A Word In a Manger

 December 19 2021

John 1:1-18

         Today we will be transitioning from the season of Advent to the season of Christmas. This is why today, there will be two separate messages based off of two different scriptures, separate by some of our favorite Christmas carols. So, this first message, from the first part of John’s gospel, is, as we will see, a great scripture to help us move from the end of Advent so that we then might celebrate the beginning of the Christmas season. This first part of the first chapter of John could be said to be John’s version of the Christmas story but since it is so abstract it is hard to get all that emotional about this story as we do with the stories of the birth of Jesus that we find in Matthew and Luke’s accounts. I mean its just hard to come up with a Christmas carol using what John has given to us; I mean “A Word in a Manger”, just seems a bit strange. Yet, despite its difficulty for us to make sense of what is written by John, what I find is that it is really worth our while to work and figure out just what he is attempting to tell us about the birth of Jesus.

         John begins by telling us that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Now, what is interesting is that the people who originally translated what John wrote from the original Greek is that they had trouble figuring out just what he was trying to say because if they would have just translated it as it should have been it should read that the Word was toward God as if the Word was spoken to God which is interesting. The Word then is what is spoken from each member of the Trinity to each other. Once we understand this then we should be curious what is the content of the conversation that is been going on in the heavens from the beginning. We are helped in our search to understand just what is this Word that is spoken eternal in the heavens from the seventh verse of the second chapter of the first letter of John. There, John writes, “Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard.” So, here John is clearly stating that the word that is the old commandment, this is the same word spoken of in the gospel of John. This word, John tells us is the old commandment that we have had from the beginning which again is the same beginning that John writes about in his gospel account. The Word spoken in heaven is the same as the commandment that God has always spoke to his people, the old commandment that we find in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy that we are to love our God with all of our heart, with all of our life and with all of our resources. We can say then, that the Word is none other than love.

           This love of God that was required of the people of Israel was to find its expression in the bearing of God’s name out into the world. The name that God was to be known by is that he is a God of compassion and faithfulness, this is how the world was to know God, through the actions of his people. However, in spite of all that God commanded of his people they utterly failed to be people who demonstrated to the world that their God was and is a God of compassion and faithfulness. They ended up being people of injustice and violence and therefore God had no choice but to send his people into exile. This is where we entered the story during Advent. The first week of Advent we heard how God told his people that during their seventy years in Babylon they were to seek the peace of their captors, the Babylonians, and only then would they themselves discover the peace they desired. This peace would be the outgrowth of their obedience to the commandment of God, to love him by doing what he had commanded them to do which was that they should be people of peace.

         The second week of Advent we caught up with the people of Israel in Babylon. There through the prophet of Ezekiel the people were to come to know God as their Creator, the one who had fearfully and wonderfully created them and gave them life. They were to understand that when God created them his creative act had made a bond with them. It was because of this bond, God’s people were to understand that no matter where they went they could always have the assurance that their God was with them. It is the faithfulness of God that would be the source of their faith. 

         Last week, we heard of God’s plan to raise up one from the house of David, the one called the Servant, who would bear the iniquities of God’s people. God would do this because his thoughts and his ways are higher than our own. You see, it is because God has compassion on us, a compassion that comes from his creation of us, this is why he is willing to pay an infinite price to overcome the pain and the grief that we bring into our relationship with him. This pain and grief is a result of us refusing to see each person as being fearfully and wonderfully made by God, as someone who is of infinite worth to God. It is precisely that we are of such infinite worth to God that he is willing to pay an infinite amount to forgive us and it is in our forgiveness that we are to become people who forgive others.  Who a person is, that they are a masterpiece of God, this is to be of far greater of importance to us than the harm and pain that we might have endured from them. When we seek to be reconciled to those we have harmed and to those who have harmed us, this is the greatest gift we can give to God because this is when we are most like him.

         So with all this we come today, with the gospel of John, and the Word that is spoken of in the Trinity, the Word that is the commandment of God to love, a commandment which God’s own people failed miserably to be obedient to. This Word, we are told made all things and in this Word was life and this life was the light of men. Once again, we are not exactly sure what John means when he writes these words.  And once again, his first letter proves to be the help we need. In the first chapter of John’s letter, we read that which “was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life-this life was made manifest, we have seen this life…” The life that comes out of this Word this is the life that Jesus came and lived among us. It was a life that they could listen to, a life that they could watch move and interact with the people in this world and a life that they could feel as they lived life with him. So, just what was this light that this life of Jesus had that was as John tells us is the light of all of us? Well, if we go back to the second chapter of the first letter of John we read that, yes, the Word was the old commandment but at the same time it is a new commandment because it was true in Jesus. The word translated as “true” here is a word that means an undeniable reality that cannot be hidden. In the life of Jesus was seen a love of God and people, a love which could not be hidden; it was a love in plain sight. This is why John goes on to say because this reality was seen in the life of Jesus and also in those who also live life in that reality, the darkness is passing away, the true light is already shining. So, whoever loves their brothers and their sisters, these are the ones who are walking in the light, these are the ones whose lives speak forth the Word, the Word who became flesh and lived among us. To understand what it means for us to say that Jesus is the new commandment we have to realize that the intention of the commandment is that we might never stop seeking to fulfill God’s purpose for us which is that we might love one another as he has first loved us. Jesus, in his life, was that fulfillment , the very purpose for our own creation and now because he came in our flesh, his life can now be our life. The light of his life, this love which he was from the beginning can now live in us without end. This is what John wants us to hold onto as we once again are filled with the wonder of Christmas, so that we don’t lose sight that this event of history is not so much about feelings but rather, it is about faith, faith that now because of Jesus every person is at last able to fulfill their God intended purpose. So, this Christmas let us remember that this season is about Jesus coming to us to be for us the true undeniable reality that calls forth faith in us, a faith that works itself out in love.

