells us that the Word of the Lord came to Haggai on the 21st day of the month of Tishri, which would have fallen on Oct 17th of the year 520. This date is given because the day on which Haggai was given this message to take to the people of God is important. When Haggai stands up to address the people, it is the last day of the Festival of Tabernacles. The Festival of Tabernacles is a festival which always happens in the Fall, in mid to late October, even to this day. It is one of the most important festivals in the Jewish calendar. Festival of Tabernacles, also called the festival of booths or Sukkoth, is the one of the seven festivals which God instructs the people to celebrate. The festival of Tabernacles is the time during which the People of God celebrate how God had taken care of them in they traveled in the desert, as well as being a harvest festival thanking God for God’s provision, it occurred right after the last Harvest had been taken in. It was a time to celebrate how God had taken care of God’s people for yet another year, as well as celebrating the promise of how God would continue to take care of them for the year to come, which a bountiful harvest showed them.
I want you to imagine this scene with me. The people, they are standing in the midst of the rubble of what use to be the temple, they have started rebuilding the walls from reshaped/misshapen stones which they have collected, the walls are sad and sagging and in places they keep falling down, even as they attempt to rebuild them. Beyond the crumbling walls of the temple they can see the half built houses, which they put together in hast simply so they could have somewhere to live. These sad, sagging, structures make up the grand city of Jerusalem, which is then surrounded by a wall that is crumbling at its’ best and no-existent at it’s’ worst.
Here they are surrounded by the basically empty shell of the grand city, which once was, celebrating how God has taken care of them by providing a harvest and looking back celebrating how God had taken care of them all the years they wandered in the desert. But [pause] the problem is, there was no harvest; the crops had failed. There is no bountiful harvest for which they can celebrate God’s care and see the promise of how God will continue to care for them into the future.
Things look bleak. Here they are back in the land flowing with milk and honey and not only is there no milk and honey but there is no harvest, there is no temple and as they look at the rubble and destruction all around them they feel as if they are never going to be able to rebuild. It is hopeless.
In the midst of the destruction, in the midst of the rubble, in the midst of the hopelessness, God has a message for them. God says, “Remember the former glory of the temple?” The people look around them at the ram shackled temple all around them and it is really kind of hard to imagine the temple which had once stood in this very place. Very few, if any, of those who had been originally carted off into exile, would still be alive after being exiled for nearly 70 years. The people who stood in the ruins what was once the splendor of Solomon’s temple had merely heard about the temple and its former glory from their parents and grandparents. They had grown up on the stories of their homeland, Jerusalem, and the glory of the Temple which stood at its heart, much like many of us grew up on fairy tales.
None-the-less, God tells them to look at the temple around them. Thing is what was all around them looked like nothing. It was a rubble pile. It was not a temple. But where they saw a pile of rubble God saw a temple. God was calling them to see what God saw. To see with new eyes to catch a glimpse of the vision God had for them. Gods says to them, “I am with you – with me – there can be a temple where there is no temple.”
God is the God who made something out of nothing. God spoke the universe into existence after all. In the beginning there was nothing and God made something but here, here God at least has some stones from the former temple with which to begin.
In the midst of the hopelessness Haggai is given a message of hope, “God is with you and when God is with you can do what seems impossible. With God with you, you can rebuild this temple. Not only that, but just as the nations carted everything which had once made up the grand glory of the temple; all the gold, all the lamps, all the plates, goblets, God says those same nations would come and fill the temple again. Not only will the temple be rebuilt but it will be even better than it was before – God will take the rubble and make it even more beautiful and more spectacular than before.
Side note – Eventually they do rebuild the temple and in the end the temple which Herod would complete, which is an refurbishment of the one they were now building, was bigger, and by some estimations better and more spectacular than Solomon’s temple.
