Circle of Love

Jesus says “Ask for anything, I will do it.” (John 14:14)  Really?  For a long time this promise seemed impossible to me; Jesus couldn’t have meant it.  What I didn’t understand was that we have been “transferred from darkness into the kingdom of the beloved son.” (Col. 1:13)  You see, we have become like Abraham, like Isaac, like David and even like Jesus.  Let me explain:  Abraham was drawn into God’s inner circle, deciding with Him, the course of history. (Gen. 18:19)  Abraham was more than God’s servant, Abraham is God’s friend.  And so it is with us,  Jesus says, “no more will I call you servants but friends.” (John 15:15)  We can ask Jesus anything because we are his friends.  Further, we have become like Isaac.  Abraham gave Isaac “all that he had.”  Isaac was Abraham’s darling son whom he loved more than life.  In the same way, all that God has is for us; we have received a spirit of Sonship,”by whom we cry, Abba! Father.”  We ask the Lord for anything and everything because everything is for us.  But there is even more to the story.  In 2 Samuel 7, King David wants to build God a house, but Lord cannot allow this, it is for Him to take care of David not the other way around.  But the Lord gives David the greatest consolation prize ever, He says, “I will build you a house.”  And this house will be a forever house, “I will raise up your seed and establish his kingdom forever…and if he commits iniquity I will chasten him but I will not take away my love from him, your house and your kingdom will be made sure forever before me.”  Now, an objection might be raised here, one might ask, “surely this forever house and this love is for Jesus and not for me?”  Yes, it is for Jesus but as the prophet Isaiah saw it is also for us.  The Lord says in Isaiah 55:3, “I will give you (plural!) the love, the faithful love of David.”  This is poetry but what it means is that everything that the Lord gives to his Son, his David messiah, is for us too, for “ the many” (53:11) as they are drawn one by one into the kingdom.  Moreover, Jesus is without sin, but all too often we fall short.  How many times has God renewed us in his love?  This is nothing less than  the promise of 2 Samuel 7 confirmed in our lives. One more thing: In 2 Samuel 7 after David hears God’s truly incredible promise, David actually prays for the promise!  He explains why, “God you have revealed that my throne will be forever, therefore I take courage and I have pray that this would be so.” This is the final reason why we ask anything of Jesus, because we have been given everything! This is not to say that our lives will be without suffering, on the contrary, Paul says that he and the other apostles are “like sheep for the slaughter” and yet, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come nor powers nor high nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8)

The Patience of God

In Isaiah, also sometimes called the "book of consolation," we read, "Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you." (Isaiah 30)  What is God waiting for?  Why does he wait?  We might initially think that God waits for us.  Maybe he's waiting for us to do something, show some sign of goodness however small so that he can, in turn, be gracious.   The chapter however, and indeed, the entire book of Isaiah, militates against any such conclusion.  In Isaiah, people are not capable of goodness, even their righteous deeds are "filthy rags"(64:6) and "all we like sheep have gone astray." (53:6)  No, the Lord isn't waiting for us to do something, he is waiting because he is patient and has something in mind for us so wonderful that we cannot even imagine it. (I Cor. 2:9)  He is waiting for the right time to show us his grace.  Think of Abraham and Sarah.  Certainly God wanted to give them a child in their youth. Had he, however, given Abraham and Sarah a child at the normal time, they would have rejoiced but chalked up the gift of baby Isaac to normal life.  God did not give Abraham and Sarah a baby in their twenties or their thirties, instead he waited until Abraham was ninety-nine years old and Sarah was ninety before he gave them Isaac.  He "waited to be gracious to them."  Only in this way could he give them not only a little baby to love but also the most precious gift of all, to know God for whom nothing is too difficult. (Gen. 6) The Lord God is always with us but sometimes he waits in faith and patience for the right time to show us his grace. And as if that were not enough good news, he give us this faith and patience too.(Isaiah 55:3)  But there is even more, so often the faith and patience that he gives us is not for ourselves but for someone else.  In the church I have found that time and time again it is someone else's faith and patience that sustains me in the trials of life. How many times has someone, in effect, laid a comforting hand on my shoulder saying, "steady on, your prayers will be answered, steady on, hold fast." We are supported and saved by other peoples' faith and patience and then we hope to return the favor. This is why God puts us in his assembly, so that you can save me and I can save you right back. (Romans 1, I Chron. 19:12) 

It's Not A "Belief System"

I was listening to Krista Tippet’s show on the radio tonight and she had as her guest, Craig Minowa, frontman for the band, Cloud Cult.  I was struck by a couple of things in the interview. First off, he referred twice to his mother’s Lutheranism, as her “belief system.” Perhaps he didn't mean to disparage her; in other parts of the interview it sounded like he really loved her.  However, the phrase “belief system” has nothing to do with what happens in church on Sunday.

