The Israelites have journeyed from Egypt to Mt Sinai, they consecrated themselves and on the third day Moses brought them to the foot of the mountain to meet their God. I can almost see the Israel as a young ancient eastern bride meeting her future husband for the very first time. She comes shyly, curious about this one with whom she is about to covenant to live for the rest of her days. Who has the match maker chosen for her? What is he like? Is he kind? Is he just? Is he handsome? She comes expecting to gain some understanding of who this person is, so she can have a glimpse of what perhaps the rest of her life will be like. Instead of merely getting to see her new husband, and perhaps exchange polite pleasantries, under the careful eye of Father, Mother and match maker, she gets a first hand look at the marriage covenant, the papers, the agreement. Her father does not make the agreement for her on her behalf, but the husband with whom she is covenanting to live, comes to her with the terms of the covenant. He tells her directly what it will mean to live in covenant relationship with him. What it will mean to be his bride and what is expected of her. What their life together will look like.
What we have here is the heart of the covenant, the heart of what it means to live as a covenant people, what it looks like when a group of people come together and join themselves with God. When people come together, and live as God is calling them to live this is the way that community will live.
The people who live in covenant relationship with God will, worship God and God alone, will have no idols, will not wrongfully use God’s name, will remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, will honor father and mother, will not murder, will not
commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, or covet. Jesus summed it up well, “You will love the Lord God and you will love your neighbor.”
These are the great commandments, this is the heart of how a community desiring to join together and join themselves with God will live. These 10 commandments, because that is what they are, they are not suggestions, guidelines, or statements; they are the articles of the covenant. God says, “This is how a community living with me will live.” These are the legal guidelines of the relationship which God is building with these people. These commandments are in a sense legally binding on the community which desires to join itself in relationship with God.
As wonderfully interesting, awe inspiring and fundamental as these covenant stipulations are, the people’s response is what catches my attention. Did you notice it when I read it? One of the hard things about coming to a passage which I have heard in one form or another since I was perhaps 3, maybe even younger, is that it is hard to not come to it with every Sunday School lesson, devotional, Bible Quizzing study sheet, Bible Study summary, and sermon which I have heard over the years all echoing in my head fighting for my attention to tell me what I already know about these nearly memorized words of holy scripture.
But this time, something immediately jumped out at me, and that was the people’s response to these words spoken to them by God. (If you read on into the next chapter it is very clear that God spoke these words, directly to the people, out of the thunder wrapped cloud that had descended up on Sinai.) Their response is to request that Moses speak to them instead of God. They did not want to hear what God had to say. They did not like what God had to say, or how God had to say it and wanted instead to speak through an intermediary. They did not want to deal with their God themselves they wanted a go between someone to run interference.
Last night a tremendous crime against humanity was committed in Stella’s bedroom, Cidra was hit in the face with Stella’s new ladybug light. As best as we can tell, Stella, enthralled with the light which shines stars on her ceiling in an attempt to stay off her fear of the dark, she picked it up and was spinning it around the room. In comes Cidra, who’s face manages to get in the way of the spinning Stella and her bug. What happened in the room does not really matter, what happened down stairs in the office is what I want to talk about today. Mike brought the children down, one by one to get them to explain to him how Cidra had managed to get hit by the lady bug. Mike was stern with them. When Daddy is being stern and serious for some reason it causes them to shy away and clam up. They don’t want to talk to Daddy when daddy is being stern. The funny thing is when this happens it does not matter what daddy has to say, at that point they would be willing to talk to anybody else other than Daddy.
This is exactly what the Israelites are doing in this passage. They do not want to talk to God themselves. Here God is offering to have a personal, relationship with the entire community, the likes of which have not been seen since God walked with the Adam at the dawn of creation. God is willing to descend upon the mountain at whose foot they are standing and speak directly to them and let them know what it means for them to be God’s people and for God to be their God, but they want nothing to do with it. They do not want to talk to God. They do not want a direct relationship with the God of universe. They are not sure about a God who comes up on a mountain in a cloud, with thunder and speaks to them sternly about the seriousness of the covenant they are making together. It is easier when they feel somewhat removed from the God with whom they are dealing. It is easier to deal with this God when they meet God at the rock and Moses makes the water flow. It is easier when God uses Moses to turn the bitter water sweet or in their minds remove things one more step and begin to the think that it was the staff of Moses that caused the waters to part so they could pass through on dry ground.
They like the God they only see through Moses, they like the God they only hear through Moses, they like the words of God when it is passed down through Moses, besides it is a whole lot easier to grumble against Moses than is this great, mighty, powerful God who speaks commandments from a cloud with a voice like thunder.
God is scary and the commandments that are the way of life of those who covenant to live in relationship with God are harder than they sound. The people knew this. They heard the words of God that day. They saw the agreement; they saw the marriage covenant and wanted an intermediary to speak on their behalf to shelter them from the reality of what it truly means to live as the people of God, to be the bride who God was calling them to be. In many ways, God was too much for them; too big, too powerful, too demanding, to loving, too caring.
God was not merely giving them rules about how to worship, rules on how to sacrifice. Being the people of God was harder than cutting of a nearly unnecessary part of their body that nobody could see anyway, being the people of God meant that they had to change the way the lived their lives. Being the people of God did not merely affect their “spiritual” life, how they worshipped, where they worshipped, who they worshipped and what they did when they worshipped, it affected every part of their lives. It affected how they spoke, what they said about others, their familial relationships, what and who they wanted, and what they did about what and who they wanted. It affected how they lived in relation to God and it affected how they lived in relation to every other person around them. This was not just making an agreement about which God they choose to worship, this was about adhering to a new way of life.
God does not call us to simply live by a new set of rules. God does not merely call us to come to church on Sundays and make nice with the people of God we encounter there. God does not want just our spiritual lives. God does not merely want our worship. God wants us to completely change our whole lives. To change how we interact when we are not at church, God cares about who we worship, why we worship and when we worship, but God also cares about how we treat others. God does not want us to speak wrongly about God, but neither does God want us to speak wrongly about others. God loves us and desires our honor and praise, likewise God expects us to honor our parents. God love us and is a jealous God, God will not share us with other gods, and thus God wants us to assume that other people are just as jealous about those whom they love and that they do not wish to share those whom they have covenanted to love with us. Nor are we to desire their stuff, or take it. And on no account are we to haul off and kill them for just any reason. God does not merely care about who we worship, and when we worship, God cares about all our relationships, who we are when we are not worshipping, how we treat others when it is not the Sabbath, these things matter just as much to God as our focused allegiance and love.
These “rules” are not easy. And many times a God who is all up in our business is not easy not an easy God with whom to be in relationship. It may seem easier to pull away to desire an intermediary, to put space between us and God, so that we don’t have to really deal with the reality of the relationship, so we don’t have to deal with the reality of what is required of us. To put the church between us and God, allow the manual to be our guidelines. To set up a system that allows this relationship to be easier, more manageable, a system that does not quite require so much out of us. We don’t want to be direct in contact with a God who gives so much and asks so much. Who wants to have a finger in every aspect of our lives, who wants to have a say in all that we do and in how we act with each and every person in our lives. Who cares what we say, what we do, and how we act toward others. These rules, these expectations, these commandments demand too much. Let us find an easier way.
These ten commandments; only worship God, do not have and idols, keep the Sabbath holy, do not speak wrongly about God, honor your parents, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not speak wrongly of others, do not murder, and do not covet. Sound easy, but they are more than just a check list, they are a way of life. They are the backbone, the heart, the inner workings of a relationship with God. This is about loving God and loving neighbor, as a way of life, a complete and utter change that requires us to wholly commit all aspects of who we are and all the relationships in our lives, whether they be who we worship, our parents, our friends, our neighbors, they guy who pumps our gas or that lady we pass every day on our way to work, all our relationships, every part of our lives is handed over and given over to a new way a life, a way of life that may not be easy but a way of life that is what living a community that is in relationship with the God of the universe is.
The Wonder Filled Day: drawing close to God; thoughts, ruminations, poems, sermons - one woman's wonderful wanderings with Christ
Monday, October 3, 2011
Exodus 17:1-7 - Struggling with God: When God is hard to trust
The Israelites are making their way across the wilderness. They have left the Red Sea filled with the chariots and the Egyptians floating its waters behind them. They have ventured out on this grand adventure with the God of their ancestors who has promised to lead them back to the land which God had personally given to their ancestor Abraham and his descendants, who was them. Even though God was in many ways leading them to the home they never knew they had, in many ways, they are walking in the spiritual footsteps of Abraham, to whom God said, “follow me and I will lead you to land which I will show to you.” Stepping out into that wilderness and following a God they barely knew they had, who had done, great things, terrible! (In many ways) Yes, but great things none-the-less.
God had sent the plagues, which did not end so well for anyone who was not a God-fearer, and then when the Egyptians had chased them across the wilderness, after saying they could go. God divided the water for the Israelites to pass through safely but the result was not the same when the Egyptians attempted to follow them in to the “dry sea.” But the end result was that the Israelites were free.
And there was much rejoicing (yeaahhh). But it soon stopped, they were running out of water and were getting mighty thirsty, and just in time they came upon some water, but it was unsuitable to drink, it was bitter so God made it good to drink, sweet. Then as they traveled they realized their rations were not going to be enough to get them where they needed to go so God daily provided food them, which fell from the sky and was more plentiful than they would need.
Which brings us to where they are in our passage today, they are still following God to the Promised Land and find they are thirty once again. And begin to fret about having enough water. You might want to think that this is a little repetitive, hasn’t God already provided them with water? Well the thing about being thirsty is as soon as you run out of water, it does not take more than a couple of hours of hard walking in the hot sun to make you thirsty again, and while your body can go a surprising amount of time without food, it can’t go very long at all without water. So here they are somewhere between Egypt and the “land to which God was taking them.” And they are out of water. This time there is not even a hint of bitter undrinkable water in sight. And this does not make them happy. As they set up camp that evening Moses can hear the rumblings among them. And as they settle down that evening with their roasted Quail dinners and their sweet like honey manna bread they find that the meal is not as satisfying with nothing with which to wash it down. And the people begin to mumble and the mumbling turns to grumbling, and grumbling turns to rumbling. Why did Moses bring out into the desert? Did he do it so we could watch our animals and our children die of thirst? What the people are beginning to really wonder is “Is God really among us?”
Moses begins to fear that they are so angry that they might attempt to stone him, so he goes to God with the problem. “God, these people might just up and kill me, if they don’t get some water, here real soon.” God tells Moses what to do, so the next morning he gathers up the Israelites and has the elders come with him and they go up to the Rock of Horeb, where God is waiting for them, Moses takes his staff, the same one God used to part the red Sea and he hits the rock with the staff and God causes the water to flow forth and the people are able to drink and are satisfied.
At the hour of their greatest need the people are satisfied; satisfied in more than one way. Satisfied, in that their thirst is abated and satisfied in that by providing water God answers their desperate question, “Is God really among us?” God shows them that they are not alone. They were not brought out into the wilderness to die, not by Moses, not by God. God is a God who will provide.
Thousands of years of hind sight cause us to look back on the Israelites and call them, “silly.”
“Those silly Israelites, didn’t they know that God would not take them into the wilderness and leave them there to be killed by wild animals, starvation or even thirst?”
“Don’t they know that is not how God acts?”
No they don’t. They don’t know God, not really. This is the beginning of God’s relationship with these people. They really did not know the one true God of all creation from false gods that were worshipped by the Egyptians. When Moses came to them to bring them up out of slavery, was really their first introduction to YWH God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Thus far they had seen that God was a powerful God, who could out magic the court magicians of the Egyptian court. This was a God who could call down death on their enemies and control the forces of nature, making a dry path through the sea. This God could take bitter water and make it sweet. YWH God was a God who could cause it to rain bread in the morning and quail in the evening. But here they are thirsty and there is no water to be found anywhere. Can they trust this God to provide what does not exist?
Was this new God, still among them? So far God had proved to be faithful and true but
they were still learning. They were still coming to an understanding of exactly who this God, the God of the universe, this “I am that I am” truly is.
It is the same with us. Sometimes we wonder, “WHO is this God we have chosen to follow?” When we are truly honest with ourselves each of us can find that we are just as unsure about God as the Israelites in this passage:
“Can I trust God?”
“Can I trust God with my money?”
“Can I trust God to meet my daily needs?”
“Can I trust God with my hopes? My dreams?”
“Can I trust God with my parents, my children, my livelihood?”
“Is God really with me today? Will God be with me tomorrow?”
“Is God among us?”
I can remember laying on a make shift bed, snuggled underneath a top sheet laying on top of a fitted sheet wrapped around a comforter in a tiny little one room apartment, that very little food in the cupboard. My computer was sitting on a box. My clothes were stacked in neat piles in the corner and my newly completed Greek homework was resting on top of my brand new seminary books which were stacked on a bookshelf, which was one of few pieces of furniture there. Lying on that “bed” in the dark crying to God, asking God, “Why?” I had moved halfway across the country to attend seminary. And my life had almost immediately fallen apart around me. Here I was alone, hungry, laying in the ashes of what were my hopes and dreams, still slugging through my homework, beginning Seminary, because I did not know what else to do. I felt so lost.
In that moment I knew what it felt like to be the Israelites as they made their way through the wilderness toward Mt Sinai. It felt like God had brought me out to this wilderness call the “Midwest,” a land that was flat and desolate and a city which simply was not a city, not anyway that I would consider a city a real city. And I wondered if God had brought me out here and leave me, not so much to die, but to fail, to shrivel up and live a shell of the life I had once envisioned I would live. I wondered if God was still there.
It was not that God had not worked amazing miracles in my life before. It was not that God had not proven that God was trustworthy to provide exactly what I needed all along my journey thus far, but this time felt different. This time might really be the end of me. This might really be the ruins of my life, this might really be the time that things were too big for God; this time I really felt like there was no place I could go, there was no way that things would ever be right or good again. It had all come crashing down around me and there was nothing anybody could do to fix it, perhaps not even God.