Too many times our lives can be compared to the rubble in which the Israelites were standing. And here we are, on yet another Sunday, called to rejoice in who God is and how God takes care of us. But sometimes when we look at the rubble in our lives, it is hard to see God. It is hard to see how God is taking care of us. We look around at the devastation, at the chaos, at the pain and the heartache and we cannot see how God could be a part of this at all. We look around and simply can’t see God. The bills are mounting. Our health or the health of those we love is not good. The children don’t always behave as well as we would like. No matter how often we do it, or how hard we try to stay on top of it the laundry seems to always need to be done. Things at work are not going well. Our relationships are not what we want them to be, it seems as if our spouse is slipping away from us. We are not as close to our parents or our grown children as we would like. Perhaps those relationships seem beyond repair. There is death and brokenness all around us. So many things in our lives are going wrong. Our lives are torn apart. We are surrounded by rubble, chaos and destruction. And, it is hard to celebrate God’s provision for us when it is hard to see how God is providing.
But God has a message for us this morning! God is calling for us to remember, to remember how God has provided in the past. God has a message of hope, hope for us as we find ourselves in the hopelessness of our lives, “Have you heard the stories of what I have done for other people? Do you remember how I have provided for you in the past? Can you see what I have done before? Can you see what is around you?”
Your life is not what you had hoped it to be, it is not how you wanted it to be. You had a dream of what it would be. You followed God and thought you were following God to the land flowing with milk and honey and instead you find yourself here (where ever here is). And here is not what it was crack up to be. You look around you and all you can see is chaos and destruction. Everything is a mess. It is a pile of rubble. So many things are going wrong. You feel like there is no way out. You are wondering how things can ever be good again.
God sees your life. God sees the pain, the hurt, the concerns, the rubble and the junk pile. But God wants you to know that God is a God who can take the junk and the rubble pile you feel your life is and turn it into something spectacular. God promises to be with you in the chaos, in the hurt. God promises to stand with you in the rubble, in the junk pile. God will be with you and work alongside of you as you rebuild your life. It won’t be easy. It may even collapse in on itself again. But God can assure you that someday, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow you will look around you and see your life as the glorious thing God sees.
With God with you, spectacular things will happen. With God with you, even God can make the impossible possible. You might be standing in the middle of a mess but know that even in the mess God is with you. Even when things look a bleak and bad as they can possibly be, God is with you and God promises that even though things might look insurmountable now, things will get better – take heart– God is with you, God has been with you and God will continue to be with you.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
The Parable of the Rich man and Lazarus
Luke 16:19-31
The gospels are full of teaching stories, stories which teach us important truths about God and God’s relationship with humanity. Recently we have been spending a lot of time in the teaching stories of Jesus, in the parables, Jesus used to teach the crowds, his disciples and the 12 while he was here on earth. Stories are one of the best ways to learn something. People remember a lesson they learn from a story much better than they will remember a lesson simply taught to them.
As we are looking at these stories it is important to not take them too far. Parables are teaching stories which are usually told to teach you one simple thing. They may contain some narrative details and some good story telling elements but the story as a whole is there to teach a simple truth. In many ways parables are extended similes or metaphors. If you say her eyes are like an ocean, you are probably saying that her eyes are blue or green and have the kind of depth of color that the ocean has, but you are not saying that are made of salt water and are teaming with fish and other kind of marine animals. It is very similar with this parable. Jesus is trying to say something with this parable to teach us something that he thought was important. Jesus chooses to teach this important lesson to his audience using this very colorful story, but we can not try to learn something from this parable that Jesus was not trying to teach.
This parable falls into a particular kind of parables, called “Kingdom of Heaven” parables. Gospels are full of “Kingdom of Heaven” parables. “Kingdom of Heaven” parables which usually begin with the phrase, “The Kingdom of Heave is like…” “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed. . .” “The kingdom of Heaven is like a woman who. . .” These parables are ones where Jesus is teaching about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. This parable is not a “Kingdom of Heaven” parable. It neither begins with the proper phrase nor is it teaching us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.