Let me explain: When God brought Israel out of Egypt it had nothing to do with a belief system. Rather, it was God’s faithfulness that did it, as Hebrews tells us.  It was God alone that had faith, even after forty years in the wilderness the Israelites were “sons in whom there is no faith.”  But what God did then has no comparison to what God has done for Jews and Gentiles in Jesus.  It's on the same lines to be sure, but it was something even greater than God’s faithfulness (although he is always that). This time, God the Father “enfaithed” his son, and we are justified by that “enfaithment” or establishment.  This is the meaning of what it says in Romans 3, that we are justified by the faith of Jesus.  Craig Minowa’s mother doesn't have a “belief system,” rather she's been created in Christ Jesus to do good things that God prepared in advance for her to do.  We are the branches and Lord Jesus is the vine. One more thing, on the program Craig Minowa said that all human beings are “gorgeous.”  He said (to paraphrase) if you could just free people from their shells, everyone would see that everyone is “gorgeous.”  He's  right on that score.  We all are gorgeous.  God said so. He looked at all creation and saw that it was "very beautiful."    But God's beautiful creatures fall into abysmal sin; “all we like sheep have gone astray,” though we are still and always, “very beautiful.”  The beauty, however, makes it all the more terrible that we can do the things that we do, “O how the mighty have fallen.”  God didn't give up on us though, rather, he gives his all, "once for all" sending his only begotten son into the world because he loved murderers, and betrayers, and cowards like us.  He had promised many years before, “I will give you (plural) the faithful pities of David."  This is the poetry of Isaiah but it means that the same faith and love that raised Jesus from the dead and gave him the victory on the cross would be given to us.   Minowa’s Mom and all those who have been placed in communion to “mutually encourage one another” on Sunday morning are there because of the power of faith but it’s not their own faith. Sunday in church is all about grace and where that grace will stop nobody knows, all we know is that the dominoes are falling and nothing and no one can stop the righteousness of God; he makes right what is wrong.

Fire Upon The Earth

In Luke chapter 12, Jesus says that he has come to “cast fire upon the earth, and would that it were already kindled.”  Our first reaction? “Whoa!  That sounds scary!”  But something surprising is going on.   The fire from heaven is none other than the cross. Jesus is speaking not about the wrath of God but about God’s love. Remember the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal found in 1 Kings 18:37ff.  There Elijah suggests a contest between God and Baal.    He says to the prophets, “You call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord; and the God who answers by fire, he is Lord.”  Baal’s prophets go first; all morning long they are crying out.  No dice.  Elijah then prepares Israel’s altar and burnt offering and prays, “O Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God...that this people may know that thou art God and that thou hast turned back their hearts back.” (emphasis added)  The fire, in other words, is not only so they might know who the Lord is, that he still loves them, that he still is their savior, and that they still belong to him, it also a sign, a demonstration, from heaven that God has already forgiven them, and he has already come in and healed their hearts, taking away the sins that kept them from the Lord. When we see the cross, that is what we see. Let's go back to Elijah's story.  “Then, the fire of the Lord fell” and it not only consumed the burnt offering, but the altar, and not only the altar, but the water in the surrounding trench. Fire from heaven devoured the offering, the wood, the stones, the dust, it even licked up all the water that was in the trench!  When the people see this they fall on their faces and say, “YHWH, he is God, YHWH, he is God!”   The cross is like this. First, it shows who the Lord is. Other “gods” demand sacrifices, but the Lord of Israel gives the sacrifice. Second, it is the demonstration of how God has already forgiven us.  It is a demonstration of how God has already come in and healed us, “turned back our hearts.” (Romans 5:25b) As it says in Isaiah 40, “Comfort, comfort my people, speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended and that her iniquity is pardoned.  The battle is over and YHWH has won.  This is why Jesus says just a verse later in Luke chapter 12 that he is “constrained” until the time of the fire, the time of his “baptism” comes.  Like Joseph in Genesis (Genesis 43 &45), he longs to help us, and make us right and heal us but he restrains himself for the right time (Romans 5:6). And when that right time comes he says to us like Joseph did to his brothers, “you meant it for evil” but God meant my cross “for good.” (Genesis 50:20) We Jews and Gentiles, we killed our Lord.  He died because of our iniquities but God meant it for our good, to bless us, yes, to bless the killers, killers like you and me, making our stone hearts into a real ones, ones like God’s own. 

The Prayer of Faith

In James 5:15, James speaks to the elders of the church.  They should gather around the sick and “anoint that one with oil in the name of the Lord and the prayer of faith will save the sick man and the Lord will raise him up.”  In our Presbyterian denomination, the elders of the various churches do this. Often there has been healing.  What about those times, though, where healing has not come?  When this happens we tend to assume there was something wrong with us or our prayer.  This assumption is wrong.    First, remember the Syro-Phoenician woman to whom God said “no.” (Mark 7:24-30) What did she do then?  She pressed on.  Her patience, her perseverance, this was her faith.  Consider a second case, without a doubt Jesus is faithful and yet remember how even he had to persevere to heal the blind man. (Mark 8:22)  

The question might arise, “why must we sometimes persevere in prayer?”  The answer comes when we recall how God trains his people up.  Look at Judges 3:2, “When Israel came into the promised land, God left certain enemies in the land in order to teach the people to war, to train them up,” that is, to teach them to fight the good fight, to teach them to be patient and to fight despair.  The word “faith” can also mean our “establishment” from God. God may be establishing us by calling us to patience.  We may be showing “faith” or “establishment” through patience and perseverance.  Finally though, let’s cast a glance at the larger picture: Certainly faith raises people up from sickness and even from the grave. (Acts 13:34b-35)  This faith however is not necessarily our own!  God is faithful even when we are not. (2 Tim. 2:13) It was HIS faith that raised Jesus up from the grave.  Moreover, it was (to coin a word) Jesus’ “enfaithment” by his Father that “justifies many.”  Romans 3:22, Isaiah 53:11)  We see then that whichever way you look at it, faith is powerful; faith is healing.  Faith makes the dead live. And one last thing, remember that when we fail, his glory shines all the brighter. Think of Peter sinking beneath the waves-- but what did the Lord do?  “Immediately he reached out his hand” (Mt. 14:31) and saved Peter.  James commands the elders of the church to gather round the sick to anoint with oil in the name of the Lord and reminds them that the prayer of faith will save.  The Lord saves but he shares his power to save with us; all that he has he gives to us because he love us.  He has promised to do so (Isaiah 55:3) and he keeps his promises, not a word of his, falls to the ground empty. (55:11)  We are granted to work beside him in the vineyard, for “we were created in Christ Jesus to do good things that God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