There are times in our lives when we look around us and we wonder; “Where is God now? I am lost. There is not enough money to make it the next month. I am hungry. I am thirty. Can God really be here among all this?”
These are not the questions of some silly Israelites who lived a long time ago and have nothing to do with us. These are our questions. This is the tenuous relationship we are building with God. Even when we have seen God work miracles in our midst in the past, when we come to this new thing, this new trial, this new fear, this new part of our journey through life, we have to learn once again that God can be trusted, we have to learn once again that God does, will not forsake us or leave us. And it is ok. Each time we find ourselves in these kinds of places we will come a little closer to, a little more confident in trusting God. It will be just a little easier than it was last time. Each time we find that we are hungry, thirsty, lost, in need and cry out to God, we will find it easier and easier to trust and know that God is there, that no matter what is going on, no matter what we have done, no matter what life throws at us, no matter what kind evil befalls us, God is still among us and God will always provide exactly what we need, and in all things, when we turn to God we will be filled and be satisfied.
God had sent the plagues, which did not end so well for anyone who was not a God-fearer, and then when the Egyptians had chased them across the wilderness, after saying they could go. God divided the water for the Israelites to pass through safely but the result was not the same when the Egyptians attempted to follow them in to the “dry sea.” But the end result was that the Israelites were free.
And there was much rejoicing (yeaahhh). But it soon stopped, they were running out of water and were getting mighty thirsty, and just in time they came upon some water, but it was unsuitable to drink, it was bitter so God made it good to drink, sweet. Then as they traveled they realized their rations were not going to be enough to get them where they needed to go so God daily provided food them, which fell from the sky and was more plentiful than they would need.
Which brings us to where they are in our passage today, they are still following God to the Promised Land and find they are thirty once again. And begin to fret about having enough water. You might want to think that this is a little repetitive, hasn’t God already provided them with water? Well the thing about being thirsty is as soon as you run out of water, it does not take more than a couple of hours of hard walking in the hot sun to make you thirsty again, and while your body can go a surprising amount of time without food, it can’t go very long at all without water. So here they are somewhere between Egypt and the “land to which God was taking them.” And they are out of water. This time there is not even a hint of bitter undrinkable water in sight. And this does not make them happy. As they set up camp that evening Moses can hear the rumblings among them. And as they settle down that evening with their roasted Quail dinners and their sweet like honey manna bread they find that the meal is not as satisfying with nothing with which to wash it down. And the people begin to mumble and the mumbling turns to grumbling, and grumbling turns to rumbling. Why did Moses bring out into the desert? Did he do it so we could watch our animals and our children die of thirst? What the people are beginning to really wonder is “Is God really among us?”
Moses begins to fear that they are so angry that they might attempt to stone him, so he goes to God with the problem. “God, these people might just up and kill me, if they don’t get some water, here real soon.” God tells Moses what to do, so the next morning he gathers up the Israelites and has the elders come with him and they go up to the Rock of Horeb, where God is waiting for them, Moses takes his staff, the same one God used to part the red Sea and he hits the rock with the staff and God causes the water to flow forth and the people are able to drink and are satisfied.
At the hour of their greatest need the people are satisfied; satisfied in more than one way. Satisfied, in that their thirst is abated and satisfied in that by providing water God answers their desperate question, “Is God really among us?” God shows them that they are not alone. They were not brought out into the wilderness to die, not by Moses, not by God. God is a God who will provide.
Thousands of years of hind sight cause us to look back on the Israelites and call them, “silly.”
“Those silly Israelites, didn’t they know that God would not take them into the wilderness and leave them there to be killed by wild animals, starvation or even thirst?”
“Don’t they know that is not how God acts?”
No they don’t. They don’t know God, not really. This is the beginning of God’s relationship with these people. They really did not know the one true God of all creation from false gods that were worshipped by the Egyptians. When Moses came to them to bring them up out of slavery, was really their first introduction to YWH God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Thus far they had seen that God was a powerful God, who could out magic the court magicians of the Egyptian court. This was a God who could call down death on their enemies and control the forces of nature, making a dry path through the sea. This God could take bitter water and make it sweet. YWH God was a God who could cause it to rain bread in the morning and quail in the evening. But here they are thirsty and there is no water to be found anywhere. Can they trust this God to provide what does not exist?
Was this new God, still among them? So far God had proved to be faithful and true but
they were still learning. They were still coming to an understanding of exactly who this God, the God of the universe, this “I am that I am” truly is.
It is the same with us. Sometimes we wonder, “WHO is this God we have chosen to follow?” When we are truly honest with ourselves each of us can find that we are just as unsure about God as the Israelites in this passage:
“Can I trust God?”
“Can I trust God with my money?”
“Can I trust God to meet my daily needs?”
“Can I trust God with my hopes? My dreams?”
“Can I trust God with my parents, my children, my livelihood?”
“Is God really with me today? Will God be with me tomorrow?”
“Is God among us?”
I can remember laying on a make shift bed, snuggled underneath a top sheet laying on top of a fitted sheet wrapped around a comforter in a tiny little one room apartment, that very little food in the cupboard. My computer was sitting on a box. My clothes were stacked in neat piles in the corner and my newly completed Greek homework was resting on top of my brand new seminary books which were stacked on a bookshelf, which was one of few pieces of furniture there. Lying on that “bed” in the dark crying to God, asking God, “Why?” I had moved halfway across the country to attend seminary. And my life had almost immediately fallen apart around me. Here I was alone, hungry, laying in the ashes of what were my hopes and dreams, still slugging through my homework, beginning Seminary, because I did not know what else to do. I felt so lost.
In that moment I knew what it felt like to be the Israelites as they made their way through the wilderness toward Mt Sinai. It felt like God had brought me out to this wilderness call the “Midwest,” a land that was flat and desolate and a city which simply was not a city, not anyway that I would consider a city a real city. And I wondered if God had brought me out here and leave me, not so much to die, but to fail, to shrivel up and live a shell of the life I had once envisioned I would live. I wondered if God was still there.
It was not that God had not worked amazing miracles in my life before. It was not that God had not proven that God was trustworthy to provide exactly what I needed all along my journey thus far, but this time felt different. This time might really be the end of me. This might really be the ruins of my life, this might really be the time that things were too big for God; this time I really felt like there was no place I could go, there was no way that things would ever be right or good again. It had all come crashing down around me and there was nothing anybody could do to fix it, perhaps not even God.
There are times in our lives when we look around us and we wonder; “Where is God now? I am lost. There is not enough money to make it the next month. I am hungry. I am thirty. Can God really be here among all this?”
These are not the questions of some silly Israelites who lived a long time ago and have nothing to do with us. These are our questions. This is the tenuous relationship we are building with God. Even when we have seen God work miracles in our midst in the past, when we come to this new thing, this new trial, this new fear, this new part of our journey through life, we have to learn once again that God can be trusted, we have to learn once again that God does, will not forsake us or leave us. And it is ok. Each time we find ourselves in these kinds of places we will come a little closer to, a little more confident in trusting God. It will be just a little easier than it was last time. Each time we find that we are hungry, thirsty, lost, in need and cry out to God, we will find it easier and easier to trust and know that God is there, that no matter what is going on, no matter what we have done, no matter what life throws at us, no matter what kind evil befalls us, God is still among us and God will always provide exactly what we need, and in all things, when we turn to God we will be filled and be satisfied.
Jonah 3:10-4:11 - Struggling with God: When You Don't Like what God is doing
Once upon a time a long time ago in a land far, far away, there lived a prophet of God named Jonah. We don’t know if Jonah was a particularly good prophet. We don’t know if he was respected by the people or by the king, what we do know is that God came to the prophet Jonah one day, while he was out and about doing prophety stuff and told Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and tell them exactly what disgusting horrible no good people they were and that it was making the Lord the God of all things very displeased with them. Jonah did not think this was such a good idea. Instead of going to Ninevah to give them the message that God had given to him to give to them, he decided to head in the exact opposite direction of Nineveh and get on a boat and sail as far from Nineveh as he could think of getting, Tarshish.
Now before we get all judgmental on Jonah, I don’t know about you but I believe if I was in his position I would find listening to God pretty hard as well. You see Ninevah wasn’t just any ole city. It was the capital city of the country which had invaded their country, killed the weakest, taken way the brightest and the best, and stripped the country of anything that was valuable, ruined the fields, burned the crops and then expected the people who were left to come up with a tribute to pay them for the this privilege.
Now not to defend Jonah, because of all the Biblical prophets, I would be the first to tell you that Jonah does not deserve any defending, but we need to be honest with ourselves when it comes to the position that Jonah was in. God was not simply asking Jonah to love his enemy, God was not simply asking Jonah go and give a message of God to his enemy, God was asking Jonah to go deep into the territory of an enemy who had nearly wiped out his people, destroyed their land and was taxing the life out of all those who were left. These were not simply people who went around slapping other people with fish (as the Veggie Tale Movie portrayed) but these were people who had were daily causing suffering for Jonah, his loved ones and for the country in which he lived.
It would almost be like expecting one of the original Boston Patriots to get on a ship, go over to Britain and share the love of God with the King and parliament while the king’s troops waged war on his friends, neighbors and relatives back here in Boston. Paul Revere, or Thomas Jefferson, or John Hancock had they been in Jonah’s position would not have done it and I would venture to say that you or I would at the very least hesitate if asked by God to do something like this as well.
So once Jonah got on the boat and the boat headed out to sea, God sent a mighty
storm. The storm raged and Jonah slept. The storm raged and his shipmates began calling upon all their different gods to spare them and the ship captain noticed that one among them was not praying to his God to be spared, so he woke Jonah up and commanded him to get about the business of praying to his God.
When all the praying did not seem to be working, the passengers and crew cast lots to see who was responsible for this calamity, because truly somebody’s god was unhappy and they needed to know whose and why. When the lot fell on Jonah they began a game of twenty questions with Jonah, to try to determine what exactly he did to make his god so very angry with him and what they needed to do to appease his god and make the storm storm. He answered all their questions and took the responsibility and even suggested that God might stop the storm if they threw him into the sea. God had not said anything to anybody about throwing anybody into the sea, perhaps Jonah thought death was preferable to preaching to the Ninevites. Jonah’s shipmates thought this was a pretty silly idea and tried to do everything within their power to save the ship before they gave in to Jonah’s suggestion and threw him into the sea. Immediately the storm stopped and the ship was saved. All the people on the ship praised God, repented and believed that Jonah’s God was the one true God. Jonah is apparently a good prophet even when he is not trying at all.
God, not wanting Jonah to die and still wanting him to go preach to the Ninevites, sent a big fish to swallow Jonah whole. Then through some unexplained miracle the fish did not begin to digest him. And there Jonah sat for three days. After a while Jonah calls out to God thanking God for sparing him by allowing the fish to swallow him (I may point out here that Jonah not once apologizes for doing the wrong thing) and God’s answer to Jonah’s prayer of thanksgiving seems to be, “That’s nice, your going to Nineveh, don’t bother to thank me for the ride.” And the fish spits Jonah up on dry land. Where upon God once again tells Jonah to get himself to Nineveh and act like a prophet and preach. And Jonah, being a wise man, decides that not going to Nineveh had not been working out so well for him, so he would try actually going to Nineveh. So off he went to Nineveh, to tell the Ninevites that God did not think too highly of their way of life and so forth.
Jonah goes into the city, preaching, gloom and doom and destruction and a strange thing happens, the people of Nineveh, listen and when they listen, instead of throwing rotten fruit or tossing him in a dungeon for preaching a message that would probably amount to treason in most places, they listen to him and repent. The people of Nineveh, repented, believed in God, declared a fast and put on sackcloth to let God know that they were serious about this. When the king heard about all this, he was far from angry and calling for Jonah’s neck in a noose, as some kings might be if a conquered enemy waltzed in to their capital city and began to proclaim destruction upon that city, the king instead he also repented, put on all the outward signs of mourning and repentance and declared a fast, in hopes that the Lord God would repent of destroying the city, forgive them of this misdeeds against God and against God’s people.
And what do you think God does at this point? God forgives them, God repents of destroying the city. And so ends the part of the story of Jonah of which we all are most familiar. And here, where those of us who grew up listening to Sunday School teachers tell of the greatness of Jonah and the greatness of God’s forgiveness left off, is where our passage picks up this morning.
Jonah gets angry and throws a hissy fit because his front row seat to the destruction of Nineveh turns out to be a front row seat to their repentance and God’s subsequent forgiveness. He actually admits to God he did not want to come to Nineveh in the first place, not because he was afraid because they were his enemies, but because he did not want God to be merciful and forgive them should they repent. He basically said, “I hate these people, and I know you are big on the forgiveness thing and I did not think that after all the Ninevites have done to my family, my friends, my neighbors and my country, that they deserved forgiveness. They deserve to be destroyed, and repentance or not I still believe they deserve to die, every last one of them. As he sits there waiting for God to send fire from the heavens and torch them all, a plant grows up that gives a little relief from the Sun but then it dies and he gets angry at God about it. God calls Jonah to task over his attitude and the fact that he care more that stupid weed than he does for the numerous men, women, children and animals on whom he wished destruction. And the story leaves us there with Jonah on the hill outside of town and God’s rebuke ringing in the air.
You see Jonah is not the hero of this story. Jonah, never gets it. He never understands. Jonah never wants what God wants. He never repents of his hard heartedness. He never does what God wants him to do for the right reasons. It seems in the end he only went to Nineveh, because it beat the belly of the whale and it would give him front row seats to the destruction of his enemies. All this leads me to believe that Jonah was never really a very good prophet of God.
If you have seen the Veggie Tale cartoon version of this Biblical tale Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber tell you that the point of the story is to not be like Jonah; to instead listen to God when God talks to you, to desire the salvation of your enemies and to accept that God forgives everyone even those whom we would not think are worthy of God’s forgiveness.
