The Taste of Blessing: Count it All Joy

 June 22 2025

Matthew 5:4, Philippians 2:12-18

         I always love to hear people tell me that they have decided to read the Bible. Yet, upon hearing about their interest in reading the Bible, I tell people to begin with the gospel accounts so that they can get acquainted with Jesus first, instead of beginning at the beginning and reading Genesis as one would normally do with a book. The reason for such advice is that the first five books of the Bible contain a number of strange rules, and laws and sacrifices that may cause some people to give up reading the Bible altogether. If nothing else, these books at least make us grateful for Jesus. I mean before Jesus the law was clear that milk and meat could not share the same dish which means no cheeseburgers. Can you imagine the sadness of never tasting a cheeseburger? And how about no pulled pork or ham sandwiches because the Jewish food laws prohibit eating pork. Such laws and rules fill the pages of books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy. 

It was when I was plodding through Deuteronomy one time that I was struck by what God demanded of every single person in the nation. There in the sixteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, God commands his people that when they celebrate the two harvest festivals called the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles, there was to be non-stop rejoicing from everybody. Listen to how clear God makes his expectations: “You shall be joyful at your festivals, you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levite priests, the strangers among you, the fatherless and the widows. For seven days you shall rejoice and celebrate the festival. For the Lord will bless you in your harvest, in all the works of your hands and your joy will be complete.” Now, there were several things that made me scratch my head when I read this. The first question is just how do you command someone to enjoy themselves? I mean, I have been a Dad long enough that trying to tell another, smaller human being that they should stop their crying and put a smile on their face is an exercise in futility. God must obviously know the very same thing so we must understand that this command from God is to be seen as an expectation, something that should be the right response for everyone concerned. In other words, if you are not full of joy during this festival you have seriously missed the point. So God expects much joy, the shouting and jumping kind of joy and God expects such a response from everyone, no one, it seems is excluded. You would think that the poor stranger who found himself in the territory during this time would be one to left off the hook, or the poor child with no father or a widow struggling to make ends meet would be told that no joy was expected from them. But no, this is not the case; all have to be ready to rejoice. And not just to have joy for a moment or an hour; no, there shall be rejoicing from everyone for seven days. Have you ever witnessed a time when everyone you knew was full of joy for seven full days? This has to make us wonder how God could expect such a response for that length of time. 

There are two other interesting aspects of this command to rejoice by God. The first is that this list of who is to rejoice during these festivals is exactly the same group of people who the prophet Joel, tells us will have the Holy Spirit poured out in them. The Spirit will be given to the sons and daughters, the male and female servants, the old and the young, all will be given the holy presence of God and the implication seems to be that the Spirit will be found among those who are rejoicing. The second interesting connection is that when the people rejoice for seven days as God expects, then the people would be blest in their harvest, in all the works of their hands, and this is when their joy, we are told, will be complete. This same phrase, “your joy shall be complete”, is spoke by Jesus to his disciples. In the fifteenth chapter of John, Jesus tells his disciples, “ These things I have spoke to you that that my joy shall be in you, and that your joy shall be complete.” Jesus says, word for word, what God promises his people in the sixteenth chapter of Deuteronomy.

Hopefully, by now it is apparent that in this third part of our message series called, “The Taste of Blessing”, we are looking at the experience of joy which is a part of the fruit of the Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit we are blessed as we taste and see just how good our God really is. The fruit of the Spirit, then, is the experiences we have when we encounter for ourselves the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Last week we learned how we must come into our relationship with God knowing that there is nothing that we must bring to the table. We must, like Simon Peter, learn that we are indeed, desperate people who are, on our own, unable to do the good that God expects of us. The flesh is weak, so unable to do the good we want, that no matter how strong our spirit inside of us is, it still is not able to move us to do the good we desire to do. Yet, even so, as we come before God with empty hands he, in turn, lays in those same hands, the entirety of his kingdom. What wells up inside of us in that moment is love for this one who has everything desires to give us who have absolutely nothing, all of who he us.

Today, we are going to look at the experience we have with the Holy Spirit that is the source of our joy. What we have learned so far from the command God gave to his people in the sixteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, is that joy is the result of knowing that what stands between us and death is God. The people of Israel were to celebrate their harvest by acknowledging that God alone brought the increase. The harvest depends on this simple idea that life comes forth out of death through the work of God. Now, the fact that Israel gave their God the credit for the harvest was nothing special because all of the nations around them had similar harvest festivals. What made the harvest festivals of Israel so very different is that since God is acknowledged as the source of life then he demands that this life be given to all people. You see, what makes this list of people mentioned in these verses so interesting is that none of them are the actual people who harvested the crop. The children of Israel, nor their servants could be given credit for the harvest. And the Levite priest served in the Temple so they were far from the work of the field.The same could be said of the strangers passing through, the fatherless and the widows. The reason that all of these could be full of joy is that God stood between all of them and their fear of death. God gave such an abundant increase that everyone in the nation could partake on the harvest. This is the way that joy was experienced by everyone during this festival.

The importance of this strange command of God that all must rejoice is so very helpful in understanding this teaching of Jesus which says:”Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Now this teaching is often quoted to bring strength to those grieving the death of a loved one, and in these cases it does seem to be a fitting scripture. Yet, in the context of experiencing and tasting the goodness of God this teaching of Jesus has a rather different meaning. In this setting, the mourning spoken of here is not the death of a loved one but it is rather our own death that has brought us sorrow. This follows the realization of the first blessing that all of us are people who are poor of spirit, unable to do the good that we know we ought to do. Paul writes at the end of the seventh chapter of the book of Romans, that he was a captive of the law of sin. He realizes that sin controlled all of his actions and he exclaims, “…Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  I believe that the reality that we all have bodies which are dead is the source of mourning and lament that we find in the second blessing that Jesus teaches us about. I believe that Paul writes so vividly about this moment of becoming aware of his true nature because he was one who had a life and death moment with the living Christ and he lived to tell about it.

         The story of Paul, once called Saul, encountering the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus is one that seems to be known by many people in and out of church circles. This story is recorded in the ninth chapter of Acts and is also mentioned two other times in this book. Now, for us to really grasp what happened with Saul, later called Paul, and the risen Jesus, we have to begin with a man named Stephen. Stephen was a follower of Jesus, a man who was chosen to serve the many widows who needed cared for in Jerusalem. Stephen though, not only served others but being full of grace and power, he also did great signs and wonders for all to see. The powerful men of Judaea could see that many were going to follow Jesus if Stephan kept on demonstrating a life that had such wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit. So they stirred up the crowds, saying Stephen was against the Temple because Jesus had said that the Temple was to be destroyed and rebuilt three days later. The end result was that the Council found Stephen guilty of blasphemy, a sentence requiring a death by stoning. Paul approved of this death of Stephen, and he was there when Stephen, kneeling on the ground, began to pray in the power of the Spirit. Stephen looked up, and he was able to gaze into the heavens and he exclaimed, “Behold, I see the heavens open up, and the Son of Man stands at the right hand of God”. What Stephen sees is the same vision that Daniel beheld as recorded in the ninth chapter of the book of Daniel. There, one like the Son of Man, a human figure, is presented before the Ancient of Days. We are then told that the Ancient of Days has given this Son of Man dominion, glory and a kingdom so that all should come and serve him. Now, the vision does not stop there because it also tells us that the holy ones of God shall also receive the kingdom and possess this kingdom as being their own. So this is an incredible promise that tells us that not only has the Son of Man been given dominion, and the kingdom from the Ancient of days but this kingdom is also to be shared with those called, “the holy ones”.  Paul, as a Pharisee would have understood himself as being one of these holy ones because he lived his life according to the holiness requirements of the priests in the Temples.As he writes in the third chapter of Philippians, according to flesh his resume was quite impressive. He was born to the right family, went to the right school, followed all the rules. He could say that according to the righteous requirements of the Law, he stood as one who had to be holy. So if his holiness was without question then why was this Stephan, this follower of Jesus, being greeted into heaven, as if the Son of Man knew this Stephen to be one of his holy ones. I believe that the mind of Saul, or Paul as he was later known, was full of questions as he headed for Damascus to root out these followers of Jesus in order to bring them to Jerusalem to face the same fate as Stephen. As he approached the city of Damascus, Saul suddenly sees a bright light, and being struck blind, he falls to the ground. Then he hears these words, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul scratches his head as he tries to figure out just whose voice this was. Saul asks this voice, “Who are you Lord?”, implying that he knew this voice came from heaven. This voice replied, “I am Jesus, who you are persecuting”. There is so much here to unpack in such a short moment. The bright light was surely a sign that the Son of Man had broken into our earthly realm. There could now be no doubt that this one who was prophesied by Daniel was indeed none other than Jesus. The question for Paul though was just how had he been persecuting this Jesus? The only answer was that this Jesus, the very Son of Man had united himself with those who followed him. This helped to explain this vision of Daniel because the Son of Man could only stand before the Ancient of Days if he was indeed holy. So this Jesus must be holy and so we’re those who followed him. By being united with him, they too now shared in the holiness of Jesus. So Stephen could behold Jesus, the Son of Man before the throne of God because he was indeed holy, united in someway with this one called Jesus. Yet, this was not all, for Paul also knew that in that moment, that if Jesus was indeed the Son of Man, then when Saul persecuted these followers of Jesus he was indeed persecuting the Son of Man. So there he stood, trembling before the Son of Man, knowing full well that he stood guilty of the judgment of death. Saul was a dead man if there ever was one. I mean what else could one expect when you violently oppose the king whose domain shall have no end.