The Don

In my churches, as we go chapter by chapter through the Old and New Testaments, we recently read Luke, chapter four.  There we see that those possessed by demons are not exactly welcoming to Jesus; they recoil from him, “Ah, what have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”( 34a)  This rejection, however, is nothing new, and is certainly not confined to demoniacs.  Jesus is not asked into most of the regions where he teaches and heals.  Jerusalem is especially hostile to Jesus.  Yet, Jesus goes to places where he is not asked. He saves and heals those who never asked him to come into their lives.  As God puts it in Isaiah, “I was found by those who did not seek me.” How can he do this?  The answer is simple.  Jesus goes to those places and people that reject him because those places and those people belong to him. They are his.  Through him all things were created, as the letter to the Ephesians reminds us. Do you remember how Jesus calls upon the Father in the garden of Gethsemane?  In the original language, it’s plain as day; Jesus calls his Father, “O Despot.”  The word means one of power, a “Strong Arm” as we might put it colloquially.  Now, granted, this “Despot,” this “Strong Arm,” is not the one of our imaginations.  God is a perfect gentleman, the Lord God has more compassion and faith in him than we could possibly imagine.  The Lord weeps over our violence and wickedness both in the Old and New Testaments.  There are vast differences between our Lord and even the great Don Corleone of Mario Puzo’s novel, “The Godfather.”  Let us not forget, however, that God is, in fact, the Don. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel is the one and only “Don”; Lord of not just some segments of New Jersey and Illinois, but Lord of all creation.  We belong to him, in life and in death, we and all creation are his.  He goes where he wants because it is all his.

Jesus Didn't Go It Alone!

God grieves.  We see it in Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Now, this is not to say that the cross is not the joy of the Lord, his good pleasure.  Of course it is.  Were we ever to come to God with the lament, “Oh, Lord we were such trouble to you.  You had to give up to death your only begotten son on the cross in order to take away our sin.”  He would reply, “My beloved son, it was my pleasure!” (Isaiah 53:10)  Jesus too is happy to suffer for our sakes, “he shall be satisfied by his knowledge” (vs. 11). Yet, God grieves, not just in the Garden of Gethsemane but in various places throughout the Bible.  In Jeremiah 9:10 for instance, the Lord says, “I will weep and wail for the mountains...desolate and untraveled..the birds of the air have fled and the animals have gone.” Yes, God weeps and wails! It was noticed many years ago by a theologian that at the Nuremberg trials, the Nazi leaders were stoic as they heard their sentences; contrast this with the Lord Jesus who was “deeply distressed, unto death.” (Mark 14:34) The question becomes, Who shall we learn from and emulate? Goering and Rosenberg? Or Jesus?  Are we quite sure that keeping a “stiff upper lip” is the thing to do?  Do we want to be like the Nazi leaders or like our Father in heaven? 

Sometimes too when we are suffering, we believe ourselves to be all alone.  We are startled by the depth of our grief and begin to think that suffering like ours must be rare or even unique; we fall into despair believing ourselves to be set apart.  The Bible corrects this terrible error. In Gethsemane we see that extreme suffering, even to the point of death is part of the human condition, because THE human, Jesus suffers so deeply.  What you are going through right now is part of the human condition.

Notice with me one thing more about Gethsemane. Jesus calls for his disciples to gather round him.  In other words, Jesus reaches out for help.  So often, we want to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.  “I ought to be able to handle this myself.”  Here’s my reply, “Who says?”  Not the Bible, not the example of Jesus!  We were created by the Lord, in order to be there for one another.  At Gethsemane, it’s true, Jesus’ disciples failed him.  Sometimes some of our friends may fail us, perhaps by being distracted or by saying the wrong thing.  Nevertheless, Jesus was not alone.  He was saved in the garden. (Hebrews 5:7) He most certainly did not “pull himself up by his own bootstraps!” Preposterous!  Because there was one friend who never deserted him--his heavenly Father.  The idea that we should “go it alone” is a lie.  Never be afraid to grieve, to weep, to wail and never hesitate to reach out for help, that is what your neighbors and friends, and pastors and acquaintances are there for!  And know, that even if all these fail you, you have one friend who will never forsake you; your heavenly Father will lift you up, as on eagle’s wings.  "And if it delay, wait for it!" (Habakkuk 2:4)

