Nothing Succeeds Like Excess

 January 22 2023

Matthew 5:38-42

         One of the phrases that goes around social media is “post turtle”. Just the other week somebody said that the person they were referring to was a “post turtle”.  Have you heard of this before? Well, out west as you’re driving down the road you might look over and there on top of a fence post will be a turtle. Now there are several truths that you can get from this image and the first, and most important is that this turtle did not get up there by himself. Someone had to have put that turtle up there for whatever reason. The second truth is that the turtle doesn’t have a clue what to do up there on the fence post and the third truth is that he will probably remain on top of that fence post until someone else comes along and gets him down from there.

Now it may seem like an odd analogy but the truth is that we are all “post turtles”. The reason I say this is that we are living a life here in this world and what is obvious, as obvious as that turtle up there on that fence post, is that we did not get here without help. I mean, the silliest phrase I ever heard anyone say is that they were a self-made man or woman. Really, just how does that work? No, there is nothing self-made about any of us. We are all alive through some strange wonder and now the only real question we have to figure out is, “Why”? Why are we here on top of this fence post we call life and just who is it that has put us here? These are universally valid questions to ask, everybody is out here living a life which they have to admit was given to them, a gift they really had no say in, but here they are living that life they have been given. You see, its only when people stop long enough to consider their life objectively that they begin to realize that if life is a gift it just figures that somebody was the giver of that gift. Now, if somebody has given us this gift we call our life when we are born then we have to wonder when we die, do we give this gift of life back to the one who gave it to us? Its questions like these that explain why all of us stay pretty busy so that we never have time to think about them.

When we do get around to thinking about our life, how it seems to be a gift, given to us by someone because like that turtle on the fence post, we got up here somehow, these questions are what is behind the strange language found in Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. I mean, don’t you find it weird that we as the blessed people of God have this common prayer that’s supposed to unite us but every time we pray it together some of us are over here asking for our debts to be forgiven and over there is somebody asking for their trespasses to be forgiven. We just accept that that’s just the way it is yet we really don’t know why Matthew has messed it up like he has. In most translations the word that is supposed to be “debts” is simply changed to “sins” as if they are interchangeable, but are they? What if Matthew had a very good reason for using this word, “debts” when asking God for forgiveness? I do believe that Matthew does have an important reason for using this idea of debts instead of sins and that is that Matthew is speaking to people all over the world not just the people of Israel. When we speak of this idea of sinning, we know that when we sin this is a breaking of a known law of God. But what happens when there are people out there who do not know what those laws are? I mean if you do not see a speed limit sign anywhere can you really get in trouble for speeding? Its like they say, if you know, you know, but what happens to those who simply don’t know? So to speak of the forgiveness of sins is a little more of an involved process than most of us care to admit.  This idea of, “debts”, though is a more universal concept because when people consider themselves and the world they live in a lot of people will conclude that there has to be some higher power, some God who created our world and it is this God who is the one who has given us life. We have been placed here on top of this fence post and therefore someone had to have done this. This God who has given us this life then, is the one who ultimately has fed us, has clothed us, the one who has given everything necessary to sustain us. We can state the that all that we are and all that we have, all of this has been a gift from the God who has created the world.  This is a statement that any honest person can make anywhere around the planet. We can all say that there is no action we have done, no thought that has entered our mind, no word spoken by us that we do not in some way owe to God. This is where we begin in our relationship with God, indebted to him for the sum total of our life. What we owe God for this life he has given us, as Paul writes in the twenty-first verse of the first chapter of Romans, is gratitude and glory. It just makes sense that when someone gives us a gift that we are supposed to say, “Thank you”, and we should honor the person who has given us this gift. I mean, its universally accepted that to bad mouth somebody who has been gracious to you is just really bad manners.

So, as we come to this point of asking for forgiveness of our debt, what has caused us to utter these words is this realization that we are indebted to God for our entire life and that we have not responded to the receiving of this gift with the necessary gratitude and glory that God deserved. We are asking God to write off all that we owe him that we have not given to him in the past. What is easy to understand when we think through this forgiveness is that even if God decided to be merciful to us and wipe away the debt that we owe to him that this will not end our relationship with God, as is what happens when we pay off a monetary debt. I mean, when I pay off the car loan or my mortgage I no longer am going to be in a relationship with my bank. But with God when our debt is forgiven our relationship the relationship does not end but rather our relationship with God is transformed. Now we realize that we do not have an independence nor a significance apart from God; we are forever bound to him because he is the very one to whom we owe our life. Life then is understood as an obligation to God which destroys any notion that our life is supposed to be about our own selfish pursuit of pleasure. No, our life, we discover, is forever connected to the One who is eternal and beyond our earthly existence.Now this might seem as if our indebtedness to God has bound us so close to God that we have lost our freedom but the truth is that when we are at last, in right standing with God we are free to be who God has created us to be, his very children.

This idea that God has created us to be his children lies right at the heart at God’s reason to forgive our debts in the first place. It is this relationship that God has with us that stands behind God’s decision to forgive us. Our refusal to give God the gratitude and glory that he rightly deserved for giving us our life meant that this indebtedness stood between us and our communion with God, a communion that has now been restored through God’s mercy and willingness to forgive. It is God’s love and mercy which we have come against, the same love and mercy which moved God to wipe away the debt that we owed. God’s love wills the very best for us, the good that God desires to see within those he has communion with, those he calls his children. So, God’s forgiveness is his removal of anything that stands in the way of this goodness on which his family is founded on. God receives us as debtors in need of forgiveness and he removes that which we rightfully owe in order that we might be restored as our rightful selves, children of God, the Almighty King. This is what Paul is speaking about in his second letter to the Corinthians, the eighth chapter, the ninth verse, when he writes, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” Those who know themselves as those whom God has blessed must confess that all of us begin this life of blessedness as those who are poor in spirit as Jesus teaches us in the fifth chapter of Matthew, the third verse. We who come to God as those who are impoverished and debt-ridden people are yet the same people to whom Jesus promises us that ours is the richness of the kingdom of heaven. God understands that what transforms us from being people of debt to being people of duty toward our king, is the excessive riches he pours out upon us, not just paying our debt but welcoming us home as children of the king.