         What Paul experienced in such a dramatic fashion is the same experience all of us must have for as Jesus tells us, “Blessed are those who mourn and lament this death which seems to have such a great hold upon us.” The blessing of such a terrifying moment is that in this moment we discover that no matter how holy we might consider ourselves, these efforts can not overcome death and its power over us. And just like was found in every harvest festival celebrated by the people of Israel, what stands between our death and our life is God. This is why Jesus, the Son of Man, confronted Saul that day on the road to Damascus, so that he might come between Saul and this road of death that he traveled on. You see, even though it was abundantly clear that Saul was on the wrong side of things, Jesus the Son of Man, did not condemn Saul. How else could Paul write at the beginning of the eighth chapter of Romans, that now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and do so with such conviction. This life beyond his sure demise is what Paul had experienced in his encounter with Jesus there on the Damascus road. You see, Paul was not struck dead there in that moment. Instead, Jesus told Saul to go into the city and there at the hands of Ananias, one of the followers of Jesus, Saul was to be baptized. Before Paul was baptized though, Ananias, told Paul, “The Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me to you so that you might regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Here is the blessing that Jesus promises to those who mourn, the giving to us of the one whose name is the Comforter. This is how Jesus brings life to those who lament their own body of death. Life is brought to us through the giving of the Spirit. This is what Paul says in our scripture for today, that we are to, “…work out our own salvation  with fear and trembling for it is God who works within us both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” What good news this is for all of us, news that is to open up within us a fountain of joy which cannot be stopped. Here is God doing exactly what he did with the harvest festivals of old, being the very one who stands between us and the death that seeks to consume us. When we are united with Jesus Christ through the Spirit, then as Paul says in the third chapter of Philippians, “I count everything a total loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ as my Lord.” All Paul wanted to do after meeting Jesus, this God who places his very life between us and the death that waits for all of us, is to know this Jesus more, to know of this power Jesus had to overcome death. Where happiness is found in all so many fleeting things which come and go, joy is found in knowing Jesus and is therefore, eternal. This is why Paul could say that even if he would be poured out as a drink offering, he was still glad and rejoicing with all the saints. So, in the same spirit as Paul, let us too be glad and rejoice with him. Amen!

         

The Taste of Blessing: It All Begins With Love

 June 15 2025

Matthew 5:1-3

         As we are now at last experiencing more summer like weather, I couldn’t help but think that summertime is usually when big, blockbuster movies would dominate the big screen. Many of these big hits were superhero movies where we watch as yet another unsuspecting person finds that they have been granted a super power of some sort. You know, Peter Parker gets bit by a radioactive spider and he discovers he now is Spider-Man. Dr. Bruce Banner gets dosed with too many gamma rays and becomes a super strong Hulk. People just love to imagine just what it would be like to be suddenly given a super power. Would this new power we would be given be the way we rid ourselves of all our problems or would it just create new problems of its own. Well, as it turns out there really is a super hero who has come to our rescue and his name is God. I say that he is a super hero because he alone has a super power. I never quite thought of God in such a way until I was helping with a worship service at Belmont Correctional, and a large, very muscular resident testified to the group. He said that the greatest power on earth was the love of God. Coming from one who obviously has a lot of power in his own right, this was saying something. What he said certainly makes us think, doesn’t it? I mean if you heard of a new movie coming out that had a super hero whose only power was love, I am sure not too many people would be willing to pay money to watch it. Let’s face it, the world with all of its problems seems much too large of an arena for us to comprehend how love could possibly be the answer. Yet, what if we merely considered how love might be the answer for the problems in our own worlds, you know the lives we are living. I wonder, might love be for us the very super power we are looking for?

         In this series of messages entitled, ‘The Taste of Blessing”, we are looking at what Paul calls the, “Fruit of the Spirit”.  This image is found in the fifth chapter of Galatians, and I believe that Paul here describes the complex taste we encounter from being blessed by God, telling us that the goodness of God is experienced by us as being love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and a dominion within us. To understand how we can know each of these experiences we are going to look at the blessing of God associated with each of these which make up the fruit of the Spirit.

         These blessings of God are the very essence of the teachings of Jesus to all who follow him. Today, we are looking at the very first of these experiences Jesus tells us that we will have when the Spirit of God touches our life. Knowing that the love of God is the very super power which changes the world, it comes as no surprise that love is what we discover in our very first moments with God. Jesus states that this relationship where we know God and where we are known by God begins in this manner: Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Upon hearing this, we have to ask ourselves just how is this a picture of the love of God entering into yet another human life. Perhaps what helps us in our discovery is to consider what this teaching of Jesus might look like in real time. What we would see is that one day the king left his throne to come and walk the streets of his kingdom. Yet, he does not walk down Main Street through the center of town, nor does he visit the well-to-do sections, no, he instead heads for the side streets, the back alleys and the places where the homeless are found. There he stoops down, and he gently touches a poor soul who cowers at his touch because this beggar expects the worst, as he has absolutely nothing and this king he kneels before owns everything. Yet, what happens next is the surprise of a life time because the king asks this destitute person, “How would you like to own this kingdom with me? “I would love for you to come and reside with me and sit with me on the throne so that you might rule this kingdom with me” the king tells this one who has nothing. This makes for an interesting plot twist, doesn’t it? In our world, those who are powerful expect the rest to get in line to serve them. But here is the one who holds all the power and this one only asks that we receive the gift of his kingdom, not asking us to serve him but he, instead, seeks to serve us by giving us what is solely his, his kingdom.

         We have to admit that this is a strange yet beautiful image, this king walking among the destitute and desperate to find any who might desire a kingdom. What this image does for us, though, is to explain why so many people miss out on this experience of God’s love for them. I remember preaching in a little country church one Sunday, and when I told this congregation that Jesus is for the desperate people, I could tell by the body language of my audience that such a belief offended them. You see, many people who live in this country believe that we actually can pull ourselves up by our boot straps, so for them, faith is the belief that God helps those who help themselves. They are not at all interested in a belief where God helps those who are utterly helpless. The danger with this idea is that if we cling to this notion that we are not quite in such dire straits as Jesus tells us then we are going to forever miss out on ever having a deep and powerful encounter with the love of God.

         When we refuse to actually believe that we are as poor and desperate as Jesus alludes to, then when we do encounter him, we do so as those who believe that we have something to offer Jesus, seeing ourselves as being God’s gift to whatever God is up to. We know this to be true because the gospel accounts tell us much about the life of Simon Peter. As you study Simon Peter it becomes quite obvious that he was a man who felt that he had something to prove, especially to Jesus. He was so over the top in his response to whatever Jesus called him to do. When Simon Peter let down his fishing nets at the request of Jesus and there were so many fish the nets began to break, it was Simon Peter who was first to kneel before Jesus, being the man who knew what was expected of him. When Jesus was encountered out there walking on the waves of the Sea of Galilee by those in the boat, it was Simon Peter who was first in line to jump overboard and join Jesus even though he was frightened out of his wits. Then when Jesus invited Simon Peter and James and John to come with him up on the mountain to see Jesus talk with Moses and Elijah, there was Simon Peter falling all over himself trying to build them all tabernacles because he could think of nothing else he could do in that situation. 