 

December 19 2021, Part 2

Luke 2:1-14

The Peace of Jesus

         So, at last we come to the traditional story of Christmas from the gospel of Luke. It is an old familiar story that we seem to know so well. I mean, it’s even heard every year when you watch the “Charlie Brown Christmas Special”. We know of the decree of Caesar Augustus that everyone had to go to their hometown to be registered. We know how Joseph took Mary, who was pregnant,  to Bethlehem in order to be registered. We know of how it was there in Bethlehem that the time came for Mary to have the baby and how she laid him in a manger for there was no room in the inn. Yes, we know the story but do we know just what happened there when Jesus was born as one of us? Just what is the significance of this very familiar story that we sing about in our beloved Carols? I believe that Luke doesn’t want us to miss the point of the moment because he alone gives us the most unbelievable account of the appearance of the angels to the shepherds who were watching their flocks by night. At first, there was just one angel which in and of itself had to be quite terrifying. It was easy enough for said angel to tell them to not be afraid but I’m sure that these words went unheeded. The reason that these shepherds were to not be afraid was that the most wondrous event had happened. There in Bethlehem, the city of David, this is where the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord, there this one had been born. These shepherds were to go and find him, there, in a barn of all places. Yet, if that were not strange enough, suddenly, alongside the angel there was the whole angel army who were praising God, singing out, “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace among those with whom God is well pleased! It is this coming of the angels that the truth of what had happened in Bethlehem was laid bare. The long awaited king from the house of David, this one had finally been born. This is the one God had promised to send to his people to rescue them, the one God himself would anoint, not with oil but with his very Spirit, this one had at last been born. This one, the angel states, this is the one who is the Lord, a title these shepherds well knew was a title reserved only for God. This title recalled what was spoken of in the One-hundredth and tenth Psalm where we hear the words, The Lord says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” This then must be the one the angel speaks of, the one who would conquer their enemies. Yet, in spite of such imagery swirling in their minds, the shepherds then heard the very army of heaven shout out to them that peace had at last come on earth. The word “peace” means to join together into a whole and this is what their sudden appearance was stating that where once earth and heaven were once separated now, heaven was pouring out upon the earth, the two which had been separated now had been bound together. There was no longer to be any doubt about how God felt about people, he indeed intended only good for them. This is what was at last a certainty because of this one who had been born in Bethlehem. There, heaven and earth had at last become united in the life of the one called Jesus. Now, because heaven had become forever joined with those of earth, this one would indeed be the long awaited Savior, the Lord who would put the enemy under his feet. This baby is the very one Paul would write about in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians who will reign until he has put all enemies under his feet and the last enemy is death. This is the power of life when earth is at last joined together with heaven. This baby would be the one who would usher in the age of the Messiah, the age of the resurrection, that age we live in right now.  This child as the angels tell us is the one who has come to rescue us, to lift us out of the dominion of darkness so that we might live in the kingdom of light. We can live in the light of the love of Jesus because now heaven has been united with earth and God is bound to us to will and to work for his good pleasure. So, this is why we now join the praises of the angels for we know that the will of God is for our good. Let us then knowing the truth of what happened in Bethlehem, be like the shepherds who heard the good news and sought after Jesus. May we go and seek after Jesus. Let us find him and be united by faith with the one who has forever joined us, the people of earth, with the glory and power of heaven so that his life and his light be found in us today and forever. Amen!

A Gift for God

 December 12 2021

Isaiah 55:1-13

         To say that the season of Christmas is a season of giving is kind of an understatement. I mean, we all know that at Christmas we are to come bearing gifts, that’s always been the expectation. So, if someone suggests changing the rules its easy to be suspicious. You know, if somebody tells you that this year let’s not exchange gifts you might not be able to contain your excitement. You get sucked in to the very idea that this year everything is going to be different. But then as you’re heading to bed on Christmas Eve you notice a package under the tree and upon closer inspection you discover to your horror that your name is on said package. When you ask about why there is a package with your name on it you find that while yes, there was an agreement to not exchange gifts this year there was this thing that had caught their eye and she decided on a whim to just get it for you. Without even realizing it, the whole dynamic of Christmas has been altered because everyone knows that if you are given a gift then you have to have a gift to give in exchange. I mean, the least desired gift on Christmas is a big load of guilt because you have been given a wonderful gift and all you can do is to smile and say thank you because you have nothing to give them.

         We just all seem to understand this whole idea that if we are given a gift then we are to give a gift in return. It just makes sense that we don’t want to be caught empty handed when the the gift exchange happens. So, with that in mind, we might want to listen again to what our scripture is telling us today. Isaiah here is recording the words of God who is inviting those who hear him to come on in for a bite and a beverage and the good thing is it won’t cost you anything at all. Now, where I come from when somebody gives you something for free that qualifies as a gift. So, in these first few verses of this fifty-fifth chapter, what we have is God offering us a gift. If we are thirsty, we can come on in and quench our thirst. If we are hungry we are invited to come and eat the good stuff, to delight ourselves in the rich food at God’s all-you-can-eat buffet . The good news is that it won’t cost you anything; if you have no money, hey, no worries, you can come right on in and fill up. This is God’s gift to you. Since we all know how awkward it is to not have a gift to share when somebody gives you a gift, and its obvious that God has given you a gift, then, I guess, the question  becomes just what will be your gift to God this Christmas?