This forgiveness that God has shown to us has to be fully understood and taken to heart in order that we can fulfill the second part of this petition found in the Lord’s Prayer. There we are told that our forgiveness of our debt that we desire that God provide for us, is the very same forgiveness with which we must forgive those who owe us. You see, only as we grasp the magnitude of God’s forgiveness of us can we realize just what God expects will be our response of forgiveness that we offer to those indebted to us. It is not just that God has forgiven us but it is also the manner in which God has forgiven us that matters. You see, God has forgiven us with lavish excess, and God therefore expects us to be forgiving of others with lavish excess. Now, just so that we do not go looking for loopholes to ease this expectation that God has for us, Matthew has given us a few examples of what such forgiveness is supposed to look like. In our scripture for today, Jesus teaches us first what we should not do. He states, “You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, “Do not resist the one who is evil.” In other words we are not to come against evil using evil methods but instead we are to use the ways shown to us by our good God. Jesus continues. “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and let him have the left one also. And if anyone would sue you and take your outer coat let him have your shirt as well. If one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” You see, if you read this teaching of Jesus without knowing that what he is describing is how the forgiveness God has shown to us is translated into our every day life then you might just think that Jesus had gone a bit too far. Yet, if we fully understand that we were the one who begged God to give us whatever it would take to pay what we owed him then it just makes sense that when someone comes to us and asks the same of us how can we not oblige. In being forgiven by God, we have in essence, borrowed from God to pay off a debt that we owed to God, and this is a loan us who are poor in spirit have no chance of ever paying back. God did not just forgive our debt as we had asked him to do but instead went further and restored us to be who he created us to be children of the Almighty King. So, when someone asks us to do something like carry their pack one mile, how can we not but go on and go further than we have been asked to do. We have asked God for freedom from what we owed and God went further and gave us all that he had, opening up to us a life lived in communion with him. So, when someone demands that we give him our coat to pay our debt how can we not think that we might as well go ahead and give them all that we have, a gift of our inner shirt. That slap on our right cheek was a public display that we were not worthy of any honor by the one who hit us. How is this any different than our indebtedness toward God? What we owed God is a life lived with gratitude to God and honor of God yet through our life we publicly never gave God the thankfulness nor the honor that God so rightfully deserved. Just as that right hand upon our cheek dishonored us, so too our life which did not give God glory, dishonored him. Even so, God never retaliated against us but he instead paid our debt and honored us as he brought us back home to live in communion with him once again. Are you beginning to see the difficulty that is presented to us when we are commanded to forgive what others owe to us, just like, in the same manner as, the forgiveness the God has shown to us. What must not be forgotten when faced with what God expects of us is that the reason God has been so lavish in his wiping away of what we owed him is that God loves us and out of this love flows the mercy which forgives us. God forgives us because his relationship with us is always more valuable to him than any debt that we might have racked up. This is the way that love works, always treasuring the relationship above anything else. In our dealings with the people in our life then what God is saying to us is that our relationship with the people we meet is what is most important because every person we meet is someone who is important to God. God, in his mercy, is not only willing to forgive the debt that we owe but God is willing to pay off every person’s debt. This is what must be held onto when we deal with the evil that people do against us as we live out this life that God has given to us. We need to see that this person who confronts us is more important that the honor that they are attempting to take from us. This person who ruthlessly would take all that we have to pay off a debt that we owe to him is still more important than everything that they might take from us. We need to see that those times when someone forces us to serve them, even if against our will, this is yet another time to look at them, and to see them as someone who is important to God. The person who asks for something from us is far more valuable and precious than anything that they might take from us. This is why we are to give the other a loan that they may never repay because in doing so we at last stand where God once stood with us.

Yet, even so, what Jesus asks of us is extremely difficult, some might even say that what he asks us to do is impossible. This is why this plea for forgiveness is asked for in a prayer to God. Just as the forgiving of our debt that we owed to God seemed impossible, a situation which crushed us with the weight of the fear of having to come to the end of our life uncertain as to what the outcome might be for us who owed so much. Yet, what seems so impossible for us is, thankfully, possible for God. God in his mercy has done the impossible for us, not only forgiving our debt but restoring us to be who he created us to be, his children. When God then states that we must forgive just like he has forgiven us, forgive in the same manner as he has done for us, then we again are faced with an impossibility that can only be made possible by and through the power of God. When we pray that we desire to not only be forgiven of our debts but also that we might be people who forgive in the same manner that God has forgiven us, God honors that prayer and in those time when such forgiveness is called for, there God will be seen working in us and through us.

The reason I believe that this to be true, that God not only forgives us but that he works in us so that we might forgive as God forgives is that this is witnessed in the life of Jesus upon the cross. We are told in the ninth chapter of the book of Hebrews, the fourteenth verse, that it was through the eternal Spirit that Jesus offered himself without blemish upon the cross. The Holy Spirit was working in Jesus, as he was slapped upon the cheek; as his coat and his shirt were taken from him; as he carried his cross all the way to Calvary. There upon the cross Jesus cried out, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”It was here, that Jesus who was rich became poor for us so that we who are poor might become rich. Through the blood shed by Jesus, our sins were cleansed, our debt erased, so that now we are able to experience the richness of communion with God through the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit, working in us, who empowers us to not only love as God first loved us but also to forgive as God has forgiven us. Let us then give to God the life we owe him, a life of gratitude and glory to the one who has called us his own. Amen! 