As the story goes along, Jesus gets to the point where he must turn his face toward Jerusalem. So, he begins to ask those who followed him, just who did the crowds say that Jesus was. The disciples told him that they thought Jesus might be John the Baptist come back from the dead, or perhaps one of the prophets of old. Jesus hearing these answers pushes them a little harder, and he asks them point blank just who did they believe that he was. Of course, it had to be Simon Peter who had to rush in and blurt out that Jesus was the Messiah. While Jesus attributes this answer of Simon Peter to the work of his Heavenly Father we have to wonder if Simon Peter was willing to acknowledge God as being the source of his answer. You see, once they knew Jesus as being the long awaited Messiah, this is when Jesus began to tell them that he had to go to Jerusalem to be crucified and then three days later he would be resurrected from the dead. Upon hearing this, Simon Peter lost it, getting in the face of Jesus as if Jesus had made a terrible mistake. Suddenly, Simon Peter found himself working for Satan instead of being the right hand man with all the answers.

         Well, Simon Peter did fall in line just as Jesus had told him to do. Just as Jesus had told them, they had made it to Jerusalem in order to celebrate Passover together. After they had eaten and drank together as part of this new meal Jesus taught them about, Jesus speaks to Peter, because Jesus is well aware that Peter still clings to this notion that it is what he brings to the table, this is what matters. So, here at the Lord’s table, Jesus hoped that Simon Peter would at last understand but he also knew that Simon Peter will ultimately fail. So, Jesus tells Simon Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat.  But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you return to me, bring strength to your brothers and sisters”.  Can you understand what Jesus is telling Simon Peter? It is not his strength or ability that is going to bring Simon Peter through the terrible night ahead of him. No, the arm of flesh would indeed fail him, but the prayer and intervention of Jesus, this is what would be the salvation of Simon Peter.

         Well, as usual, it was Simon Peter, James and John who went with Jesus as he entered the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus tells these three, “My soul is very sorrowful even unto death; remain here and remain awake with me.” Jesus begins to pray intensely, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.’  Jesus then returns to Simon Peter, James and John, and instead of finding them awake and praying with him on this the worst night of his life, he found them instead, very much asleep. Listen to what Jesus says to them next,“So, you could not even stay awake and be with me for just one hour? Stay awake and pray that you will not fall into hard testing! The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Here, Jesus is going back to his core teachings telling his disciples yet once again that they are indeed those who are poor in spirit. You see, what Jesus is pointing out is that the spirit within all of us, this inclination and desire we may have to be people who are able to be God’s gift to whatever God is up to, this is going to fail every single time because our flesh, our wherewithal, is too weak. The spirit within us must be considered to be poor because it does not have enough power to do that which we know is right and good. Paul, at the end of the seventh chapter of Romans, tells us the very same thing when he writes, “I do not know my own actions. For I do not do what I want to do, but instead, I do the very thing I hate…For I have the desire to do what is right, but I lack the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want to do is the very thing I keep on doing.” This is exactly what Jesus means when he says that all of us are, “poor in spirit”. This is why we must come to the conclusion that when we come to Jesus, nothing in our hands we bring for we simply are incapable of doing the good and righteous acts that give glory to our king.

         Well, even though Jesus has told Simon Peter that he is being prayed over so that he does not lose his faith and even though Jesus has point blank reminded Simon Peter and the others, that even though their spirit may be willing, their flesh, nonetheless was weak, and even though Jesus tells Simon Peter that later that night he would deny Jesus three times before the rooster crows, Simon Peter still refuses to give up this notion that he is somehow God’s gift to whatever God is up to in the world. So Simon Peter blusters forth full of courage and belief that he is able to last the night and prove Jesus wrong. So what we are left with is this tragic image of this friend of Jesus, warming himself beside a fire on that cold evening, afraid to admit that he even knew Jesus. Three times he was questioned; three times his answer was, “I do not know him”. Then the scene shifts to the rising sun, and the rooster crowing and a man becoming totally undone, weeping bitterly because he suddenly realized that there he was indeed unable to bring anything to this friendship with Jesus. As his tears washed over his face, Simon Peter knew what it meant to be one who was poor of spirit, yet if this was so then we have to ask, just where is this blessing that Jesus once told him, would be found in this confession?

         As it turns out, the blessing of Simon Peter is recorded for us in the twenty-first chapter of John. There we discover that Simon Peter has gone back to being a fisherman along the Sea of Galilee. It is not hard to imagine that now that he has figured out that he has absolutely nothing to offer Jesus except failure he should go back to what he was always good at, fishing. As Simon Peter tries all night to catch some fish he strangely is unable to catch even one fish. This must have given him a case of deja-vu for there was one other time this very same thing had happened. And just like that time, some three years past, when the sun was coming up, Simon and the others heard a voice asking them if they had caught any fish. You know, the last thing you want to hear after a long night of coming up empty is someone who seems to just be pointing out your failure. Yet, just as had happened some three years ago, this voice told them to cast their nets on the right side of the boat.  And just like the last time, the nets became so full of fish they were impossible to haul aboard their boats. This is when they knew who was calling out to them; it was their Lord, Jesus. There on the beach they saw Jesus, frying up a breakfast of grilled fish sandwiches.

         When breakfast was over, Jesus pulled Simon Peter aside, and Jesus asked him, point blank, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? “Yes, Lord”, Simon Peter replied, “You know that I love you as a brother.” Jesus then tells Simon Peter, “Feed my lambs”. Jesus turns to Simon Peter a second time, and asks him, “Simon son of John, do you love me with the love of heaven, the love found in the kingdom of heaven, will you love me as I have first loved you? Simon Peter , with tears in his eyes, tells Jesus, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you”. Jesus says to Simon Peter, “Tend my sheep”. Then Jesus asks Simon Peter a third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me? Standing there around that charcoal fire there along side the Sea of Galilee, it would have been easy for Simon Peter to remember another charcoal fire on a terrible night when the reality of his poverty crushed him as he denied that he ever even knew this one called Jesus. Yet, despite his utter failure, Jesus has not abandoned him; no, far from it for here was Jesus asking him if he loved him. You see, that is all Jesus ever asks of those he encounters. Jesus is not interested in anything we might bring with us for there is absolutely nothing that he needs from us. All Jesus desires is a simple response of love when he offers us the gift of his kingdom. So, for a third time, Jesus asks Simon Peter, “Do you love me?, to which Simon Peter replies, “Lord, you know everything; you have to know that I love you.” Jesus then replies, “Feed my sheep”. What we learn from Simon Peter is that none of us have anything that Jesus can use except this, our hearts.  Jesus asks that our hearts respond in love when he tells us that we have a place in his kingdom, a kingdom where everyone loves and serves one another. The goodness of the love of God can only be tasted and experienced if we come with empty hands, desperate to experience this love which invites failures such as us to be his kingdom. If we have tasted this love then when Jesus asks us, “Do you love me? Our response will be just like Simon Peter, who replied, “Yes, Lord you know that I love you! I pray that  love will always be our response when Jesus blesses us, and we taste the goodness of our king’s love of us. Amen!               

 

         

The Taste of Blessing: Until Christ Is Formed In You

 June 8 2025

Galatians 4:8-20

         As a church we follow a different calendar which covers roughly the whole arc of God’s salvation. Last week was the last week of Eastertide, the forty day period when Luke records that the risen Christ taught his followers about the kingdom of God. The end of Eastertide is marked by the ascension of Christ. Now, I find it interesting that we, as evangelical Christians do not see Christ’s ascension as a holy day as the Amish and Mennonite communities do. This is one of those traditions that often catch tourists off guard, and if they went to Amish country on May 29^th, they would have gotten a surprise when everything was closed. Yet, at least these communities are reminded yearly that Jesus Christ has ascended to the right hand of the Father. We need to know the importance of this day because Jesus told his disciples that he was being carried into heaven in order to send the promise of the Father upon us, to clothe us with power from on high as recorded in the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke.

         Today, is the day when we celebrate that the promise of the Father was indeed sent to us, when at last the followers of Christ were clothed with power from on high. This day is called Pentecost, because this outpouring from heaven happened as the people of Israel were celebrating this festival. The name, “Pentecost”, refers to the festival happening fifty days after the celebration of Passover, “pente” meaning fifty in the Greek.This festival marked the beginning of the harvest of the wheat crop when the faithful would come to Jerusalem with the first fruits of their harvest to offer them to God as the Law required them to do. So it should come as no surprise that God would choose just such a day to send the Holy Spirit so that the first fruits of his kingdom might be brought before him. Many times Pentecost is referred to as the birthday of the church. So our church calendar is marked by two birthdays, one, the birth of Jesus, and the second is the birth of his bride, the church.