         Perhaps the best thing for us to do is to take and unwrap this present that God has given us so that we might know just what might be the appropriate gift for us to give to God. Just what does God mean when he tells us that those who are thirsty that they are to come to the waters? Well, in Isaiah, we find in the forty-fourth chapter that God states that he will pour water out upon the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground. He will pour his Spirit upon his people’s offspring and his blessing will be on their descendants. They will spring up among the grass like willows by flowing streams. So, when God invites us to come to the waters he is really telling us to come and allow his Spirit to fill us and satisfy our thirsting for the world to be set right. When God goes further and tells us to delight ourselves with rich food its isn’t hard for us to remember the vision that God gave to Isaiah in the twenty-fifth chapter where God explains to Isaiah that there on the mountain God is going to make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. There, God will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations . God is going to swallow up death forever and God himself will wipe away the tears from all faces. This is what is being remembered in the beginning of the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, and now the reason for death being defeated is further explained as being that the Spirit of God himself, his life, will become our life and it is this life that death cannot defeat.  This is what God is telling us when he pleads with us to incline our ears, to lean in to what he is saying because when we come to God and hear what he has to say then we will find life. This life will be an everlasting life because God tells us that with us he is going to make an everlasting covenant, an enduring bond with us that death will be unable to break. This life is the gift that God desires to give to each of us, and it is a true gift in that it is given without a price tag; all we must do is to accept and find delight in this present God is offering to us.

         God goes on to tell us more about this gift that he has for us. He tells us that this everlasting bond has its foundations in God’s steadfast, sure love for David whom God promised that the house and kingdom of David would forever be before his face. It was God who took David from the sheepfold and formed him into the great king of Israel. David was the one we are told, that had a heart for God. As a king who loved God, David was a leader and commander who witnessed to the power of God. It is the descendant of David, the one who Isaiah refers to simply as the Servant, who like David, is one who once again would have a heart for God. It was the Servant, who will be the fulfillment of God’s promise to David, the one who would be the promised everlasting king of the house of David. It is this one called the Servant who will accept the will of God and allow himself to be crushed, who will experience grief and sickness because of the iniquities of God’s people. And it is the Servant who will give his life as an offering for the guilt of God’s people. Yet even so, Isaiah also records, that the Servant, out of the anguish of his soul would see and be satisfied that through his knowledge, God’s righteous Servant will make many to be accounted righteous because he was the one who took upon himself the evil of his people. This is why the Servant would be the one that God would lift up and exult so that he alone might be Lord of all.

         It is when God’s eternal covenant with David is upheld in the life of the one Isaiah knows as the Servant, this is when the nations, all of the people of the earth, will come to God’s people because through the Servant, the glory of God will shine in their midst. This was Isaiah’s hope as he writes about it in the second chapter of his book where we read that many people will come and say, “Let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of Jacob, that he might teach us his ways, that we might walk in his paths.” The glory of the Lord is his life, and when the Servant comes and deals with the evil of God’s people then at last they will be empowered to live out the right way of living. When this righteous life is lived out before the nations they will come running to Gods people so they might be able to live that life for themselves.

         So, this gift God is giving to us is the gift of life but it is not just any life but it is rather his life, the life of God, this is the gift God is giving to us, a gift he gives to us without price. This life is being held out for us to take and receive but because of the nature of this gift, that it is the life of God, this requires us to search for God, to cry out to him, for he is the one who has the operating instructions that we need so that the gift can move by the power of the Spirit in us. If we desire to hold this gift within our hands then everything else that we might cling so tightly to, we have to let go of, to set aside our old tired worn out way of life and take hold with a firm grasp this new gift of life. When we forsake, the wicked unrighteous ways we used to live by and turn to receive the gift God has for us then we are told that there is God welcoming us with compassion, forgiving and forgetting all of our old ways that brought him so much grief.  God tells us that his ways are not our ways, that his thoughts are not his thoughts and we are left wondering just what are those ways and thoughts? The answer as to what are the thoughts and just what are the ways of God is exactly what we have experienced when we turn to God to receive the gift he has for us, compassion and forgiveness. The thoughts of God focus on his love which is the same ache a mother has for her child because the word “compassion” comes from the Hebrew word for “womb”. This is an important term for us to understand the thoughts of God. As we learned last week, God desires us to know him as our Creator, to understand that God has intentionally created each one of us, that we are all fearfully and wonderfully made. It is when we know this that we then understand that no matter where we go, from the heights of heaven to the depths of the sea, we can have the assurance that God will be there with us because we have been created by him. So, we have this bond with God from before we were born this is the reason for our assurance of the compassion of God toward us. This relationship that we have with God then is also the reason why we know that God is a God who abundantly pardons. You see, what is of utmost importance to God is us, who we are, that we are his masterpiece, and because of who we are God is willing to suffer when we do what goes against him. This is what the Servant of God demonstrated in his life that God is a God willing to bear upon himself the horrible grief and pain that we bring into our relationship with God. The source of this pain and grief that we bring into our relationship with God comes about precisely because we refuse to understand that not only are we fearfully and wonderfully made by God but so is every person on the planet. Every person we encounter is someone God intentionally created and therefore every person is someone God has compassion for, the same feeling a mother has for her child that she has carried in her womb. What happens though is that when people wrong us all we can see is the ways that others have hurt us, all of the ways that the other person has wronged us, all of the ways that this wrong tells us that this world is filled with people who just aren’t right. How easy it is for us to separate the world into a world of “us” and “them”! Yet, how also very wrong of us to do so because there is only us, people who are all fearfully and wonderfully made by God. This is what it means to learn the thoughts of God. Only as we understand how God thinks about the people we encounter can we then understand the ways of God. The ways of God always leads with how precious each person is in his eyes and because of the infinite worth God places upon each person, this is why God is willing to pay the infinite price necessary to continually repair the relationship he has with each and every person. This is what is meant by us walking in the ways of God that as we go about our dealings with each other that we might behold each person as someone who is worth everything to God.

