A Good Longing

September 19 2021

Ecclesiastes 1

         As many of you know, Jennifer and I have a son named Matthew. Now, we have always known that Matt is a little unique, I mean after all, he was the kid who at four years of age announced from his high chair that he was going to count to one hundred by elevens. Yup, off he went, eleven, twenty-two, all the way to ninety-nine which was close enough for me. He was also the one who, in the aftermath of having a tree smash our house leaving me a wreck told me, “Its just a house Dad.” That was a pretty profound and quite right statement coming from a fifteen year old kid. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had the kids over for lunch since we don’t see them very often as they have all flown the nest. As we were eating, in the midst of our catching up, we found ourselves on the topic of people getting upset, which seems to be pretty prevalent these days. Matt, like usual, understood, perhaps better than most just what was the source of people being upset. He said people get upset when their expectations don’t line up with reality. People want the world to be a certain way, they expect certain things to happen but then they come face-to face with reality and the reality they are living in doesn’t match up with what they were expecting. That’s kind of deep when you think about it. His answer is to just not have any expectations and just learn to accept the reality that you find yourself in, that way you will never find yourself frustrated when the people and things of life fail to live up to your expectations.

         Now, Matt and the way that he thinks about life would be at home in the company of the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes because the writer of Ecclesiastes also has done a lot of thinking as to why is life so frustrating.  For many people though, what is frustrating is trying to read the book of Ecclesiastes because it can be a rather obscure and hard to follow book. The author seems to be a real downer because he writes continually about everything is vanity. This translation of the word which is a central part of what he is speaking about doesn’t help either. I mean, if you are like me, a vanity is that sink with a mirror where you brush your teeth every morning. So, before we can even think about getting into what the whole point of what the writer is attempting to speak about we have to first figure out just what is this idea that has been translated as “vanity”. 

         Even so, though, the book of Ecclesiastes has some great quotes that have been plucked out of its manuscript. If you are of a certain age you will remember that a band called The Byrds had a hit in 1965, called Turn, Turn, Turn which was nothing more than the first eight verses of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, so there’s that. There are also verses from the fifth chapter that are sometimes used at weddings because they state that two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. A threefold cord, which can be thought of as a husband and wife and God, we are told is not easily broken. So, yes, there are bits and pieces we can take out of Ecclesiastes which are beautiful and profound but the real power and purpose of this writing unfortunately doesn’t get understood when we do so. This is why I thought we should take the next several weeks and have a look at just what is this strange book really all about.

         Well, first, we might want to start with the strange name that this book has, Ecclesiastes. As a person who has been trying to spell this correctly I can assure you that I wish they had called it something else. The word, “Ecclesiastes”, is a Greek word which has its roots in another Greek word, “ecclesia,” This is a word that means to call out or to call together and it was the name for when a town meeting was to be held the town crier would call out for people to come together in the town square. The early church was often called the ecclesia because they were people whom God had called together into an assembly. So, Ecclesiastes then is the one who is speaking to those who have been called together; he is the speaker to the assembly. This would be much like in school where you find out that on a certain day you were going to have an assembly because of a speaker who was going to address the student body. The speaker who was going to talk to you in Greek would be called Ecclesiastes. Now, what is interesting is that in the case of Ecclesiastes, the person who wrote it is actually writing about the speaker, it isn’t the speaker himself. So, it’s a second hand account kind of like you had to write about the speaker who came to speak to the student assembly.

         One more thing about the book of Ecclesiastes is that it is part of the Bible’s wisdom literature. What is fascinating is that although the Bible has several books classified as being about wisdom, they all take different approaches to that subject. The best known book of wisdom,Proverbs for example, takes the approach that everything that is wise is written down within its pages so that if a person desires to be wise all they need to do is to study the book of Proverbs, learn the right way of living that is found there and voila, you will be a wise person. Ecclesiastes though, differs from the book of Proverbs because what this book is about is one person’s quest to figure out why the world is messed up and then through study and observation figure out the solution to what plagues the world. Ecclesiastes then is quite scientific in its approach because it involves a lot of study and questioning and then forming a conclusion from all that has been learned in the search. The writer of Ecclesiastes though does not just want his listeners to accept his findings but he rather wants those who listen to him to be people who do their own people watching, do their discovery and pondering and then agree with what he has found. The wisdom of Ecclesiastes then, is not about rote learning, reading a book, memorizing answers and then applying them; no, Ecclesiastes is about developing a wisdom mindset, about discovering just what it means to be wise from everyday living in the real world. We might say that it is learning to be wise from attending the school of hard knocks.

         So, as we begin Ecclesiastes, it seems as if the speaker is a bit over dramatic and pretty much a downer. He sounds like a guy you would hate to have to ride in an elevator with. Then there’s that word, “vanity”. The best way to figure out just what is meant by this word is to go back to the original Hebrew where we find that the word is hevel. Its roots mean breath or wind and the idea is trying to catch the wind. Have you ever tried to run and take hold of the wind? With that image in mind it is pretty easy to understand that hevel can be understood as being futile, utterly futile, nonsensical, or senseless absurdity. This word absurdity is perhaps the closest to capturing what the speaker is getting at because in its original use it meant to be deaf to the voice of reason. When people don’t do what seems reasonable or rational, then, we call them absurd. So, when the speaker of Ecclesiastes states that all is absurd he is saying in no uncertain terms that the whole world seems to be deaf to the voice of reason. He has looked around, observed people in their comings and going and what he notices is that everything people are doing is pretty nonsensical.  A famous phrase plucked from this first chapter of Ecclesiastes is that there is nothing new under the sun. Every day it’s the age old, same old. Jennifer has been working hard at eating right but the other day I couldn’t help but laugh when as she was packing her lunch she said under her breath, “Salad, again.” This is what our speaker is getting at, everyday, it’s salad, again. There is a weariness to life, what has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. A generation goes and a generation comes, right, and you find that the only two sections of the paper you really want to read are the obituaries and the funnies. One helps you remember the truth about life and the other helps you to forget it. This what I like about the speaker is that even though he is a bit of a downer he at the same time, is honest about the way life is. What the Bible teaches us is not that we have to go around with a smile on our faces acting as if nothing is wrong but it rather says that its okay to be honest and state that you know, life has a lot of moments that are mundane and boring, where life seems a bit nonsensical and its okay to feel like we are just running to make the wheel go around.