One of the wonderful things about this story is that EVERYONE in this story save Jonah repents at some point in this story. Jonah’s shipmates repent and give praise to God. The people of Nineveh including their horrible evil king repented and come to believe in God. In the original language, even God repents, twice in fact, God repents of the storm and causes the sea to be calm once again and God repents of destroying the city of Nineveh. But not once does Jonah repent. Jonah, does thank God for the fish, but that is the best thing he does in the whole book. The narrative closes, with Jonah chastised by God, on the hill angry that God did burn and entire city of living breathing people to the ground.
So there are only two “characters” in this story. There is unrepentant, stubborn, angry Jonah and there is the almighty, merciful God. As the story closes who is in the right? Who do we want to be like? Who should we strive to emulate? The answer is obvious. I mean seriously, no one wants to be like Jonah sitting on a hill in the heat of the Sun calling down fire on your enemies and cursing God for God’s forgiving nature. The only choice is to NOT be like Jonah, to be like God, which of course is what we aim for as Christians anyway. We aim to share the love and forgiveness of God with our world.
It is easy to look at Jonah and say we won’t be like Jonah, but how many of us cheer when our enemies fail. How many of us have ever wished calamity upon those who have sought to do us harm? What how would we feel if we found out that God had forgiven our worst enemies? The gospel calls for us to love where the is hate and for prayer where there is persecution.
What a wonderful God we have who forgives even those whom we would deem unworthy! There are some we may secretly desire never truly know the love and forgiveness of our God. There may be some in this world whom we really hope will “burn in hell.” But God desires to forgive all, all who repent and turn to God will be forgiven. In this story we should be routing for Jonah’s pagan shipmates and rejoice when they come to believe in God, and our hearts should rejoice when God forgives every last one of the Ninevites when they repent and call out to God. Our God does not only love and forgive the worthy. God does not love and forgive the good. God loves and forgive ALL who will repent and believe.
Now before we get all judgmental on Jonah, I don’t know about you but I believe if I was in his position I would find listening to God pretty hard as well. You see Ninevah wasn’t just any ole city. It was the capital city of the country which had invaded their country, killed the weakest, taken way the brightest and the best, and stripped the country of anything that was valuable, ruined the fields, burned the crops and then expected the people who were left to come up with a tribute to pay them for the this privilege.
Now not to defend Jonah, because of all the Biblical prophets, I would be the first to tell you that Jonah does not deserve any defending, but we need to be honest with ourselves when it comes to the position that Jonah was in. God was not simply asking Jonah to love his enemy, God was not simply asking Jonah go and give a message of God to his enemy, God was asking Jonah to go deep into the territory of an enemy who had nearly wiped out his people, destroyed their land and was taxing the life out of all those who were left. These were not simply people who went around slapping other people with fish (as the Veggie Tale Movie portrayed) but these were people who had were daily causing suffering for Jonah, his loved ones and for the country in which he lived.
It would almost be like expecting one of the original Boston Patriots to get on a ship, go over to Britain and share the love of God with the King and parliament while the king’s troops waged war on his friends, neighbors and relatives back here in Boston. Paul Revere, or Thomas Jefferson, or John Hancock had they been in Jonah’s position would not have done it and I would venture to say that you or I would at the very least hesitate if asked by God to do something like this as well.
So once Jonah got on the boat and the boat headed out to sea, God sent a mighty
storm. The storm raged and Jonah slept. The storm raged and his shipmates began calling upon all their different gods to spare them and the ship captain noticed that one among them was not praying to his God to be spared, so he woke Jonah up and commanded him to get about the business of praying to his God.
When all the praying did not seem to be working, the passengers and crew cast lots to see who was responsible for this calamity, because truly somebody’s god was unhappy and they needed to know whose and why. When the lot fell on Jonah they began a game of twenty questions with Jonah, to try to determine what exactly he did to make his god so very angry with him and what they needed to do to appease his god and make the storm storm. He answered all their questions and took the responsibility and even suggested that God might stop the storm if they threw him into the sea. God had not said anything to anybody about throwing anybody into the sea, perhaps Jonah thought death was preferable to preaching to the Ninevites. Jonah’s shipmates thought this was a pretty silly idea and tried to do everything within their power to save the ship before they gave in to Jonah’s suggestion and threw him into the sea. Immediately the storm stopped and the ship was saved. All the people on the ship praised God, repented and believed that Jonah’s God was the one true God. Jonah is apparently a good prophet even when he is not trying at all.
God, not wanting Jonah to die and still wanting him to go preach to the Ninevites, sent a big fish to swallow Jonah whole. Then through some unexplained miracle the fish did not begin to digest him. And there Jonah sat for three days. After a while Jonah calls out to God thanking God for sparing him by allowing the fish to swallow him (I may point out here that Jonah not once apologizes for doing the wrong thing) and God’s answer to Jonah’s prayer of thanksgiving seems to be, “That’s nice, your going to Nineveh, don’t bother to thank me for the ride.” And the fish spits Jonah up on dry land. Where upon God once again tells Jonah to get himself to Nineveh and act like a prophet and preach. And Jonah, being a wise man, decides that not going to Nineveh had not been working out so well for him, so he would try actually going to Nineveh. So off he went to Nineveh, to tell the Ninevites that God did not think too highly of their way of life and so forth.
Jonah goes into the city, preaching, gloom and doom and destruction and a strange thing happens, the people of Nineveh, listen and when they listen, instead of throwing rotten fruit or tossing him in a dungeon for preaching a message that would probably amount to treason in most places, they listen to him and repent. The people of Nineveh, repented, believed in God, declared a fast and put on sackcloth to let God know that they were serious about this. When the king heard about all this, he was far from angry and calling for Jonah’s neck in a noose, as some kings might be if a conquered enemy waltzed in to their capital city and began to proclaim destruction upon that city, the king instead he also repented, put on all the outward signs of mourning and repentance and declared a fast, in hopes that the Lord God would repent of destroying the city, forgive them of this misdeeds against God and against God’s people.
And what do you think God does at this point? God forgives them, God repents of destroying the city. And so ends the part of the story of Jonah of which we all are most familiar. And here, where those of us who grew up listening to Sunday School teachers tell of the greatness of Jonah and the greatness of God’s forgiveness left off, is where our passage picks up this morning.
Jonah gets angry and throws a hissy fit because his front row seat to the destruction of Nineveh turns out to be a front row seat to their repentance and God’s subsequent forgiveness. He actually admits to God he did not want to come to Nineveh in the first place, not because he was afraid because they were his enemies, but because he did not want God to be merciful and forgive them should they repent. He basically said, “I hate these people, and I know you are big on the forgiveness thing and I did not think that after all the Ninevites have done to my family, my friends, my neighbors and my country, that they deserved forgiveness. They deserve to be destroyed, and repentance or not I still believe they deserve to die, every last one of them. As he sits there waiting for God to send fire from the heavens and torch them all, a plant grows up that gives a little relief from the Sun but then it dies and he gets angry at God about it. God calls Jonah to task over his attitude and the fact that he care more that stupid weed than he does for the numerous men, women, children and animals on whom he wished destruction. And the story leaves us there with Jonah on the hill outside of town and God’s rebuke ringing in the air.
You see Jonah is not the hero of this story. Jonah, never gets it. He never understands. Jonah never wants what God wants. He never repents of his hard heartedness. He never does what God wants him to do for the right reasons. It seems in the end he only went to Nineveh, because it beat the belly of the whale and it would give him front row seats to the destruction of his enemies. All this leads me to believe that Jonah was never really a very good prophet of God.
If you have seen the Veggie Tale cartoon version of this Biblical tale Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber tell you that the point of the story is to not be like Jonah; to instead listen to God when God talks to you, to desire the salvation of your enemies and to accept that God forgives everyone even those whom we would not think are worthy of God’s forgiveness.
One of the wonderful things about this story is that EVERYONE in this story save Jonah repents at some point in this story. Jonah’s shipmates repent and give praise to God. The people of Nineveh including their horrible evil king repented and come to believe in God. In the original language, even God repents, twice in fact, God repents of the storm and causes the sea to be calm once again and God repents of destroying the city of Nineveh. But not once does Jonah repent. Jonah, does thank God for the fish, but that is the best thing he does in the whole book. The narrative closes, with Jonah chastised by God, on the hill angry that God did burn and entire city of living breathing people to the ground.
So there are only two “characters” in this story. There is unrepentant, stubborn, angry Jonah and there is the almighty, merciful God. As the story closes who is in the right? Who do we want to be like? Who should we strive to emulate? The answer is obvious. I mean seriously, no one wants to be like Jonah sitting on a hill in the heat of the Sun calling down fire on your enemies and cursing God for God’s forgiving nature. The only choice is to NOT be like Jonah, to be like God, which of course is what we aim for as Christians anyway. We aim to share the love and forgiveness of God with our world.
It is easy to look at Jonah and say we won’t be like Jonah, but how many of us cheer when our enemies fail. How many of us have ever wished calamity upon those who have sought to do us harm? What how would we feel if we found out that God had forgiven our worst enemies? The gospel calls for us to love where the is hate and for prayer where there is persecution.
What a wonderful God we have who forgives even those whom we would deem unworthy! There are some we may secretly desire never truly know the love and forgiveness of our God. There may be some in this world whom we really hope will “burn in hell.” But God desires to forgive all, all who repent and turn to God will be forgiven. In this story we should be routing for Jonah’s pagan shipmates and rejoice when they come to believe in God, and our hearts should rejoice when God forgives every last one of the Ninevites when they repent and call out to God. Our God does not only love and forgive the worthy. God does not love and forgive the good. God loves and forgive ALL who will repent and believe.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Romans 14:1-13
Romans 14:1-13
As fallen human beings we have many failings that are all too often common among us all. One of those failings is our constant need to live in comparison to others. We want to be able to look at others around us and say, “Hey, at least I am better than that!” I had a friend in college who told me that she enjoyed watching day time talk shows because when she watched those shows, she could look at the lives of those people and KNOW without a doubt that her life was better than theirs, qualitatively, morally, whatever, her life was never anywhere close to being as messed up and hopeless as the poor peoples’ lives on that show. I suspect that this is exactly the reason why these types of shows are so popular. They give the viewer as sense of superiority. Something to look at and say, at least my life is not as messed up as that.
As children we also had this innate need to feel as if we were somehow better than those around us. After all is it not the desire to show themselves to be better than a particular peer, at the heart of every tattle-tale? There is an overwhelming desire in the heart a small that wants the adult to know exactly how bad little Johnny has been, thus highlighting what a good boy or girl they have been, all though not realizing that they are putting themselves on par with little Johnny because most of the time tattle-taleing is just as naughty as whatever it was that Johnny had been doing. That of course does not seem to matter to them and they do not understand why they too are being reprimanded for bringing Johnny’s short falling to the adult’s attention, in their own mind they have the moral superiority, after all compared to little Johnny they are being a saint.
Paul is dealing with this common human problem among the Christians in the church in Rome. The Christians in Rome were comparing themselves to each other and different individuals had come up with different reasons as to why they were better Christians than those other Christians that were not doing as they were doing. You see the people of that church were split in their opinions on two issues that they thought were very important.
First of all there are those that eat meat and those who do not eat meat. Surprisingly the vegetarian/meat eater debate is still one that rages among Christians and non Christians alike. Although the vegetarians in Paul’s day did not abstain from eating cows because they are so cute, or because human beings should learn to live without killing other living things, or for environmental reasons or for any of the other half-dozen reasons that a modern person might be a vegetarian. They abstained from eating meat for religious reasons and depending on whether they were Jewish Christians or Gentiles they might have had entirely different reasons for abstaining from eating meat.
Some of the Gentiles would have chosen to not eat meat because they felt that it had been defiled. You see most of the meat that would have been available in the Roman market would have come from the slaughtering facilities in the local pagan temples.
The Gentiles who had come out of these pagan religions would know that before the meat was sold that it would very likely have been offered as a sacrifice to a pagan deity. They felt that they would be accepting and promoting the worship of these pagan deities by eating meat that had been previously used in this way. Since there was no way of knowing which meat had been offered to pagan idols and which had not, some of them choose to abstain from eating meat altogether.
The Jewish Christians on the other hand would abstain from eating meat on reasons of Jewish dietary laws. Rome was far away from Jerusalem and any large community of Jews, therefore making it hard for them to find meat that had been prepared in a “kosher” way, in other words the meat at the market was unclean. Finding themselves living in a city where it was nearly impossible to find meat that they would consider clean, some of the Jewish Christians chose to abstain from eating meat.
Note that I said that only some of the Jews and only some of the Gentiles chose to abstain from eating meat altogether, others did not feel that either of these issues had any bearing on their Christianity and chose to eat whatever meat was available to them there in Rome. The problem is not that some ate meat and other did not, but that each group thought that they were necessarily right and the other group was necessarily wrong.
As if this was not complicated enough, there were more issues in the church at Rome than meat. There were meat eaters and vegetarians, but there were also those Jewish Christians who strictly observed the Sabbath, as well as all the feast and fast days that God instructed the Jews to follow in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. The Gentile Christians had probably never read Deuteronomy or Leviticus and did not see why observing these days had anything to do with being a Christian. And of course those that observed the days thought that those that did not observe these days should and those that did not, did not see why those other Christians were so concerned about something that seemed so trivial to them.
Paul would not have had such a problem with people having different opinions if it was not that those that abstained from eating meat and those who abstained from observing the special days despised those that ate meat or observed the special days, while those that ate meat and those that observed the special days judged those that that did not eat meat and did not observe the special days. Paul did not really care if some people liked beef and others did not, what he cared about was all the despising and judging that was going on over what seemed to him to be unimportant issues.
Before I delve into what it is that Paul is saying in this passage let me begin by telling you what he is not saying. Paul is not making a blanket statement to all Christians everywhere not to judge, not to declare what sin is and expect all Christians everywhere to flee from it. He is not saying that all morality is relative, that sin does not matter. He is not telling us that we cannot call sin, sin and wrong doing, wrong doing. In the verses preceding this chapter he does just that, he declares to the people of the Church of Rome just a short list of what he considers sinful and should be avoided if we as Christians are to live honorably as Christ has called us to live.