         Now when we hear that phrase, “the birth of the church”, just what does this mean? There seems to be just as much mystery in who the Holy Spirit is as there is in understanding who we are, the church that has come forth because the promise of the Father has been given to us, the power from on high is now clothing all of us. In our day, the church is what happens every Sunday when people get up and go to a building and sit often in the most uncomfortable seating, to sing songs and listen to a half-hour lecture about Jesus which makes the listeners so hungry that they rush from the service to be the first in line for lunch. I hope, by now, that most people realize that the church is not about the building which we often call a church. No, the church is not a steeple, the church is a people, for I am the church and you are the church, all who follow Jesus all around the world, we are the church together. Yet, is it just enough for us to be people who sit in a certain building for an hour in order for us to be the church. I mean, if you sit in a garage does this make you a car? No, there must be more to being the church than singing all the right songs, saying all the right things, listening for as long as possible and going home. As it turns out there is something more that is expected of us who say that we follow Jesus. At least this is what should be obvious to us when Paul tells his church, in todays scripture, that he is in anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in them. Can you hear the importance of Christ being somehow born in us? If such an experience was so important to Paul, then I believe it has to be this important to us as well. We  might even want to go so far to say that the church is not born until Christ is born in us.

         As Paul is writing this letter to the churches in the region of Galatia, he makes this idea of Christ being in us a steady drumbeat all the way through. He begins in the first chapter by telling us, in the sixteenth verse, that God has called Paul by his grace and it pleased God to reveal his Son in Paul. Then in the twentieth verse of the second chapter we hear this oft quoted scripture, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the Son of God , who loved me and gave himself for me.” As we read this we can sense that Paul is testifying to a deeper experience of knowing Christ, one which he desires all who follow Jesus to know for themselves.

         Now when we get to the third chapter we find that Paul introduces the patriarch of the Jewish faith, Abraham because he was the one who was first declared righteous by God because of the faith he had placed in God.Yet, Paul speaks about Abraham not just for his faith but also for being the one through whom the blessings of God would go out into the nations. This message is one Paul could say was God preaching his good news right from the very beginning. Paul explains, here in the middle of the third chapter of Galatians, that we all used to live under the curse of the law but,”…Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us by dying upon a cross so that the blessing of Abraham might come to all the world, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” So what the Father has promised to us is the Spirit, the one through whom all of the blessings might go out to all the world. Here we need to pause just to figure out just what is this blessing that God desire to give to everyone? One of the best definitions of being blessed is found in the sixth chapter of the book of Hebrews, where we are told that to be blessed is to finally know what God is up to, it is to taste the heavenly gift, being able to share life with the Holy Spirit; it is to taste the goodness of the word of God and to taste the powers of the age to come. The writer is obviously taking off where the thirty-fourth Psalm left off because in the eighth verse, we read, “Oh taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him!…those who seek the Lord lack no good thing”. Blessed means that the goodness of God is not just some biblical definition but rather the goodness of God is a wonder for us to taste and experience for ourselves.

         It is just this experience that Paul is afraid that this church at Galatia is in danger of losing out on. We hear his anguish in our scripture for today where Paul tells them that now that they have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how could they turn back to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world all to end up becoming a slave to such things. Paul wonders, what happened to the blessing that this church had received? Perhaps this blessing seemed too good to be true, but for whatever reason, this church had become convinced by some spiritual con artists that keeping the law was still necessary for those who found faith in Jesus Christ. Paul, right at the beginning of this letter, tells this church that what they have come to place their faith in was some other gospel, some other means of salvation not based on the promise God had made to Abraham. Now, this idea that there might be some other gospel that people would be attracted to should grab our attention because such goofy gospels still exist. People run after the good news that says that following Jesus will make you rich but the true gospel says that we have received a blessing in order to bless others, not ourselves. Or some believe that the good news is that if we follow Jesus then God will make us a great nation but the good news that speaks of blessing others says that these blessings will go out to every family on earth no matter what nation they live in; this is the true good news of Jesus Christ. The mark of these false gospels is that they always create division. At the churches in Galatia, their false gospel caused separation between those who thought salvation is by following the rules and those following the ways of blessing. The reason why people become susceptible to false gospels is that they have stopped short in receiving all of the fullness of blessing that the Holy Spirit desired for them. You see, the depth of the blessing of God is when the Spirit brings the life of Christ to be lived within the life of one who has found faith in Christ alone. When one allows the Spirit to lead them, this is when they will be led to discover and know God through the experiences they have with God, tasting and finding that God is indeed good.

         So again, on this the birthday of the church, it must be said that the church is not born until Christ is born in us, the church. The reason we must insist that this is true is that as Paul points out to the churches in Galatia, if Christ has not been formed in us, those who are the church, then the church is susceptible to chase after other gospels. And here is the bottom line: The church without the one, true gospel ceases to be the church, it’s as simple as that. The church that is born at Pentecost is in danger of dying unless it insists that Christ be born in those who are the church. This is the truth that the Spirit reveals to us because the Holy Spirit did not just move there on Pentecost setting the church in motion but the Spirit from that moment on was always leading every generation through the wilderness of this life in preparation of the life to come. Perhaps when Paul spoke of the Spirit’s leading he thought of the image found in the sixty-third chapter of Isaiah, where the prophet remembers how in the days of Moses, God put his Holy Spirit in the midst of of his people. Isaiah writes, “Like livestock that go down in the valley, the Spirit of the Lord gave them rest. So, you, O God, led your people, to make for yourself a glorious name.” The implication here, is that the glory of God is tied to his ability to lead his people to a place of rest, a place where they would at last cease to always be striving in unbelief and at last abide in confidence that comes from knowing the goodness of God.  

         So, yes the church is born when the promised Spirit is given to us when Christ has ascended to his throne. The Spirit descends to us so that through his leading, the authority and dominion of Christ evident in the heavens above might at last be seen in us here on earth. This is why Paul insists that Christ must not just be claimed to be alive by us but instead, Christ has to be alive in us for this is the very promise of the Father. How can we not allow Christ to be Lord over us as he lives in us when we remember the wonder of his love for us, his giving to us his very life as an act of the greatest love of all. 

         Those who are the church would most likely believe in all Paul is saying but what is difficult for most people is, just how do we become those who can join Paul in testifying that we have been crucified with Christ, that it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me? The answer, strangely enough is found in this beautiful expression of Paul who speaks of the fruit of the Spirit. You see, people love this image of fruit, spiritual fruit, virtues that are in some way the result of the work of the Holy Spirit. What people don’t love though, is figuring out how this fruit connects with this issue Paul is dealing with in this letter. It is easy, and very tempting to cut this section out of this letter so that we no longer see that here is the answer Paul is giving to them in order that Christ might be formed in them. I believe that this fruit of the Spirit is the experience of tasting and seeing that the Lord is good in a multiple of ways. As the Spirit begins to lead us we will discover all of these different attributes which make up the complex flavor of the goodness of God. The journey, of course begins with love, because love is this, that God first loved us. It makes sense that our first experience will be that we know God as not just the one who loves us but rather we are to know God as being love in all of its fullness. 

         The Holy Spirit, then, leads us through the wilderness of this life and along the way, we are led to different experiences where we are blessed by God. Through that blessing of God we not only know God but we know God as being for us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This last experience, often called self-control, is the part of this fruit which proves that this work of the Spirit is indeed tied to all the rest of what Paul is writing about in this letter. When self-control is ripped from the context of this letter, it can be defined many different ways but when this word is taken down to the original Greek, what we discover is that it means the dominion in us. This word that means, “dominion”, is found at the end of the word, “democracy”. This part, “cracy”, means dominion, so that democracy is dominion, or government, by the people. So to have dominion within us surely must be understood that the one who has been given all dominion, this one called Christ, is found to be in us. It is this last experience found by following the Spirit through the wilderness of this world, this is the experience that Paul insists that this church desperately is in need of, to have the dominion of Christ found to be alive in them. Without this experience of being governed by the inner work of Christ in us we are at risk of being governed by every whim and every other gospel that people insist that we obey. We will be, as Paul told the church at Ephesus in the fourth chapter, “…children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” As Paul insists, we must be willing to grow up and allow Christ to be the dominion within us.

         As intimidating as this sounds, the good news is that Christ knows our frame, being one of us. So, when we go to his one true gospel, we discover that his core teachings deal with blessing, as they should do. The very first core teaching of Jesus from which everything else flows out of, begins, “Blessed are…” In the fifth chapter of Matthew we find this teaching of Jesus which begins, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.” This is where the leading of the Holy Spirit begins, with us spiritually poor and God with all the riches of his kingdom. What is our experience when the God who holds all the cards comes to us and offers us the entirety of his kingdom even though he is aware that there is absolutely nothing we can do to be worthy of such an offer? What we should come away with is that this God who has found us is a God who profoundly loves us. This is what we are going to look at next week in this series of messages on the fruit of the Spirit, called “The Taste of Blessing”. Each subsequent blessing will have a different experience as we find listed in Paul’s description of the fruit of the Spirit. This is the way that the church is born of the Spirit, following his lead until Christ is born in us because we know without a doubt that the church is not born until Christ is born in us. Amen!