         Yet in spite of our dreary state of affairs all is not lost because what the speaker also has pointed out is the fact that we are aware of our state of being. We are aware that there is a God and he has given to us a life to be busy in. We know the passing of our days and we also are aware that these days we have been given should have meaning, that our days should make sense. You know, a dog or cat is never disappointed to eat the same kibble day in or day out. They treat every day as a brand new day never worrying about what happened yesterday or fussing over what’s going to happen tomorrow. But we are different and there is no place that this difference is so keenly felt than in this nagging feeling that there ought to be more to life than this, that life has to be about more than eating and being busy and going to bed just to get up and do it all over again because that’s basically how the dog and the cat live their life. Our frustrations are the alarm bell that is trying to wake us up to the reality that God has created us to be different, to live different. This difference is that life is supposed to make sense, this is what wisdom is all about. Life is supposed to be reasonable; life is supposed to have meaning. The writer of Ecclesiastes understands this and he is wondering just why is it that life is not as its supposed to be, why is life so frustrating? This is where his search begins with his questioning of the status quo, and this is where our search begins as well.

         You see, God wants us to have a longing for more. Listen to what Jesus tells us in his first sermon as found in the fifth chapter of Matthew, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” This hunger and thirst for things to be right, this is, I believe what the speaker of Ecclesiastes is experiencing. You know, when people get to a certain level of hunger they often become irritable, what people know as being hangry. I think something similar happens when we are hungry and thirsting for the world to be right. When we live in a world is as the speaker of Ecclesiastes tells us, exceedingly futile, hopelessly absurd, our hunger for life to be reasonable and meaningful can make us frustrated. As my son Matt has already figured out, you are just going to be frustrated if you have expectations because more often than not, your expectations will not match the reality you’re living in. Yet, I wonder if it is just so easy as just having no expectations? When Jesus states that it is alright for us to be hungry and thirsty for the world to be made right he is telling us that we are not to give up on our expectations that the world should be a certain way. We aren’t just to say that it is no use expecting that people will act in a righteous manner, but rather Jesus instead says, its ok to be hungry, to keep expecting even if your pretty sure you’re going to be disappointed in the end. So, how are we to live with this endless craving for our world to be made right? The answer Jesus gives is a promise, “You will be satisfied.” What this promise of Jesus forces us to do is to put our hope of satisfaction somewhere in the future not in the here and now. The speaker of Ecclesiastes must have had some inkling that the hope he was searching for lay not in the everyday life where there is nothing new under the sun but instead the hope he desired resided where God was. In chapter three, the speaker writes again about the work that we all busy ourselves with saying, “What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given his children to be busy with.” These are the same words he has spoken that are found in the first chapter about the unhappy business of life. But here in the third chapter the speaker goes on to say, “He has made all things beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to end. I perceived that there is nothing better than for them to be joyful and to do good as long as they live.” This is an amazing observation that the speaker of Ecclesiastes has discovered that when God was forming us, he created us in such a way that all of us have an awareness of eternity. This awareness of eternity can be thought of in many ways but perhaps the best way to understand what is meant here is that all of us have an awareness of God. The Jewish people hold that where humans differ from animals is that as human beings we are aware that God is speaking to us. It is God who is eternal because as the people of Israel knew so well, the one constant, age after age, was God. God is ever present, never changing , always faithful; this is what it means to be eternal. Jesus confirms this in his last prayer with his disciples when they heard Jesus say to his Heavenly Father, “Father glorify your Son, that the Son might glorify you since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” This is what Jesus has done, he has taken this awareness of eternity and he has made known the one who is eternal because this is the life God created us for. It is here, in this life of knowing God, here is where we find satisfaction for the hunger and thirsting for righteousness because only God is wholly righteous. You see, it is the frustration with the futility and absurdity of this life under the sun, the life marked off day by day and year by year, this is what makes us long for more. The more that we are longing for awakens within us something God created us with when he knit us together, an awareness that the more that we are longing for is a reality and this reality is the eternal reality of God.

         So, it is God who makes so that in our frustration we are not driven to despair in our longing for this world to be set right. It is because of God that we can, as the speaker of Ecclesiastes tells us we can experience joy even in a world that is so frustratingly futile, so overwhelmingly absurd. We can know our hungering and thirsting doesn’t allow us to let our frustration be an excuse to not keep on doing good as long as we live. Yet in spite of what we have so far figured out the speaker is not satisfied that there is a way for us to live with a world where reason seems to fall on deaf ears. The speaker of Ecclesiastes wants to know just why it is that this world is so messed up because he knows that this is what wisdom is supposed to do, to be that which brings order out of chaos.  This is why the speaker declares that he has applied his heart to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. He applied his heart to know everything, wisdom and madness and folly, the good, the bad and the ugly of it all. What he found disturbed him a great deal but as we go through what he discovers we too will come to find some answers as to just why things are the way that they are. For now though, we hold fast to the promise of Jesus that we will be satisfied. We know that his promise to be true because he is always been faithful to us, even being faithful to die for us that we might be set free to know the eternal God who loves us and who invites us to come and enjoy his righteous life. So, let us keep on being hungry and thirsty for this world to be right because one day, we will find our blessed satisfaction in the grace of Jesus Christ. Amen.