No Paul is not telling us to be soft on sin and to allow it to seep into our lives and corrupt who we are as Christians. Paul is instead telling us not to live our lives in comparison to those around us. We are not live act as if the rest of the world is a day time tv show and live trying to see that our life is better than theirs. We are not to be five year old tattle-tales that are constantly looking around the sanctuary and telling God exactly how sinful so and so is, so that God will see, and will know exactly what good, wonderful, moral upright Christians we are. We are not to live our Christian lives looking to our neighbor on the road, see their short comings and the areas in which they struggle with sin in their lives and see that we do not struggle or fall short in the same ways they do and therefore judge ourselves to be better than they.
On the other side of the coin neither are we to look at others who are doing their very best to be the people that God has called them to be and in an attempt to flee from anything that might even have the appearance of wrong doing go a little farther than we do, or think is necessary, we might think that they are taking their Christianity to far, or being to strict, surely those things that they are so worried about are not things that God is worried about. We are not to compare ourselves to these people and think how enlightened we are that we are encumbered by the same sensibilities that those people have. We are not to look down our noses and silently call them backwards or simple. In short we are not to despise them for being extra cautious when it comes to their relationship with God.
Paul wants us to know that when we look at other Christians who are striving their best to be the people that God has called them to be and they don’t do things exactly the same way that we do and we think that they are wrong, that if they are truly reaching for God and searching for his guidance in their lives, they are seeking to honor and serve the same God that we honor and serve, they are worshipping the same risen Christ that we are worshipping. Those of us that are seeking the face of God in all that we do, should not be split amongst ourselves. We should be striving together, building each other up and glorifying Jesus Christ as OUR Lord and Savior.
Paul is telling us that in the end we will all stand before the judgment seat of God, after all it is God’s right and not ours to judge our fellow Christians. We will not stand before God and get to have a giant three-year-old-esk tattle-tale session with God, telling him all the things that those other Christians were doing wrong and how we were such better Christians than they were, because we did this and did not do that. We do not get to sit back and watch everyone else’s lives and show God how much better we have been compared to them.
Paul reminds us that when we stand before God each of us will not be accountable for “their lives,” but we will be accountable for ours and ours alone. Remember that one of the most important lessons that we learned as three year old tattle-tales was that we were just as wrong for standing in the judgment seat of the capable adult that was there and declaring the wrongness of our peer, when we ourselves, in the very act of tattling were doing something just wrong. Think how much worse it will be when we stand shamefacedly before the judgment seat of God pointing at our fellow Christian, who Christ declared that we were suppose to encourage and build up, instead of despising and pushing them down with our judgmental attitude towards them and God stands before us and says that we were not called to live our lives as better than “theirs,” but we were to live our lives according to the loving instruction that God himself gave to us.
As fallen human beings we have many failings that are all too often common among us all. One of those failings is our constant need to live in comparison to others. We want to be able to look at others around us and say, “Hey, at least I am better than that!” I had a friend in college who told me that she enjoyed watching day time talk shows because when she watched those shows, she could look at the lives of those people and KNOW without a doubt that her life was better than theirs, qualitatively, morally, whatever, her life was never anywhere close to being as messed up and hopeless as the poor peoples’ lives on that show. I suspect that this is exactly the reason why these types of shows are so popular. They give the viewer as sense of superiority. Something to look at and say, at least my life is not as messed up as that.
As children we also had this innate need to feel as if we were somehow better than those around us. After all is it not the desire to show themselves to be better than a particular peer, at the heart of every tattle-tale? There is an overwhelming desire in the heart a small that wants the adult to know exactly how bad little Johnny has been, thus highlighting what a good boy or girl they have been, all though not realizing that they are putting themselves on par with little Johnny because most of the time tattle-taleing is just as naughty as whatever it was that Johnny had been doing. That of course does not seem to matter to them and they do not understand why they too are being reprimanded for bringing Johnny’s short falling to the adult’s attention, in their own mind they have the moral superiority, after all compared to little Johnny they are being a saint.
Paul is dealing with this common human problem among the Christians in the church in Rome. The Christians in Rome were comparing themselves to each other and different individuals had come up with different reasons as to why they were better Christians than those other Christians that were not doing as they were doing. You see the people of that church were split in their opinions on two issues that they thought were very important.
First of all there are those that eat meat and those who do not eat meat. Surprisingly the vegetarian/meat eater debate is still one that rages among Christians and non Christians alike. Although the vegetarians in Paul’s day did not abstain from eating cows because they are so cute, or because human beings should learn to live without killing other living things, or for environmental reasons or for any of the other half-dozen reasons that a modern person might be a vegetarian. They abstained from eating meat for religious reasons and depending on whether they were Jewish Christians or Gentiles they might have had entirely different reasons for abstaining from eating meat.
Some of the Gentiles would have chosen to not eat meat because they felt that it had been defiled. You see most of the meat that would have been available in the Roman market would have come from the slaughtering facilities in the local pagan temples.
The Gentiles who had come out of these pagan religions would know that before the meat was sold that it would very likely have been offered as a sacrifice to a pagan deity. They felt that they would be accepting and promoting the worship of these pagan deities by eating meat that had been previously used in this way. Since there was no way of knowing which meat had been offered to pagan idols and which had not, some of them choose to abstain from eating meat altogether.
The Jewish Christians on the other hand would abstain from eating meat on reasons of Jewish dietary laws. Rome was far away from Jerusalem and any large community of Jews, therefore making it hard for them to find meat that had been prepared in a “kosher” way, in other words the meat at the market was unclean. Finding themselves living in a city where it was nearly impossible to find meat that they would consider clean, some of the Jewish Christians chose to abstain from eating meat.
Note that I said that only some of the Jews and only some of the Gentiles chose to abstain from eating meat altogether, others did not feel that either of these issues had any bearing on their Christianity and chose to eat whatever meat was available to them there in Rome. The problem is not that some ate meat and other did not, but that each group thought that they were necessarily right and the other group was necessarily wrong.
As if this was not complicated enough, there were more issues in the church at Rome than meat. There were meat eaters and vegetarians, but there were also those Jewish Christians who strictly observed the Sabbath, as well as all the feast and fast days that God instructed the Jews to follow in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. The Gentile Christians had probably never read Deuteronomy or Leviticus and did not see why observing these days had anything to do with being a Christian. And of course those that observed the days thought that those that did not observe these days should and those that did not, did not see why those other Christians were so concerned about something that seemed so trivial to them.
Paul would not have had such a problem with people having different opinions if it was not that those that abstained from eating meat and those who abstained from observing the special days despised those that ate meat or observed the special days, while those that ate meat and those that observed the special days judged those that that did not eat meat and did not observe the special days. Paul did not really care if some people liked beef and others did not, what he cared about was all the despising and judging that was going on over what seemed to him to be unimportant issues.
Before I delve into what it is that Paul is saying in this passage let me begin by telling you what he is not saying. Paul is not making a blanket statement to all Christians everywhere not to judge, not to declare what sin is and expect all Christians everywhere to flee from it. He is not saying that all morality is relative, that sin does not matter. He is not telling us that we cannot call sin, sin and wrong doing, wrong doing. In the verses preceding this chapter he does just that, he declares to the people of the Church of Rome just a short list of what he considers sinful and should be avoided if we as Christians are to live honorably as Christ has called us to live.
No Paul is not telling us to be soft on sin and to allow it to seep into our lives and corrupt who we are as Christians. Paul is instead telling us not to live our lives in comparison to those around us. We are not live act as if the rest of the world is a day time tv show and live trying to see that our life is better than theirs. We are not to be five year old tattle-tales that are constantly looking around the sanctuary and telling God exactly how sinful so and so is, so that God will see, and will know exactly what good, wonderful, moral upright Christians we are. We are not to live our Christian lives looking to our neighbor on the road, see their short comings and the areas in which they struggle with sin in their lives and see that we do not struggle or fall short in the same ways they do and therefore judge ourselves to be better than they.
On the other side of the coin neither are we to look at others who are doing their very best to be the people that God has called them to be and in an attempt to flee from anything that might even have the appearance of wrong doing go a little farther than we do, or think is necessary, we might think that they are taking their Christianity to far, or being to strict, surely those things that they are so worried about are not things that God is worried about. We are not to compare ourselves to these people and think how enlightened we are that we are encumbered by the same sensibilities that those people have. We are not to look down our noses and silently call them backwards or simple. In short we are not to despise them for being extra cautious when it comes to their relationship with God.
Paul wants us to know that when we look at other Christians who are striving their best to be the people that God has called them to be and they don’t do things exactly the same way that we do and we think that they are wrong, that if they are truly reaching for God and searching for his guidance in their lives, they are seeking to honor and serve the same God that we honor and serve, they are worshipping the same risen Christ that we are worshipping. Those of us that are seeking the face of God in all that we do, should not be split amongst ourselves. We should be striving together, building each other up and glorifying Jesus Christ as OUR Lord and Savior.
Paul is telling us that in the end we will all stand before the judgment seat of God, after all it is God’s right and not ours to judge our fellow Christians. We will not stand before God and get to have a giant three-year-old-esk tattle-tale session with God, telling him all the things that those other Christians were doing wrong and how we were such better Christians than they were, because we did this and did not do that. We do not get to sit back and watch everyone else’s lives and show God how much better we have been compared to them.
Paul reminds us that when we stand before God each of us will not be accountable for “their lives,” but we will be accountable for ours and ours alone. Remember that one of the most important lessons that we learned as three year old tattle-tales was that we were just as wrong for standing in the judgment seat of the capable adult that was there and declaring the wrongness of our peer, when we ourselves, in the very act of tattling were doing something just wrong. Think how much worse it will be when we stand shamefacedly before the judgment seat of God pointing at our fellow Christian, who Christ declared that we were suppose to encourage and build up, instead of despising and pushing them down with our judgmental attitude towards them and God stands before us and says that we were not called to live our lives as better than “theirs,” but we were to live our lives according to the loving instruction that God himself gave to us.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Romans 12:9-21 - Living Live of Living Sacrifice
Romans 12:9-21
In the first half of Romans 12 Paul instructed his readers to give themselves to God as living sacrifices. Last time we met together, we looked at this passage and explored what it meant to be living sacrifices and what it meant to live the holy, God pleasing lives of the living sacrifice to which God calls us. In the latter half of this chapter Paul gives us a pretty descriptive explanation of what a holy, God please life of living sacrifice looks like. In fact I think that many of us could spend the rest of our spiritual journeys reading, re-reading this passage, studying each of these 40 some odd exhortations, and working to live these simple instructions out in our daily lives. Living out these forty exhortations is being holy, being the person in this passage is being the person God created us to be, these 12 verses tell us what it looks like to be a living sacrifice.
This list of exhortations given to the church by Paul in this passage are pretty basic. Almost simplistic, reading through this reminds me of a poem that was on a poster when I was in High school. It was by Robert Falghum it went like this:
All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten.
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do
and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not
at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the
sandpile. These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some
and draw and paint and sing and dance and play
and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,
hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.
Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup:
The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody
really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even
the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die.
So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books
and the first word you learned - the biggest
word of all - LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.
The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.
Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any of those items and extrapolate it into
sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your
family life or your work or your government or
your world and it holds true and clear and firm.
Think what a better world it would be if
all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about
three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with
our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments
had a basic policy to always put thing back where
they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you
are - when you go out into the world, it is best
to hold hands and stick together.
The heart of what Fulghum has to say is simple basic life lessons but these basic early learned lessons are the hardest things to remember in the general goings on of our everyday life. The same is true with this passage here in Paul these are the basics of living the Christian life. These are the basics of what a lived submerged in the love of God. These are the basics of Holy living. A life lived this was is a living sacrifice holy and pleasing to God. At the end of it all is holding hands and sticking together. Paul has told us this as well, as Christians, we are called to hold hands and stick together. Live, our holy, living sacrifice lives as a part of a holy community of faith, as a part of the Body of Christ, to work out holiness and holy living in, among and with the Church.
Being a holy person and being a holy community, the holding hands and sticking together part of being a child of God, begins with love. But not feigned love, not false love but genuine love. Truly loving people, as opposed to fake or put on love. That is not loving people because we are “suppose to” love them, but loving people because we want to love them, because we really do love them and care about them and care about what happens to them. This is about loving people because Jesus loves them. We love because we are loved. We love because as persons who are living Christ-like lives we will love all who Christ loves. This means that we do not love people with ulterior motives; we not only care about people because of what they can do for us. We don’t reach out and love people because we want to get anything out of them. We don’t only love people because the act of love, words of love, or sharing the love of Jesus with them is some kind of notch in our spiritual belts. As Christians we simply and genuinely love people.
The love that we have as Christians begins with one another, first and foremost, and last and finally we are, as the people of God, the body of Christ, to hold hands and stick together, i.e. love. For Paul being a Christian begins with being a part of the community of faith, a part of the body of Christ, a part of the Church. Being a Christian is not an “alone” kind of thing, being truly Christian, living a life of holiness and holy love can only truly exist within relationship with the body of Christ. In many ways, I am only as holy as WE are holy. I am only living a life of living sacrifice as much as WE are living sacrifices and MY love is only genuine as much as OUR love is genuine. The Christian life is not lived alone, it is lived within community. So Paul tells us that holy, genuine love is first exemplified within the Church community.
So how do we genuinely love one another within this community? We begin by doing our best to out do one another with mutual affection. It is like school yard contest. “I bet I can hop on one leg longer than you can!” “I bet I can jump farther than you can!” But instead of trying to out do one another with our mad grad school skills, we all are trying to be the best at showing love to one another. In this game of out loving one another, each of us is striving to exceed each other in showing more and more love, loving more and more. It is a Loving competition.