         

         

         

The Kings Way: Taking A Stand

 June 1 2025

Ephesians 6:10-20

         As a fan of football I enjoy watching the draft to see which college players are chosen by which team. Now, it is no surprise that the players on the offensive side of the ball make most of the headlines. And make no mistake, people want to know all about the quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers; these are what make the headlines. I too used to get excited about the players on the offensive side of the ball but then I had a conversation with my cousin who played defense for Dover High. What he told me has stuck with me for years, because he told me that it is actually the defensive side of the football, and not the offense, that wins championships. I was surprised and I asked him why he believed this and he said this: If a team can’t score, they can’t win. That just makes so much sense, if you think about it. Over the years, what my cousin said has proven itself a true statement for whenever defenses keep the other team from scoring this is when then winning happens.

         This same kind of thinking is apparent in our scripture for today. Four times in these ten short verses Paul urges those who follow Jesus to, “Stand”. The armor Paul speaks about, in the first few verse, is put on all so that we might,”Stand”. Again, halfway through this teaching of Paul, he says that we are to take up the whole armor of God so that we might be able to, again, “Stand”. Then when we have done all that this armor calls us to do then again, we are urged to, “Stand. And finally, as Paul begins to speak to each piece of armor, he begins by stating that we are to, “Stand.”Now if this was a football game, Coach Paul, is telling his defense, with the ball on the one yard line, that now is the time to, “Stand”. Now is the time to plant your feet firmly in the ground, and form a wall that stands firm. You see, while we love songs like, “Onward Christian Soldiers”, which have us marching as to war, Paul instead says no, the way to win is to simply, “Stand”.Perhaps Paul understood more about football than we previously thought because I believe he would have agreed wholeheartedly that it is defense that brings the victory. You see, Paul knew that if the devil can’t score than evil can not win, it is as simple as that.

         Perhaps it is a surprise that we are playing defense against the team headed by the devil, but this is the very truth Paul says about the matter. One of the least known, yet most profound, verses in scripture is the twelfth verse of the sixth chapter of Ephesians, where Paul states, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places”. We need to pause and consider just what Paul is telling us here. Our fight, is not against flesh and blood, just let that sink in for a moment. For many people, including many Christians, evil has a face.We might even go so far to say that when people think about evil they have a certain face in mind. Yet, this way of thinking according to Paul is absolutely wrong. No, evil is the voices that whisper in our ear, the sense of foreboding darkness, the hellish spiritual forces pressing in on us, these are the true source of evil.

As we are going to consider evil, we have to be able to understand just what we are talking about. I found a lot of help in figuring out this idea of evil in a book written by the acclaimed author C. S. Lewis, called, “Mere Christianity”. In this book, Lewis does a deep study into this idea of evil and he finds that evil cannot be understood apart from the idea of good. As it turns out, evil is best thought of as being anything that is less than good. When we apply this to the statement of Paul who says, “for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers, the authorities, against the cosmic powers that reign over the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil”. It is these forces of evil which manipulate us into seeing others as being less than good all so that we might believe that evil has a face.

The way that we begin to believe evil must have a face is through the,  “schemes of the devil”, as Paul calls them. Now, Paul only speaks of the devil one other place in his letter to the Ephesians, which is the twenty-seventh verse of the fourth chapter. There we read, “If you are angry, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down when you are provoked to anger, give no opportunity to the devil.” When we give an opportunity to the devil, this is when he can score and evil, wins. This is what we must be ready to take a stand against, which means we must understand the devil’s game plan. Paul wants us to know that the  devil is going to use our anger to lure us in to sin, for it is when someone else pushes our buttons, this is when the devil strikes. 

         So the devil’s offensive strategy is to take those times when someone starts pushing all of our buttons, and he uses these moments of anger to cause us to give evil a face. Jesus speaks to just such an occasion in his core teachings, the Sermon on the Mount. In the fifth chapter of Matthew Jesus teaches us, “…I say to you, everyone who is angry in God’s family will be deserving of judgment; whoever says to one of God’s family, “You good for nothing”, deserves to stand before a jury of their peers, and whoever calls a member of God’s family, “You dull and mindless person”, will be deserving of being thrown out into the darkness.” Then Jesus adds this, “So if you have come to make an offering to God on the altar and there remember that you have done something against anyone, by all means, leave your offering, and hurry and be reconciled with your neighbor. Only then should you go and offer your gift to God.” Now when Jesus points out the utter wrongness of telling someone that they are, “…good for nothing”, our ears should have picked up on the fact that this is the very way that C.S. Lewis defined evil. You see, when we declare that someone is less than good what we are doing is stating that evil does indeed have flesh and blood which is a flat out lie. Yet this is what happens anytime someone is found to be of no use in fulfilling someone else’s plans or purposes. We have all probably felt the sting of not being able to be the person who was able to fulfill someone else’s desires and dreams. Yet here is the thing that must be forever remembered, we were not created to be someone who is useful in fulfilling any human endeavors. Yes, someone may find us to be good for nothing according to their needs but that is of no concern, no matter how hurtful it may be, because every one of us has been created to be part of God’s purposes, something every person can participate in.

         You see, Paul tells us in that same fourth chapter, that all of us were “… created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness”. This is the good God has made us to be. This is the reason why Jesus can state we deserve severe judgment anytime we look at someone and see in them something less than what they really are, a holy and righteous creation of God. This is the reason why Jesus insists that if we come before the altar and there remember that we have given evil a face, seeing someone as less than good, then we are to go first and be reconciled with them. The image that Jesus gives is one where a person has come to stand before the face of God but they are unable to see his face because the face of the one held to be less than good, stands between them and God. This person who has been cast aside as being unworthy must once again be known as being worthy of the goodness of God in order that one might at last stand before the goodness of God. The importance of restoring those we have declared to be less than good, is that if we refuse to do so, then Jesus says it is just as if you have taken that other persons life. This then is a victory for the devil because as Peter tells us at the end of his first letter, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. The devil takes us and in a moment of anger, uses us to tell another life that the world would be just as good without them. When we act as if the world would be better if someone would be better off dead then it is the devil who roars at his victory.

         Yet, all is not lost because as Peter goes on to tell us, “Resist the devil, be firm in your faith.” Just like Paul, all that is necessary is for us to take a stand. The way that we defend against these schemes of the devil is to make absolutely sure that we are ready. We must never forget that our battle is with the rulers, with the authorities and the spiritual forces of evil and never with any member of God’s family. To prepare our defense we must return to the cross and the wisdom found there.The cross is where we beheld the truth, the truth of who God is and the truth about each person. This truth was there displayed for all of us in the acts of, redemption, righteousness and holiness. 

The truth about who God, our Heavenly Father is, is revealed in his redemption of humanity. Our Heavenly Father knew that there was no one to be for us our kinsman redeemer. So he did the unthinkable and he chose to send his Son to earth, to become one of us, so that this one called Jesus might be for all of us the ransom which secured our freedom from our past. In this way, we now know that our Heavenly Father considers every person to be worth the infinite value of his Son.

         The Son of God, sent to us by the Father to be the ransom for many, went to the cross to pay the cost, the shedding of blood for our forgiveness. Yet this blood was not just for our forgiveness it was also the very blood of the new covenant, a bond Jesus has with us where we are welcomed into his life. Now everyone is invited to come and live in our Father’s house. In doing so, Jesus was the righteous judge, declaring that all of us are equal in his eyes, and all are worthy of the grace and mercy of God. So now we know that righteousness is found when we judge others with the righteous judgment of Jesus, seeing others as we see ourselves, doing onto them what we desire be done to us.

         The blood of Jesus was not only the very means for our forgiveness, and the new covenant which made us all equals, but it also was the means by which we have been cleansed so that now the Holy Spirit might abide in us, the living temples of God.  The Holy Spirit is the very Spirit of our unity for he not only dwells in us but he also brings us together and binds us into a greater temple that has Christ as its cornerstone. Now we know that God in all his fullness longs to make his presence live with each and every person.