         

All Good Things Do Not End

September 12 2021

John 5:19-29

         Well, this past Thursday the NFL got off to a great start with Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers facing off against the Dallas Cowboys. What has already happened, even before this first game was even played is that the analysts and the pundits have been hard at work speculating about which teams will win their divisions and even going so far as to predict just who will win the Super Bowl this year. To me this is just bordering on lunacy because the whole fun of watching football is watching a team that everybody has written off that finds a way, using a bunch of no-name players, to beat the odds. Everyone loves a good David vs. Goliath story where the incredible happens out of the hands of the little guy. So, I’ve come to the point where I refuse to even read anything that smacks of predictions and speculation because what I have come to realize is that all these analysts are toting is just their best fictional story about future events. I mean, if I wanted to read fiction I might as well read a novel by an author that I know can weave a tale that’s half way engaging. 

         The church is not immune to endless speculation, either. Nowhere is this more true than in the endless theories put forth about the end times and the return of Jesus. I cannot begin to tell you just how many different takes there are on the meaning of the book of the Revelation to John. Most of the discussion revolves around just where we are at in relation to the thousand year reign of Christ described in the twentieth chapter of the book of Revelation. This thousand years are called a millennial and so people either believe that today we are living before this millennial which is called premillennialism or we are living on the far side of that time which is called post-millennial. Premillennialism believe that Christ will come back soon to rescue his followers from a world that is growing ever more spiritually dark. Post-millennials hold that the kingdom of God is now here and that we are to live in the truth of that reign. Its pretty easy to see that there is a wide difference between these two positions. What is amazing is that both of these beliefs were found among the various groups who came together to form the Church of the Nazarene. Many did not believe that those who held such very different beliefs on the second coming of Christ could be united into one denomination. In the end though, they came to the conclusion that they did not regard the theories surrounding this Bible Doctrine concerning the Second Coming of Christ as essential to salvation. That is why in the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene we find in the fifteenth article of faith the following statement: We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ will come again; that we who are alive at his coming shall not precede them that are asleep in Christ; but that, if we are abiding in Him, we shall be caught up with the risen saints to meet the Lord in the air, so that we shall ever be with the Lord. So, yes, Jesus is coming back and yes, those who are abiding in Christ will be with the Lord forever. There is no speculation concerning the Lord’s return because his return is a certainty. You see, my problem with all of the speculating is that this is so vastly different from how we believe in Jesus Christ. Our belief in Christ is not speculation; our belief is founded on the truth that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. If this fact is not true than our faith is futile and we are still in our sins. This fact that Jesus has been raised from the dead then leads us to understand that he is not just a man, a Jewish rabbi from Judaea but is in fact the Son of God who was raised in power according to the Spirit of Holiness. Here then, is how we come to our belief in the Incarnation, that Jesus is God in the flesh, our mortal and corrupt flesh but without sin because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It was because he had taken on our flesh that on the cross Jesus condemned sin in the flesh, putting it to death when he died. Through the shedding of his blood Jesus forgave all of our sins as the perfect once-for-all sacrifice and through the shedding of his blood Jesus created one new humanity through the peace which resulted from his death. Three days later when Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus was justified through the display of the power of the Holy Spirit raising him to life and because we are forever united with Jesus, we are justified as well. Through the hope we have of the resurrection we know that Jesus is our future so that now we no longer need to be enslaved to fear, worry or anxiety. In the absence of fear then faith can be created in us and out of this faith, we can be people who love in the present moment fulfilling the Law through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. You see, all of what we believe is not some speculation on our part but is in fact founded on the true event of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, it seems wrong to have our faith begin on the solid standard of truth only to get to the end and there decide that we should try and stand on some flight of fiction. As our founders knew all too well, these speculations of the end times really have no bearing on our salvation and it is our salvation that should be of our utmost concern.

         With our salvation in mind then, let’s have a look at our final article of faith found in the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene, which concerns Resurrection, Judgment, and Destiny. Article Sixteen: We believe in the resurrection of the dead, that the bodies of the just and the unjust shall be raised to life and united with their spirits-“they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

         We believe in future judgment in which every person shall appear before God to be judged according to his or her deeds in this life.

         We believe that glorious and everlasting life is assured to all who savingly believe in and obediently follow, Jesus Christ our Lord; and that the finally impenitent shall suffer eternally in hell.

         Here then is what we should focus on as we concern ourselves with the end times, the time when the final resurrection is at last upon us. What is interesting is that everyone will be raised from the dead, this is what our article of faith confesses to and it is backed up by our scripture verse for today from the fifth chapter of the gospel of John. The reason why we know this to be true is that Jesus, taking our flesh upon himself, has forever united himself with each person, dying for each person, in their place, upon the cross. So, the salvation that Jesus has secured is a salvation that is offered to every person. This is exactly what Jesus teaches us when he tells us in the third chapter of John, that  this is how “God so loved the world, he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but he sent his Son into the world in order that the world might be saved through him.” Jesus did not come to condemn the world but he came to save the world and this salvation is already a reality for each and every person on the planet.  It is not then our faith which makes our salvation a reality but rather it is the salvation that Jesus has secured that creates our faith because only as our future is secure are we able to experience the perfect love of God which casts out all fear and when fear is dispersed then faith can come in to our hearts. 