Paul tells us that as we are doing this will are not to lag in zeal for genuine love. If loving were a running race, this means we are not to be the straggler who is only half heartedly making her way down the track not caring what place she ends up in, but we are instead to strive to be first and win the loving race. We do not want to be out done or let ourselves “come in last.” The imagery used here makes me think of the girls in my gym class who would choose not to “run” the mile when we were all suppose run it, but they would instead walk it, lagging behind and just doing what needs to be done to finish the “requirement.” Paul does not want us to be like those girls but strive to out do one another in loving each other.
As a community we are also to rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, and persevere in prayer. These are all ways that we can love one another. When you truly love another person, you care about them so much that when they are rejoicing you rejoice with them hoping for the best for them. But it is more than just that, we all know that together we can rejoice in the fact that through Jesus Christ we can hope for a world the way that it should be. We can rejoice together knowing that there is hope for life lived as it was meant to be lived, life lived as it was created to be lived, hope that one day all things will be set right, that one day we will no longer live in a broken, bent, sin twisted world. We can rejoice because by living holy lives we are bringing the holiness of God down to earth, allowing the kingdom of God break into this broken world in our words, actions and interactions.
We also love one another through patience in suffering. When those in this community are suffering, we patiently suffer along side of them, allowing our hearts to break, even as their heart is breaking. But also knowing that suffering is a consequence of the sin and evil which we brought into to this world and the world is not the way that it should be, or could be and knowing this we are patient in our hope.
Lastly as a community of Christians living lives of living sacrifice, we persevere in pray. Pray and keep on praying, even when it does seem to accomplish anything. In all things we pray. In rejoicing we pray and thank God. In suffering we pray. We pray at all times in all things for God’s will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven. We join our hearts with God’s and pray for what it is God desires most, that someday things will be as they should be, that all things will be as they were created to be, that all things will be set right, that in the end God’s love wins.
As people living lives of living sacrifice, living the holiness of God, Paul tells us that our love does not end at the church doors. We do not only love those who are a part of us, who have chosen to join themselves with God and join themselves to this community, Paul call for our love to extend beyond the borders of our churches into the world outside of our sanctuaries and church walls. Genuine love is begins with us but it reaches out to those in need. We are to give to the saints in need and extend hospitality to strangers. In Paul’s day and age, by definition strangers, that is people who are not from around here, were in need. When someone choose or was forced to travel far from home they were at the mercy of the hospitality of strangers. A person would not get far on the shelter and provision he could bring with him, so he was dependant upon the people he met along the way to extend kindness and hospitality to him along his journey. So in essence Paul is telling us that holy Christians love not only their community, those who are needy inside the body of Christ, and outside their community as well. The love, which we have for one another blossoms and grows and extends beyond us into the world around us.
God has blessed each of us in many and differing ways and as Christians we share that blessing with one another and with anyone who God might put in our path who needs what we can spare. God bless us and then God blesses others through us. Christians are by virtue of the generosity of God extended to them are therefore likewise generous. No matter how hard up we may feel or may actually be, there is always someone who has less than us. No matter how much or how little we have we should be generous with what we have and even more generous with anything that we have in surplus.
Being living sacrifices means reaching out with the love of God not only with this idea and feeling of love but with action of love and generosity, giving to those in need within and without our community. Loving people in these physical generous ways is speaking a language of love, which those who do not know the love of Jesus, can understand.
There are many ways to be generous. You can help out at the local homeless shelter, you can always carry something to hand to the man on the corner who asks, you can give to Hope’s cradle (or even volunteer to help out), you can give to the Haiti Hot water project or any other number of organizations who are wiling to help you be generous to people all around the world who have less than you do.
But we are not only to love those who “deserve it.” We are not only called to love those closest to us and those within our surrounding community, but we are called to love everybody in all things. That is a pretty tall order. It is easy to love our family, it is not all that hard to love others our church, especially when our church is filled with loving members of the body of Christ, it takes little effort to turn our pity for those who have less than us into actions of love, compassion and generosity. But Paul calls for us to love everybody in all things. No matter who they are, no matter what they have done, no matter what they are doing or have done to us, no matter what is going in their lives. We are to love everybody. Even when we don’t want to.
So rejoice with those around you, weep with them, mourn when they mourn. Live in harmony, seek to live peaceably with those around you. Don’t think yourself better than them for any reason, associate with the lowly, the outcast, the disenfranchised, and those who society has deemed unworthy or less than worthy. Be kind and generous to everybody.
And least you are at all confused about what “everybody” means, that includes those you don’t like, and those who don’t like you. Loving everybody in all things, extends to our enemies, and to those who wish to do us harm. This means loving those who are not kind to you, those who disappoint you, those who would do things maliciously against you. But we are actually to go one more step than simply loving them but we are to bless them. Show them the love of God, extend the same amount of grace, forgiveness and blessings which God has extended to us to anyone who would work to do us harm. That is hard. That is sincerely difficult. They have done nothing to deserve your kindness, they have done nothing to earn your favor, but Paul spent enough of the book of Romans showing us exactly why we don’t deserve God’s grace, but receive it none-the-less. Of Course they don’t deserve it, but neither do you.
Do not repay evil with evil instead do your best to out do your enemies’ evil with goodness and kindness. Paul than uses an image that does not really make sense and when taken at face value, seems contrary to what Paul has been saying about the place of genuine love in all our relationships with everyone. But Paul is drawing from a common practice, which was when it was cold it was common to send a person who was leaving your house away with a coal from your fire to keep them warm. Paul is saying that if you are dealing with your enemy with kindness and generosity that the extent of your generosity should be as such that instead of just giving them one coal to keep warm heaping coals upon them when they leave. It not simply about being barely hospitable to your enemy, it not about simply being cordial, this is about going above and beyond showing them extreme kindness, over abounding generosity, leave whatever judgment they do or do not deserve up to God, you love them, treat them with overflowing kindness and give to them more than they would ever even think to require of you. Out do their evil with goodness.
Whew, now that is a lot! That is a lot of loving. Can you remember all that? I have gone over it once and there is going to be a test. (pause) No I am serious. There will now be a test. After I finish my sermon, we will depart from here. Some of us will fellowship for a while down stairs and our love for one another will be tested in our actions and interactions with one another, can we be genuinely loving with the body of believers in which God has called us to live in community? Then eventually we will all disperse from here, each to our daily lives and every morning we will wake up to another test, will we live lives of love today? That is the question asked of us each and everyday. Will we love our fellow Christians? Will we give to the needy? Will we reach out to the lowly? Will we live peaceably? Will we treat even those who wish us harm with over abounding kindness and generosity in all things? Will we be living sacrifices to God today? Tomorrow? In this moment? With this person who is before me right now?
In the first half of Romans 12 Paul instructed his readers to give themselves to God as living sacrifices. Last time we met together, we looked at this passage and explored what it meant to be living sacrifices and what it meant to live the holy, God pleasing lives of the living sacrifice to which God calls us. In the latter half of this chapter Paul gives us a pretty descriptive explanation of what a holy, God please life of living sacrifice looks like. In fact I think that many of us could spend the rest of our spiritual journeys reading, re-reading this passage, studying each of these 40 some odd exhortations, and working to live these simple instructions out in our daily lives. Living out these forty exhortations is being holy, being the person in this passage is being the person God created us to be, these 12 verses tell us what it looks like to be a living sacrifice.
This list of exhortations given to the church by Paul in this passage are pretty basic. Almost simplistic, reading through this reminds me of a poem that was on a poster when I was in High school. It was by Robert Falghum it went like this:
All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten.
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do
and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not
at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the
sandpile. These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some
and draw and paint and sing and dance and play
and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,
hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.
Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup:
The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody
really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even
the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die.
So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books
and the first word you learned - the biggest
word of all - LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.
The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.
Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any of those items and extrapolate it into
sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your
family life or your work or your government or
your world and it holds true and clear and firm.
Think what a better world it would be if
all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about
three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with
our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments
had a basic policy to always put thing back where
they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you
are - when you go out into the world, it is best
to hold hands and stick together.
The heart of what Fulghum has to say is simple basic life lessons but these basic early learned lessons are the hardest things to remember in the general goings on of our everyday life. The same is true with this passage here in Paul these are the basics of living the Christian life. These are the basics of what a lived submerged in the love of God. These are the basics of Holy living. A life lived this was is a living sacrifice holy and pleasing to God. At the end of it all is holding hands and sticking together. Paul has told us this as well, as Christians, we are called to hold hands and stick together. Live, our holy, living sacrifice lives as a part of a holy community of faith, as a part of the Body of Christ, to work out holiness and holy living in, among and with the Church.
Being a holy person and being a holy community, the holding hands and sticking together part of being a child of God, begins with love. But not feigned love, not false love but genuine love. Truly loving people, as opposed to fake or put on love. That is not loving people because we are “suppose to” love them, but loving people because we want to love them, because we really do love them and care about them and care about what happens to them. This is about loving people because Jesus loves them. We love because we are loved. We love because as persons who are living Christ-like lives we will love all who Christ loves. This means that we do not love people with ulterior motives; we not only care about people because of what they can do for us. We don’t reach out and love people because we want to get anything out of them. We don’t only love people because the act of love, words of love, or sharing the love of Jesus with them is some kind of notch in our spiritual belts. As Christians we simply and genuinely love people.
The love that we have as Christians begins with one another, first and foremost, and last and finally we are, as the people of God, the body of Christ, to hold hands and stick together, i.e. love. For Paul being a Christian begins with being a part of the community of faith, a part of the body of Christ, a part of the Church. Being a Christian is not an “alone” kind of thing, being truly Christian, living a life of holiness and holy love can only truly exist within relationship with the body of Christ. In many ways, I am only as holy as WE are holy. I am only living a life of living sacrifice as much as WE are living sacrifices and MY love is only genuine as much as OUR love is genuine. The Christian life is not lived alone, it is lived within community. So Paul tells us that holy, genuine love is first exemplified within the Church community.
So how do we genuinely love one another within this community? We begin by doing our best to out do one another with mutual affection. It is like school yard contest. “I bet I can hop on one leg longer than you can!” “I bet I can jump farther than you can!” But instead of trying to out do one another with our mad grad school skills, we all are trying to be the best at showing love to one another. In this game of out loving one another, each of us is striving to exceed each other in showing more and more love, loving more and more. It is a Loving competition.
Paul tells us that as we are doing this will are not to lag in zeal for genuine love. If loving were a running race, this means we are not to be the straggler who is only half heartedly making her way down the track not caring what place she ends up in, but we are instead to strive to be first and win the loving race. We do not want to be out done or let ourselves “come in last.” The imagery used here makes me think of the girls in my gym class who would choose not to “run” the mile when we were all suppose run it, but they would instead walk it, lagging behind and just doing what needs to be done to finish the “requirement.” Paul does not want us to be like those girls but strive to out do one another in loving each other.
As a community we are also to rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, and persevere in prayer. These are all ways that we can love one another. When you truly love another person, you care about them so much that when they are rejoicing you rejoice with them hoping for the best for them. But it is more than just that, we all know that together we can rejoice in the fact that through Jesus Christ we can hope for a world the way that it should be. We can rejoice together knowing that there is hope for life lived as it was meant to be lived, life lived as it was created to be lived, hope that one day all things will be set right, that one day we will no longer live in a broken, bent, sin twisted world. We can rejoice because by living holy lives we are bringing the holiness of God down to earth, allowing the kingdom of God break into this broken world in our words, actions and interactions.
We also love one another through patience in suffering. When those in this community are suffering, we patiently suffer along side of them, allowing our hearts to break, even as their heart is breaking. But also knowing that suffering is a consequence of the sin and evil which we brought into to this world and the world is not the way that it should be, or could be and knowing this we are patient in our hope.
Lastly as a community of Christians living lives of living sacrifice, we persevere in pray. Pray and keep on praying, even when it does seem to accomplish anything. In all things we pray. In rejoicing we pray and thank God. In suffering we pray. We pray at all times in all things for God’s will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven. We join our hearts with God’s and pray for what it is God desires most, that someday things will be as they should be, that all things will be as they were created to be, that all things will be set right, that in the end God’s love wins.
As people living lives of living sacrifice, living the holiness of God, Paul tells us that our love does not end at the church doors. We do not only love those who are a part of us, who have chosen to join themselves with God and join themselves to this community, Paul call for our love to extend beyond the borders of our churches into the world outside of our sanctuaries and church walls. Genuine love is begins with us but it reaches out to those in need. We are to give to the saints in need and extend hospitality to strangers. In Paul’s day and age, by definition strangers, that is people who are not from around here, were in need. When someone choose or was forced to travel far from home they were at the mercy of the hospitality of strangers. A person would not get far on the shelter and provision he could bring with him, so he was dependant upon the people he met along the way to extend kindness and hospitality to him along his journey. So in essence Paul is telling us that holy Christians love not only their community, those who are needy inside the body of Christ, and outside their community as well. The love, which we have for one another blossoms and grows and extends beyond us into the world around us.
God has blessed each of us in many and differing ways and as Christians we share that blessing with one another and with anyone who God might put in our path who needs what we can spare. God bless us and then God blesses others through us. Christians are by virtue of the generosity of God extended to them are therefore likewise generous. No matter how hard up we may feel or may actually be, there is always someone who has less than us. No matter how much or how little we have we should be generous with what we have and even more generous with anything that we have in surplus.
Being living sacrifices means reaching out with the love of God not only with this idea and feeling of love but with action of love and generosity, giving to those in need within and without our community. Loving people in these physical generous ways is speaking a language of love, which those who do not know the love of Jesus, can understand.
There are many ways to be generous. You can help out at the local homeless shelter, you can always carry something to hand to the man on the corner who asks, you can give to Hope’s cradle (or even volunteer to help out), you can give to the Haiti Hot water project or any other number of organizations who are wiling to help you be generous to people all around the world who have less than you do.