Since this is not a Kingdom of Heaven parable and it is not attempting to teach us about Heaven, we really, can not conclude anything about what Heaven is like from this parable. As far as this particular parable is concerned, Heaven, Heaven’s attributes or its’ geography simply are not what Jesus is teaching about through this parable. Since it is a parable and not an historical account, the situations in the parable are not supposed to be taken literally; it is a story after all; a story teaching us an important lesson, but most defiantly not a description of the Heavenly life to come.
So the parable begins by telling us about an unnamed rich man. Names are important in Jewish culture, so it is very telling that Jesus gives Lazarus a name in this story but does not give the Rich Man a name. Jesus does tell us that he is dressed in fine purple cloth. Purple was a very costly dye, so only the very rich could afford to wear garments which were dyed purple. We are also told that this rich man feasted sumptuously everyday. In other ways he dressed and lived in a very extravagant manner. His clothing and lifestyle were actually way over the top, even for a rich person.
And then we have Lazarus, who by comparison is dressed only in sores and would like nothing more than to eat the scraps from the rich mans table. Lazarus is the poorest of the poor. And he lived outside the gates of the rich man. One man lived in extravagant wealth why the other lived in absolute poverty. One man lived in absolute ignorance of the other in spite of the fact that the other man was dieing on his doorstep. The other man lived in constant awareness of what the one man had which he did not and that the mere scraps which the one man threw away would have, if offered, sustained the other man.
The parable is about what happened to these two men. Lazarus dies and he is taken way by angels to be with Abraham. This might not be what we usually think of what will happen when we die. This was a very Jewish understanding of the best the afterlife could offer, being taken away by messengers of God and placed in the care of the Abraham the father of the Jewish people. On the other hand we have the rich man. He also dies. He is taken to the place of the dead, Hades and is tormented. Jesus tells us that from his place of torment he sees Lazarus and recognizes him as the man who used to sit at his gates and beg. And Rich Man wants Lazarus to dip his own finger in some water and bring that drop to him cool his tongue. He basically wants Lazarus to fetch him some water. After ignoring him and being completely unaware of this man and his plight in life, the Rich man now that Lazarus should be his servant in the after life; he wants Lazarus to run errands for him. Even though Lazarus is with Abraham and the Rich Man is being tormented, the Rich Man sees Lazarus as being less than him. In fact he sees himself so much above Lazarus that he does not even ask Lazarus, but asks Abraham to send Lazarus. He sees himself as a peer of Abraham, one who can call out to a friend and ask a favor of him. He asks Abraham to send his servant, Lazarus, to him so Lazarus can do a service for him. Abraham says, “No.”
The rich man, not to be thwarted and seeing that things are not going so well for him here in the afterlife once again calls out as if he were an equal and asks Abraham to send Lazarus on a different errand for him. Can Abraham send Lazarus to go and warn his brothers? Abraham “Says they already have a warning.” They know what is required of them in the Law God gave to them through Moses, if they do not heed the warning given to them by Moses and the Prophets, basically the Old -Testament, then they will not heed one come back from the dead.
So the question at this point is, “What is Jesus talking about?” We have already discussed that he is not talking about the geography of Heaven. This does not definitively tell us that all those who live in torment can see Heaven from where they are. It does not even tell us that al those who please God in this life go to live Abraham and all those who do not will be tormented. What Jesus is really talking about is our treatment of other people, our treatment of the people who live all around us, with whom we come in contact every day.
The parable tells us that the rich man was not a righteous person and he ended up in torment. Why? Because of the way he treated Lazarus. Here he was living an extra-extravagant lifestyle and Lazarus would have died (and probably did die from lack of) for the crumbs off the rich man’s table. Here was one man living wastefully all the while another is dieing of starvation on his doorstep. He was living in ignorance of this man dieing at his feet. He lived ignoring and in doing so mistreating this other man. One man is rich and the other is poor living in proximity to one another and the former does nothing to help, or ease the situation of the latter. This makes this rich man an unrighteous person. Now hear me correctly our treatment of the poor is not the only thing that denotes a righteous person. But our, kind, caring, compassionate treatment of all the other people around us is the good fruits which a righteous person bears. And Paul tells us that good trees produce good fruit. There are lots of things a righteous person should naturally do because they are righteous and their treatment of other people especially those less fortunate of them, is just one of them.