         What this means then is that rather than our faith securing our salvation it is rather our disbelief that condemns us. Further in the third chapter of John, we hear Jesus explain that “this is the judgment that the light has come into the world and people have loved the darkness  rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” So, here we are told plainly the criteria for our future judgment which is a persons works, what they are using their energy and their resources on. Those willing to be close to the light, who is Jesus who has come into the world, are those whose works are carried out in God. These works are what Jesus speaks about in our scripture for today when he states that he doesn’t do anything of his own accord but he only did what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he is doing.” And further Jesus explains the works that his Father is doing telling us that just “as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.” So, if our works are to be carried out in God for us to be living in the light then it just makes sense that our works are to be works that are life giving works. If Jesus has united us with him through the taking on of our flesh then for us to remain united to him we have to be willing to be focusing our energies in the same direction that Jesus is doing which is the giving of life. This is what is meant by being people who are doing good, because as God alone is good and God alone is the giver of life then in order for us to do good we also must be givers of life even if it means that to do so we must lay down our life. This laying down of our life is the way that Jesus in the tenth chapter of John defines the greatest love of all. Love then is also about being life giving.  This is what has to be kept in mind when in the twelfth chapter of John, Jesus cries out, “If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge them; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word I have spoken will judge them on the last day. For I have not spoken on my authority but the Father who has sent me has himself given me a commandment…” This commandment, as we learn in the thirteenth chapter of John, is the new commandment that we are to love as Jesus has first loved us, loving each other with a love willing to lay down our lives so that others might live. This is the very same thought that we find in the third chapter of John’s first letter, where we are told that we know we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers and sisters. Whoever does not love abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer and no murderer has eternal life in them.” Judgment day then no longer becomes some day in the far future but instead judgment day is any day when we refuse to love, when we refuse to give another person life for this is what we do when consumed by our hatred. And if we refuse to give life then it just follows that we cannot be part of God’s eternal life because God’s life is all about giving life.

         It might seem though that this idea about God’s judgment is mere speculation however the reality of God’s judgment was put on display in the life of the Israelites, the people who were known as the very people of God. They were the ones who Jesus came into this world to live as one of them and they rejected him. They rejected  Jesus because they refused to believe that the God he was was indeed the one true living God. They refused to believe that their God would actually insist that they not resist the evil one, that their God would insist that if someone were to slap them on one cheek then they should let them have a go on the other one. They could not accept that their God would teach them that if anyone were to take their coat then by all means, let them have your shirt as well. They could not handle that their God would be so absurd as to expect them to not only carry a Romans gear for a the required mile but to just go on and carry it the next mile as well. I mean what kind of God would actually think that it would make sense for us to give to anyone who begs and for us to not refuse to give to any who would borrow from us? The final straw of course is that Jesus would not budge in his conviction that the only God there is is one who loves the very people who hate him. What kind of nonsense is this? And then because Jesus held that this was who God actually was, then we too were to love our enemies. You see this is why Jesus was nailed to a cross because he would not let go of this idea that the God of Israel was this kind of God but by nailing him to the cross, as the very Son of God, this just proved this was indeed who God really was, a God who loved his enemies, willing to give the life of his Son to prove it.  Before his death though Jesus, pronounced judgment on those who would not accept the reality of who their God really was, telling them that when the people of Israel refused the ways of peace, the ways of God, then all that was left for them was for them to experience judgment. Judgment came as Jesus had foretold it when in A.D. 70, the people of Israel went to war against the Roman forces that occupied their country and the Roman forces destroyed the very Temple where the people of Judaea believed dwelled the God who would give them victory. Yet, the one true God was not there because he instead dwelled with the people who believed in Jesus, the people who trusted that in Jesus was the very life of God who had given life to them and because of that they were to be people who gave life to others.

         You see, the people of Israel believed wrongly that being the people of God meant that they were to carve out of the world a place that would separate us from them. What they failed to realize is that there is no “them” but only us as the whole world stood condemned to death because of their sin, and the whole world needed the life that only could come to them through the death of Jesus. The people of Israel serve as our reminder that this world and its desires is passing away. Here we can firmly state that there is no lasting city, no lasting country, no lasting anything and this is why we are to be people who live as people for whom this world is not worthy. To try and establish something permanent in this world would mean that we would have to resort to the ways of this world and the ways of this world all find their power in death. Instead what Christ calls us to do is to witness to the life that is to come, to live the life of God’s new creation within the old creation. This means that we are to be life givers in all that we do. This is why when Jesus spoke of the final judgment he put it in terms such as these, as found in the twenty fifth chapter of Matthew. “Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come those who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me, I was in prison and you came to me.” It is acts of love towards even those who least deserve them, this is the way of life, the way of the kingdom of God. The eternal consequences of these acts is heard in Jesus stating that these acts were done to him. They were done to him because he has forever united himself with every person when he took upon himself their flesh, when he died in their place. So, when love is shown even to one considered to be our enemy in that very moment we are loving the very One who has bound himself to our enemies life. So, when we choose to not love our enemies we, at the very same moment, have chosen to not show love to the very One who out of love has chosen to bind his life to theirs. Can you begin to grasp the eternal consequences that are bound up in our every day decisions? If we can understand how our judgment centers on life then we can understand the reasoning behind hell and eternal punishment. When we refuse to have our life be about the giving of life then we have separated ourselves from God who is the giver of life and apart from life it just stands to reason, there can be only death. The original images from where our ideas of hell come from are images of the garbage dump, a place of smoldering decay, and this is all that can be when one has cut themselves off from life. This is not of God’s choosing for he has done everything to give life but when one refuses life, as one is free to do, then the consequences can be only death. So, knowing Jesus then we do not have to speculate on the end of things because if Jesus is our life then beyond this life, beyond our death, there will be simply more abundant life. May God grant that it be so for all. Amen. 