Our Friend, The Holy Spirit

“May the grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”  This is the blessing that we often hear at the close of worship service. We can easily understand the first two parts.  The “grace of Jesus” is the grace that the Lord Jesus showers upon us (“he loved his own and he loved them to the end” --John 13), it is also the grace his Father lavishes upon him, Jesus, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”
In the same way, the phrase the “love of God” is straightforward.  Both the Old and New Testaments are filled with news of the love of God, “you are honored and precious in my sight,” God says, “and I love you, I give man in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.” (Isaiah 43)
What, however, is the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit?”  I learn that the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit” could be said to be the true friendship and friendliness of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we forget what a friend the Holy Spirit really is.  He is with us all the way.  His spirit is with our spirit, right alongside us. (Romans 8:16) He is there with us when all have forgotten and abandoned us.  He lifts us up from the deepest pit and revives us again. (8:10-11)  He intercedes for us with “sighs too deep for words.”  The Spirit makes common cause with us.  So you see, when the blessing is given that the people may have the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit,” we are being blessed so that we too might have this same friendship and common cause with one another.  Many years ago I read of a church where many people had debts on their credit cards.  It was a terrible problem.  But then one day, the minister realized that something wonderful could be done.  A big glass jar was placed on the communion table.  One family was chosen by lot to come and put their credit card in the glass jar.  Then when the offering time came around, the people came forward and put money in the bowl, as much as they could.  Every Sunday they did that, until there was enough money to pay off the family’s entire debt.  Then it all started all over again with another family chosen at random; and one wonderful Sunday, the entire congregation was free from debt.  Sometimes we forget that love and friendship in the Bible is not only the feeling we have in our hearts; it is action too. The people in that church made true common cause with one another, opening their wallets and sharing what they had.  Sometimes where we spend money shows where our hearts really are.  The heart of the Holy Spirit is with us all the way.  He is with us even when we make bed in Sheol (Psalm 139). He raises us up on eagle’s wings.  He never fails or forsakes us.  But it doesn’t end there.  Just as the Holy Spirit is our friend, we are empowered by the Lord to be friends with one another.

The Doctor

In the Presbyterian denomination we have two disciplines for reading scripture.  The first, “lectio divina” as we call it, is probably the most familiar to people.  Readings are assigned based on the church year.  Our second discipline is “lectio continua” or “continuous reading.”  Continuous reading means exactly that, reading chapter by chapter through the Old and New Testaments.  In our congregations at Ellsworth and Hager City we have progressed from Genesis to First Chronicles in the Old Testament and have gone once through the entire New Testament. We started over in Matthew and are now reading Mark.  I have a noticed many things as the Bible is read aloud in the Sunday assembly that I never could have learned from private study; one recent and simple discovery is that Jesus really is the “Great Physician.”  He is a doctor; he looks at people intently, he listens to them, he questions them, he touches the ear that is deaf, the eyes that cannot see.  Recently I went to my doctor because of a problem (it turned out that I had sprained my big toe!) but sadly, my doctor, though he tried his best, was not able to question me, to listen me, to look at me.  As I sat there explaining my symptoms, he had to type into a computer, noting down the things I said on some kind of form.  I could tell that he would much rather not have had this chore to do.  Later I happened to look at my record and noticed that he had gotten a lot wrong.  He desperately needed a secretary!  Even worse, he seemed to be under a time constraint.  He wanted to understand my trouble but he also seemed worried about the time that was passing.  In the end he did not dare to make a diagnosis but sent me to a specialist.  Two specialists and a physical therapist later, I found out what the problem was.  It was the physical therapist that finally got it right.  Not surprisingly she was the only one to really look at my foot, the only one to manipulate the muscles, listen to my symptoms and thoroughly question me.  She reaped the reward that comes from being a doctor like Jesus; she discovered the problem and was able to set me on a course to healing.  I tell this story because it is so sad and frightening.  My grandparents were both doctors and they wanted to help people.  They would have been devastated by limitations that are imposed in our day on the medical community.  There is too big a difference between our doctors and the Great Doctor, the Lord Jesus. This leads me to a question: Have we as a society done right by our doctors and nurses?  Have we created a space where they can be free to take to time, to look, listen, touch, question?  I make bold to say, I do not think so. How can we fix this problem?  I leave this question open, because, frankly I do not know if we as a society have the will to make things better for our doctors and our nurses. However, I do know this, Jesus was and is and will be the Great Physician, he will continue to look at each one of us, to touch us, with compassion, with open ears, sharp questioning.   As the Bible says, even when we are faithless, God is faithful for he cannot deny himself. Let’s pray that we can do better by one another and by our doctors, nurses and aides and that one day they can be free to be instruments of the Lord’s peace that they were meant to be.

You Were There

Did you know that you were at the Red Sea?  Did you know that you were freed from slavery in Egypt?  Did you know that you stood at the mountain and heard the voice of God giving you the words of the law, the law of freedom?  If your eyebrows are raised quizzically right now as you read this, I don’t blame you.  “Pastor Amy,” you might reply, “I certainly remember going to Sweden two summers ago but I don’t remember going anywhere in the Middle East!”  And yet, consider the Jewish feast of Passover.  At that celebration those who are gathered speak of how “God took us from the iron furnace of Egypt,” how “He took us through the Red Sea on dry ground.”  Moreover at Passover one can say to the Lord God, “You saved me at the Red Sea and gave me the law to free me from sin and death at the mountain.”  Are the Jewish people who say such things at the Passover simply dreaming?  On the contrary.  They were most certainly there at the Red Sea and at the mountain.  Why?  Because God has said so.  In Deuteronomy, God speaks to the children of the children of Israel, many of whom were not even born at the time that God said to Pharaoh, “let my people go,”  but nevertheless God says to them, “not to your fathers but to you I gave my covenant, it was to you that I spoke with, face to face, at the mountain, to you.” (see Deut. 5) This is why each generation says to the Lord, “You took me out of the iron furnace of Egypt and set me free.”  At this point you might say, “Pastor Amy, that is just for the Jews, not for me, a Gentile believer.”  Here again I would reply to you, “On the contrary.”  The apostle Paul tells us that we Gentiles have been grafted into the olive tree of Israel.  We partake in all its riches. (Romans 11:17f) In Jesus, we Gentiles can now say with the Jewish people, “I was there.”  With the Jewish people, we Gentiles can now say, “the Lord spoke with us, face to face, at the mountain.”  We of the nations thank God that he rescued us too from Egypt and gave us too the law of freedom and life at the mountain and put us too into his congregation formed there in the wilderness, but even more we Jews and Gentile believers thank God for the even greater rescue that he gave each of us at Calvary.  Can we even imagine a rescue, a deliverance that could top the Red Sea?  Yet, there is one, the rescue at Calvary, the “Exodus at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31) that puts the Exodus out of Egypt in the shade; there at Calvary God freed us not from the Egyptians but from the even greater foes of sin and death.  It was there at Calvary that God raised us up, not from out of slavery, but from out of sin and death, transferring us to the kingdom of his beloved son, waking us up from the dead, and giving us the new covenant, written in our hearts, so that without being under the law of Moses, or being obliged to obey even one of its commands, we fulfill it, for God not only supports us and carries all the way, at Calvary, he gives us hearts like his, hearts of faith and love. (Isaiah 55:3)