The topic of care for the needy is something which is not an unfamiliar topic in the Old Testament, Moses and the prophets talk about all the time. O. T. is full of instructions for the people of God to make sure the poor and the widows are taken care of and are not taken advantage of. These were the needy in the land. Taking them was part of the system God set up by which the people of God were to live. Often times when God is pronouncing Judgment on Israel in the Old Testament and is listing the sins of the people, the sin of not taking care of the needy or taking advantage of them is almost always listed. Jesus believes everyone should do what they can to take care of those who are less fortunate than themselves.
At the heart of taking care of the needy is Jesus’ call for us to love God and to love one another. Taking care of those who must struggle to make it day to day, or who are daily going without basic needs is just one way in which we show our love for one another. It is just one way we can take that love which God gives to us so freely and share it with those around us in just as free of a way which God shares God’s love with us.
So I can hear you, “Pastor I am not Rich like the rich man. I do not wear expensive clothing and eat expensive food. I am not what anyone would consider rich. But the “Rich Man” is not unrighteous because he wears purple clothes, he is unrighteous because he wears extravagant clothes while those around him are dieing of exposure. He is not unrighteous because he eats expensive food but because he does so while those around him are dieing of starvation. The “Rich Man” is not unrighteous because he is rich. The “Rich Man” is unrighteous because he does not treat those around them with kindness, caring or respect. The Rich Man is unrighteous because he does not live by the most basic thing Jesus calls for those who follow him to do, that is to love God and to love others.
So the question is not whether or not we are rich or poor. The question is not whether we adorn ourselves with fine clothes or eat good food. The question is, “How do we live?” not matter what our station in life is. The question is not, “How much money do we have?” Or, “Do we have more money than others?” But the question is not matter where ever we are in the social structure of our world, however much money we have or do not have, “Are we showing love for those around us?” “Are we living the love of Jesus Christ to those who are sitting on the doorsteps of our lives?” Or are there “Lazaruses” populating our lives, dieing on our doorstep from lack of things we have in abundance without our even knowing or acknowledging their existence? This parable is about living righteously before other. This parable is about living righteously toward others. This parable is about living righteously in relationship with others. Jesus to us this morning is to look around our lives. Open our eyes, step outside the safety and comfort of our lives and look at those who live around us. Are we loving them? Are we sharing the love of Jesus Christ with them, in our words, in our deeds, and in our actions? Living as Christ calls us to live, is not only about loving God. It not only about living right and good lives which are pleasing to God, but it is also about loving the people in our world; taking care of the needy; taking care of those who are struggling; showing the love of Jesus Christ by living the love, by acting the love, by allowing our hands, our feet, as well as our resources to speak the love of Jesus Christ into people’s lives. We are the only Jesus Christ many people see, what kind of Jesus Christ are they seeing if we walk by them everyday and allow them to suffer on our doorsteps?
The gospels are full of teaching stories, stories which teach us important truths about God and God’s relationship with humanity. Recently we have been spending a lot of time in the teaching stories of Jesus, in the parables, Jesus used to teach the crowds, his disciples and the 12 while he was here on earth. Stories are one of the best ways to learn something. People remember a lesson they learn from a story much better than they will remember a lesson simply taught to them.
As we are looking at these stories it is important to not take them too far. Parables are teaching stories which are usually told to teach you one simple thing. They may contain some narrative details and some good story telling elements but the story as a whole is there to teach a simple truth. In many ways parables are extended similes or metaphors. If you say her eyes are like an ocean, you are probably saying that her eyes are blue or green and have the kind of depth of color that the ocean has, but you are not saying that are made of salt water and are teaming with fish and other kind of marine animals. It is very similar with this parable. Jesus is trying to say something with this parable to teach us something that he thought was important. Jesus chooses to teach this important lesson to his audience using this very colorful story, but we can not try to learn something from this parable that Jesus was not trying to teach.