         All of this is the truth that is found at the cross, the very truth that Paul tells us better be strapped to us when we go out into the world. This truth speaks to us of righteousness, the breastplate, protecting our heart. Righteousness is looking at another and always seeing our equal, one who Jesus Christ has decided is worthy of following him home for they are those who are of infinite worth to our Father. Can you see, that when we our provoked by someone, how very important it is that we in that moment, see that person as an equal, one who can get on a person’s nerves just like we are so capable of doing. So righteousness in that moment can simply be cutting this other person some slack and just let them vent as all of us need to do. In righteousness we can take a stand.

           Paul goes on to tell us that not only must we fasten on ourselves the truth about God and who all of us are, and place over our hearts the breastplate of righteousness, but we must also put on our feet the good tidings of peace. Paul has taken this image from the fifty-second chapter of Isaiah, where we read of how beautiful are the feet of those who brings good news, those who publish peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, the one who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” From this we can see that peace is the result of God coming to reign, his kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven. This kingdom comes when the wisdom of heaven is lived out by those who have received this wisdom from the cross. When the wisdom of the cross determines the choices we make then we can proclaim to others, “Our God reigns.” This is the wisdom that speaks to us of the infinite value God places on every life, the wisdom that declares each person to be worthy of the grace and mercy of God, and so by us as well, and the wisdom that states that each person is holy, a saint, who waits to receive the Holy Spirit. Peace, in a Hebrew understanding, is about restoration, and with the wisdom from above the way we act with each other is restored to the way God has always intended us to live. This is good news indeed, something to be proclaimed and lived out where ever our feet may take us.

         Paul goes on to say in this sixth chapter of Ephesians that we must be sure to take with us the shield of faith to protect us against the flaming arrows of the devil. You see, in those moments when others are playing offense, you know, being offensive, this is when we must be absolutely certain of our faith. We must be certain that victory will only happen using the wisdom and power from above and nothing else. In these moments, we must take what we believe and play great defense, knocking down all the attempts by the devil. When the devil wants us to see someone as being less than good we must come back against this by our belief that all people our worth an infinite amount to God, that all people are worthy of the mercy and grace of God and that all people are a worthy temple of God. This is what it means to take a stand through the power and wisdom of the cross.

         Paul then adds that we must take on the helmet of salvation. This means that we know that the wisdom of the cross has been verified by the power of the resurrection. So when we live by the wisdom of the cross we can stand secure in the knowledge that this wisdom found at the cross is the true way of life. This means that we no longer allow our anxieties and worries to be the cause of our anger with others.Instead, when we live by the wisdom of the cross we can know that this is the way of eternal security. In light of this eternal security, the only sword we need is the word of God, his call to love him with all of our heart, and all of our soul and with all that he has given to us. As we stand at the cross how can we not respond by giving our whole self in love to God? Out of the outpouring of our love for our God we pray, asking only that the name of our Father be made holy, that his kingdom come, his will be done, here on earth just as it is in heaven. Yes, Lord take us and give each of us, we pray, to bring this life to our world. When we pray such a prayer we find that God empowers us, and by his strength we do find that we can stand firm against evil, knowing that our God can surely deliver us from this evil that we face. So, in all of these ways, we play great defense, standing firm at the base of the cross, always ready to see the good in everyone. May God be glorified in our victory! Amen!

               

          

 

The King’s Way: Living Under God’s Judgment

 May 25 2025

Romans 15:1-17

         A couple of weeks ago, I was invited by my daughters to go with them to see the play, “Shucks’, up at Playhouse Square in Cleveland. As we headed north I couldn’t help but to say something we would say as a family when headed out into the world, the saying which goes, “As far as anyone knows we are a nice normal family”.  This was our appeal as parents that our children act decent as we interacted with others. We had a number of these little sayings that we would say to our children as they were growing up. We had to often remind them, “Be a duck not a chicken.” That makes sense, doesn’t it? Well what this weird saying refers to is all those things that people would say about them. You see, when the chicken and the duck are caught out in the rain, the chicken allows the rain to go right through their feathers, soaking that poor hen to the bone. The duck, on the other hand, has the ability to close its feathers tightly against itself so that the rain rolls right off its back, and the duck stays nice and warm. So, when someone would insult our kids, we would tell them, be a duck, let those nasty words roll off of them because they are not the truth about who they are. You see, they and all of us have a choice. We can let the judgments people throw at us roll off, so that the coldness of this world doesn’t affect us.

         In a world full of people who are unable to judge others in a right manner it is important that we take these judgments people might have about us and not accept these as the truth. This is so important when we live in this time that Jesus calls an evil age. Yet, when we at last come to the good judgment of God we must move from being a duck, with our feathers shut tight against the cold rain of this world, to being a chicken, opening our feathers so that the warmth and goodness of God can soak us all the way through.

         You see the truth about who any of us really are was decided one Friday, on a lonely hill, where yet another crucifixion took place with yet again another rebel seeking to be king. There, on that cross, the wisdom of God, was displayed as an historical event, a wisdom that looked like so much foolishness to those so wise in the ways of this world. That man, judged to be so weak, so low and despised by the world was nonetheless, the very one who revealed to us the wisdom of heaven. As we have said many times in this series on the King’s way of life, Paul tells us, in the first chapter of the first letter to the church at Corinth, “…you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, holiness and redemption.” All wisdom is about making choices, choices which will become actions, actions that will prove the wisdom that is expected. So here at the cross we witnessed, in this historical event, the choices God made using his wisdom. The Father decided that every person is worth the infinite worth of his Son when he offered Jesus for our redemption. This meant that the Father would send his Son to our world, and the Son entered into our human story by taking on our flesh in order that Jesus might be for us our kinsman-redeemer, given as a ransom for many. The Son of God took upon himself the judgment that justice demands for all of us deserved death as a just and fair penalty for our own wrong judgments. Yet, this was not all, for Jesus, using the wisdom from above decided that now that our past had been dealt with, we are now welcome to come into his life so that we might experience the love he has known from his Father for all eternity. This favor shown to us is the grace of God and because the Son of God has given such grace to all people then we are to know that we are all equal and deserving of grace for this is the just wisdom of God. This is the way the wisdom of God becomes in us our righteousness. Yet this is not all that was revealed that Friday for the wisdom of God also decided that the blood of Jesus would be not only the means for the forgiveness of our past sins, and not just the blood of the new covenant where all our equals deserving of grace, but the blood of Christ also cleansed us so that now we have become a holy temple in which The Holy Spirit might abide. As God’s holy nation we are to be true sons and daughters of Abraham who take God’s blessings out to all the world for the cross has indeed broken the curse which has long held our world captive. If we withhold the blessings of God that we enjoy , from just one person, then we call into question the power of the cross to break the curse. No, we are called to be holy just as God is holy, loving and blessing all people just as God has always done.

         So, the wisdom of God has judged every person as being of infinite worth, and that we are all equals according to the judgment of the righteous judge named Jesus, deserving of the grace and welcome of God. God has also judged all of us as being his living temples who are worthy of being called holy, empowered by God to actually be holy as God is holy. This is what has been revealed in the once for all historical act of the cross, the wisdom of God and his judgment of us all, the question though is, do we believe that this really is the truth about ourselves and everyone else? Yes, this is the truth, God’s judgment about us, so it should be obvious that this is a judgment without fear. We never have to fear because the cross shows us that the wisdom of God flows out of his great love for all of us, a love which casts out all our fear.

         Paul gives us a glimpse of what it means for us as followers of Christ to live under the judgment of God here at the end of the book of Romans. As always, it is best that we begin with the reason for this letter which may surprise many people because this letter is not primarily about salvation or theology as it is often referred to be about, but instead Romans is all about a church quarrel. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Just like in the church at Corinth, the church at Rome struggled to get along. The problem in the church at Rome was that there was friction between those who had converted from the Jewish faith and those who had previously been idol worshippers. The wrong way wisdom of our world had infected this church so that those who were previously idol worshippers began to judge the Jewish converts to be weak in their faith of Jesus. These formerly Jewish people struggled to give up those food laws, and purification rights when they accepted Jesus as their Savior and Messiah. Those who had previously worshipped idols saw this refusal to let go of their past ways as being their need for a crutch to lean on, something they proudly boasted they never had to do when they received Jesus. So there was much judging going on, the former idol worshippers judging their Jewish-Christian brothers and sisters with contempt, which of course, set those Jewish-Christian brothers and sisters to judge them right back. This is the mess that Paul is actually addressing in his letter to Rome. 

