The Kings Way: Taking A Stand

 June 1 2025

Ephesians 6:10-20

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

               

          

 

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

 May 25 2025

Romans 15:1-17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

         

         

The Kings Way: The Blessing of Holiness

 May 18 2025

Hebrews 12:1-17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The King’sWay: Seeking Righteousness

 May 11 2025

Matthew 6:33, 7:1-12

         One of the things that surprises people when I tell them about myself is that my uncle, Harlan, was a common pleas court judge in Tuscarawas County. He grew up on the family farm but decided that he wanted to become a lawyer and he went on to be the county prosecutor before being elected judge. Now when I got that notice in the mail that I had been selected for jury duty in my uncle’s courtroom, I thought that this was going to be an easy out. So, yes, I did try and plead my case that there might be an issue of impartiality because of my relation to the judge but the judge had other thoughts and said I should just stay put. So I got to not only do my civic duty but I also got to see my uncle in a different light, no longer just my uncle but a judge who had to see that the case that came before him ended with a just and right verdict.

         In this series that we are in, called, “The King’s Way’, we are looking at the way that Jesus lived his life. But not only how he lived his life but also how he gave up his life for us when he died upon the cross. What we now know about Jesus since he has defeated death is that he now is our righteous judge, as Paul explains. Now this may not be for us a great way of thinking about Jesus because when we think about who a judge is, most of us think of people like my uncle. The judgment that judges like my uncle give to those who came before him usually come with a price that has to be paid. But the judgment of our righteous judge named Jesus is not like that at all. As it will hopefully become clear, the righteous judgment of Jesus brings forth righteous people. 

Well the way that Jesus has become known to us as our righteous judge is that Jesus took on our judgment and in exchange gave us the boundless mercy that the wisdom from above calls for. This is what we heard Paul tell the church at Corinth as we find in the first chapter of the first letter he wrote to them. Paul reminded the members of this church that their church was founded on one message-Christ and him crucified. The reason why the cross was the focus of Paul’s message is that at the cross was seen the wisdom of God and the power of God. So as we look at that One there upon the cross we must have no doubts that right here, on this old, rugged cross, is a different kind of wisdom, a wisdom from above. And here too on this cross, was power, yet this was a peculiar force, a strength that was demonstrated to us by this One who served us all, there upon the cross. The life which ended up on the cross lived by the wisdom from above, a wisdom which is described for us at the end of the third chapter of James. This wisdom is, “…first, pure, then it is peace seeking, gentle, confident, overflowing with mercy, bearing the fruit of goodness, impartial and sincere”. If you listen closely, it is easy to hear James describe to us the very life of Jesus. 

If this wisdom is taken to its ultimate end then is should be no surprise we hear Paul make his drumbeat -Christ and him crucified. And Paul concludes his teaching about this wisdom by revealing to us that this wisdom is experienced by us through the acts of redemption, righteousness, and holiness. These three terms speak to us of the three-dimensional life of our king named Jesus, the three ways that our king called Jesus makes himself known to us.

Now, as we look over these three aspects of the wisdom from above we find that a good place to begin is with the subject of redemption. Most of us know that redemption is what was given to us at the cross, there where the life of Jesus was offered up for us, his blood shed for us. When we go deeper in our study of this idea of redemption, what we find is that one of the best examples given to us in scripture concerning redemption is that of the kinsman redeemer. A kinsman redeemer is defined for us in the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus, where we are told about a family member who finds themselves a slave because they couldn’t pay off their debt. They know that there is a good chance they will never live long enough to even make a dent in all that they owe, so what are they to do? Well, the Law says that they can find someone in their family, their next of kin, you know, an uncle, or a cousin, any close relative, who will pay off their debt and obtain their freedom. This is what it means to be a, “kinsman-redeemer”, a kinfolk who is willing and able to restore one of their family to a life of freedom. 

         With this in mind, listen to what Jesus tells his disciples in the weeks before he goes to Jerusalem, as heard at the end of the tenth chapter of Mark, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”.  Jesus knew that he had come as one of us all so that his life might be given as payment in what can only be considered as being a cosmic hijacking. Imagine it, he entered into our humanity as a baby all so that, through the blood that flowed through his veins, he could look at anyone of us and call us his kinfolk and be our redeemer. Jesus came to put himself in between us and the worst this world could do to us, all so we might know the best heaven offers to us. There at the cross Jesus heard the cries of those he calls his sisters and brothers, those who languished in the slavery of their sin and he was moved to do the unthinkable, becoming for us, our kinsman redeemer. Jesus paid the price, giving his own life so that we might receive our life back and at last find freedom as his people.