But we are not only to love those who “deserve it.” We are not only called to love those closest to us and those within our surrounding community, but we are called to love everybody in all things. That is a pretty tall order. It is easy to love our family, it is not all that hard to love others our church, especially when our church is filled with loving members of the body of Christ, it takes little effort to turn our pity for those who have less than us into actions of love, compassion and generosity. But Paul calls for us to love everybody in all things. No matter who they are, no matter what they have done, no matter what they are doing or have done to us, no matter what is going in their lives. We are to love everybody. Even when we don’t want to.
So rejoice with those around you, weep with them, mourn when they mourn. Live in harmony, seek to live peaceably with those around you. Don’t think yourself better than them for any reason, associate with the lowly, the outcast, the disenfranchised, and those who society has deemed unworthy or less than worthy. Be kind and generous to everybody.
And least you are at all confused about what “everybody” means, that includes those you don’t like, and those who don’t like you. Loving everybody in all things, extends to our enemies, and to those who wish to do us harm. This means loving those who are not kind to you, those who disappoint you, those who would do things maliciously against you. But we are actually to go one more step than simply loving them but we are to bless them. Show them the love of God, extend the same amount of grace, forgiveness and blessings which God has extended to us to anyone who would work to do us harm. That is hard. That is sincerely difficult. They have done nothing to deserve your kindness, they have done nothing to earn your favor, but Paul spent enough of the book of Romans showing us exactly why we don’t deserve God’s grace, but receive it none-the-less. Of Course they don’t deserve it, but neither do you.
Do not repay evil with evil instead do your best to out do your enemies’ evil with goodness and kindness. Paul than uses an image that does not really make sense and when taken at face value, seems contrary to what Paul has been saying about the place of genuine love in all our relationships with everyone. But Paul is drawing from a common practice, which was when it was cold it was common to send a person who was leaving your house away with a coal from your fire to keep them warm. Paul is saying that if you are dealing with your enemy with kindness and generosity that the extent of your generosity should be as such that instead of just giving them one coal to keep warm heaping coals upon them when they leave. It not simply about being barely hospitable to your enemy, it not about simply being cordial, this is about going above and beyond showing them extreme kindness, over abounding generosity, leave whatever judgment they do or do not deserve up to God, you love them, treat them with overflowing kindness and give to them more than they would ever even think to require of you. Out do their evil with goodness.
Whew, now that is a lot! That is a lot of loving. Can you remember all that? I have gone over it once and there is going to be a test. (pause) No I am serious. There will now be a test. After I finish my sermon, we will depart from here. Some of us will fellowship for a while down stairs and our love for one another will be tested in our actions and interactions with one another, can we be genuinely loving with the body of believers in which God has called us to live in community? Then eventually we will all disperse from here, each to our daily lives and every morning we will wake up to another test, will we live lives of love today? That is the question asked of us each and everyday. Will we love our fellow Christians? Will we give to the needy? Will we reach out to the lowly? Will we live peaceably? Will we treat even those who wish us harm with over abounding kindness and generosity in all things? Will we be living sacrifices to God today? Tomorrow? In this moment? With this person who is before me right now?
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Romans 12:1-8 - Living Sacrifices
Romans 12:1-8
Our world shapes who we are. The world in which I grew up is really different world than the one in which many of you grew up. I do not remember when Jimmy Carter was president, nor have I ever watched the Ed Sullivan show. Many younger members of our congregation may not remember a time when nearly every household did not have a Personal Computer, not to mention remember the world of computers prior to Microsoft Windows and the wonderful thing that once was MS Dos. Many may not remember the world before cell phones; while my grandmother could tell me of the first time she saw an automobile and how frightened she was.
The world in which we live shapes the way we think and the way we understand things. Sometimes I still find it odd that when I was in 4th grade science I learned that we were living at the end of an ice age while today’s young people are learning about global warming and its effects on us and our environment. The world in which some of you grew up in believe it or not was not the same world in which I grew up. The different world in which each of us has lived has form and shaped us and how we see the world around us. It affects how we live and how we think, in ways that we don’t even know and probably will never fully understand.
In today’s passage Paul calls for us to step outside of everything that we know about our world and do something radically different that really does not make much sense at all. He calls for us to give ourselves to God as sacrifices, as living sacrifices. Giving yourself as a sacrifice was pretty much just as much of a radical idea in Paul’s day as it would be today. As daily riding in a motor-powered machine that can travel at speeds upwards of 60 miles an hour would be to people who lived right here in Cambridge at the time this church was formed. It would have been a completely non-sensical idea to most of them. Likewise, for many reasons the idea of a living sacrifice utter non-sense to most of us.
Before we can come to any kind of understanding what a living sacrifice is we need to first understand how the people to whom Paul would have understood sacrifices. The Jews in the church at Rome would have understood the idea of sacrifices; because sacrifices are were a part of Jewish worship. The Jewish sacrificial system had dual purposes. First it was a way for the worshiper to acknowledge who God was in their life. It was a way of thanking God for giving the things that gave you and your family sustenance, thanking God for continually providing the things that are needed to make it from day to day, week to week and season to season. It also helped maintain the priesthood. Many offerings, such as grain offerings and oil offerings were not burned at all but were simply given to the temple, and most sacrifices were not whole burnt offerings, meaning that they were not entirely consumed by fired, but instead were simply cooked or only a certain portion was burnt on the alter. Anything that was not wholly burnt on the alter was used by the priests and their families, since they had no other means of supporting themselves.
So the Jews in the Church at Rome understood what a sacrifice was, but so did the Gentiles I the Church. Sacrifices were not exclusive to Jewish worship but were a part of most common religions of that day. Sacrifices in the pagan religions was about giving to the god what the god demanded to keep the god happy so that the god would act on your behalf. Sacrificing was the way in which a person showed honor and respect to the god. So no matter who you were Jew or Gentile the idea of a sacrifice being offered up to God made sense.
But Paul was calling for the people to be living sacrifices, which were offered up to God. I mentioned earlier that there were several different kinds of offerings or sacrifices the Jews would bring to the temple. Some offerings were to be taken offered up on the alter and then taken home and eaten. Other offerings were given to God and then were used to support the priest and his family. Still other offerings were put on the alter and were completely consumed by the fire have been burnt completely in the process. These later offerings were called whole burnt offerings, they were completely consumed by the fire and in doing so the sacrifice was seen as having been given completely and wholly over to God
Many different things were sacrificed in the Jewish sacrificial system lambs, goats, pigeons, but there was one thing that was never considered an appropriate sacrifice and that was the sacrifice of a human being. From the very beginnings of Jewish history God forbade human sacrifice. God did not want God’s people to sacrifice their children, as so many other deities required. God said that is was an abhorrent practice and was not under any circumstances to be practiced by God’s people.
But then here in this passage we have Paul calling for Human sacrifice, a different kind of human sacrifice but a human sacrifice non-the-less. This is what made what Paul was saying here so radical to the people to whom he was writing. The kind of sacrifice he is calling for them to make was unlike any other kind of sacrifice these people had ever heard. It was not a pagan human sacrifice where human blood was spilled to placate a false god, nor was it like any sacrifice found in the Jewish sacrificial system.
It was a sacrifice but it was completely different from any sacrifice anyone had ever made to God on several levels. First of all, with this kind of sacrifice one did not offer something, or someone else, whether it be a goat, lamb or a pigeon; a slave, a captured enemy or your first born son, on the alter. Paul was talking about offering up one’s self as a sacrifice to God. This was not offering something that was ultimately not yours to offer, like the life of someone or something outside of your self, but this was about putting what is nearest and dearest to you on the alter, giving up what really mattered to you. It was about putting yourself on the alter, not laying anything, or anyone else down as your sacrifice but laying yourself down.
This is about truly following Christ’s example in ALL things. Giving yourself up, just as Christ gave himself up. Jesus did not offer anyone or anything else up on our behalf but offered himself up on our behalf, likewise Paul is calling for us to be Christlike in the extreme, giving up even ourselves to the glory of God. Sacrificing yourself to God
This is different kind of sacrifice on another level as well. The sacrifice Paul is calling for us to make is offered up in a way that is not in anyway like any sacrifice had ever been offered before. Sacrifices were by definition dead, they were either inanimate objects or living things that had been killed. Paul was calling for people to give themselves to God as living sacrifices. He was asking the people of the church at Rome to give themselves as alive sacrifices, to place their own lives on the alter as a sacrifice, but not giving their life up as in ending it, giving up their lived life to God; living life as if they belonged to God. And the thing is was we not just to live any kind of lives but we are to live lives that are holy and acceptable to God.
In the Bible holy has two meanings. First it means, having the attributes of God. Secondly it means, being set aside for use by God. Having the attributes of God means, reflecting who God is in all we do and say, in all our actions, interactions and reactions with every person we encounter each and every day. It means that our words and actions are the words and actions that God would have, if God were in our position each and every moment of every day. In this sense, being holy is being who and what God is in all in all things.
Being set aside for the use by God is the way in which the articles of the temple were holy. Everything in the temple was set aside as holy unto God in that they were not used for common usages but were only for temple use; for use in worship and for the specific purposes in the temple. They were holy, they were set aside for use by God in the temple.
When Paul is calling for the people of the Church of Rome to live lives of living sacrifice, he is saying that they are to reflect both of these usages of the word holy. They were to be set aside for use by God, AND that they were to reflect the very nature of God, they were to reflect the Holiness of God in this world.
In living lives as Living sacrifices one becomes what a person could never be on their own. When a Christian lives a life of holiness then their life is pleasing to God. When one who belongs to God’s Church place themselves on the alter, giving themselves wholly and completely over to God, God transforms forms them into what they could never be on their own.
As humans with the tendency to live in self-serving ways as opposed to the in the loving ways God calls us to live, we are NOT holy; we are NOT pleasing to God. But a life given completely and entirely over to God, sacrificed and gift freely given, then we as Christians become through the power and transformation of God, holy AND pleasing to God.
When we as Christians we live these kinds of lives we are transformed, not conformed. Conformation is a power from the outside changing who you are. When something is conformed is it more like being pressed into a mold, or shaped and crafted by something on the outside. Being conformed is being shaped and formed by the world in which we live. It is easy to allow our environment or something outside of ourselves to determine who we are and what we are becoming.
Transformation is something coming from within changing who you are. Christians are changed by a power that resides within. Christians are changed by a power greater than any power on the outside, changed by the power of Jesus Christ. Changes by the one we have allowed to dwell within us, allowing God to shape us and transform us into the people God created us to be, who we were meant to be in the first place. As Christians we are shaped and formed by the one who dwells within and are not to be conformed by the world that is fallen and given over to destruction.
Once we as followers of Jesus Christ are living sacrifices, being transformed into the holy Godly people we were created to be, Paul give us a warning to not think too highly of ourselves, to use sober judgment and for each of us to work on the faith given to us. This is Paul’s quick way of saying to not be all up in each others’ business, that each of us should not always be looking at those around us and be critical of everyone else thinking our faith and our relationship with God is better, stronger, deeper, more spiritual than so in so’s who sits in that pew on the other side of the sanctuary. Working on the faith walk that God has given to you should be enough of a worry for you, and if you have time to be thinking that you are better than someone else, you are not spending enough time on your own faith.
But even as we are not suppose to be worrying about the other person and how much better we are than them we are to be working together. As believers we are all one body, one Church, all apart of Jesus Christ we are to work together as a living body works together. By giving ourselves as sacrifices we become parts of a unified Body. The Church is the Body of Christ that remains in this world even as he has returned to the Father. We make up the physical presence of Christ in this world. As the Church we are the body of Christ alive and working the will of the Father here.
As different parts of the same body we all have different gifts, different functions. But we are all essential parts of God’s Church and Christ’s body. We are all good at different things and because of that have different functions in the body; feet, walk; hands clap; voices sing, eyes see. We all are different parts fulfilling different functions all working together to make the body work. Paul says the sign of a healthy body is that we are all working together; working to together; unified to do the work and the will of God in this world
Ultimately this is what it means to be living sacrifices to God. Being holy, acceptably, pleasing sacrifices to God means that we are living in community with the Body, the Church of God, living, working, together to do the work that God has called us to do; loving God, loving one another, loving the people in the world around us, striving and working together to bring the light and love of God to those who as of yet do not know what it means to be loved by God, to love God and to love as God loves.
Sometimes we get confused and we think that being a Christian is about just Jesus and me, sometimes we get confused and we think that Holiness is about me and my life alone, but truly living a life that is lived a Christ would life it, living a holy life, a life set apart to God, a life that is lived loving as God would love, is a life that is lived working together in the community of faith, as the Church, as the body, all fulfilling our different roles but working together for the common goal of reaching the world around us with the love of God, so that not only can we be transformed but that they (who ever “they” may be) may also know the love and transformative power of God in their lives. Holiness begins with me, it begins with you, but from there it extends to us, and we and ends with us and we extending God’s holy love to the world around us, to the people I come in contact with each and everyday, to the people you come in contact with each and everyday and by allowing our community and the world around us to come in contact with us in great and small ways through you and me and through what we do together as we are living in community as the body of Christ.
Our world shapes who we are. The world in which I grew up is really different world than the one in which many of you grew up. I do not remember when Jimmy Carter was president, nor have I ever watched the Ed Sullivan show. Many younger members of our congregation may not remember a time when nearly every household did not have a Personal Computer, not to mention remember the world of computers prior to Microsoft Windows and the wonderful thing that once was MS Dos. Many may not remember the world before cell phones; while my grandmother could tell me of the first time she saw an automobile and how frightened she was.
The world in which we live shapes the way we think and the way we understand things. Sometimes I still find it odd that when I was in 4th grade science I learned that we were living at the end of an ice age while today’s young people are learning about global warming and its effects on us and our environment. The world in which some of you grew up in believe it or not was not the same world in which I grew up. The different world in which each of us has lived has form and shaped us and how we see the world around us. It affects how we live and how we think, in ways that we don’t even know and probably will never fully understand.