Good Advice

      Recently my friend Mary told me about some good advice she had received from a fellow Presbyterian.  As Mary was growing up sometimes she did not have enough to eat; like many families, Mary’s family faced challenges.  Mary’s background did not embitter her.  On the contrary, she learned about how God provides even through the rough times, especially in the rough times.  Moreover when neighbors came to the door with food, she and her family learned first hand about God’s angels, people who became instruments of his peace.  Today Mary and her husband and children have plenty of food.  But often as she is driving home from shopping for the week, she looks back and sees her bags of groceries and feels guilty.  She confided in a fellow church member and this is what he said.  He knew of course that Mary and her family gave to others and to the church generously and many times even sacrificially but his advice was about what NOT to do.  He said, “don’t try to justify yourself.”  “What do you mean?” Mary asked. He answered, “Don’t say to yourself something like, “Well, I worked hard for my money, so I shouldn’t feel bad. Don’t say, ‘I deserve this.‘  Don’t justify yourself.  Instead, just remember that Jesus justifies.  We are clothed in his righteousness alone.”
     I was glad my friend shared this story with me the other day.  It reminded me of what we learn in First Corinthians, chapter one: “ God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise.  God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.  And the base things of the world and the things which are despised...and the things that are nothing, to bring to nothing the things that are.”  God did not choose me because I was wise, he chose me because I am foolish.  God did not choose me and you because we were strong, he chose us because we are weak. When we go out into the wide world we mentally arm ourselves, “gotta be strong,” we say to ourselves, “gotta be smart.”  But in truth our most valuable and most sure possession is not our street smarts or our strength, the possession that we have that is most sure, is the Lord’s wisdom and his strength.  That’s what we can count on.  We stand before the throne today dressed in his righteousness, his strength, his wisdom.  Beautiful and lasting garments indeed, our boast is in him alone.

Why Cry?

We read in John chapter 20,“Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying.  As she wept she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.  They asked her, Woman, why are you crying?” Later, Jesus will ask the same question again. Let’s look more closely at this.  When go back to the original language of this passage, we see that, really, the angels and Jesus are asking something much less solemn sounding than, “Woman, why are you weeping?”  Actually, they say, “Woman, why weep?”  Repeat this question with a Brooklyn or Yiddish accent and you get an even stronger hint that something happy is going on here!
    There is a story in Nehemiah 8 that helps us to understand this joy.  A remnant of the people of Israel have come back to Jerusalem and are rebuilding the city and the temple.   One day they assemble as a congregation at the entrance to the city.  The Bible is read and explained to them; when they hear it they begin to weep.  Why are they weeping? They are thinking of all the trouble they had caused for God; they had been so disobedient and awful. God had had to slave in their sins like a janitor cleaning up muck in a church basement. So the people were weeping but Nehemiah and the priests say, “Don’t weep.” In fact, they say, “go and get some good stuff to eat and drink and if there is a neighbor that doesn’t have good food on hand, send some of yours to their house!”  Nehemiah explains further, he says, “the joy of the Lord will be your strength.” The people had been telling themselves, “We’ve been such a burden to God” but God replies, “No, trouble at all!”  “My pleasure!”   That’s the secret here and at the tomb. Mary is weeping, but Jesus and the angels say, “Why cry?”  In effect, God says to Mary and to us, “It was no trouble at all; it was my pleasure!”  It was his joy to give his only begotten son, the son whom he loved, even to die on a cross and be put in a tomb and be raised on the third day--that we might be freed from our sins and live and have a living savior who will never fail or forsake us.  As the Bible tells us, “the people shall live in Zion and you shall cry no more.” (Isaiah 30) God will wipe away every tear from the eye. So, “Why cry?”  Remember instead, the joy of the Lord over what he has done in Jesus.  This will be your strength.