A Cry for the Kingdom

 September 5 2021

James 5:13-16

         When I was growing up we didn’t have cable channels and streaming services; no, it was the dark ages. All we had were three channels that we could pick up on something called an antenna all of which came out of Cleveland. So, it goes without saying that we became familiar with many of the Cleveland personalities. One of the biggest thrills of my life was getting a signed picture of Captain Penny who made an appearance at downtown Dover one year. As I recall he was friends with a guy called Mr. Jingleing but that’s another story for another day. I also remember Big Chuck and Little John and their antics as well. But the one that sent me down this memory lane was a televangelist by the name of Ernest Angley. Do you remember him being on TV? He was pretty wild. I mean, I belonged to a pretty uptight United Methodist church and when you see Pentecostals in action its kind of mind blowing. One of the things old Ernest was known for was his healing ministry where people with all kinds of ailments would come forward and Ernest would lay his hands upon them and in a loud shout proclaim,” Be healed in the name of Jay-sus! That was something you just never could imagine would ever happen in any church I knew of. Yet what is interesting, way back in our Nazarene history, there were those who very much just like Ernest, were laying hands on people, crying out in the name of Jesus. Yet even though these spiritual ancestors of ours believed quite strongly in the healing power of God through the work of the Holy Spirit they also knew that God also can bring healing through the use of modern medicine. The reason why they did not choose one way of healing over the other was that very much like in the case of baptism, the founders of the Nazarene church had come from very many and different streams of belief, yet in spite of their differences the one thing that was of utmost importance was the key doctrine of entire sanctification. The one belief that had to be upheld was the doctrine that Jesus Christ, through his life, death, resurrection and ascension has made it possible for everyone to experience freedom from original sin in the here and now. This belief they were unwilling to give even an inch but everything else, including the different beliefs about healing, they were willing to allow a lot of leeway. With all this in mind lets have a look at the fourteenth article of faith found in the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene. Divine Healing: We believe in the Bible doctrine of divine healing and urge our people to offer the prayer of faith for the healing of the sick. We also believe God heals through the means of medical science.

         So, there is our belief on divine healing. What is important whether one is prayed over or whether one is being treated at the hand of a doctor, all healing comes from God. As a wise old pastor once explained to me, doctors can treat our ills but only God can heal them. We see God’s healing hand in the stories of Jesus who once walked beside the Sea of Galilee healing those with infirmities. While I am always amazed when I read how Jesus brought healing and relief to so many people what we have to also be aware of is that even though Jesus did cure the ills of many people there were many people that did not receive healing. And of those who had been healed, in the end they still all succumbed to death perhaps at the hands of an illness. So, while the healings we read about in the gospel accounts were important there was something more to them than just a public demonstration of the ability of God to restore wholeness to a person’s life.

         It might be difficult for us to wrap our minds around the fact that the healings we receive from God are meant to point at something greater. It goes without saying that in our world health is a very big deal. Health is just what we consider the normal state of being. What is often forgotten in our endless pursuit of health is that all health really is is staving off death for as long as possible. As Paul says in the eighth chapter of Romans, all of creation, which includes all of us, is subject to corruption. So, yes, it is good to be healthy, but as Redd Foxx points out health nuts are going to feel pretty stupid someday, lying in the hospital dying of nothing. So, yes we can’t forget that being healthy has a limit. When we know this then we have to also understand that there is something more going on when we ask for prayers for healing.

         Well, not only do we think of health as the normal way of being but in the same breath, if we are honest, we also can say that, yes, suffering and death are part of the deal of life here on Earth. Yet what we cannot forget is that suffering and death reveal a defeat of who we are as people, that these have their origin in our sinful state. This is a defeat that no amount of medicine can overcome.The only one who has overcome the defeat of sin, suffering and death is Jesus who is fully human just as we are, he was clothed in our flesh yet without sin. Through his death Jesus defeated sin and death and three days later Jesus was raised in power through the Holy Spirit. Through Jesus we know that our hope is found not through denying death as we frantically attempt to hold on to our health but rather our hope is found in the life without end which awaits us as our reward beyond death. You see, as some of us know all too well, when we are sick what we need most of all is hope. When we are suffering and hurting we can begin to feel defeated, to surrender to darkness, despair and solitude. I am what they call a long-haul Covid survivor which means that I never have a day when I don’t hurt, there’s never a day when I’m not fatigued. So, when I read of someone who also had this and they committed suicide because of it it is a tragedy that is so terrible yet it is understandable if what a person is placing there hope in is endless days of health instead of placing their hope in Jesus Christ whose grace awaits us beyond this life. We have to believe with Paul who writes in the fourth chapter of Second Corinthians that “though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…” You see it is our afflictions, the afflictions that Jesus tells us that we will have in this world, it is these that is what gets us ready for the glory days ahead. Paul goes on to say it is God, working through our afflictions who prepares us for the glory which is ahead and it is God who has given us his very Spirit as a guarantee that what we believe in will be a certain reality.

         This greater reality which waits ahead of us is the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed was at hand. The healings that he performed were signs of power exclaiming that the long awaited kingdom of God had at last come upon the Earth in the person of Jesus. So, the healings Jesus brought forth were to not only give release from suffering in the here and now but they were to also bring hope for the future because now the one has come who can bring a sin-sick world back to wholeness. This summer series is entitled Confident, and the reason we are confident is that Jesus has overcome this world with all of its sufferings, and afflictions. In Jesus we have found that hope is found beyond death, beyond the cross because it is there that there is resurrection. Paul in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians tells us that what is sown is perishable; what is raised will be imperishable. What is sown in weakness will be raised in power. This is what life will be when the kingdom of God is no longer a veiled reality.

         You see, all of this has to be understood for us to get the full impact of what James is teaching us about the power of prayer. James tells us that when we are suffering first on our list is to pray. In other words when the world is at its worst we need to go to God who is always the best. If someone is sick, James continues, they are to go and call the elders of the church who will come and pray over them. This prayer over the person who is sick is to be done, James tells us, “in the name of Jesus”. Now, what we must not do is to believe that this means that we are to use the name of Jesus in a superstitious way as if his actual name had special powers. No, what this phrase, “in the name of Jesus” means is that when we pray we should pray just as if we were Jesus, in the same manner and way that Jesus did. What is interesting is that this is easy to figure out because the teachings of Jesus about prayer are pretty limited. The one place that stands out is when the disciples of Jesus ask him to teach them how they were to pray. The prayer he taught them is the prayer we know of as being the Lord’s Prayer and is found both in the sixth chapter of Matthew and the eleventh chapter of Luke. As you study this prayer it is easy to figure out that it is a cry for God’s kingdom to come. It is for a reality to arrive where life is understood to be found only in the provision of God, that we are forever indebted to his mercy and therefore mercy must be found in us. What must also be kept at bay is anything that would keep us from entering into that coming kingdom, the evil which only God can deliver us from. So, as we pray “in the name of Jesus”, it is not hard to understand that it means that we pray with a longing for God’s kingdom in our hearts. It is to pray for the presence of the Holy Spirit because as Paul teaches us in the fourteenth chapter of Romans, the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy which only the Spirit can bring. 