         Now when we begin to understand just what are the thoughts and ways of God it is fairly easy as to why we would just as soon take this gift of life that God is attempting to give to us and give it back to him. We would much rather be people who demand justice, to seek others to pay in full for all the ways they have harmed us. To this we need to heed the words of James from the second chapter of his letter where he teaches us that judgment is without mercy for those who show no mercy. If we refuse to extend mercy, seeking rather to be people of justice and judgment then we will be people who refuse to live according to the ways of God and find ourselves under the judgment of God. This is why that if we desire to experience God’s mercy, we have to be people of mercy when we deal with others.                 It is God’s mercy that we all need so desperately for we can all confess that we have not always treated the people around us with the infinite worth that they have in the eyes of God. Too often we have placed the value of ourselves and our needs to be greater than the worth and dignity of a child of God. This is why it was the will of God that his Servant, the one we know as Jesus, the one who knew so intimately the thoughts of his Heavenly Father, this Jesus would be the one who would take upon himself our iniquities, laying down his life as the greatest act of love. Jesus knew that those who had cried out, “Crucify him” were nonetheless people God had created and even in the depths of their sin, they were still precious to God. It was that Jesus knew that his Heavenly Father was willing to pardon even those who crucified his own dear Son this is why Jesus could cry out that he also forgave his enemies, thus the pardon of the Father was indeed the very pardon of the Son. And since Jesus is forever united with us through his coming in our flesh we know that this life can be our life too. We too at last can look in the eyes of another and know that they, just like us, are worth the gift of the precious blood of Christ. In light of this grace, we are free to extend grace and mercy just as God first had extended that grace and mercy to us.This is what is meant by living a life patterned by the very thoughts and ways of God.

         You see, when we live out the life of God, when his thoughts and his ways are our thoughts and our ways, then God’s creation has, at last, not returned to him empty. God’s word, the word that spoke our world into being will at last have been said to have fulfilled what it set out to do, to have a world where the life of God is reflected back to God through what he created. At long last, the curse under which our world lives, symbolized by the thorn and the briar, will have at last been broken. All of creation which has languished for eons under the futility of sin will be set free so that the mountains and hills break out into song and the trees will clap their hands in praise. This is why we can say that to receive this gift of God, to accept his life and make it our very own, this is a world changing event. What God gets out of his giving is that his name, his reputation, which has been tarnished by the evil and sin that comes about through our refusal to know God’s thoughts and to walk in his ways, this name will at last be high and lifted up.

         So, ok, God has given you a gift. He has placed this gift in your hands and now comes the awkward part where you have to figure out just what it is that you can give to God in return. The good thing is that Jesus already has revealed just what it is that God desires so there’s no guess work on our part. The story Jesus tells is found in the fifth chapter of Matthew where  Jesus speaks about a person who presents his gift at the altar. The altar was the place where God’s people were given the assurance of their forgiveness so it makes sense that upon receiving the gift of God’s forgiveness one would understand that giving God a gift would be appropriate. But Jesus says that a better gift when attempting to respond to God’s forgiveness is to pause for a moment and think about whether anyone has something against you. As you think about God and his mercy, think of the ways that you have failed to be merciful, the ways that you have been hurtful towards someone, when you have a name then Jesus says for us to drop everything and go. Go and confess to another the ways that you have not treated them as the ones who have been fearfully and wonderfully made by God and this time get it right. Live as if the very life of God lives in you, that you have experienced the power of his thoughts and his ways and now there is no better way to respond to God than to treat others as God first treated you. Jesus says that this is the best gift you can give God, the gift you should give before any other gift. To seek to forgive and be forgiven, to be reconciled is demonstrating that you know the higher thoughts and ways of God. God has given you a gift, the gift of life. Jesus has paid the price for it. The question for you this day is this: are you ready to give God his gift today? Just who is it that you need to forgive? Just who is that you need to seek forgiveness and be reconciled?  May the joy of giving this greater gift be yours today! Amen!

 

 

Knowing God Changes Everything

 December 5 2021

Ezekiel 37:1-14

         Do you know what you’re getting for Christmas? How many times, over the years, have you been asked this question. Do you remember being a kid how you would wonder just what would be under the tree just for you? Yes, you had your wish list, you know, the one that was formed from spending hours looking in the Penny’s or Sears catalog at all the latest toys and games, yet you learned quickly that what you wanted and what you got could sometimes be totally different things. So, you waited until the Christmas tree was up and decorated because you knew it wouldn’t be long until a present or two would appear there beneath the tree. This was the time when your sneaky skills would come into play and you would wait patiently until no one was looking and you would find a present and give it a little shake in order to have a few clues that would tell you what it was that was hidden under the wrapping paper. You learned over the years that you had to be gentle with your shaking of said present because if you were too rough with those boxes under the tree you might hear pieces begin to rattle around in the box. So, gently you would pick up the box, sensing just how heaven it was, and if when you moved it from side to side there were any noises emanating from inside. Through all the clues you gathered, how large the box, how heavy it was and the noises that you heard, you then would try and figure out just what it was that you might be getting for Christmas. What motivated you to spend so much time trying to discover what it was that was under the tree with your name on was this curiosity you had, this longing to know just what was it that you were getting for Christmas.