The Littlest One

In the famous musical, “The Sound of Music,” the littlest of the Von Trapp children (Gretl) asks why her name is always last on the list of concert playbills.  Her stepmother Maria lovingly replies, “It is because you are most important!”   Man too is the last on the playbill of creation. First came the light, then the firmament, then the dry land, then the plants, then the sun and moon and stars, then the sea creatures and birds and sea monsters, then the animals and finally man. He is the littlest, the youngest, the one created last of all when God made the heavens and the earth.   Yet God has exalted us on high.  As the apostle Paul says, we will even judge the angels. (I Cor. 6:3) It is, however, good to remember that we are not exalted in this way because we are smarter or somehow better than the rest of creation.  We are lifted up and have dominion over the plants and animals because of the love of God, because of his plan of grace.   David asks, “What is man that thou art mindful of him,” crowning him “with glory and honor,” giving him the care over “the sheep and the oxen...the birds in the air...the fish in the sea.” (Psalm 8).  On the very last day of creation God made a being in his own image, someone who would be a living, breathing, walking, talking statuette, depicting the Lord God.  God made man; God’s glory.  Then God makes the woman, who is the glory of the man, “glory squared” as I have said in some of my sermons.  God makes the last, first!  The above is a simple enough thing to notice about the Bible, but it changes the way we think of creation and it changes the way we think about ourselves.  The animals and the plants are no longer “lesser beings” but as the Bible puts it “living souls,” like ourselves.  Moreover they are elder brothers over which God has given us the dominion.    Will we be the good gardeners and farmers that God means us to be?  I hope so.  In light of Genesis we also think of ourselves differently. The philosopher Descartes said, “I think therefore I am.”  But as we ponder the creation story we see that Descartes was wrong.  Our ability to reason is not what lifts us up to the skies, rather it is as theologian Karl Barth said, correcting Descartes, “I am thought on by God therefore I am.” 

How to Study The Bible

When Martin Luther King Jr. intoned the magnificent words, “I have a dream” in his 1963 speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, he was speaking of his vision for the future, but he was also alluding to the Bible, specifically to Joel 2:28, “And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions.”  Pastor King was not only predicting freedom but predicting that freedom that comes from Jesus alone.  His words go deep.  Jesus’ words are deep in the same way; they contain Biblical allusions that open them up to understanding.  Consider what Jesus has to say to the Pharisees in Matthew 12.  He asks them, “What man of you, if he has one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath will not lay hold of it and lift it out.”  For so long I thought Jesus was simply giving an example from life, a sheep fallen into a pit, but Jesus is alluding to 2 Samuel 12, where the prophet Nathan comes to David and tells him the story of the rich man and the poor man and how the poor man had but one ewe lamb  whom he had bought and nourished up; “it grew up together with his own children; it ate of his own bread and drank of his own cup and lay in his bosom and was like a daughter to him.”  You see Jesus is talking not just about any old sheep, but rather a sheep that is loved just like that one little ewe lamb of Nathan’s story.  Jesus is explaining why he has healed the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath day.  It is because we are to him as precious as that little ewe lamb was to the poor man.  Now, I ask, did we know this?  Did we know that God loves us like that poor man loved his one little lamb?  Allusions like this are in almost every line of the New Testament, just waiting to be discovered.  John Calvin gave us the clue long ago when he said, “Scripture interprets Scripture.   The Bible is “God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” ( 2 Timothy 3:16); those who “go forth with tears, bearing the seed for sowing, will come home with shouts of joy” (Psalm 126).

The Gift

We know that Jesus saves.  He forgives our sins, he heals our diseases.  “Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name, who forgives all your iniquities and heals all your diseases.” (Psalm 106) But do we know that first of all Jesus is witness to (Matthew 9:1, Mark 2:5) and a demonstration of (Romans 3:25) the Father’s already accomplished forgiveness?  Paul writes that the cross is a demonstration, something like a billboard that splashes its headline near and far, “Come home, all your sins have been forgiven.” (Romans 3:25)    God said, “Comfort, comfort my people speak tenderly to Jerusalem, say to her that her warfare is over, her iniquities are pardoned, she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins” (Isaiah 40:1) and Jesus recognizes that it has been done.  In the Lord’s gracious superabundance, Jesus saves, Jesus heals, Jesus forgives, but first of all, Jesus attests to what has been done by the word of the Lord.  God said let there be light and there was light.  God says “your iniquities are pardoned” and they are pardoned.  “Heal us and we shall be healed.”

How have we managed to forget such an important thing?  Perhaps we have forgotten what a friend is. Friends give out of the sweetness of their hearts with no thought of return. They make right what is wrong.  They heal the broken heart.  God the creator of the universe is our friend.  Or perhaps we have forgotten what love is, or what it means to be a mom or a dad.  I know a couple who have just adopted a nine year old child from Detroit.  They do this not because they will “get something out of it,” but because they love her.  God is our father in heaven, our Abba, who sees we are clothed in filthy rags and clothes us in his righteousness, who sees we are wounded and binds up our wounds and takes care of us, who sees we are dead and restores us to life.  Why?  Because he loves us.  We didn’t do anything to get salvation.  There is no contract between us and God. There is no exchange.  We do not give a little to God and receive grace.  Our error arises in some measure out of that tangle of misunderstandings having to do faith. For instance, we think we are justified by “faith in Christ” but it is by the “enfaithment” or “establishment” of Jesus. (Romans 3:21-22, 26, 30)  We engage in painful mental gymnastics about free will but the entire concept of “free will” is philosophical, not Biblical. Despite the efforts of the Church Fathers, we do not even really know in our hearts that belief is the result of justification.  But I think that one day, if God be pleased, we will see what he has done in reconciling us to himself.  It is a gift. It is the gift. It is rescue.  It is resurrection from the dead.  Even now when we read through Isaiah and the Old Testament as a whole, there is no other conclusion. Out of the longing of his heart, out of his great faithfulness, God pours himself out to make us whole.  It is something so great and good, we never could have imagined it ahead of time, so great and awesome a gift that the prophet must ask, “Lord, who has believed our report?” (Isaiah 53:1) Who could believe a love like this? 