         It is knowing that the prayer that James is expecting is to be a kingdom prayer that helps understand why when someone is sick that as James teaches, they are to call the elders. The elders, as the name implies, were the older mature believers of the assembly and they would be representative of the local church. As we remember, the coming kingdom is a unity that Christ has brought about by his blood. When the elders arrive it is easy for the one who has been taken ill to understand that they are not going through this illness alone but instead the whole church suffers as they suffer. When the words can not form on the lips of one who is overcome by pain there are those whom Christ has united to that person who will cry out on their behalf. The elders cry out for healing but more importantly they cry out for God to make real the hope that those who are suffering so desperately need. James also tells us that the elders are to anoint with oil the person who is sick. The word in Greek that is translated here as “anoint” is not the normal word translated in that manner. The word normally translated as anoint is “chrio” from which comes the word Christ which means the anointed one. So, what James was referring to was not an anointing as we think of it but rather James was most likely thinking of how oil was used in those days to help bring healing. We see this in the story of the Good Samaritan where the Samaritan pours his oil into the wounds of the man who had been robbed in order to help heal these wounds. James throughout his letter, stresses that faith without works is dead so perhaps what he is indirectly stating is that not only should the elders pray but they should do something, such as rubbing oil on the one who is hurting in order to bring relief. Now, in our day, having friends from the church show up wanting to pray over you and while they are there insist on giving you an oily massage may not help you focus your heart on the kingdom of God. No, the point I believe James is trying to make is that in addition to praying try and find something that will communicate the love and mercy of God to the person who is hurting. The kingdom of God must not only be spoken of and cried out for but the kingdom of God is something that must also be experienced.

         James continues his teaching on healing prayer by saying that the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up. The word used here which is translated as being “sick” is a different word than was used before to speak about the one who is sick. Here this word is translated as “sick” is a word that means to be tired to the point of exhaustion, to be weary and discouraged. This understanding helps us then to figure out why James states that the prayer of faith will save but not necessarily heal the person who is sick. James is telling us that when a person is sick to the point where they have been just beat up, wore out from the fight they are in, they are so susceptible to giving up on everything including God. The prayer of faith is there to counter the cloud of doubt that hangs over the sick bed. As James goes on to say, it is the Lord who will raise them up. One of my pet peeves is when people post that prayer works. It is not prayer that works; it is God who works just as Jesus tells us in the fifth chapter of John that his Father is at work and he is working still. We have a God who is at work, raising us up. This means that God, through the Holy Spirit lifts us up from the life of this world into the life of the next. It is the Holy Spirit who comes, as our foretaste, our down payment, our guarantee of the life to come so that when our hope is lingering the sweet grace of God comes to us to stir within us anew the freshness of faith.

         You see, God knows that it is when we find ourselves laid low by the ailments and afflictions of this world that this is when God gets our attention. As the author C.S. Lewis’s writes, it is in our pain that God speaks to us with a megaphone. So, our pain as awful as it may be, serves a purpose and that is it awakens us to our own fragility and morality otherwise we may keep on believing that life is possible apart from God. Yet, as important as it is that we allow our pain to awaken us to the necessity of God we also need the church, the people who serve God, those who come in his name, to come to us in faith that can counter our doubts. We need those who can cry out for the Kingdom on our behalf, praying that the Spirit may come and bring into our life the life that is to come so that we do not lose hope and find ourselves turning away from the God who longs to reach us with his promise of glory.

         It is when we understand that in our despair we may begin to doubt God, to turn inwardly upon ourselves and give up fighting the good fight that this is when we also can figure out why James turns to speaking of committing sins with the promise of God’s forgiveness. Often the commentary centers on these sins somehow being the cause of the sickness being addressed but I wonder if rather James is speaking to the sin that occurs because of our sickness, our anger at God for the trial that we face. In our pain and our hurt we can seek solitude rather than communion with God and our brothers and sisters in the church. James pleads that if we find ourselves doing so that we come back to where the love is because forgiveness is always held out for those who come home. 

         Let’s face it, the difficult part about speaking about praying for healing is that the healing we desire does not always come. We, as redeemed people yet still prone to sin are simply unable to demand anything from a holy, almighty God. We must accept that sometimes the answer God will give us is, “No”. Part of placing our faith in God is understanding that God knows best. Even Jesus when he prayed for the cup of suffering to be taken from him was denied in his request. Paul in the twelfth chapter of Second Corinthians prayed that the thorn in his flesh be removed but he too was denied in his request. What Paul was told was that God’s grace was sufficient for him because God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. Perhaps Paul’s discovery is what we must hold on to when our requests seem to go unanswered. We must know that they are instead answered with an answer of “No” in order that the life of this world will be weakened enough so that the life of the next world might be more clearly seen in us. Perhaps this is when we will be surprised to find a greater confidence in Jesus, not apart from our afflictions but right there in the midst of them. To God be the glory! Amen,

         

 