         So, yes, we can pretty easily understand that Christmas is a time of not only of giving gifts, but it is also a time when we want to know just what those gifts will be. We know that part of the Christmas joy is this element of surprise, to go from wanting to know just what it is that we will be receiving to at last tearing back the paper, and cutting through the tape so that the box might at last be opened and the truth of what it is that has been given might be at last revealed to us. Now, with all of this in mind, I wonder, do we know what we have been given that first Christmas? I mean, Jesus, is the gift of all gifts, and yes, we know that he has been given to us, but I still wonder, do we know what we were given that first Christmas? I can’t help but think about what John writes in the first chapter of his gospel account where he states that Jesus was in the world and the world was was made through him but the world did not know him. So, here was Jesus, the true gift of Christmas and as this gift was given the reaction of the world was we don’t know who or what this gift is. So, as we prepare ourselves once again for the coming of Jesus it might be good for us to ask ourselves, do we know the gift given to us that first Christmas, the gift we know as Jesus. This might seem like a silly question but as I look around at those who claim that they are Christians, people one would assume should know Jesus, I hear them say things and I see them do things and all I can think is that they do not know the Jesus that I know. Case in point: last January, in Washington, protestors there placed a cross alongside a gallows as if to say that the Jesus of the cross would have no problem with those who followed him taking the life of those who did not agree with them. To this, I would say, that they did not know the Jesus that I know. This is why I believe that now is a good time to ask yourself just how well do you know Jesus? Do you know this gift you have been given at Christmas?

         This theme of knowing Jesus, of knowing the God who came into the world as the one we know as Jesus, this is the central theme of our scripture for today. It is easy to be so shocked by the imagery of a valley of dry bones that we miss that this section of the book of Ezekiel is framed by Ezekiel telling the Lord that he was the only one who knew if these bones could live and then this section ends with God telling Ezekiel that the people of God will know him when he brings them forth from their graves. Once again, to understand what is being revealed to us in Ezekiel we have to remember the context, the situation in which Ezekiel finds himself. As we discovered last week in the book of Jeremiah, God sent his people into exile at the hands of the Babylonian army because they had become a violent people, people who had turned God’s Holy Temple into a hideout for thugs. Jeremiah, in the ninth chapter of his book, records God as telling him that his people had heaped oppression upon oppression, deceit upon deceit and what this proved is that God’s people had refused to know God. To put this another way, if God’s people knew him then they would not be people who oppressed the weak and the poor and they would not be people who saw no problem in deceiving others refusing to be people of the truth. At the end of this ninth chapter of Jeremiah, God tells Jeremiah that if people wanted to boast about something what they should boast about is that they understand and know God, that they knew that their God is a God who practices steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth. If God’s people knew him they would know that God is actively working at faithfully loving his people, making his goodness flourish upon the Earth and when they oppressed each other and were no longer people that could be trusted then they were coming directly against the very work of God. This is affirmed in the twenty-second chapter of Jeremiah where, speaking about the king Josiah, God says of him that he was one who did justice and righteousness, one who judged rightly the cause of the poor and needy and God concludes by asking Jeremiah, “Is this not what it means to know me?” The answer to this question, of course, is that doing justice and righteousness and watching out for the poor and needy is indeed what it means to know God.

         Well, because God’s people refused to know him, he decided that they must be carried off to Babylon to live in captivity for seventy years. As we learned last week, God sent his people in exile a letter telling them that, yes, they were going to live in Babylon for a long time, and yes, their one job was to seek the peace of Babylon, to pray to God that the very people who had captured them and had made them slaves, these were the people who they were to ask God to bless their lives with peace. When they sought the peace of their captors, then God told them, they themselves would experience peace.

         So, when we come to the book of Ezekiel, this is the story of those people to whom God sent his letter. Ezekiel was a priest who had been taken captive and was now residing in Babylon. In Babylon, Ezekiel was raised up by God to be his prophet, God’s mouth piece, to the people of God in captivity. As God’s prophet, Ezekiel’s was there not to so much to condemn God’s people but rather he was raised up by God to give his people hope in what seemed to God’s people to be a hopeless situation. What God’s people struggled to understand is that God had delivered them into what to them seemed like a desperate situation so that right there they at last might come to know him. God had to bring them to a place where the only way out of what they were going through was to stop relying upon their strength and their wisdom to at last turn to God to rescue them. Now, we have to always remember that what these same people were to do while in Babylon was to allow this time of exile to be a time when they learned to be people of peace. The way that God was training them to be people of peace was by bringing them to a point where they had to at last come to know him so that in knowing him they might trust him and his ways because knowing God and trusting God was the only way that they would ever find themselves at home once again. In this knowing and trusting God then they would at last become people who rested in the security of God no longer needing to create their own security through violence and oppression.

         We have to understand the narrative of the story of God’s people in exile in order to make sense of this vision that Ezekiel had that was given to him through the Spirit of God.  We are told that the hand of the Lord was upon Ezekiel and in the Spirit, God set Ezekiel down in a valley that was strewn with bones. As God led Ezekiel around this place there were just so many bones and we are told that they were very dry. What we have to come away with in this opening vision is a situation of utter desolation. We have to get the subtle message that these bones were scattered here because of death and violence. As we gaze upon the horror of this vast valley, we hear God ask, Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” If you had been there what would your answer to God have been to this question? Could you actually believe that these old, dusty, bones could really come to life once again? Ezekiel wisely answered by responding to this question by simply stating, “O Lord, God, you know”. It is some comfort to us that Ezekiel in this moment did not know the answer to the question. In his humility, he knew that he had to be silent and allow the answer to come from God.