In today’s passage Paul calls for us to step outside of everything that we know about our world and do something radically different that really does not make much sense at all. He calls for us to give ourselves to God as sacrifices, as living sacrifices. Giving yourself as a sacrifice was pretty much just as much of a radical idea in Paul’s day as it would be today. As daily riding in a motor-powered machine that can travel at speeds upwards of 60 miles an hour would be to people who lived right here in Cambridge at the time this church was formed. It would have been a completely non-sensical idea to most of them. Likewise, for many reasons the idea of a living sacrifice utter non-sense to most of us.
Before we can come to any kind of understanding what a living sacrifice is we need to first understand how the people to whom Paul would have understood sacrifices. The Jews in the church at Rome would have understood the idea of sacrifices; because sacrifices are were a part of Jewish worship. The Jewish sacrificial system had dual purposes. First it was a way for the worshiper to acknowledge who God was in their life. It was a way of thanking God for giving the things that gave you and your family sustenance, thanking God for continually providing the things that are needed to make it from day to day, week to week and season to season. It also helped maintain the priesthood. Many offerings, such as grain offerings and oil offerings were not burned at all but were simply given to the temple, and most sacrifices were not whole burnt offerings, meaning that they were not entirely consumed by fired, but instead were simply cooked or only a certain portion was burnt on the alter. Anything that was not wholly burnt on the alter was used by the priests and their families, since they had no other means of supporting themselves.
So the Jews in the Church at Rome understood what a sacrifice was, but so did the Gentiles I the Church. Sacrifices were not exclusive to Jewish worship but were a part of most common religions of that day. Sacrifices in the pagan religions was about giving to the god what the god demanded to keep the god happy so that the god would act on your behalf. Sacrificing was the way in which a person showed honor and respect to the god. So no matter who you were Jew or Gentile the idea of a sacrifice being offered up to God made sense.
But Paul was calling for the people to be living sacrifices, which were offered up to God. I mentioned earlier that there were several different kinds of offerings or sacrifices the Jews would bring to the temple. Some offerings were to be taken offered up on the alter and then taken home and eaten. Other offerings were given to God and then were used to support the priest and his family. Still other offerings were put on the alter and were completely consumed by the fire have been burnt completely in the process. These later offerings were called whole burnt offerings, they were completely consumed by the fire and in doing so the sacrifice was seen as having been given completely and wholly over to God
Many different things were sacrificed in the Jewish sacrificial system lambs, goats, pigeons, but there was one thing that was never considered an appropriate sacrifice and that was the sacrifice of a human being. From the very beginnings of Jewish history God forbade human sacrifice. God did not want God’s people to sacrifice their children, as so many other deities required. God said that is was an abhorrent practice and was not under any circumstances to be practiced by God’s people.
But then here in this passage we have Paul calling for Human sacrifice, a different kind of human sacrifice but a human sacrifice non-the-less. This is what made what Paul was saying here so radical to the people to whom he was writing. The kind of sacrifice he is calling for them to make was unlike any other kind of sacrifice these people had ever heard. It was not a pagan human sacrifice where human blood was spilled to placate a false god, nor was it like any sacrifice found in the Jewish sacrificial system.
It was a sacrifice but it was completely different from any sacrifice anyone had ever made to God on several levels. First of all, with this kind of sacrifice one did not offer something, or someone else, whether it be a goat, lamb or a pigeon; a slave, a captured enemy or your first born son, on the alter. Paul was talking about offering up one’s self as a sacrifice to God. This was not offering something that was ultimately not yours to offer, like the life of someone or something outside of your self, but this was about putting what is nearest and dearest to you on the alter, giving up what really mattered to you. It was about putting yourself on the alter, not laying anything, or anyone else down as your sacrifice but laying yourself down.
This is about truly following Christ’s example in ALL things. Giving yourself up, just as Christ gave himself up. Jesus did not offer anyone or anything else up on our behalf but offered himself up on our behalf, likewise Paul is calling for us to be Christlike in the extreme, giving up even ourselves to the glory of God. Sacrificing yourself to God
This is different kind of sacrifice on another level as well. The sacrifice Paul is calling for us to make is offered up in a way that is not in anyway like any sacrifice had ever been offered before. Sacrifices were by definition dead, they were either inanimate objects or living things that had been killed. Paul was calling for people to give themselves to God as living sacrifices. He was asking the people of the church at Rome to give themselves as alive sacrifices, to place their own lives on the alter as a sacrifice, but not giving their life up as in ending it, giving up their lived life to God; living life as if they belonged to God. And the thing is was we not just to live any kind of lives but we are to live lives that are holy and acceptable to God.
In the Bible holy has two meanings. First it means, having the attributes of God. Secondly it means, being set aside for use by God. Having the attributes of God means, reflecting who God is in all we do and say, in all our actions, interactions and reactions with every person we encounter each and every day. It means that our words and actions are the words and actions that God would have, if God were in our position each and every moment of every day. In this sense, being holy is being who and what God is in all in all things.
Being set aside for the use by God is the way in which the articles of the temple were holy. Everything in the temple was set aside as holy unto God in that they were not used for common usages but were only for temple use; for use in worship and for the specific purposes in the temple. They were holy, they were set aside for use by God in the temple.
When Paul is calling for the people of the Church of Rome to live lives of living sacrifice, he is saying that they are to reflect both of these usages of the word holy. They were to be set aside for use by God, AND that they were to reflect the very nature of God, they were to reflect the Holiness of God in this world.
In living lives as Living sacrifices one becomes what a person could never be on their own. When a Christian lives a life of holiness then their life is pleasing to God. When one who belongs to God’s Church place themselves on the alter, giving themselves wholly and completely over to God, God transforms forms them into what they could never be on their own.
As humans with the tendency to live in self-serving ways as opposed to the in the loving ways God calls us to live, we are NOT holy; we are NOT pleasing to God. But a life given completely and entirely over to God, sacrificed and gift freely given, then we as Christians become through the power and transformation of God, holy AND pleasing to God.
When we as Christians we live these kinds of lives we are transformed, not conformed. Conformation is a power from the outside changing who you are. When something is conformed is it more like being pressed into a mold, or shaped and crafted by something on the outside. Being conformed is being shaped and formed by the world in which we live. It is easy to allow our environment or something outside of ourselves to determine who we are and what we are becoming.
Transformation is something coming from within changing who you are. Christians are changed by a power that resides within. Christians are changed by a power greater than any power on the outside, changed by the power of Jesus Christ. Changes by the one we have allowed to dwell within us, allowing God to shape us and transform us into the people God created us to be, who we were meant to be in the first place. As Christians we are shaped and formed by the one who dwells within and are not to be conformed by the world that is fallen and given over to destruction.
Once we as followers of Jesus Christ are living sacrifices, being transformed into the holy Godly people we were created to be, Paul give us a warning to not think too highly of ourselves, to use sober judgment and for each of us to work on the faith given to us. This is Paul’s quick way of saying to not be all up in each others’ business, that each of us should not always be looking at those around us and be critical of everyone else thinking our faith and our relationship with God is better, stronger, deeper, more spiritual than so in so’s who sits in that pew on the other side of the sanctuary. Working on the faith walk that God has given to you should be enough of a worry for you, and if you have time to be thinking that you are better than someone else, you are not spending enough time on your own faith.
But even as we are not suppose to be worrying about the other person and how much better we are than them we are to be working together. As believers we are all one body, one Church, all apart of Jesus Christ we are to work together as a living body works together. By giving ourselves as sacrifices we become parts of a unified Body. The Church is the Body of Christ that remains in this world even as he has returned to the Father. We make up the physical presence of Christ in this world. As the Church we are the body of Christ alive and working the will of the Father here.
As different parts of the same body we all have different gifts, different functions. But we are all essential parts of God’s Church and Christ’s body. We are all good at different things and because of that have different functions in the body; feet, walk; hands clap; voices sing, eyes see. We all are different parts fulfilling different functions all working together to make the body work. Paul says the sign of a healthy body is that we are all working together; working to together; unified to do the work and the will of God in this world
Ultimately this is what it means to be living sacrifices to God. Being holy, acceptably, pleasing sacrifices to God means that we are living in community with the Body, the Church of God, living, working, together to do the work that God has called us to do; loving God, loving one another, loving the people in the world around us, striving and working together to bring the light and love of God to those who as of yet do not know what it means to be loved by God, to love God and to love as God loves.
Sometimes we get confused and we think that being a Christian is about just Jesus and me, sometimes we get confused and we think that Holiness is about me and my life alone, but truly living a life that is lived a Christ would life it, living a holy life, a life set apart to God, a life that is lived loving as God would love, is a life that is lived working together in the community of faith, as the Church, as the body, all fulfilling our different roles but working together for the common goal of reaching the world around us with the love of God, so that not only can we be transformed but that they (who ever “they” may be) may also know the love and transformative power of God in their lives. Holiness begins with me, it begins with you, but from there it extends to us, and we and ends with us and we extending God’s holy love to the world around us, to the people I come in contact with each and everyday, to the people you come in contact with each and everyday and by allowing our community and the world around us to come in contact with us in great and small ways through you and me and through what we do together as we are living in community as the body of Christ.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Romans 8:26-39 - God On Our Side
Romans 8:26-39
Thus far Paul has let us know that we can be free in Christ, free from the slavery to sin, free from the inability we have to live the way we were created to live, but instead we are adopted children of God, belonging to God, and belonging to God’s family. We are not just saved from slavery to sin, but we are saved into a family, into a community, a loving caring family in which all of us have the position of privilege. We are not just all in the family, but we are all first born sons, co-heirs with Christ, all receiving the greatest portion, the full inheritance, the best that God has to offer. In this family no one is second, no one gets the cast offs or hand me downs. We are all first, we are all the favorite. We are together, we are united and we all receive all the privileges in God’s family.
The thing about being apart of a family is that we all belong and we all belong together. Being apart of a family is a wonderful thing. First of all it means we are not alone. It also means that we have others to help and support us. (It also means that we have someone to poke us continually until we want to scream and break their neck on long car rides but that is beside the point) Nothing makes my children happier than when we are walking down the street and we all hold each others hands, a string of four people all joined together, for them this is the essence of being family. It is when we are so obviously linked together like this, that they feel that we are truly a family.
As members of the family of God we all belong together. We are joined together and together we are who we truly are. We are children, brothers and sisters all apart of those who belong and to and are joined together with God.
As members of this family we have God as our parent, as our father, working on our behalf, striving on our behalf. God is not just about being up in Heaven being all holy and Godlike, creating the universe, keeping the cosmic laws in place and all that, God is at work on our behalf, on behalf the family of God, the children of God. God saved us not merely from sin, but saved us unto God’s-self, into a body, a community of those that belong to and are apart of the family, we are saved from the loneliness and self destruction of our lives apart from God into God’s family, in to THIS community, we are saved into relationship with God and with each other.
Because God has called unto God’s-self a community a family, God works for that family. Paul begins by explaining to us that although we as the people of God don’t always know what to pray for that because we are apart of this community and the Spirit knows that our deepest desire is truly for what God wants, for God’s greatest desires, that even when we are at a loss, and are not even sure what it means to align our will with the will of God, because lets face it most of the time we don’t know what is God’s best, the Spirit will take the core of our desire which if for God, for God’s best, to be aligned with all that God wants and desires not only for us as individuals, but for us as God’s Church and also for all creation, and the Spirit will speak on our behalf. The Spirit will speak in sighs too deep for words in groans that words cannot express. We are told elsewhere the all creation is groaning for redemption, groaning for all things to be set right. The Spirit joins in that groaning and deep sighing speaking on our behalf for God’s will, for all things to be set right.
The Church may not always know what being set right is, what being the people, the faith community, the body God knows we can be is. The Church may not always know what is God’s best for us. We may not always know exactly what the will of God entails or where it will take us, but even when we don’t know, even when we don’t know what to pray for or how to pray the Spirit of God, knowing that our deepest desire is to be the people of God we are called to be, to be the people of God, God envisions us to be, that our hearts longing is to live, act, move and be who we were created to be, will then pick up where we fail, pick up where our knowledge and our abilities fall short and pray for what we don’t even know how to pray for.
But that is not all there is, (at this point I almost feel like a car salesman) not only are we apart of the family, growing and moving together in relationship not only God but with each other, not only do we all have the rights and privileges of first born sons, all have the place of honor, not only does the Spirit of God step in and express our hearts deepest longing for all that it means to be truly shaped, formed and made over by the will of God but God will also step in and intervene on our behalf. God is working on behalf of this family, on behalf of the Church. God did not call us into this family and ask the children to fend for themselves. We are apart of a loving family with a loving father who works on our behalf, who does not self-servingly strive for merely that which benefit his life and his plans but we have a father who lives and seeks what is good for the family, who works and strives on OUR behalf, working to make all things work together for the good of us all, so that Church, the family of God can be who we are called to be, who God saved us to be.
God called the church into existence. It for the church that Christ died. It was the Church, the family, the children of God whom God envisioned and destined to exist from the beginning. God works and strives for the good of the Kingdom and in Paul that means that God works and strives for the good of all those who are children, for this family God has called into existence for the Church. Let me tell you folks, no matter how bad it looks. No matter how hostile our culture seems to be to the truth of the Gospel, no matter how many poor representations of God and what it means to belong to God prevail in our society, the Church, God’s church will never fail. God is continually at work, for the betterment for the good of those, those that gather and worship, for those who love one another and are marked by the love of the Lord God. No matter what is going on. No matter how bleak the future may look from the limited vantage point we have here, God will not let God’s church fail. God is always working on behalf of the family, for the children of God, for the Church, not just this Church but for THE CHURCH as it exists in all its congregations, bodies and forms all over the world. God is at work, the Church will not fail!
Nothing can stand against God’s Church and ultimately win. As long as we are God’s living, working and striving together to be the people, the Church God is calling us to be, as long as we are children of the most high, then God nothing can work against us will succeed. It is actually not so much that nothing can come against us, because believe me things do. But it is more that it does not matter what comes against us, because God is at work on our behalf, strengthening, teaching and guiding down the paths that she should go. God is at work on behalf of God’s family and God’s children and God will assure that his family will not be destroyed.