A Prayer for the Blessed

 January 15 2023

Matthew 5:1-12, 6:9-13

         On the evening of the 2^nd of January I, and millions like me, had turned on Monday Night Football to watch what was surely going to be a great game, a game with playoff implications, the Buffalo Bills versus the Cincinnati Bengals. Everything was going along great in the game, Cincinnati had the ball, Joe Burrow threw it to his wide receiver Tee Higgins who slammed into a Bills defensive player, you know, it was just a regular game up until that point. But that Bills defensive player, a safety whose name is Damar Hamlin, got up from that stop that he had made and suddenly collapsed upon the turf. The medical staff were called out onto the field, then the ambulance arrived and emergency medical personnel performed CPR on Damar for nine minutes. Only later would it be revealed that he had tragically suffered a cardiac arrest. In that moment of shock and unbelief when that young man’s life hung in the balance, those who watched did what came quite instinctively to them, they prayed. Dan Orlovsky, one of the ESPN broadcasting crew, brought everything to a full stop and lifted this young man and his situation up in prayer. There on that evening we were reminded that there is something far more important than the game of football. I am still in awe of how people just knew that right there in that moment that they had to cry out to God, that they knew that there is a God who cares and listens to us, a God who is our hope when the situation we watched looked extremely bleak.

         What is also surprising is that everyone just seemed to know not only that they needed to pray but they also all seemed to know how they were to pray. Everyone knew that they just needed to cry out to God, plead for Damar and his situation the best that they could. What is not always evident in those times when we lift someone up to God is that when we pray we have an image of what we hope will happen. As we pray for Damar we pray for God to heal him, and so, we also have this image of Damar out of the hospital, perhaps once again standing on a football field. We pray for comfort for his family and we can imagine the living Jesus wrapping his loving arms around them. So, while we don’t always think about it when we pray, the prayers we lift up, the hope that we have, this can be thought of as being an image, a picture of a preferred future that we are calling on God to make a reality.

         As followers of Jesus, we have been given a prayer, the prayer that he taught to those who first followed him, a prayer which was not just their prayer but it is a prayer for us as well. We know this prayer simply as the Lord’s Prayer because it is the prayer that our Lord, Jesus Christ teaches to us. In the gospel of Matthew, this prayer is right at the center of the core teachings of Jesus, the teachings that we commonly call the Sermon on the Mount. As we pray the Lord’s Prayer, just like when we pray any other prayer, I believe that we are to wonder just what the world would look like if this prayer would become a reality. Just like when we pray for healing for someone and we envision them whole and healthy, so when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we must also wonder what is the vision that this prayer is asking our Heavenly Father to make a reality. Fortunately for us, Matthew has surrounded the Lord’s prayer with the teachings of Jesus which provide us with images of that future which the Lord’s Prayer is crying out to our Heavenly Father to make a reality. 

         So, the Sermon on the Mount contains at its core a common prayer which is surrounded by teachings which give us a common vision that we are praying our Heavenly Father is going to make a reality, and this common prayer and common vision is the hope of people who have had a common experience, the experience of being blessed by God. This is what we discover, that right there at the beginning of this sermon that Jesus gave to his followers there are  nine sayings that all begin with the word normally translated as “blessed”. So, what Jesus is describing here at the beginning of his message is a common experience of those that he is teaching. They are the ones who can say that they have been blessed by God, the blessing that God has, throughout scriptures, promised would come to all the families on earth. Jesus, in his teaching about this blessing, is speaking about how God’s blessing has come to people and how this blessing has worked in, and has transformed the lives of those, who called themselves blessed by God. As you look at these nine statements about the blessing of God what you discover is that they are written in much the same form as the Psalms, the prayers and songs of the people of God. As we study these blessings we find, just as in the Psalms, there is a repetition of thought for emphasis. This means that to properly understand these blessing we must hold them together as being pairs. So, the first two read, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” This is the beginning of the life of blessing. The promise of living under the rule and reign of God is offered to those who have come to the realization that they do not have what it takes, on their own, to be right with God. They mourn because they know that before God they are as good as dead. It is not hard to hear in these two statements the sentiments of Paul, who writes in the eighteenth verse of the seventh chapter of the book of Romans, that he at last understood , “that nothing good dwells in him, that is his flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” This is what it means to be poor in spirit, lacking in the power to conform our life to doing the will of God. As Paul continues, he states that he, “does not do the good that he wants , but the evil that he does not want is what he keeps on doing.” Further on in this same chapter in the twenty-fourth verse, Paul writes. “Wretched man that I am. Who will save me from this body of death?” This is exactly the situation that all of us find ourselves, yet all is not lost because into this rather hopeless situation there comes a promise that the kingdom of heaven is ours to be had, and there in our mourning over our body of death, we are told that comfort will come. The Greek word translated as being comfort is “parakaleo”, which is the same root as “paraclete”, the name Jesus uses for the Holy Spirit in the gospel of John. Here in our sorrow and our grief at the realization that we are trapped in a body of death comes a voice speaking to us words of comfort, words of blessing. This is the hope we find in the fifty-seventh chapter of Isaiah, the fifteenth verse, where God tells us that he , “dwells in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” This is where the journey of blessing begins right here at our lowest point.

         The next two moments of blessing that Jesus speaks of are, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.” This meekness Jesus speaks of is the willingness to be obedient to the voice of the Spirit who comforts us. Those who follow the Spirit are those who will receive the future blessing of the earth, renewed and restored to its original glory. This future hope creates in us a present longing for our world to be set right, for justice to at last be brought to bear against the evil that seems to run rampant.