         What is interesting is that God doesn’t answer the question with a simple answer but instead God tells Ezekiel to prophesy, to speak over the bones. God is involving Ezekiel in the miracle he is about to bring forth so that in this experience that Ezekiel is having he might come to know God in a deeper, more profound way. God tells Ezekiel to say to the bones, “O, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. The Lord God says, “Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews upon you. I will cover you with skin, and put breath in you and you shall live. Then God finishes his command by telling Ezekiel that when these bones at last are living they shall know that I am the Lord. Now, this is the way that this sentence is normally translated however the reason that it states that these bones will know that God is the Lord is that the Hebrew translators at one time felt that the name of God was too sacred for them to spell it out so whenever they would come to this name they would simply write, “the name”, or “the Lord,” which is the Hebrew word, “Adonai”. In this instance though, I believe that it is important that we use the name which has been replaced by the word, “Lord”. That name is often known as Yahweh or the other way that it is translated is Jehovah. 

         The name Yahweh used here in Ezekiel would have been a way to anchor this experience of the dry bones upon the foundational experience of their delivery from slavery in Egypt. There in the Exodus story the people of God had found themselves in a desperate situation just like people of God were experiencing in the days of Ezekiel. And just as in the days of Ezekiel what was most important to God is that through his people’s experience with him, in their relying on him to rescue them, they might know him.  In order for God to be known though it is he who must reveal himself to his people and the way that God revealed himself to the people he rescued in the days of Moses was by the giving of this name, Yahweh.  If one studies this name in the original Hebrew, you will find that this name is a combination of three Hebrew words, the Hebrew word for “is” or to exist”, the Hebrew word for “was” and the Hebrew word for “will be”. So, God reveals himself to be the one who was, the one who is and the one who will be. What this is supposed to tell us is that God experiences time very differently from us because for us when the past is past, we can no longer live there and the future is always not here yet so we can not live their either. We can only live here in the present moment but God can live in the past, present and future all at the same time. What this tells us then is that God experiences time like he does because he is outside of time and he is outside of time because he is the creator of time. So, long story short, the name that God revealed to Moses and his people tells us that he is the Creator, the God outside of time because he is the Creator of time.

         So, getting back to Ezekiel,  God tells Ezekiel that he is going to bring all of these bones that Ezekiel sees back to life so that Ezekiel might know that God is Yahweh, the God out of time because he is the Creator of time. The point starts to become clear, doesn’t it, that what is supposed to be known about God is that he is our Creator.  If we revisit the first chapter of the gospel of John, where we are told that Jesus came into the world but the world did not know him what is not known about Jesus is that the world was made through him. Here again, the problem with knowing is that people did not know that Jesus is the one through whom the world was made, the God who is our Creator. We have to ask ourselves then just why is it so important that we know that God is our Creator? The first reason we have for knowing God as our Creator is that if God is our Creator then he must have intended us to be here as part of his creation. We are not just some random cosmic accident but instead we are alive because this God who is our Creator has given us life. If we understand then that this God who is our Creator has given us the gift of life then it’s not hard to figure out that we need to respond to our Creator for the gift of our life. It just makes sense that we should have an attitude of gratitude toward God for this gift of life. From this giving of this gift of our life by our Creator to our response of thankfulness for that gift of life comes the basis for our relationship with God. Our relationship with God is based on the fundamental idea that as our Creator, God is the one who has intentionally given us life and we in return, respond with thankfulness. So, it isn’t a leap that if we know God is the giver of our life that we would not only respond with gratitude but to go further and respond with love. The way that we demonstrate our love to God is to join him in his work of bringing steadfast love, justice and righteousness upon the earth which is the foundation for being peacemakers.

         Here in this story of Ezekiel and the dry bones coming back to life, God is reminding Ezekiel and the people in exile that he is the Creator, the very giver of life. This is who they should know him as being, the one who gave them life and in their most desperate time he can give them life once again. They were to remember the song they used to sing that we know as the one hundred and thirty ninth Psalm where the writer exclaims that if he went to heaven, he would know that God is there. If he descended in to the land of the dead, there too he could know that God would be there. Even if he found himself in the depths of the sea, the writer knows, that there as well the hand of God would lead him and hold him up. How can he have such confidence? He has this confidence about God because it was God who had formed his inmost parts. It was God who had knitted him together in his mother’s womb. He would praise his God for he knew that he was fearfully and wonderfully made by God.

         How could Ezekiel not think of this song as he watched God bring those bones to life? If God could be known as the giver of life then he most assuredly would be constantly present to watch over that life which he created. So, the people of God could find their hope in God because they would once again come to know him as their very life. He would one day bring them back to their home and then his Spirit, the very life of God, this they would come to know as their life. When they at last knew that their life was safe in the hands of God they would at last rest in faith, no longer needing violence to create their security but rather the God who gave them life would be known by them as being their place of peace.

         Jesus at the beginning of the seventeenth chapter of the gospel of John, states in his priestly prayer that the work that he was sent to do was that through him people might know the only true God and that they might know Jesus whom he had sent. Do you know this Jesus? Do you know him as the one who trusted his life to his Heavenly Father as he went to die upon the cross? Do you know him as the firstborn of those who the grave can not hold as Ezekiel saw so long ago? Is your life resting secure knowing this gift of Christmas? Amen!

         

         

God Sends A Letter

 November 28 2021

Jeremiah 29:1-14

         Our oldest daughter Elizabeth just recently started a new job at Giant Eagle. Now, as many of us know all too well, those first days of a new job are really rough and it was this way for Elizabeth. She started out on midnights but that proved too hard on her sleep schedule so they then moved her to days which helped.  What proved to be the most difficult challenge was to just accept that what her manager told her to do was what she was in fact supposed to do even if it didn’t make much sense to her. She wanted to put the products on the shelf in a neat and tidy fashion but her boss wanted her to throw them on the shelf as fast as she could and get on to the next product. To be honest, her mother and I were not convinced she was going to make it as she had a lot to learn and a lot of adjustments to make so that she could do her work as fast as the company wanted things done. She even toyed with the idea of quitting or looking for another job which we knew would require her to just start all over. So, you can only imagine how thrilled we were when one day last week we got a text from her simply stating, “I found my groove now.” After we read those few simple words we left out a sigh of relief because that meant that she at last was no longer fighting the system but was into doing the best she could do.