This parable falls into a particular kind of parables, called “Kingdom of Heaven” parables. Gospels are full of “Kingdom of Heaven” parables. “Kingdom of Heaven” parables which usually begin with the phrase, “The Kingdom of Heave is like…” “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed. . .” “The kingdom of Heaven is like a woman who. . .” These parables are ones where Jesus is teaching about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. This parable is not a “Kingdom of Heaven” parable. It neither begins with the proper phrase nor is it teaching us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.
Since this is not a Kingdom of Heaven parable and it is not attempting to teach us about Heaven, we really, can not conclude anything about what Heaven is like from this parable. As far as this particular parable is concerned, Heaven, Heaven’s attributes or its’ geography simply are not what Jesus is teaching about through this parable. Since it is a parable and not an historical account, the situations in the parable are not supposed to be taken literally; it is a story after all; a story teaching us an important lesson, but most defiantly not a description of the Heavenly life to come.
So the parable begins by telling us about an unnamed rich man. Names are important in Jewish culture, so it is very telling that Jesus gives Lazarus a name in this story but does not give the Rich Man a name. Jesus does tell us that he is dressed in fine purple cloth. Purple was a very costly dye, so only the very rich could afford to wear garments which were dyed purple. We are also told that this rich man feasted sumptuously everyday. In other ways he dressed and lived in a very extravagant manner. His clothing and lifestyle were actually way over the top, even for a rich person.
And then we have Lazarus, who by comparison is dressed only in sores and would like nothing more than to eat the scraps from the rich mans table. Lazarus is the poorest of the poor. And he lived outside the gates of the rich man. One man lived in extravagant wealth why the other lived in absolute poverty. One man lived in absolute ignorance of the other in spite of the fact that the other man was dieing on his doorstep. The other man lived in constant awareness of what the one man had which he did not and that the mere scraps which the one man threw away would have, if offered, sustained the other man.
The parable is about what happened to these two men. Lazarus dies and he is taken way by angels to be with Abraham. This might not be what we usually think of what will happen when we die. This was a very Jewish understanding of the best the afterlife could offer, being taken away by messengers of God and placed in the care of the Abraham the father of the Jewish people. On the other hand we have the rich man. He also dies. He is taken to the place of the dead, Hades and is tormented. Jesus tells us that from his place of torment he sees Lazarus and recognizes him as the man who used to sit at his gates and beg. And Rich Man wants Lazarus to dip his own finger in some water and bring that drop to him cool his tongue. He basically wants Lazarus to fetch him some water. After ignoring him and being completely unaware of this man and his plight in life, the Rich man now that Lazarus should be his servant in the after life; he wants Lazarus to run errands for him. Even though Lazarus is with Abraham and the Rich Man is being tormented, the Rich Man sees Lazarus as being less than him. In fact he sees himself so much above Lazarus that he does not even ask Lazarus, but asks Abraham to send Lazarus. He sees himself as a peer of Abraham, one who can call out to a friend and ask a favor of him. He asks Abraham to send his servant, Lazarus, to him so Lazarus can do a service for him. Abraham says, “No.”
The rich man, not to be thwarted and seeing that things are not going so well for him here in the afterlife once again calls out as if he were an equal and asks Abraham to send Lazarus on a different errand for him. Can Abraham send Lazarus to go and warn his brothers? Abraham “Says they already have a warning.” They know what is required of them in the Law God gave to them through Moses, if they do not heed the warning given to them by Moses and the Prophets, basically the Old -Testament, then they will not heed one come back from the dead.