         With all of that in mind, we come to the fifteenth chapter of Romans, where Paul is wrapping things up by telling his audience what they must do to get their church back on track to have a united life. Knowing what we know about the fighting going on in this church, imagine how these words of Paul must have hit this audience when he says, “We who are strong have an obligation, you owe it to the weak, to bear with them when they are without any strength or any power.” Far from judging others as being weak, Paul is saying this is a sign where those who are strong, those who do have power, to step in and do something. In fact, Paul insists that they have an obligation to lift up those who are struggling in their faith, those who are clinging to their past so tightly that they are in danger of missing out on the present and the future. We are left wondering just why does Paul believe that the strong owe it to the weak to do something when they are struggling? Well, the answer is found back at the fifth chapter of this letter where Paul has previously told his audience, that it was while, “…we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.” Paul here is reminding this church of the judgment of God found in their redemption, that time when they were too weak to find freedom on their own, this is when Christ, the very Son of God died for the ungodly, those so unlike himself. Paul continues in this fifth chapter speaking to the wisdom of God to do such an action for us, “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person- though perhaps for a good person one might even dare to die…” Here Paul is using this world’s wrong way wisdom, to decide just who it is that might be worthy of another person dying for them. Most people would agree that it would have to be someone pretty special to justify giving ones life to save them. Yet the wisdom of God is different because as Paul continues, “…but God stands with us, even while we were sinners, Christ died for us.” Even though we were weak people, so unlike God, continually missing the mark with our wrong judgments of others, God stood beside us; Christ our kinsman, redeemed us by dying for us on the cross. This is why Paul tells those in this church who know the strength of their faith that they owe it to the weak, for when it was when they were weak, this is when Christ, in the strength of heaven, came and gave his life for them. Paul is asking them and us, just how are we going to repay the ransom given for us all? The answer is that if we now find our faith in the wisdom of God then we must become like God and be those who bear others up when they are weak. 

         Paul continues in this fifteenth chapter by contrasting the results of the wisdom from above and the wrong way wisdom of this world, when he tells his audience that they were not to seek pleasure for themselves but instead each person was to please their neighbor, doing what is best for their good, so that the whole house is built up. Now if we can recall when we began this series, we talked about how the church at Corinth was being torn apart by factions and quarrels. What we found to be the source of the problem was that they had begun to focus on eating, drinking and being merry instead of being the church. Here at the Church of Rome, then, it is not difficult to understand why Paul strictly tells them to not seek their own pleasure because if they did so, their pleasure seeking would only end with fighting. Yet Paul is not calling for some dreary existence but instead he states that everyone is to be about pleasing those that cross their path, the one scripture calls the neighbor. As Jesus defines just who are neighbor is in the tenth chapter of Luke, we find that our neighbor is the next person we find who stands in need of our mercy, just as the Good Samaritan did for the man who he found half dead in a ditch. The longing behind these actions is for a world where we all look out for each other  knowing that as we look into each others eyes, there in that other face, is one who desires to be full of joy, to find faith in their belief and to abound in hope by the work of the Holy Spirit, just as Paul knows is possible for us to experience. This is the righteousness of Jesus as we witnessed there upon the cross. He never sought to please himself but as our equal, Jesus sought to please us by inviting us spiritual orphans to come home with him, to live with him in the Father’s house. This is the righteous judgment of our righteous judge named Jesus so it comes as no surprise that when we live under this judgment that we are to “…welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, as Paul urges us to do.This is the righteousness demanded by Jesus to do unto others as we would want done to us.

         When we seek to please our neighbor this is when Paul states that they will be then, built up. Now, in the original text, Paul teaches us, that when we seek to please not ourselves but instead seek to please all people by seeking their good, we are building a house. That sounds rather strange, doesn’t it? Well, Paul helps us unravel this mystery when in writing about how Christ did not please himself, Paul uses the sixty-ninth Psalm. I believe that Paul expects his readers to know this Psalm because if we read it we find that the people had gotten angry at God and because the writer has such a passion for the Temple, this holy place of God, then the anger aimed at God lands on him as well. Paul is saying then that when we begin to live under the judgment of God using the wisdom of God then we can expect some rough sailing. When we seek the pleasure of others before ourselves as Jesus first did for us, then the world will begin to wonder about the wisdom it follows for now there has come into the world, a new way of looking at the world. Just as the Temple of old was a physical representation of what the world would be like when heaven at last becomes united with earth, when we as God’s people seek to please everyone else before ourselves we become a living representation of the world to come. As we please our neighbor, doing what is best for his good, we are building a house, a new and holy Temple, a new reality where the perfect love of God is found to be perfected in us. When we go about pleasing others before ourselves we are stating our faith. This is the reality we believe God brought forth when he cleansed us by the blood shed on the cross. Now all of us are indeed holy for this is the judgment of God, worthy places for his Holy Spirit to dwell. We are holy for now through the Holy Spirit the holy love of heaven is poured into our hearts. This holy love is the love of our holy God who loves all people, all the time, forever and ever, amen. It is this holy love that is now able to live in us, so that we have the power from on high to bring forth this new creation. This new living Temple of God, formed out of living temples of God, is built every time just one more person seeks to please their neighbor for their good. In that moment is the proof that the curse has indeed been broken, and the blessing of God is at last unleashed upon the earth. This is where all scripture is pointing us to and this is why they are so necessary for us so that we do not lose heart and can endure until the end. This is the hope of Paul, that this church and us as well, might know the God of all endurance and encouragement. Through our working with this God under the judgment of the cross, we are to become people of one unrelenting passion, this building up of his house, to have such a zeal for this new way of life given to us that we become consumed by our love for what our God is doing in the world, even if in doing so, the world holds us in contempt. This one passion is to result in our oneness in Christ so that together we all with one voice will glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. As Paul wraps up his letter, he holds out this hope for them and us as well, ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” Amen.

         

         

The Kings Way: The Blessing of Holiness

 May 18 2025

Hebrews 12:1-17

         As many of you are aware, Pope Francis passed away on April 22. His funeral Mass was held five days later on April 26^th and more than a quarter million people watched as he was laid to rest. As Pope, Francis was the head of the Catholic Church, a church that almost 1.5 billion people claim to be a part of, and which makes up fifty percent of all Christian’s who profess Jesus as their Lord. This is why finding his successor was so important for the conclave which chose a new pope, Pope Leo, the first American to hold this office.

         Now, as we watched the death of the pope unfold and then his funeral which was followed by the selection of a new pope, we who are not members of the Catholic Church are reminded once again, that the Catholic Church has many different customs which may appear strange to those of us looking in from the outside. As I consider all of the various aspects surrounding the death of Pope Francis, what surprises me most is that neither Pope, Pope Francis nor Pope Leo, are considered to be a saint according to the Catholic Church. So, needless to say, to be a saint in the Catholic Church is a very high honor indeed and a position which is not often and easily given.

         Yet, perhaps surprisingly, the Bible defines being a saint as being a title all already have been given. Far from being some elite status achieved by a few, this being a saint, holy ones, this is a new way of being that is offered to everyone.Listen to what Paul writes at the beginning of his first letter to the church at Corinth, “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those made holy in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours…”. As we read this we must not forget that this is a church which Paul himself would say has more than its fair share of problems but nonetheless, he still regards all of them as being,”saints”. What this means for us is that if we are those who call Jesus their Savior is that we should know ourselves as being saints, God’s,” holy ones”, think about that for a moment. You see, as Paul explains to us in the third chapter of First Corinthians, ‘Do you not know that all of you are the temple of God and that God’s Holy Spirit dwells in you? So, if anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy them. For God’s temple is holy, and all of you are that temple.” God considers each of us to be a holy temple that has been found worthy of being a residence for the very Spirit of God to come and live in.

         Now we are considering just what does it mean for us to be the holy ones of God because as we have listened to Paul speak to us from the first letter to the Corinthians, he has told us that Christ Jesus has became for us the wisdom from God, and then he adds these three words, righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Paul is telling us that this wisdom from above was most clearly seen when Jesus hung there upon the cross. There upon the cross, we witnessed how Jesus had become one of us, taking on our flesh and blood, so that he might be for us our kinfolk. Jesus came to us to be the ransom that was necessary to achieve our freedom. As our kinsman-redeemer, Jesus was not only willing to pay the price to achieve our redemption, but he also was able to give, not silver or gold, no, Jesus gave his blood, for blood is required for our forgiveness. You see, the wisdom from above knows that we must be set free from the curse of our past judgments, all those times when we judged another person to be for us nothing more as a stepping stone on our way up. You see, when we judge others in the same manner as we judge what we desire, then we never place the right value on them because their value is always connected to their usefulness to us. Yet Jesus, our very own kinfolk, has judged us to be of infinite worth to God, placing himself between us and the consequence of death, a death we rightfully deserved. Jesus judged us as being rightly deserving of death but instead of death we were judged as worthy of grace and mercy instead for Jesus did the unthinkable, and the death we rightly deserved, Jesus accepted this as his own. 