         All of us, have probably had a similar experience that Elizabeth had where we had found ourselves in a new situation, overwhelmed by a new way of doing things, frustrated by the people who we answered to, struggling to make sense out of what we were supposed to do. Then there came a day when, like Elizabeth found out, that what had formerly been strange and confusing, now began to make sense, and in her words, we at last had found our groove. This is when we no longer had to think through every step but could do what we were supposed to do almost without thought.

         The people of Judaea, which our scripture speaks of today, were finding themselves in a very similar circumstance to having a new job in that God, as he had promised them he would do, sent them into exile. In this strangely new experience of having been ripped from their home, marched hundreds of miles so that they could now be residents in the enemy city of Babylon, they too would have felt disoriented, scared and confused, overwhelmed by the loss of any point of reference. They too would have had so many questions, the most important of these would have been what would now be their relationship with God? They had always, proudly, held themselves out to be the very people of God but now what would become of this relationship? The rest of the nations who knew of them had to surely have been amazed and appalled that the God of the people of Judaea would have allowed such a catastrophe to occur. To these neighbors, this God must have not have been a very great God if he could not have stopped the Babylonian army from swooping down upon Judaea and carrying the best and brightest of its citizens off to Babylon. What those apart from God could not have possibly understood is that the God of Judaea not only knew of Babylon’s army he was counting on it to carry his people into exile because God’s plan all along was to use the Babylonians to discipline his people. You see, just like in the workplace, the boss, which in this case is God, has a certain way that he wanted his people to be, a certain way that he wanted his people to do his work, yet they just refused to perform to the standards that God had for them. If God had been their actual employer he would have probably just have fired them but God could not just walk away from his people because he had made a promise to them, a covenant bond and if he was to be known as the God who could always be counted on to be faithful, then faithful is what he would have to be. What was really at stake was not God’s power or ability to rescue his people from an invading army but rather could this God form his people into those who could live drastically different from the world, to have them live so that they might be holy as he is holy? This was a far greater challenge. What this meant then was that God would have to take drastic measures in order to break his people of all their unholy ways, the common ways of being that mirrored how people lived in all the nations around them instead of living lives that reflected the holiness, the other worldly way of life that they found in God.

         This is why God had his people hauled off to live in the custody of the Babylonians so that there in those trying circumstances they might give his ways of living a try. Just so his people did not miss the reason as to why God had allowed Babylon to take them into exile, God instructs his prophet Jeremiah, to write his people a letter. Can you imagine opening up your mailbox and in there you find a letter from God, addressed to you?As unreal as it might sound this is what we are told in this twenty-ninth chapter of Jeremiah, that God is sending his people a note. 

Now, what is interesting is that when God tells Jeremiah what to say he skips the little nicety of what we call the salutation. You know, it’s that part of the letter that reads, “Dear Sir or Madam”, or “To Whom it may Concern” or “Dear John”, you know, the polite way we were taught to begin a letter way back in grade school. Well, God totally skips that part and the reason most likely has to do with the fact that letters in Jeremiah’s day would begin with the phrase, “Peace or Shalom to you”. Even today in Israel, the way people say hello or goodby is by saying, “Shalom” which is the Hebrew word for peace. So, do you begin to understand that God is saying volumes when he begins by saying nothing. To these exiles he refuses to extend even the expected greeting that his peace might be with them. It is easy to figure out that the central issue that God is addressing with his people is that of how they might be people of peace.

         So, as we begin to get into the meat of this letter God has sent to his people we have to keep in mind that he is training his people in the way of peace. This helps us to understand just why it is that God begins by telling his people that while in Babylon that they were to build homes and live in them. They were to plant gardens and eat of the produce. They were to take wives and have sons and daughters. Then they were to take wives for their sons and give their daughters in marriage; they were to multiply there and not decrease. The point of this opening to-do list is God’s way of telling his people to get settled in because you’re going to be there awhile. In fact, as God further in the letter tells them they are going to be residents of Babylon for seventy years. Now, in the days of Jeremiah there were false prophets who countered the claim of Jeremiah by stating that God wasn’t going to leave them in Babylon for seventy years they would most assuredly be back in seven. God though was adamant that his people were going away for a long time and if we stop and think about it there is a very good reason why God was going to keep them in Babylon for seventy years and that is that the generation who went to Babylon would not be the generation that would be coming back. What God is doing with the exiles is not much different than what he did with their ancestors in the wilderness. When God’s people refused to trust him for their victory in conquering the Promised Land, he told them that they could wander in the desert for another forty years which was long enough that the rebellious generation would eventually die out and be replaced by a new generation who had come to trust in the ways and power of God. In a very similar matter, God is saying that he was willing to wait until a new generation had been raised up and then he would allow them to return to Judaea.