The Immortality of The Soul

There are many who believe in the immortality of the soul. It would seem that the Bible supports this belief. In I Corinthians Paul writes, “When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’”  There are many other places that speak of immortality. In John 11, Jesus assures Martha that we shall not die but live, “Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.'”  In these and many other verses the Bible is pointing toward unending life.  Even in the very beginning, Adam and Eve would have lived forever had they not disobeyed God. Jesus’ coming means that we will live forever, body and soul.   Yet like the body, the soul dies.   Many of our translations of the Bible obscure this fact.  In Judges 16, the great and beloved Samson, now weakened and blind, prays a great prayer to God.  We read, “Then Samson called to the LORD and said, "O Lord GOD, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be avenged upon the Philistines for one of my two eyes. “ He grasps the two middle pillars of the temple, and as he bears down on them with all his might says, “let me die with the Philistines.”  Only, this is not what he really says.  The Hebrew is quite clear.  What Samson actually says before his destruction of God’s enemies, is “let my soul die with the Philistines.” 
There are a number of other places in the Bible that speak of the death of the soul.  Taking a quick look, and confining myself for the sake of time to just the books from Genesis to the beginning of Joshua, I counted more than a dozen times that Bible referred to “dead souls” or the death of the soul.    In addition the soul can be in danger, it can be bought and sold (as in Revelation 18:13) and it can be “destroyed.” (Matthew 10, various psalms)  How then will the soul live forever? The answer to this question is simple.  Our souls will live forever, but not because they do not die, rather because God raises us up, body, soul, spirit, every little bit of us.  We will be raised up when Jesus comes again to be sure, but not just in the time to come but in the NOW. How can this be? Anyone can see plainly that the graveyards are not empty.  But remember, we walk by faith not by sight.  How is it that when we take our last breath, our next breath will be in the arms of our Lord and Savior? But so it is. And not just our souls will be with the Lord but our bodies too, our whole selves.  Peter saw by the power of the Holy Spirit how it was with Jesus when Jesus dead in his tomb.  Jesus says, “I saw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved: Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope.”  Jesus continues, God the Father will not leave my soul in the grave, in the underworld or even allow “thine Holy One to see rot.”  “Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance.” (Acts 2:27ff) As it was with Jesus so it will be with us; again, not just in the hereafter but in the here and now.  In the book of Isaiah, God says, “I will give you the faithful pities of David.”  All the mercies that Jesus is given, we will given as well.  We too will say in our graves, “I saw the Lord ever before me, for he is at my right hand...thou hast made known to me the ways of life.”  Our Father will not let us see corruption in the grave. Death, in the hereafter and in the here and now, is swallowed up in victory.  We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

A New Heaven and A New Earth

A New Heaven And A New Earth

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. (Revelation 21:1) There is a little story from II Samuel that helps us understand. One of the sons of giants came up to fight against David, now established king over Israel, and the giant carried a new sword.  Why a new sword?  Because he recognized that in David, something new had happened.  Gone were the times of Jesse who now “went about, an old man among men” (I Samuel 17:12); his times were over.  Gone were the times of oppression, humiliation and despair. Remember how day after day Goliath humiliated the armies of Israel but little David came up to fight, and that giant went down and the armies of Israel rose up with a shout.  God was victor and we in him.  The old times were finished and the new was here.  So when it says a new heaven and a new earth, that’s what it means. Jesus Anointed, our David, our warrior king, has come, and the old ways of sorrow and death and humiliation gone. The giants of sin and death and the devil and his prophet are down for the count, utterly vanquished. Jesus is victor.  We rise up and cast off unbelief and lies.  There are no more immoral, no more cowards. There is no more sorcery, idols, delusion.  All that is done and the new has begun.  Now is the time of refreshment and the restoration of all things. (Acts 3)  And God shall wipe every tear away from their eyes. 
Sometimes a question arises. I have talked to some people who think this verse means we fly away to a different earth or planet. They read Isaiah 51, “lift up your eyes to the heavens and look upon the earth beneath for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke and the earth shall wax old like a garment” and they figure if everything is going pouf here, then logically we go some new place.  But the Bible says“No” to this idea.  In fact, every time the Bible talks of a new heavens and a new earth or about the earth or heavens growing old, it also makes it clear we aren’t going to a different planet.  Read on in Isaiah 51, in verse six it speaks of the heavens vanishing like smoke but in verse eleven, “therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing to Zion and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads and they shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”  God is not talking about a Zion on some different planet.  He is talking about our Zion, our Jerusalem, the one with the Wailing Wall, the one with the little shops with their mountains of spices, the one with the Home Depot and the Burger King, the one sinning and sinned against, the one where tea is carried through the streets on silver tea trays, the one with white wall of separation running through the country like a scar, the one that God loves in spite of herself and will always love. 
All this is important because sadly when people move to a new apartment for instance, there is a temptation not to be careful anymore.   Sometimes they leave the apartment a terrible mess. There are those in the churches who have decided for the same reason not to take care of the rivers and the land and the heavens above, because, as they put it, “we are going fly away from this fallen earth to a new place, so why invest our time and talents in preserving and helping the fish and the trees and the seas and the animals?” The Bible corrects us.  We are not moving.  God is faithful to his creation.  His children are too. He is not giving up, nor will he ever give up on the rivers and the seas and the land and the heavens above.  On the contrary he is bringing all these things to perfection.  Through his faithfulness in Jesus we are made like him: caretakers, saviors, gardeners of all that he has given.