         Well the wisdom from above was not only witnessed as being redemption but Paul also says that as Jesus hung there on the cross what we also saw was righteousness. One must wonder just how a scene which appeared so terribly unjust, could be for us, the very place of righteousness. We find the answer to this question in one of the first teaching moments that Jesus had with his students. There on that hillside in Galilee, Jesus first spoke about how the people of the nations all chase and hunt about for what they will eat, what they will drink and what they will wear, but those of us who know the faithfulness of God are to know, without a doubt, that their Heavenly Father will supply all that is necessary for life. This is a certainty for all of us who have been to the cross and have seen the offering of the Son of God given for their sin. If the Father has judged us worthy of the offering of his Son, then most assuredly he will give us all that is necessary for life. Once we are certain of our Father’s faithfulness, then we are set free to go out and seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness. This seeking for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, is done by following three steps. The first is that we must stop judging. We simply do not have the ability to perceive people as we ought to. Jesus calls us to understand that it is simply impossible for any of us to live out the righteousness of God if we insist on using our own judgment. The second requirement is that we must be people who are in search of where God is bringing his goodness to overcome evil in our world. We are to be asking God, where are you working out your good in the world today. And we follow up  by seeking and looking for where God and his goodness might be at work in our world. And we are to keep knocking until the doors open, and the goodness of God can enter there. The third requirement is that we participate with God in his work bringing his goodness to overcome the evil, by looking upon someone else and in their face, see our own face, one who is our equal for this is the righteous judgment of our righteous judge. The righteousness of the judgment of Jesus was forever made certain when his Father raised him to life through the power of the Spirit.And what was this judgment of Jesus? Paul tells us in the third chapter of Romans, that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God but nonetheless, Jesus also judged that all of us are deserving of the grace and favor of God. So, when we are in the presence of another person, we can judge them with the judgment of Jesus and find that they too are someone who is worthy of grace. So, righteousness is found when we judge others with the righteousness of Jesus, the one who rightly judged all of us as being worthy of grace, love and mercy.

         Well, the wisdom from above is also known to us, not just as redemption and righteousness, but also, holiness as well. This seems to make sense especially if, as Paul seems to think, that we are indeed saints, God’s holy ones. The importance of us knowing ourselves as being holy ones is found in the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, where God says to us, “You shall be holy for I the Lord God am holy.” This sounds like an overwhelming charge, doesn’t it, to be called to be like God, so it comes as a relief to hear our scripture for today, where we learn that our Heavenly Father trains us, a training which is for our good because this training will enable us to share in the very holiness of God. Now why this should be worthy of our attention is that the writer of Hebrews, goes on to say, that without striving after this holiness we will miss out seeing the Lord. 

         To help us to understand this strange idea of holiness, we need to again, remember what Paul tells us in the third chapter of First Corinthians where he says, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy them. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” Let’s pause here to consider what Paul has said. It becomes clear that the reason why we are of infinite worth to God is that each one of us is a living temple capable of being a place where the fullness of God might abide. Jesus was offered by the Father to be the means by which his temples might not perish. We could say then that the Father judged us to be of infinite worth through the giving of Jesus to be our kinfolk. In doing so, Jesus, our righteous judge, judged all of us as being equal in worth to himself, the very Son of God. He did so that we might know ourselves as being equal to each other. And through the blood shed by Jesus, the blood which has purified us, we are now judged by the Holy Spirit as being worthy of being his place of residence. 

         For all those who may have been terrified of just what the judgment of God might be, at the cross we discover that the judgment of God, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a judgment that declares us as being worthy of bearing the holiness of God, a truly amazing judgment for all who know their fall from glory. So, holiness is a characteristic given to us which we are called to maintain, not something that we must achieve. The writer of Hebrews though also speaks of those who have failed to obtain the grace of God, of those who have a root which springs up in a person so that they end up a bitter person which in the end, defiles a once pure and holy temple. To understand just what the writer of Hebrews means we must look at what the situation is that has caused the writing of his letter. The church the writer is writing to has had some terrible experiences, They have been publicly exposed to scorn and affliction. They have been imprisoned and they have watched as their property was plundered. They have come to the point where they are ready to walk away from Jesus.Not only that but they also have begun to treat those who have persecuted them with contempt, which is understandable, isn’t it? It would seem normal to get angry at those people who just would not stop bringing the evil of this world against them. Certainly we can sympathize, and believe that this church should see their persecutors as those they should judge as being unworthy of receiving any love from them. What would be the trouble if they would just write off this bunch of people who sought to harm them?

         Well, this is the dilemma that this church found itself in and so the writer of Hebrews, in no uncertain terms, tells them of the foolishness of this way of thinking. He says, “It is impossible, in the case of those who have been once enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away-to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm, holding Jesus up to contempt.” Here the writer of Hebrews is stating, in no uncertain terms, that if these good folks had been blessed by God, having seen the light, and been blessed by the sweetness of our hope of heaven, and have had the Holy Spirit unite them in love and have feasted on the holy word of God and have experienced for themselves the very power of the coming age, and then they turn to someone and refuse to extend this same blessing to them, there just is no coming back from such actions. There is no way to straighten out a mind and a heart that has become that twisted and perverse. The reason why this is the absolute truth is that when we refuse to offer the life of blessing to just one person, then we have called into question the work done by Jesus upon the cross. Has the offering of Jesus upon the cross destroyed the curse all of humanity suffered under since the wrong judgments of our ancestors, or has the cross accomplished nothing at all? Was Jesus simply a man accursed by God according to Jewish law? Or has Jesus indeed brought about a world where every family has the hope of blessing just as God promised Abraham one day would happen? You see, how the world judges Christ and him crucified, is dependent upon, not just our belief that the cross has indeed broken the curse and now the blessings of God can flow out to every tongue, tribe and nation but it depends even more so on those who live out this truth, otherwise the truth about the cross will suffer. 

         The writer of Hebrews speaks to this temptation to withhold blessings from those who would persecute us when he says to them that they must see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God. In the original language, the writer of Hebrews is speaking more to those who have fallen away from standing before God. This is in contrast to the witness of Jesus, who we are told at the beginning of this twelfth chapter that he was able to endure the cross because of the joy that was before him. This joy that Jesus focused on was the joy of his Heavenly Father, who rejoiced over this one who is and always will be the good and faithful servant and Son. In the midst of the pain caused by those who persecute us as followers of Jesus, the pull of this joy becomes weakened. We let our eyes fall away from the face of our Father to look at the gods of this world. Instead of being pure in our devotion to our Heavenly Father we now find ourselves divided in our allegiances, and this division in our hearts is much like an evil plant that has become rooted within us. If left to grow, this, “plant”, will lead us further and further away from the God who longs to bless all of us. In the end, all that is left is a harvest of bitterness and weeping at the loss of the blessings God desired to give to us.

         You see, we must be about the blessing of others if we have known and can say that God has indeed blessed us. This proves to be especially true when we encounter those who judge us as being unworthy for they simply can find no use for a life that refuses to follow this world’s wrong way wisdom. Yet those who persecute us, and harm us, these are the ones we absolutely have to go out of our way to bless because this is the way of holiness. If you don’t believe me, listen to the words of Jesus, who says to us at the end of the fifth chapter of Matthew, “You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may receive an inheritance from your Father who is in heaven. For your Heavenly Father makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good. And your Heavenly Father sends rain on the just and on the unjust. If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than every one else does? Does not every person, in every nation merely love those who love them? You therefore must reach the goal to love all people, just as your Heavenly Father loves all people.” You see, to be holy as our God is holy means that we must be those who love all people just as our Heavenly Father loves all people. When we bless those who curse us, this is when we can know our Heavenly Father is right there steadying our trembling hands and unsteady legs that just want to run, instead of looking this jerk in the face and love on him just like our Father first loved on us. Yet, we know that we must do so because the Holy Spirit has first judged us to be holy and if this is true then we must live like this title of holy is the truth about who we are. And only as we are truly holy can the cross be seen as being holy, the place where God gave those living under the curse of wrong judgments, the gift of his blessed presence all because he has judged all of us as being those who are worthy of his love. So let us go forth and bless because Christ and him crucified  has forever defeated our curse! Amen!