         You see, the reason why God was willing to wait it out for a new generation is that as it has often been said, its hard to teach old dogs new tricks. This new trick that God was hoping his people would learn is one that he had hoped that they would learn right from the beginning of their relationship and that was that his people would be people of peace. Over and over, down through the generations, the people of God refused to walk the path of peace that God had laid out for them and instead they had become terribly violent. In the seventh chapter of Jeremiah we read how the people of Judaea went to worship in the Temple, certain that they could act any way that they wanted as long as they gave God his due at the Temple but God was not impressed and he told them that he knew that his house, the Temple, had become nothing more than a den of thieves. In our day we might have said that the church had become a place for gangs and thugs to gather.  The imagery then suggests that God’s people were horribly violent toward each other and toward God.  Jeremiah told them that they refused to listen to God and instead they walked in their own counsel and the stubbornness of their evil hearts going ever backwards not forward. So they became a people, as Jeremiah describes in the ninth chapter, who had to beware of their neighbors, people who could put no trust in their brothers because every brother was a deceiver and every neighbor went about as a slanderer. They had become a people where everyone deceived his neighbor and no one spoke the truth. They were people who taught their tongues to speak lies and they wearied themselves with all of the iniquities they committed. Heaping oppression upon oppression, and deceit upon deceit, they were a people who refused to know the ways of God. Do you see how the violence of God’s people was tearing apart the very fabric of their society? How could God be one Lord over a people who no longer could have any hope of unity in his name? This is why God told Jeremiah that he was going to refine his people and test them because what else could God do for his people? This image of refining and testing was one where metal is put into the fire and melted so that the impurities could be drawn off so that the metal could be tested and found to at last be pure. This is  what God had done when he allowed Babylon to carry his people off to live in exile. If God’s people wanted to live by the ways of violence then God would allow the most horrible violence to come upon his people, the violence of losing home and country. At last they would feel the searing pain that violence inflicts so that they at last might be brought to a place where they would give the ways of peace a chance. God tells his people in his letter that they were to seek the peace of Babylon. Not only that but they were to pray to God on behalf of the citizens of Babylon because, as God told them, it is in the peace of the people of Babylon, this is where the people of Judaea would find their peace. So, God would not begin his letter with the expected “Peace be with you”, because the peace of God would only be theirs when they asked God to give his peace to the very people who had ripped them from their homes and sent them on a long march to live in utter humiliation. God had placed his people in a situation where their violence would be met with ever greater violence. This they learned the hard way because twice the people of Judaea rebelled against the Babylonian occupation, the first time resulted in the loss of Judaea being a country and the second time the Babylonian army destroyed Jerusalem and burnt the Temple to the ground. They simply were a people who refused to accept that the ways of peace were the only way they would survive the ordeal of their exile. God had to bring them to a place where they had to at last submit themselves to what he expected them to be, people of peace. Yet what God asked of his people was unbelievably hard. I mean, can you imagine in your daily prayer time having to speak the names of the very people who had invaded the place where you lived and who had forced you to leave your home so that you could become a slave to your captors? The very thought of having to ask God to do something for the very people who had harmed you in this way is quite naturally, repulsive but God always expects us to go beyond what we would naturally do because doing what comes naturally is the common thing to do but God is holy and so must we be.

         It is only a holy God who would expect his people to seek the peace of those who have done violence to us. This peace that God asks us to ask him for is not just the end to war or violence as we normally think of it being. No, in the Hebrew, shalom, their word for peace, means wholeness, completeness or harmony. The point is that when one seeks peace they should not only stop the hostilities but they should seek to bring healing and wholeness where they had brought damage. Where relationships had been strained and broken, God expected his people to be the builders of bridges, the mender of fences, so that where there was discord there might at last be harmonious relations between people. This is what God, in his letter, was telling his people was to be their sole work while in exile. Yet, he did not expect that they could find the wherewithal to be such peaceful people on their own; no, God told his people to pray. You see, God was and is always at work bringing peace upon the earth all he asks is that we might be united with him in his efforts.Through prayer we are to seek to know this God who expects his people to be people who will find ways of bringing harmony and wholeness into the situations that they find themselves in. Sure, to learn to be a person who is attuned to God in such a way of course will take time, that’s why God insisted on this training to last seventy years.

         When those seventy years would at last end, God tells his people that he would fulfill his promise that he made and return them at last to their home. It is here, in this letter of God, that we come to what might be one of the most beloved scriptures from the book of Jeremiah. This phrase, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for peace and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” can be found on everything fromT-shirts to stationary. Most of the time, this scripture is used to bolster the belief that God has a plan for each person’s life which unfortunately is not a belief that is found in scripture. What is found in scripture is that God indeed does have a plan, his will that he desires to have done, and what we are called to do is to conform our life to the plan that God has. The plan God has for his people and for us, this plan for peace and not for evil, this is what God had been training his people to accept their seventy years in exile. God’s plan is always for peace and never for evil, evil that is found in violence toward each other and toward God. When we align ourselves with God’s plan for peace, this is when we have the certainty that when we call upon God, he will most assuredly hear us. When we seek God with our whole heart then we can know that we will find him.

         While history will prove that God did fulfill his promise in bringing his people back to Judaea, sadly they remained in exile because they never did learn the ways of peace that God longed for them to know. We hear in the nineteenth chapter of Luke, the anguish of Jesus who as he drew to Jerusalem wept over the city, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things  that make for peace!” Jesus knew that the way of peace was the way of the cross this is why he told Pontious Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world otherwise his followers would fight. Jesus went to the cross so that he might be our peace, to make us one, to break down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility and hatred.

         On this first Sunday of Advent, as we await once again the arrival of Jesus, we must ask ourselves if we are living out this peace that Jesus shed his blood to establish? We must search our hearts for all of the places where we have begun to rebuild the wall of hostility and hatred that Jesus through his suffering and death has torn down. Now, is the time for forgiveness and mercy, for the praying for our enemies, for the seeking of peace, for this is the plan of God to give us a future and a hope. Amen!