         As we encounter the God who comes to us in our grief, the God who calls us to follow in his ways and to desire what he desires, a God who gives us the hope that one day all will at last be set right, we are to be overwhelmed by the great love this God has for us. Ours is a God who is faithful and loyal to us, binding himself to us because this is who he is, this is his holy nature. It is solely because God is faithful to us out of his loyal love for us that he offers us his grace and forgiveness. The question then becomes just what will our response be to this great outpouring of love that God has so lavished upon us? The only right response is that we would love each other with the same faithful, loyal, love that God has first shown to us. If we are people who hunger and thirst for righteousness then of course we will do the right thing and love others the same way that God has loved us. This will purify our hearts because we will love God and people, no matter what. Gone is the belief that we can love God with one part of who we are and hate certain people with another part of who we are. It just can not happen like that. You see, if people can experience the love of God in our life reaching out to them, then this is when God, his love and his faithfulness, will be seen living in us. This then is what is meant by Jesus telling us, “Blessed are those who love with faithful, loyal, love for they are the ones who have received faithful, loyal, love. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The blessing of God is not something we can keep hidden.

         Well, it makes perfect sense that if we are people who love others with the same faithful, loyal, love that God has shown to us, the end result is going to be peace. We are going to be people who, through our loyalty and love for everyone, are going to be bringing things together not tearing things apart.When peacemaking becomes not just our confession but our profession as well, then God says, “Welcome to the family.”If we are going to cry out “Abba, Father”, then we have to be about healing not hurting, restoring not wrecking the lives of others.  Yes, there will be those who simply will refuse to believe that this world cannot be put right without the use of violence.Yes, there will be those who like the world with all of its strife and anguish just the way it is. When these people are confronted with the dawning of a new way to live, a life of peace, they will cling to life in the darkness. This is why those who choose peace are going to be always met with suspicion and hatred. Those who are about peacemaking will be persecuted yet it is those who follow the ways of peace who end up being a citizen in the kingdom of God. Yes, this persecution is a blessing because it is a sign of desperation on the part of those who refuse to live in the light, a light which always conquers the darkness.

         So, this being blessed by God, this is our shared experience. It is while we are poor and lowly in our spirits, dead in our sin and that is when we are awakened to the hope of life in the kingdom of God. There in the certainty of our death the God of all comfort finds us and brings us back to life. Through our listening and obedience to the voice of the one who comforts us we discover hope. Through the experience of being loved by the God who is and always will be faithful and loyal to us out of his great love for us, we become people who allow his love to flow through us so that the world can witness God living and loving through us. The blessing of God leads us then to join him in the work of peacemaking in a world obsessed and lusting after violence. This violence will come against us as we call into judgment those who refuse to learn the ways of peace yet even so, this is a blessing of God. All of this, that comes through the blessing of God, this is what unites us and gives us a common shared experience. And it is those of us who have this common, shared experience of being blessed by God who have been given a common, shared prayer that is to guide us when we cry out to God. This prayer is the reality that we desire our Heavenly Father to bring forth, a future hope that we long to experience, today. So, within this prayer is a vision of our world that we desire to live in today. This world is described for us in the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. These teachings take the shorthand of the Lord’s Prayer and give us a vision of what the world will look like when God fulfills the requests we cry out to him.

         To see just how the teachings found within the Sermon on the Mount tie in with the requests found within the Lord’s Prayer perhaps it would be good to begin with what is absolutely central to this prayer which is that the will of the Father be done on earth as it is in heaven.When we read this petition what is supposed to jump out at us is that what is already happening in heaven is what we long to see happen here on earth. So there is this sense of unity, a unified way of living which God desires us to live. Another way to put it is to say that God desires that heaven and earth be united into one. This can be understood by remembering that the God of heaven through his faithful, loyal love has united himself with our earthly human cause. Yet as we just learned about the blessings which God has given to us, when we experience this faithful, loyal love of God we then are to turn and love each other with that same faithful, loyal love with which God first has loved us. In this way, through the love of God, heaven and earth are at last united together. This means that when we pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”, we must be mindful of not tearing apart what God is bringing together. This is why in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, in the twenty-first verse of the fifth chapter of Matthew, teaches us that” you have heard it said, ‘You shall not murder’ and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother or sister will be liable to the council; and whoever says, “You fool!”,will be liable to the hell of fire.” Why does Jesus give us such a stern warning not to get angry or to insult someone? The answer is that such actions tear apart what God is bringing together. We know this to be true because Jesus goes on to further teach us in the twenty-fourth verse, that if we remember that someone has something against us we are to go and be reconciled with them. The word translated in this verse as, “reconciliation”, is the Greek word, diallassomia, and it is found only here in the Bible. It is a different word than is normally used for reconciliation because this word stresses that a change has occurred between two parties who used to be at odds with each other. Where they used to consider themselves enemies now they have become friends, a relationship that reflects unity.

         Jesus in this same section of the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with the twenty-seventh verse, goes on to speak about marriages, of how this great act of bringing together a man and a woman in a bond of love is something that should be taken very seriously. One should not allow a passing glance or an obsessive thought to be the beginning of the destruction of this union. Again, the reasoning is that God is bringing everything together so we must not be found to be those who tear it apart. As Jesus teaches us it is better that we lose part of our body, destroying the unity of who we are, than to tear apart and destroy the unity of the body of humanity that is being brought together through the work of Christ. 

         Lastly, in the thirty-third verse through the thirty-seventh verse of this fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus address the issue of taking oaths, and the problem that we are to not swear falsely. Again, this is about unity, that what we say that we are going to do should be exactly what we end up doing. The unity God is bringing about is to concern the very integrity of ourselves.

         So, when we pray, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”, we as the people blessed by God are to see this vision of a world united. A world where anger no longer tears people apart, a world where calling somebody a stupid idiot would be a terrifying thought, a world where enemies work hard at becoming friends. It is a world where marriages would be entered into very seriously, with the understanding that it is this union which best represents the unity that God wishes to bring about here on earth. If this prayer would become a reality then people would do exactly what they said they would do. This all sounds rather impossible, doesn’t it? And this is why we pray for these things to happen because we realize that for us such a world is an impossibility but yet, with God all things are possible. Our prayer is that we trust God to make such a world ours one day soon! To God be the glory! Amen!