God's Joy (Part II of Series)

It may be that we don't really understand what the New Testament is saying about men being attracted to men and women to women. In Romans 1, Paul is talking about the blindness of all society to Jesus, to the suffering servant. Because of this blindness, God hands all society over to its own latent sins and thus, we have women being attracted to women and men to men. For Paul and the apostles, men not loving women and women not loving men is worse than fornication, worse than covetousness, worse than murder. Read that list of vices for yourself. The rabbis always put the most serious transgressions first. But those who do any of these things, from the most weighty transgression to the lightest, are "worthy of death." Paul has a big surprise for us though, because for the "judge" (Romans 2) to condemn to death those who are caught up in these sins is to "do the same things," that is, to be blind to the suffering servant, the savior who saves us from our spiritual enemies, who saves us from the fires that we can't escape. As the song says, "I can't change, even if I tried, even if I wanted to."  That's the way it is, we are too deep in, we can't change. But Jesus was raised from the dead to save people like that, people like you and me. And he does and he did and I know he will. Because let's face it, all of us are prey to these vices that are listed here in Romans 1, at least one, if not a whole bunch. Now, we might have a question. Why is it that men going with men and women with women, heads Paul's list of transgressions? The reason is that Paul is simply following the Bible, in the very beginning God made Adam and then made Eve and Adam saw that Eve was the only one for him. That's Genesis, but we are constantly attempting to destroy Genesis. God generates, God gives the growth. We as sinners want to destroy life and growth. We want "de-generation." And here's the thing: the most destructive form of de-generation is when men don't like women and women don't like men and that describes a lot of us, a lot of the time. Women don't really see men these days and men don't really see women either. We just don't "get" why marriage and romance and men liking women and women liking men is very important but that's only because we don't see like God does. In fact, we don't see at all. It's only in God's light that we see light. Only he reveals what love is, what faith is, what is important and what is not important. All our reasoning, all our philosophy, all our science comes up with precisely nada, nothingness, chaos. In the early 20th century we reasoned and philosophized our way to eugenics and the holocaust. And we haven't changed one bit. Our way is always toward destruction. Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life." He also said, "Come to me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest." The Good Samaritan came to the man who had fallen among thieves, and who was pretty much as good as dead, beaten up by sin and death and the devil and he had compassion on him. We are that man. We are the ones who hate God and in so doing destroy ourselves and are destroyed. But God still loves us, he is crazy in love with us, he came to us while we were yet enemies. He is here, "the home of God is among men" and one by one we are lifted up in his arms and healed and saved. And as if that were not enough, to save us is his joy, his delight. We learn in the Bible that he sings with joy over what he has done through his only begotten Son. This is the entirely unexpected and undeserved face of God's justice and nothing can stop that justice now.

(Note: I follow the theologians William Orr of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and N.T. Wright of St. Andrews in this article, the song quoted above is "Same Love" written by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis)

Supreme Court Decisions

Today is a day that we can be thankful for, even as we grieve what the Supreme Court has done to aid in the destruction of love and marriage. The mask has been ripped off government and we see the rot behind it.

Oaks of Righteousness

Oaks of Righteousness

 In Romans 1, when we look at the original Greek, we find, “Jesus is declared to be the Son of God...by the resurrection of the dead.” Who are people raised from the dead?  They are us.  We see the beginnings of it in Matthew 27.  When Jesus dies, the veil of the temple is rent from top to bottom, there is a great earthquake and the rocks are split, the “bodies of the saints rise from the dead” and when Jesus is raised they “appear to many” in the holy city.  But this was only the start, because in Jerusalem and in all the nations of the earth God’s clarion call grows louder and sweeter still, for he raises those dead in their sins to life, “when we were dead in our sins, he has made us alive together with the Anointed One.”  When you go to church this Sunday, look around at your fellow believers in the pews: They are the proof that God’s justice has come and is coming.
Put it another way: Do you ever wonder why Paul does not despair when he sees his beloved brothers and sisters felled where they stand by the powers that be? After all Paul is just as capable of sadness as any one of us.  Yet in the very place where you would expect him to be filled with despair, he writes these triumphant words, “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Romans 8).  Last week in Pierce County we saw  despotism vividly illustrated when the trees on the courthouse lawn were cut down.  But it will not stop with trees, “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”(Ephesians 6) and these powers seek the destruction of humanity, body and soul.  Moreover, these powers are too much for us, they are “hands too strong for us.” (Jeremiah 31)   Should we then despair?  We must not, and even more, we are prevented from despair.  We are prevented from despair by seeing all around us, the dead that the Lord God has raised through his justice on the cross.  There is no one who assembles with the saints on Sunday, or  who believes or even wants the Lord Jesus in his life who has NOT been raised from the dead.  We sinners, realize that no argument ever got through to us.  We destroyed others and we destroyed ourselves.  People who love us talked themselves blue, but we ignored it. Only the word of the Lord got through.  Only the word of the cross raised us from death to life.  Christians have many weaknesses and sins.  Our churches are hospitals.  But Christians, whatever their faults are the living proof that the dominoes are falling.  It started with the veil being torn from top to bottom and it continues, as one by one people come into the kingdom.  Nothing can stop God’s justice.   His justice through the establishment of Jesus on the cross set off a chain reaction that nothing can stop.  Trees can be cut down but nothing can stop the restoration of all things, nothing can stop him who raises the dead to life, nothing can stop the hand that heals and nothing can stop the world to come.  And by “world to come,” I do not necessarily mean the end of the world, but rather the new world that is coming in.  We forget that our Savior is alive and is on the move, “all the the trees of the field shall clap their hands” and we ourselves shall be “oaks of righteousness.”  We see the proof of its coming all around us.