So the question at this point is, “What is Jesus talking about?” We have already discussed that he is not talking about the geography of Heaven. This does not definitively tell us that all those who live in torment can see Heaven from where they are. It does not even tell us that al those who please God in this life go to live Abraham and all those who do not will be tormented. What Jesus is really talking about is our treatment of other people, our treatment of the people who live all around us, with whom we come in contact every day.
The parable tells us that the rich man was not a righteous person and he ended up in torment. Why? Because of the way he treated Lazarus. Here he was living an extra-extravagant lifestyle and Lazarus would have died (and probably did die from lack of) for the crumbs off the rich man’s table. Here was one man living wastefully all the while another is dieing of starvation on his doorstep. He was living in ignorance of this man dieing at his feet. He lived ignoring and in doing so mistreating this other man. One man is rich and the other is poor living in proximity to one another and the former does nothing to help, or ease the situation of the latter. This makes this rich man an unrighteous person. Now hear me correctly our treatment of the poor is not the only thing that denotes a righteous person. But our, kind, caring, compassionate treatment of all the other people around us is the good fruits which a righteous person bears. And Paul tells us that good trees produce good fruit. There are lots of things a righteous person should naturally do because they are righteous and their treatment of other people especially those less fortunate of them, is just one of them.
The topic of care for the needy is something which is not an unfamiliar topic in the Old Testament, Moses and the prophets talk about all the time. O. T. is full of instructions for the people of God to make sure the poor and the widows are taken care of and are not taken advantage of. These were the needy in the land. Taking them was part of the system God set up by which the people of God were to live. Often times when God is pronouncing Judgment on Israel in the Old Testament and is listing the sins of the people, the sin of not taking care of the needy or taking advantage of them is almost always listed. Jesus believes everyone should do what they can to take care of those who are less fortunate than themselves.
At the heart of taking care of the needy is Jesus’ call for us to love God and to love one another. Taking care of those who must struggle to make it day to day, or who are daily going without basic needs is just one way in which we show our love for one another. It is just one way we can take that love which God gives to us so freely and share it with those around us in just as free of a way which God shares God’s love with us.
So I can hear you, “Pastor I am not Rich like the rich man. I do not wear expensive clothing and eat expensive food. I am not what anyone would consider rich. But the “Rich Man” is not unrighteous because he wears purple clothes, he is unrighteous because he wears extravagant clothes while those around him are dieing of exposure. He is not unrighteous because he eats expensive food but because he does so while those around him are dieing of starvation. The “Rich Man” is not unrighteous because he is rich. The “Rich Man” is unrighteous because he does not treat those around them with kindness, caring or respect. The Rich Man is unrighteous because he does not live by the most basic thing Jesus calls for those who follow him to do, that is to love God and to love others.
So the question is not whether or not we are rich or poor. The question is not whether we adorn ourselves with fine clothes or eat good food. The question is, “How do we live?” not matter what our station in life is. The question is not, “How much money do we have?” Or, “Do we have more money than others?” But the question is not matter where ever we are in the social structure of our world, however much money we have or do not have, “Are we showing love for those around us?” “Are we living the love of Jesus Christ to those who are sitting on the doorsteps of our lives?” Or are there “Lazaruses” populating our lives, dieing on our doorstep from lack of things we have in abundance without our even knowing or acknowledging their existence? This parable is about living righteously before other. This parable is about living righteously toward others. This parable is about living righteously in relationship with others. Jesus to us this morning is to look around our lives. Open our eyes, step outside the safety and comfort of our lives and look at those who live around us. Are we loving them? Are we sharing the love of Jesus Christ with them, in our words, in our deeds, and in our actions? Living as Christ calls us to live, is not only about loving God. It not only about living right and good lives which are pleasing to God, but it is also about loving the people in our world; taking care of the needy; taking care of those who are struggling; showing the love of Jesus Christ by living the love, by acting the love, by allowing our hands, our feet, as well as our resources to speak the love of Jesus Christ into people’s lives. We are the only Jesus Christ many people see, what kind of Jesus Christ are they seeing if we walk by them everyday and allow them to suffer on our doorsteps?
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