 

A Hard Test

 January 8 2023

Matthew 4:1-11

         The beginning of a new year is always a great time to stop and reflect on just what it is that we are supposed to be doing and to reassess our priorities. I say this because, you know, it is real easy to go through life and just keep doing the same things over and over again and never question why is it that we do what we do. This examining of our life is great at this time, not only because this is the beginning of a new year but also because we have just wrapped up another Christmas season and we have celebrated the birth of Jesus and now we are left wondering what was all that about? What is the big deal about this Jesus, this one who we declare is our king, and why is it exactly that he has come as one of us? The place where we are going to look for answers to questions like these is in the core teachings that Jesus taught. The great thing about these core teachings of Jesus is that they only take up three chapters in the gospel of Matthew, the fifth sixth and seventh ones specifically. I mean, it shouldn’t be too hard for anyone to take and read such a small portion of the Bible and I think that this is kind of the point. What Jesus taught is not some long, drawn out, complicated manifesto; no, what he had to say was rather simple and straightforward. If you look over these three chapters which make up the core teachings of Jesus what you also find is that at the very center of these words of Jesus is what we often call the Lord’s Prayer. It is called the Lord’s Prayer because in Luke’s account found in the first four verses  of chapter eleven, it is the disciples who ask Jesus to teach them how to pray because John the Baptist had taught his disciples how to pray. So, this prayer that our Lord Jesus gave to us is the very essence of what our life is to be about in its most simplest form. 

         Just to go over what has already been said then, we have the whole of scriptures and out of all of these there are the core teachings of Jesus which take up just three chapters out of those scriptures and at the center of those core teachings of Jesus is this prayer that he taught to his disciples. The image all of this conjures up is what is called a nesting doll where you have a big doll which you open up and inside is a smaller doll and inside that doll is a smaller doll and so forth. Well, as we get to the absolute center of all the teachings of Jesus we end up focusing in on the Lord’s Prayer what we also find is that there is one phrase at the center of that prayer which is this,”Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. This is the most fundamental truth that Jesus taught that we must be doing no matter what. Now, where this ties in with our wondering just what was Christmas even all about, is something we find in the sixth chapter of John’s gospel in the thirty-eighth verse where we hear Jesus say, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” Jesus had a reason for being born as a baby in Bethlehem and that is so that he could do the will of his Heavenly Father here on earth. As Jesus understood this to be his life’s purpose we too are to focus in on the most central petition of the prayer that he taught and make the pursuit of the will of our Heavenly Father our life purpose as well. This is why the start of a new year is such a great time to pause and ask ourselves is our central prayer really “Heavenly Father, my hearts desire is that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”? Can we really say with all honesty that this is what our life is really all about?

         I think it is vitally important that we understand that Jesus was all about doing the will of God before we begin to take a deep dive into what is known as the temptations of Jesus. While this is the common way that this episode in the life of Jesus is normally described, a better way to think about it is to say that these forty days which Jesus spent in the wilderness is where he was tested. The reason I say this is that, first, it is the Holy Spirit who leads Jesus out into the wilderness so we don’t want to get the impression that God leads people into temptation. As James tells us in the thirteenth verse of his first chapter, “God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” So, we have to be careful not to imply that God is leading Jesus out into the wild places so he can tempt Jesus to do something evil. Instead, what helps us understand just what Jesus undergoes at the leading of the Holy Spirit is something that is written in the second verse of the eighth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy where Moses tells the people of Israel to “remember the way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not”. So, it is not a stretch to see that Jesus is, in someway, going through something very similar to what the people of Israel went through when they had been led by God in the wilderness. Just as God had led his people out to the wild places to test them so that he could examine what was going on in their hearts, so too the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to test him to see just what is going on in his heart. The key question is this: What does it mean for Jesus to be the Son of God? At his baptism there was a voice from heaven which said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” It is immediately after this announcement that Jesus is lead into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit so that he might be tested to see if he is a true son, one worthy of receiving the inheritance from his Heavenly Father.

         After Jesus has fasted for forty days and nights we are told that he was hungry which is quite understandable. It was at this time, the time when the desires of Jesus were doing their best to overwhelm him, this is when the Accuser enters the picture. The little whisper that buzzes around the ear of Jesus tells him to just go ahead turn these stones on the desert floor into bread, satisfy the ache gnawing away at you, go on Jesus, the voice continues, doesn’t being a Son of God mean you can have the power to fulfill every desire? Jesus replies using a scripture, a verse from the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy once again, where in the third verse, Moses reminds the people of Israel how God had humbled them and let them hunger and how he fed them with manna, which they did not know, so that he might make them know that people do not live by bread alone but people live by every word the the Lord speaks. This is what Jesus knew deep within himself, this understanding, that as a person he had been created for a greater and higher purpose than any other part of creation and that was that he was to listen to his Heavenly Father and do only what he commanded him to do. Being the Son of God then was not about power but rather it was about obedience. Through hearing our Father in heaven speak, people who obey this word from above can become avenues through which that which is in heaven comes to be a reality here on earth. Does that sound vaguely familiar?