Jesus the Gift and Giver of Life

 August 29 2021

1 Corinthians 10:14-22, 11:17-32

         There is a lot of stuff that comes across my IPad screen every day, most of which I scroll on past. But every now and again there is something that catches my eye and I click on that article. One of these articles that caught my attention this week concerned the state of Christianity in America. There was a Gallup survey done and here is what was found out: more than sixty percent of Christians in America between the ages of eighteen and thirty-nine believe that Buddha, Muhammad and Jesus are all valued paths to salvation. Over thirty percent of Christians in that same age range, eighteen to thirty-nine, say that they either believe Jesus sinned just like other people when he lived on earth or they are just not sure that Jesus was indeed sinless.  The survey also found out, not surprisingly, that the percentage of born-again Christians with a biblical worldview has been cut in half in the last decade; that is a mere ten years, folks. Only six percent of Americans actually have a biblical worldview because while fifty one percent of Americans said that they had a biblical worldview, forty-nine percent of these same people also said that re-incarnation was a possibility. Further, of those fifty-one percent who said that they had a biblical worldview only thirty-three percent, a third of them, also said that they believed that human beings are born with a sinful nature and can only be saved from the consequences of their sin through the salvation offered in Jesus Christ. This means that two thirds of those who say that they have a biblical worldview believe that human beings are not necessarily sinful people. And then to top it all off, the survey also found that forty-three percent of millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, stated that they do not know, nor do they care or basically don’t believe that God exists at all.

         So, perhaps after hearing these numbers it hopefully becomes clear why this summer series, where we have been going over just what it is that we believe, is so important. We live in a world where those who actually know the truth about the Christian faith are more and more in the minority.  This means that the influence of a world where all sorts of beliefs are floated about is going to just get greater. We have to be constantly asking ourselves just how confident am I of what I believe? This is really what should be the takeaway from everything we have covered in this series is that we should examine our beliefs against the articles of faith so that we can have certainty of the truth that we believe in. You see, only as we are sure of what we believe in can we be able to share with the next generation the truth about Jesus Christ. Is Jesus really the same as Buddha and Muhammad? Absolutely not! We know this to be so because the God who Jesus revealed is the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the God whose very nature is love. So, our belief is not about us having to do anything to win God’s love because our faith is all about what our God has already done for us out of his love for us. Our faith is not about us trying to make ourselves better by trying to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps but it is rather God reaching down into our brokenness and lifting us up to be where he is, in the heavens. Our faith is grounded in the hope of resurrection, not re-incarnation. We will be raised a body empowered by the very Spirit of God and we know this to be true because we  can experience this resurrection power in no small part here today.

         I wonder if part of the problem with people getting messed up in their belief of Jesus, who he is and what he has accomplished for us is perhaps that the beauty and importance of Holy Communion has somehow been lost. You see, as we will discover, Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper or the Last Supper, or the Eucharist, has as its basic function to bring to mind Jesus and all that he has done and what he is going to do. With that in mind let’s look at the thirteenth article of faith from the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene: The Lord’s Supper. We believe that the Memorial and Communion Supper instituted by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is essentially a New Testament sacrament, declarative of his sacrificial death, through the merits of which believers have life and salvation and promise of all spiritual blessings in Christ. It is distinctively for those who are prepared for reverent appreciation of its significance, and by it they show forth the Lord’s death until he come again. It being the Communion feast, only those who have faith in Christ and love for the saints should be called to participate therein. 

         Here in the Lord’s Supper, just like we learned about baptism, we have what the church calls sacraments, sacred moments, where the stuff of one reality, water in baptism and bread and grape juice in the Lord’s supper, open up to us the new reality that Christ has brought about through his life, death, resurrection and ascension. What Jesus has done for us has changed everything yet this newness can only be experienced by faith, through a new understanding of how the world now is because of what Jesus has accomplished. In the sacraments, a window is thrown open and we can see with the eyes of faith, the new creation and who we are in that new creation. In baptism, through the cleansing of the water we are initiated into the royal priesthood which is the defined life of all those who live in the life of glory won for us by Christ.  To be a priest means that we serve only the one true living God and that we bear the name of God which means that we understand that God’s reputation depends on the way we live. This is the life we shall live in the world to come, a world where sin has been defeated and a distant memory. This is what we find in the book of Revelation where those in heaven are robed in the white robes of the priesthood and they are gathered around God’s holy presence, serving him, crying out, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain!” As we shall live there so also should we live that way now. This is what is declared when we are baptized. Like the people of Israel who passed through the waters of the Red Sea, leaving behind their slavery to become the royal priesthood of God so baptism is when we too left behind the slavery of sin in order that we might serve God as his royal priesthood.

         In the Lord’s Supper we have the second sacrament recognized by the Church of the Nazarene. It is a sacrament because, as we had said before, it uses common elements, bread and wine, to bring to mind the new reality that Christ has brought about. Now, the Lord’s Supper tells us the whole story of Jesus in brief, broad strokes. The bread is stated as being his body, the wine or grape juice, is his blood. Here then we know that Jesus was a flesh and blood person. Here is the faith statement of the incarnation, that the Son of God took on our flesh, our sinful and corrupt flesh because this was the only flesh Jesus could be clothed in. Yet in spite of his sharing in our flesh and blood, Jesus was without sin. We know this to be true because Jesus allowed his body to be broken, his flesh pierced by nail and sword. Jesus shed his blood so that he might be for us the mercy seat where we as unholy people might at last be able to be in the presence of a holy God. As Paul stated to the church at Corinth, eating and drinking the Lord’s Supper proclaims the Lord’s death, until he comes. In that small phrase we can unpack that Jesus is coming again, and where is he coming from? Jesus is coming to us from heaven just as he did when he was born. And why is he in heaven? Jesus is in heaven because he is our resurrected Lord, who has defeated death, has been raised as a justification for the claim that his death is the true once-for-all sacrifice for sin. As the Lord who has trampled down death by his death, Jesus has ascended to the right side of the Father in glory and there he remains until the end of the age when he shall return to save those who eagerly await him. All of this is contained in that small phrase, that we declare the Lord’s death until he comes every time we partake of the Lord’s Supper.