This does not mean that things cannot and do not move to work against God’s Church. Because believe me they do. But many of them do not come in the form we expect. The things that come against God’s church tend to not so much be people or outside institutions trying to destroy the church from the outside, but tend to be more subversive than that, the things that destroy churches are things like apathy, despair, despondency, distraction, a general feeling and attitude of hopelessness. These are the things that can threaten to tear a body of believers apart. These are the things that come against The Church. But it does not matter. No matter what comes against The Church, no matter what threatens to dismantle a community of faith God is still there at work. And if we are working together to love God and neighbor, willing to align our actions, our will, our desires with those of God, it is not so much that nothing can come against us, because things will. Things will come against this particular body of believers, but it won’t matter, because nothing can win when we align ourselves with God. God is working with us, for us, on our behalf, so that in truth nothing can succeed should it try to dismantle God’s church, God’s body, God’s community.
Nothing can separate God’s children, God’s beloved, God’s Church from God. We are a family and a family is always a family and like any true family nothing can really dissolve a family. A family can ignore each other, a family can feud, they can fight, they can move to the corners of the earth to get away from each other, but they are still a family, a dysfunctional family but a family none-the-less.
There are four children in the family I grew up in, four sisters, who grew up together. Let me tell you we drove each other crazy, and sometimes still do. We fought, we bickered, we called each other names and there were times in which we wished we could just be rid of each other, but through it all we are still a family. We have all grown up now and have all started our own families. We have all gone our separate ways. The two younger ones have set up house and home with in 10 miles of my parents house in Maryland but us two older sisters have wandered far and wide, my elder sister has live as close to my parents as North Carolina, but now lives in Utah, having lived for nearly a decade in Phoenix, Arizona in between. After having graduating from ENC I have lived in Kansas City, in a small town outside of Wichita, KS and now here. But no matter how far apart we live, or how close, we are all still a family. And nothing or nobody can take that from us.
With God is it is similar, but as with all things when it comes to God, so much better. Nothing can remove us from God’s family. As the family of God, as the body of believers, the community of faith, things may be difficult, we may become distressed by circumstances in the world around us, the world may rise up against us, we may loose everything that we hold valuable, we may be in danger, or threatened with death, there may be wars waged all around us, we may be separated by height or depth or distance, but none of these things can separate us from God. This is a family that can not be apart due to distance, this is not a family that can be torn apart by the actions of anyone from the outside. God’s family is united, joined together, sharing life, living in relationship with God and with each other. God is on our side, because we are united with God and with one another. WE are not called to be united with God and remain alone, it is not Jesus and me all the way to Heaven, we are each called out of our lives of sin and loneliness, out of being orphaned in our distorted, shadowy lives lived apart from God, love and community and we are saved into a family, saved into relationship, saved to be together. Part of living the way we were created to live, being who we are created to be is living in holy relationship, not just holy relationship with God (which is important) in relationship with one another, in relationship with the Body, with a community of faith, we were called to BE the CHURCH, to be God’s children together, no longer orphaned in our sin but united as a family.
The fact of the matter is that not only does God call each and everyone of us to be children of God, to love God and to love others, but we are called not only into relationship with the most holy God of the universe, but we are called to be in relationship with one another. We are called to be the Church working together, striving together, loving God together and loving this world, this city, this neighborhood together.
The truth of the matter is that God called US, The Cambridge Church of the Nazarene into existence and God called us to living in holy community with one another, living and loving and being the people of God, the children of God, the Church together, in this place, at this time. We are God’s church, we are God’s people. But it is more than that, God did not call us and leave us, God did not call us and the expect us to do this on our own, God called us and told us that as long as we are striving for God’s best, seeking the will of God in all things, even when we are uncertain, even when we do not know what it is God is calling us to, or who it is we need to be, as long as we are aligning our will with God’s and truly desire God’s desires for us as a community, then the Spirit of God will speak on our behalf, praying the things, that we don’t even know how to pray. And God, God, is working and striving on our behalf, and will not allow any force to dismantle the Church, the family God has called into existence. If we are truly being the Church God is calling us to be, allowing God to call us into existence, allowing God to make us the family that God envisions us to be, doing the work and the ministry God has called us to, God will not allow the distance between us, the struggles, the quarrels, the differing opinions we have, our own sense of despondency or despair, to tear us apart. We are united as a family we are God’s family and God will work to draw us together and move the work and ministry God has called us to forward. The future we have here in this place is one of unity and purpose, we merely need to join with God and be the people of God the children of God, the united family, God is calling us to be, together.
Thus far Paul has let us know that we can be free in Christ, free from the slavery to sin, free from the inability we have to live the way we were created to live, but instead we are adopted children of God, belonging to God, and belonging to God’s family. We are not just saved from slavery to sin, but we are saved into a family, into a community, a loving caring family in which all of us have the position of privilege. We are not just all in the family, but we are all first born sons, co-heirs with Christ, all receiving the greatest portion, the full inheritance, the best that God has to offer. In this family no one is second, no one gets the cast offs or hand me downs. We are all first, we are all the favorite. We are together, we are united and we all receive all the privileges in God’s family.
The thing about being apart of a family is that we all belong and we all belong together. Being apart of a family is a wonderful thing. First of all it means we are not alone. It also means that we have others to help and support us. (It also means that we have someone to poke us continually until we want to scream and break their neck on long car rides but that is beside the point) Nothing makes my children happier than when we are walking down the street and we all hold each others hands, a string of four people all joined together, for them this is the essence of being family. It is when we are so obviously linked together like this, that they feel that we are truly a family.
As members of the family of God we all belong together. We are joined together and together we are who we truly are. We are children, brothers and sisters all apart of those who belong and to and are joined together with God.
As members of this family we have God as our parent, as our father, working on our behalf, striving on our behalf. God is not just about being up in Heaven being all holy and Godlike, creating the universe, keeping the cosmic laws in place and all that, God is at work on our behalf, on behalf the family of God, the children of God. God saved us not merely from sin, but saved us unto God’s-self, into a body, a community of those that belong to and are apart of the family, we are saved from the loneliness and self destruction of our lives apart from God into God’s family, in to THIS community, we are saved into relationship with God and with each other.
Because God has called unto God’s-self a community a family, God works for that family. Paul begins by explaining to us that although we as the people of God don’t always know what to pray for that because we are apart of this community and the Spirit knows that our deepest desire is truly for what God wants, for God’s greatest desires, that even when we are at a loss, and are not even sure what it means to align our will with the will of God, because lets face it most of the time we don’t know what is God’s best, the Spirit will take the core of our desire which if for God, for God’s best, to be aligned with all that God wants and desires not only for us as individuals, but for us as God’s Church and also for all creation, and the Spirit will speak on our behalf. The Spirit will speak in sighs too deep for words in groans that words cannot express. We are told elsewhere the all creation is groaning for redemption, groaning for all things to be set right. The Spirit joins in that groaning and deep sighing speaking on our behalf for God’s will, for all things to be set right.
The Church may not always know what being set right is, what being the people, the faith community, the body God knows we can be is. The Church may not always know what is God’s best for us. We may not always know exactly what the will of God entails or where it will take us, but even when we don’t know, even when we don’t know what to pray for or how to pray the Spirit of God, knowing that our deepest desire is to be the people of God we are called to be, to be the people of God, God envisions us to be, that our hearts longing is to live, act, move and be who we were created to be, will then pick up where we fail, pick up where our knowledge and our abilities fall short and pray for what we don’t even know how to pray for.
But that is not all there is, (at this point I almost feel like a car salesman) not only are we apart of the family, growing and moving together in relationship not only God but with each other, not only do we all have the rights and privileges of first born sons, all have the place of honor, not only does the Spirit of God step in and express our hearts deepest longing for all that it means to be truly shaped, formed and made over by the will of God but God will also step in and intervene on our behalf. God is working on behalf of this family, on behalf of the Church. God did not call us into this family and ask the children to fend for themselves. We are apart of a loving family with a loving father who works on our behalf, who does not self-servingly strive for merely that which benefit his life and his plans but we have a father who lives and seeks what is good for the family, who works and strives on OUR behalf, working to make all things work together for the good of us all, so that Church, the family of God can be who we are called to be, who God saved us to be.
God called the church into existence. It for the church that Christ died. It was the Church, the family, the children of God whom God envisioned and destined to exist from the beginning. God works and strives for the good of the Kingdom and in Paul that means that God works and strives for the good of all those who are children, for this family God has called into existence for the Church. Let me tell you folks, no matter how bad it looks. No matter how hostile our culture seems to be to the truth of the Gospel, no matter how many poor representations of God and what it means to belong to God prevail in our society, the Church, God’s church will never fail. God is continually at work, for the betterment for the good of those, those that gather and worship, for those who love one another and are marked by the love of the Lord God. No matter what is going on. No matter how bleak the future may look from the limited vantage point we have here, God will not let God’s church fail. God is always working on behalf of the family, for the children of God, for the Church, not just this Church but for THE CHURCH as it exists in all its congregations, bodies and forms all over the world. God is at work, the Church will not fail!
Nothing can stand against God’s Church and ultimately win. As long as we are God’s living, working and striving together to be the people, the Church God is calling us to be, as long as we are children of the most high, then God nothing can work against us will succeed. It is actually not so much that nothing can come against us, because believe me things do. But it is more that it does not matter what comes against us, because God is at work on our behalf, strengthening, teaching and guiding down the paths that she should go. God is at work on behalf of God’s family and God’s children and God will assure that his family will not be destroyed.
This does not mean that things cannot and do not move to work against God’s Church. Because believe me they do. But many of them do not come in the form we expect. The things that come against God’s church tend to not so much be people or outside institutions trying to destroy the church from the outside, but tend to be more subversive than that, the things that destroy churches are things like apathy, despair, despondency, distraction, a general feeling and attitude of hopelessness. These are the things that can threaten to tear a body of believers apart. These are the things that come against The Church. But it does not matter. No matter what comes against The Church, no matter what threatens to dismantle a community of faith God is still there at work. And if we are working together to love God and neighbor, willing to align our actions, our will, our desires with those of God, it is not so much that nothing can come against us, because things will. Things will come against this particular body of believers, but it won’t matter, because nothing can win when we align ourselves with God. God is working with us, for us, on our behalf, so that in truth nothing can succeed should it try to dismantle God’s church, God’s body, God’s community.
Nothing can separate God’s children, God’s beloved, God’s Church from God. We are a family and a family is always a family and like any true family nothing can really dissolve a family. A family can ignore each other, a family can feud, they can fight, they can move to the corners of the earth to get away from each other, but they are still a family, a dysfunctional family but a family none-the-less.
There are four children in the family I grew up in, four sisters, who grew up together. Let me tell you we drove each other crazy, and sometimes still do. We fought, we bickered, we called each other names and there were times in which we wished we could just be rid of each other, but through it all we are still a family. We have all grown up now and have all started our own families. We have all gone our separate ways. The two younger ones have set up house and home with in 10 miles of my parents house in Maryland but us two older sisters have wandered far and wide, my elder sister has live as close to my parents as North Carolina, but now lives in Utah, having lived for nearly a decade in Phoenix, Arizona in between. After having graduating from ENC I have lived in Kansas City, in a small town outside of Wichita, KS and now here. But no matter how far apart we live, or how close, we are all still a family. And nothing or nobody can take that from us.
With God is it is similar, but as with all things when it comes to God, so much better. Nothing can remove us from God’s family. As the family of God, as the body of believers, the community of faith, things may be difficult, we may become distressed by circumstances in the world around us, the world may rise up against us, we may loose everything that we hold valuable, we may be in danger, or threatened with death, there may be wars waged all around us, we may be separated by height or depth or distance, but none of these things can separate us from God. This is a family that can not be apart due to distance, this is not a family that can be torn apart by the actions of anyone from the outside. God’s family is united, joined together, sharing life, living in relationship with God and with each other. God is on our side, because we are united with God and with one another. WE are not called to be united with God and remain alone, it is not Jesus and me all the way to Heaven, we are each called out of our lives of sin and loneliness, out of being orphaned in our distorted, shadowy lives lived apart from God, love and community and we are saved into a family, saved into relationship, saved to be together. Part of living the way we were created to live, being who we are created to be is living in holy relationship, not just holy relationship with God (which is important) in relationship with one another, in relationship with the Body, with a community of faith, we were called to BE the CHURCH, to be God’s children together, no longer orphaned in our sin but united as a family.
The fact of the matter is that not only does God call each and everyone of us to be children of God, to love God and to love others, but we are called not only into relationship with the most holy God of the universe, but we are called to be in relationship with one another. We are called to be the Church working together, striving together, loving God together and loving this world, this city, this neighborhood together.
The truth of the matter is that God called US, The Cambridge Church of the Nazarene into existence and God called us to living in holy community with one another, living and loving and being the people of God, the children of God, the Church together, in this place, at this time. We are God’s church, we are God’s people. But it is more than that, God did not call us and leave us, God did not call us and the expect us to do this on our own, God called us and told us that as long as we are striving for God’s best, seeking the will of God in all things, even when we are uncertain, even when we do not know what it is God is calling us to, or who it is we need to be, as long as we are aligning our will with God’s and truly desire God’s desires for us as a community, then the Spirit of God will speak on our behalf, praying the things, that we don’t even know how to pray. And God, God, is working and striving on our behalf, and will not allow any force to dismantle the Church, the family God has called into existence. If we are truly being the Church God is calling us to be, allowing God to call us into existence, allowing God to make us the family that God envisions us to be, doing the work and the ministry God has called us to, God will not allow the distance between us, the struggles, the quarrels, the differing opinions we have, our own sense of despondency or despair, to tear us apart. We are united as a family we are God’s family and God will work to draw us together and move the work and ministry God has called us to forward. The future we have here in this place is one of unity and purpose, we merely need to join with God and be the people of God the children of God, the united family, God is calling us to be, together.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)