         Well, the Accuser was not finished for he returned once again to Jesus and he led Jesus to the holy city and, in a moment, Jesus found himself hundreds of feet above the ground, teetering on the ledge of the highest point of the Temple. This time the Accuser had his own scripture, quoting from the ninety-first Psalm, the eleventh and twelfth verse which state that, “God will command his angels concerning you. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” The underlying question that this Psalm is putting forth is this: Will the protection of God mean that we will never have to suffer? I mean, if God is indeed our shield then will we really ever have to endure any hardship or loss? Ultimately, what this Psalm was getting at was this thought: Can the faithfulness of God be determined by our circumstances? I mean, if we are having hard times, suffering greatly, can we assume that God has left the building? It can feel like this, can it not? Yet, is that really the truth about God? Jesus wisely rebuked the little whisper in his ear again by quoting from the book of Deuteronomy, this time from the sixth chapter, the sixteenth verse, where Moses, again addressing the people of Israel, tells them that they were not to “…put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” Here Moses is referring to an incident that happened in the wilderness, as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of Exodus, where the people of Israel found themselves without any water. They were suffering, death seemed imminent, and they began to think that perhaps God had brought them out into the desert so that he could kill them off, abandoning them in the time of their greatest need. Was this the truth about God? Absolutely not! They were putting God to the test wondering, is the Lord with us or not? What the shielding presence of God is supposed to do is not to make so that the people of God never experience pain or suffering but rather the hovering presence of God is to assure God’s people that God was always with them, even in the midst of their suffering, even if their obedience to his will meant that they might have to give up their life, they were to be certain that their life is always safely covered by the glory wings of God. 

         Well, the Accuser was not finished with Jesus. This time the Accuser took Jesus up to a very high mountain and he let Jesus gaze out upon the endless horizon and see all of the kingdoms of the world and their glory. The Accuser whispered his lie once again telling Jesus that if he would just come and bow down and worship him he would give Jesus all of these vast kingdoms, all of their immense glory, the very glory of humanity. Once again, not surprisingly, Jesus recalls a verse from Deuteronomy, the sixth chapter, the thirteenth verse. This verse lies right in the center of a warning that God gives to the people of Israel, that when they come to live in the land that God had promised them, a land which had great and good cities which they had not built and houses full of good things which they had not filled and cisterns which they did not dig and vineyards and olive trees that they had not planted- when they had eaten and were full, they were to take care lest they would forget the God who had given this land to them. No, they were to not forget God but rather they were to fear God, be in awe- filled worship of their God and it is God alone that they were to serve. This was the final reply of Jesus to the Accuser because Jesus had passed the test, he had answered correctly and proved that in the depths of his heart he understood what it meant to be the Son of God.

         Now, you might say that’s all well and good but what does this testing of Jesus have to do with me?  Well, if we know that Jesus came into our world, as the Son of God, in order that he might do the will of God then it just stands to reason that the answers with which Jesus rebuked the Accuser are answers which will help us understand just what sort of people we have to be in order that we might be the fulfillment of the prayer that pleads for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven. You see, what is as stake in all of this is as we are told in First John, chapter two, the seventeenth verse, “this world is passing away along with its desires  but whoever does the will of God abides forever”. Those who are the answer to this prayer that God’s will come on earth as it is in heaven, these are the ones who have the assurance that they have an eternal home with God. So, it is in our doing not in our believing, this is the way that we can have a peace about our eternity. This is why we need to lean in and listen to what this testing of Jesus has to say to us.

         The first lesson we can learn from the testing of Jesus is that God expects us to be obedient. To be obedient means that, first, we must be willing and able to hear God speak to us. This means that we need to stop seeing God as merely being the power which fulfills our desires and longings. It is our desires and our longings which as James teaches us in the first chapter, the fifteenth verse, which “give birth to sin and sin when it is full grown brings forth death.” You see, God has created us for a greater purpose than merely to eat, drink and be merry. We are the ones God has created to hear his voice, so that in being obedient to that voice, the glories of heaven can be brought down here on earth. The reason why we will stop listening to our base desires is that we at last will catch a glimpse of the greatness for which God has created us. We are the ones that Almighty God has entrusted to help bring about the unity of heaven and earth. This is what God has “done in Christ, he has brought forth his plan to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.” This is what Paul understood and wrote of in the first chapter of Ephesians. God invites you and I to be part of this great plan, to set our sights on greater things. We were created to work with God in bringing heaven and earth together and the way we begin to do that is through listening for his voice and then being obedient to do what our Heavenly Father desires us to do.

         The testing of Jesus not only demonstrates that for us to do the will of our Heavenly Father we must be obedient to his voice, but we also learned that we cannot allow our circumstances to determine the faithfulness of our Heavenly Father. We must remember that our God is a holy God which means that he is nothing like any one else we might be in a relationship with because where we falter in our faithfulness, God’s faithfulness is the essence of his name, his character which never changes. God’s faithfulness is proven by his fulfillment of his promises through which we discover that God, in his love, is forever loyal to those who he has bound himself to. It is this unwavering faithfulness of God which is the foundation of our faith. We can trust God and be obedient to what he asks us to do because the faithfulness of God flows from his eternal love. We never have to be concerned about whether God still loves us, if God is still with us, because the love and faithfulness of God is not a choice which God makes but rather the love of God and the faithfulness of God is the very name of God, his unchanging character.

         As we move through each episode of the testing of Jesus it becomes clear that each test builds upon the last. To do the will of God must mean that we will listen for the voice of God and act according to what he commands us to do. As we follow this voice of God we can have faith that God is with us as we do the work which he calls us to do because of the holy name of God. God’s unchanging nature is that he is a God of loyal love and unwavering faithfulness. Only as we are certain that this is who God is and not simply what God chooses to do, only then will we find that we can trust God. Now, it seems to follow, that once we know that the only one with whom we can be in a relationship with who is utterly and completely loyal and faithful to us out of his love for us, and that this one has called us to work with him, then does it not just make sense that we should be in awe of this God? Does it not just make sense that this one who loves us because this is who he is and that he does not love us on account of anything we might do, that this one is the one we would find worthy of giving our life to, serving him in faithful obedience? Why would we abandon the ways of the world upon which all of the kingdoms and governments are built upon? The answer is that in this world where fear rules and love must be earned we have found one who is faithful, one whose love is freely given to us. This is why God alone is the one we worship, the only one worthy of our service.