         So, yes, from end to end, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is all about Jesus, which confirms to us every time we come to his table that our faith is about what Jesus has done for us and not at all about anything we have done for him. As I heard it put this past week, Christianity is not a religion, nor is it a set of principles to follow; no, Christianity is a person, the person of Christ. So, we then must ask if this sacrament brings to our mind the whole ministry of Jesus just what is it that we are to take with us when we rise from the Lord’s table? Paul, in our scripture for today, writes that through the cup offered up at the Lord’s Supper, is offered so that we might participate in the very blood of Christ. The bread we break is done so that we might participate in the body of Christ.  Paul goes on to say that those who would eat the sacrifices in the Temple would be bound together in some manner with the sacrificial offering upon the altar. Here, Paul is clearly referencing the priests, the ones who would be partaking of the sacrifices brought to the altar. So, Paul is saying that we as priests in the new Temple, we too eat of the sacrifice, the sacrifice of Jesus, who was offered up for us upon the altar of the cross. To help us understand the significance of this moment, of our eating and drinking, we must listen carefully to the words of Jesus, who speaks to us from the sixth chapter of John, where he tells us, “The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” And further in that same chapter, Jesus continues, “I am the bread of life. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread I give for the life of the world is my flesh.” When we read the words of Jesus it begins to be abundantly clear that Jesus laid down his life, his flesh and blood, so that in doing so we might have life. Jesus understood that his life lived out in flesh and blood was a life that was for one purpose and that purpose was to do the will of his Heavenly Father. Here the truth about all human life becomes evident. We have been given a life by God, and it is sustained by God so that this life might be used to serve God and bring glory to God.  We know this to be true because this was the life of Jesus, who while he was the Son of God, was at the same time, perfectly human. Through this death of Jesus that we proclaim through our partaking of this meal, we now have life. Before the cross there was only enslavement to sin and an end in the darkness of death. But now, because of Jesus through his death, we have life. This is what is written in the fifth chapter of the first letter of John, “God gave us eternal life, and this life is his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life.” So, the new way of understanding life is that life is Jesus and to live is to participate in Jesus who is our life. So, when we eat the bread and drink the juice which represents the food which keeps us alive, we are to go on to know that the bread is the body of Jesus broken for us and the juice is the blood of Jesus shed for us and it the death of Jesus which is now our life. Yet it is not just for us alone but this life is for all who are made up of flesh, which is everyone. This is what Paul was saying when he writes in the tenth chapter of First Corinthians that because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, we all partake of the one bread.Here we can come to understand that when Jesus took upon himself our flesh he in that act united himself with all who are clothed with flesh. What this means then is that, as we have discussed before, that Christ died to unite us all into one humanity. In the breaking of his body, the one loaf of which we participate, Jesus took the fragments of our broken humanity and has brought them all together to share in one common life, a life which Christ gives to them. So, to proclaim the death of Christ means for us to receive anew the gift of life which is the result of Christ’s death for us. His was a life which held forth the truth that he taught that, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Jesus was willing to die in order that he would be the first of many fruits of eternal life.

         It is when we understand that our life is a gift given to us through the gift of the life of Jesus and not just our life but the very life of everyone is also a gift given to them through the death of Jesus, this is when we also understand the sacredness of every life because of the holiness of the death of the Son of God on their behalf. It is when this understanding is brought to mind that we then are empowered to have the law of God written on our hearts. We will set aside one day every week to remember that it is God who has given us life and it is God who sustains our life not the efforts of our own doing. We will honor those who have brought us into this life, our parents. We will not take another life or hate another life or disparage another life because each person’s life is a sacred gift of God. It is this sacredness of others which keeps us from seeing them as a possession to lust after, or as someone to use for our own personal gain. This sacredness is why we speak the truth in love to one another. This new understanding of life is why we also in all circumstances, whether we have plenty or not enough, in all circumstances we will learn to be content because it is not what we desire which is necessary for our life but rather we are certain that it is Jesus who gives us strength to endure to the end.

         You see, Paul understood that when we know that the death of Jesus is the very source of our life, then the impact of this knowledge should be seen throughout our life. This is the point Paul was trying to make when he states that the people of Corinth were eating the bread of the Lord and drinking the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner. People have often taken these words out of context so that the original meaning that Paul was referring to gets lost. Paul wasn’t stating that we are to turn the focus upon ourselves concerning ourselves with our sins and shortcomings but he was rather he is speaking about how we look out for others. The term, “unworthy”, in the Greek has the same root as the word we know as axle. An axle can be thought of as a pivot point and this was what was used as an early scales. An arm was laid upon an axle and then items were laid on either side of the arm to see how much of one item was equal to another. It looked like a small scale teeter-totter. So, what Paul was saying was that the behavior of the people towards each other was unequal to the way that Jesus had treated them. They were at odds with each other not even worrying about beginning the celebrating of the Lord’s Supper until everyone had got there. As Paul told them there were some going hungry and some drinking to excess. In doing so they despised the church of God and they humiliated those who had nothing. How unequal was this treatment of those in need from the treatment that they had received from Christ. When we were but nothing before God, Christ gave the most precious gift of himself so that through his death we who were dead might have life. This is what the standard of our life must be is what Paul is saying. We have been given life so that we would become people who take this life and like Jesus give this life and share our lives with others. This is when we know that we have taken the Lord’s Supper in a worthy manner. We are to consider our treatment of others in light of Christ’s treatment of us. The way that we have treated people in the past can only be forgiven but how we treat people in the present and the future is a choice that can be made only because Christ has set us free to do so. The question is will we be people who proclaim the Lord’s death, the death which gave us life, by living a life where we share this gift of life through Christ with others? We must hope that we will be found not only worthy now but also when Christ comes again! Amen.