         Here in the testing of Jesus it is easy to see that the cross already is casting its shadow upon his life. To be obedient to his Heavenly Father, to place his life at the mercy of the faithfulness and love of his Heavenly Father, to find his Father worthy of his service and even his life, it is not hard for us to hear Jesus pray, “Not my will but yours be done.” This is why Jesus went to the cross, so that the power of sin might be at last defeated, so that we might be set free to follow him, so our prayer too might be, “Father, not my will but yours be done! Amen!

 

         

           

Places of Promise

 January 1 2023

Matthew 2:19-23

         Well, another year has rolled around and here we are at the beginning of 2023. It is so unbelievable to write that number and realize that we are now living in the future that we used to dream about. I mean, every year I have to ask, just where are the flying cars that we were once promised that would be ours by now? After seeing how well self-driving cars are doing maybe not having flying cars is a good thing. As we enter this new year, we not only wonder about what the future holds, especially in the area of technology, but we also, personally, begin to focus more on self-improvement. You know, now is the beginning of a new year, its time to slim down, or get organized or whatever life goals might be on your mind. In Christian circles, this personal emphasis on self-improvement is usually centered around the question,”What is God’s will for my life?”. It is as if to say, that if God has a plan for my life then here at the beginning of a new year, now is a great time to be figuring that out so that I can get on doing whatever God has planned for me. This is a rather unfortunate way of thinking about things because the truth is that searching for God’s will for ones personal life has no support in the Scriptures whatsoever which might surprise some people. No, what the Bible does speak volumes about is the will of God but this will is not some personalized plan that God has for each individual person rather what we find in the scriptures is that God has a will and what each person must do is to conform their life to the will of God. A much better question as we begin the year is to ask the question, “Just what is the will of God?”, and the second question we need to ask once we figure out what God is up to is to ask,”Just what must I take on or let go of in order that I might align myself with this will of God?

         If we are interested in knowing just what is the will of God it goes without saying that there is no better place than in the life of Jesus. Throughout the life of Jesus the will of God seems to be always present sometimes in very loud and unavoidable ways and then, in scriptures like our scripture for today, the will of God is given to us in more subtle ways, almost like in a whisper.

         To understand just what is going on in this little snippet of scripture from Matthew’s gospel, we need to remember that it is in Matthew’s account of the Christmas story that we have recorded for us the visit by the wise men. Notice I didn’t say “the three wise men” because, truth be told, Matthew does not actually say how many there were. Regardless, these astrologers who watched the night skies for what the future held, one day saw a star rising in the western sky which was interpreted by them that a new king had been born somewhere west of where they lived. So, they set out to discover just which country would soon be under new leadership. Their journey led them to Judaea where they began to ask just where they could find this newborn king of the Jews. This is when the trouble began because when Herod, who considered himself to be king, heard that these travelers were looking for the king of the Jews who had recently been born it wasn’t hard for him to conclude that he and his sons after him, might be out of a job before long.

         Herod, admittedly, was pretty smart because instead of going and searching for this newborn king himself he just tells the visitors from the east that before they head for home they were to stop by the royal palace and let him know where they had found the one they were looking for. Well, these astrologers did find Jesus and they worshipped him and, as we know so well, they gave Jesus gifts that they had brought with them. Yet, they did not go and tell Herod where Jesus was because, as Matthew informs us, they were warned in a dream to not to return to Herod but instead they were to go straight home by another route.

         Well, it just makes sense that Herod is not just going to let the news that there is a new king in town go without doing something about it. He decides that if he can’t find the young king he would just take and get rid of every boy two years and under in the region of Bethlehem. Now, if we are familiar with the story of Israel being slaves in Egypt, we will remember that this was the same tactic of the king of Egypt. In that story, Moses is saved from the slaughter of the male children by his sister who placed him in a basket and hid him in the reeds along side of the river. So, in no small way, the situation in Judaea had become much like situation which caused the exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt. What we find in Matthew’s story is that Jesus, who represents the people of Israel, has his own Exodus story because as Matthew records the story, the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to take his family and flee to Egypt so that Herod might not harm the baby Jesus. Its not hard to be astounded by what a strange turn of events has happened here in this story of God and his people. Where God had to rescue his people from annihilation when they were slaves in Egypt so he brings them from there to the land he has promised Abraham. Now, in order to save Jesus from annihilation, God takes him from the promised land and takes him to Egypt. It does seem that truth is stranger than fiction!

         So, Joseph waits it out down in Egypt until Herod at last dies. This is where we, at last, come to our scripture for today. Once again, we are told, Joseph is visited by the Lord in a dream and Joseph is told to, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” It is here in this message from the Lord to Joseph that we have our first clue as to just what is the will of God. We have to wonder just why does God insist that Joseph head back to the land of Israel? And why does God call it the land of Israel instead of stating that it is Judaea as we hear throughout the gospel of Matthew? Perhaps the best explanation to questions such as these is that this phrase, “the land of Israel”, speaks to the promise that God had made to Abraham. In the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, the 18^th verse, we hear God promise Abram, “To your offspring, I give this land…”. As we might recall, Israel is the God given name of Jacob who was the grandson, the offspring of Abram. And again, in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis, the eighth verse, God again promises Abram that he would give to Abram and “his offspring after him, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession and I will be their God.”. So, when we hear God tell Joseph that he was to go to the land of Israel, he was speaking to how he had made good on his promise to the ancestor of Joseph, how this land was indeed the everlasting possession of the descendants of Israel. Yet, what cannot be forgotten is that this land was given to Abraham and his descendants solely because this land was just one of the many ways that God had blessed them. This is what God first told Abraham, as we learn in the twelfth chapter of Genesis, the second verse, that God would make of Abraham “a great nation and God would bless him and make his name great.” God had a purpose for lavishly pouring out these blessings upon Abraham and his family and that is, as we learn in that same verse of the twelfth chapter, that they were to “be a blessing.” This land of Israel then was a blessing from God to Abraham and his family but it was given in order that Abraham and his descendants would, in turn, be a blessing to others. So, when God speaks to Joseph about the land of Israel, he was speaking of the land that he had faithfully given to the people of Israel in order to bless them. This land then was very explicitly a gift from God, neither Abraham nor any of his descendants had done anything to warrant them being in possession of this land. Because this land was purely and simply a gift, the expected response from them was to be gratitude toward God for his grace and favor. This graciousness of God was also to create a response to the people who had received it. They were to be gracious toward each other for as they had experienced receiving a gift they had not earned, so now they would want to share that experience, giving to others as they had received from God. It is amazing how this little phrase, “the land of Israel”, is so loaded with meaning and when we consider this phrase carefully we can begin to understand how we can learn much about the will of God from it.

         Joseph upon hearing from the Lord heads back to the land of Israel yet he doesn’t know exactly where in this land he was to call home. He wanted to live somewhere in Judaea but as Herod’s son was now reigning there, Joseph was afraid to settle down so close to him. Once again, we have another dream, this time warning Joseph  to get out of Judaea and the question then became, just where should he go? Well, he headed for the hills, the hills of Galilee, that is. We have to wonder, is there any significance to this place, this land  in the northern part of Israel that is anchored by the Sea of Galilee? The answer is that this land was spoken about by the prophet Isaiah, as found in the ninth chapter, the first two verses. Isaiah writes, “But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulon and Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness on them has light shined.” Here we learn of the reputation of Galilee, that it was a land of the nations. People from all the surrounding nations could be found there because Galilee was situated on the northern edge of Israel, at the interface between Israel and the rest of the world. As Isaiah tells us, this land was once the part of the land of Israel that was given to the tribes of Zebulon and Naphtali but because of their rampant idolatry, God allowed the Assyrians to take these people in the northern part of Israel into exile. This is the contempt, the shame that has come upon these northern tribes, that Isaiah writes of here but Isaiah also writes that into this sad situation, God is going to do something glorious. Into this place called Galilee, the place where people from all the nations could now be found, into this place of spiritual darkness there was the promise that a great light was coming. It is this place of Galilee, this is where Jesus would grow up. Think about Jesus being known as the light of the world living in the very place where Isaiah foretold that those who walked there in darkness were going to at last see a great light. So, Galilee, the place of the nations, was indeed very significant primarily because it was this place in between the people of Israel and the rest of the world. You are probably wondering just why was this being a land of the nations was so important? The answer, again, is found in the story of Abraham. There in the twelfth chapter, in the third verse, God tells Abraham, “…in you all of the families on earth shall be blessed.” You see, the whole reason that God had been so gracious to Abraham, the purpose for his blessing of Abraham and his descendants was solely because they were to be a conduit through which the blessings of God would flow out until every family on earth would experience the blessing of God. So, here in Galilee of the nations, Israel did not even have to leave home in order to bring blessings upon other families that were not their own. At least that was the theory. The truth was that the people of Israel stood just as much in need of blessing as the rest of the nations. Instead of being gracious they had become greedy; instead of being grateful they had turned their back on God. In response, God took his people and sent them out of the land that he had given to them because this land was a blessing from God given so that his people might be a blessing to others but God’s own people had taken God’s blessing for granted and they found themselves cursed by God, exiled from the promised land.

         Galilee of the nations thus spoke of the mission of God to bring blessing to every family which made up those nations and it also spoke of Israel’s inability to do so because they themselves were under the very same curse, the same darkness that plagued the nations. What was needed was light, a light that could deliver God’s people from their cursed spiritual darkness so that they could at last be the people of blessing that they were supposed to be.

         This hope that a light would come into the darkness which the people of Israel found themselves in is found in the last destination that our scripture speaks of when we are told that Joseph,  “…went and lived in a city called Nazareth.” Now, we have to ask just what is the significance of Jesus having to call this place his hometown? There is a lot of speculation about the meaning of the name, “Nazareth”, however there is a lot of similarity between that name and the Hebrew word for branch which is, “netzer”, The importance of this word “branch”, is that it is used throughout the prophets for the king who would come out of the line of David to bring in the reign of God once and for all. The term, “branch”, then is another name for the Messiah, the one who would be anointed by God who would remove the curse from Israel so that they once again could be blessed by God and through them all of the families of the nations could at last be blessed. We hear of this Branch in the first two verses of the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, where we read, “ There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” Here in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, this one called the branch is the very one on whom the Spirit of God would rest, the Spirit who would be a powerful presence in the life of the Messiah. This is what the name of Nazareth points to, the one whom the prophets call the “Branch”, the very one who would fulfill the promise God had made to David that his house would be an everlasting kingdom. Isaiah further writes about this king in the forty-second chapter, where he calls this king, the servant. There in the first verse of that chapter, God speaks of his servant, saying, “Behold my Servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights. I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.” In a similar way, God again speaks of his servant in the forty-ninth chapter, the sixth verse, saying, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, to bring back the preserved of Israel. I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” So here, at last, we begin to tie the land of Israel, the region of Galilee and the city of Nazareth together in their deeper meaning. It is the Branch, the “netzer”, the root of the name of Nazareth, this is the one who will be the servant of God, anointed with the very Spirit of God, he is the one who will bring back the people of Israel, the people who God desired to bless, and he will not only restore the people of God so that they could once again be people of blessing he will also be the one who will bring light to the nations, the people represented by the region of Galilee. This is the very will of God, that all might come to be blessed no longer living under the darkness of the curse of sin. This is why Jesus went to the cross and took upon himself the very curse of the world, our sin, so that through his death the power of this curse might be destroyed and we might receive his blessing. Here then is the will of God that those who have received God’s blessing, the blessing of Jesus, they are to take that blessing out into the world and give that blessing to others. As we begin this new year then we must ask ourselves just how will we be faithful to the will of God? How will we bear

 the blessing we know as Jesus, out to those cursed by sin? In this new year may our faithful God find us faithfully doing his will! Amen!