         As we consider the cross, it should come as no surprise that Paul would first and foremost refocus the attention of this church by taking them to see Christ upon the cross. You see, this church at Corinth had become divided into four camps of differing views, quarreling and infighting was the norm. This quarreling is, as James tells us in the fourth chapter of his letter, a symptom of an inner uneasiness, a quarrel within ourselves that comes out in the judgmental ways of the church at Corinth. This discomfort found in the inner life of these church members was caused by chasing after worldly desires, an inward focus which comes from living life by the world’s wrong-way wisdom. This is why Paul takes these who would chase after the world and he places them before the cross so they can have a long, hard look at the wisdom from above that is displayed there. We can almost hear Paul speak those words he spoke to the church at Rome as found in the eighth chapter of that letter: “He, the Father, who did not spare his own Son but handed him over, handed him over for all, how will he not freely give him, and then freely give us everything else as well? This is what the cross does, it shatters this inward turning of our lives to focus our gaze upon this one offered up for us, and if Jesus the Son of God has been freely given for us, why in the world would we refuse to believe that our Heavenly Father would give us all that we need for life.

         So, instead of chasing after worldly concerns, we are to  be those who imitate Jesus, by becoming a kinsman redeemer, listening for the cry of the stranger, those who have no kinsman redeemer to call upon in a strange land. As God heard our cry when death and the fear of death had enslaved us, so too we are to hear the cries of those who are enslaved by fear, and set them free through allowing our Father to use us to redeem them.

         When the redemption given to us by Jesus leads us to become focused on others we can sense that we are moving to be people of righteousness. This is the way it seems that Jesus is leading us as we hear in our scripture for today. This scripture follows a teaching of Jesus which calls us to rely upon the faithfulness of our Heavenly Father for all of our worldly needs. You see, when we become absolutely certain of the faithfulness of our Heavenly Father, when the cross marks forever the truth about our Father’s care for us, then Jesus says we are ready to turn our focus outward and listen for the cries of our kinfolk.

In our scripture, Jesus calls this serving of others, the seeking of his kingdom, the pursuit of the righteousness of God. Now this seems pretty straight foreword, doesn’t it? I mean, shouldn’t all of us be able to say that we have been working hard all week pursuing the kingdom of God and searching for his righteousness? Well, if we are serious about following Jesus then we need to lean in and listen to what he has to tell us about righteousness.

          Jesus begins by stating that the first order of business for us, is that we absolutely have to be done with judging people. This means that we must cease living our lives by those three criteria of worldly wisdom, as we find at the end of the second chapter of the first letter of John. No more are we to run around chasing after the desires of our flesh, the desires of our eyes or whatever might increase the pride we find in our possessions. You see, these criteria have to go, and when they do then we will cease using those criteria to determine just how useful someone might be to us. This is why, at the beginning of the seventh chapter of Matthew, Jesus, in no uncertain terms, states, “Do not judge, then you will not be judged”. This seems to be pretty straight forward doesn’t it? I mean its not as if Jesus mumbled and we couldn’t hear him clearly. No judging, any other questions? You see this order is given because we simply do not have the ability to judge each other correctly. If you think otherwise then consider the rest of what Jesus said, that we are fair game to have the judgment we use for everyone else be for us the very judgment others can use to judge us. How will that feel to have others judge us according to the same standards that we expect of everyone else? What we discover when we consider how we judge others is that we, more often than not, regard ourselves holding some kind of position of greatness, which we find is just an illusion the moment our judgment is used to judge us. When we discover that we are really not able to hold ourselves to the high standards we hold everyone else to, then at last, we are able to agree with Jesus who wisely observes, we are terrible at knowing our own limitations. Jesus gives us this cartoon where we are portrayed as one who has pulled someone aside to examine them in the hopes of removing some small flaw, all the while having a very large wooden beam protruding out of our own eye. Isn’t this so true, that we are so often bothered by the tiny imperfections in others all the while never concerned by our own judgmental attitude which often clouds our judgments.

Jesus has brought us to this point of realization about our own attitudes so that we might consider how these attitudes affect how we seek first, the kingdom of God and then chase after his righteousness. Jesus, earlier in this Sermon on the Mount teaches us that our righteousness must be greater than the righteousness of the Pharisees, and one must wonder if Jesus, in his teaching here, is giving this righteousness of the Pharisees, a subtle wink. What Jesus says is, “Do not give dogs what is holy and do not throw pearls before pigs because they will trample them into the dirt and then turn and attack you.” As we look to scripture to unravel this odd teaching of Jesus it is easy to remember the encounter Jesus had with the Canaanite woman, as found in the fifteenth chapter of Matthew, where Jesus addresses her with the common slur, calling her a dog. He does so in order to address the disciples own judgmental attitude toward foreign woman. And pigs were a symbol of the people of the nations, eaters of a dirty, disgusting, unclean animal. So perhaps what Jesus is saying is that if when you attempt to bring the holiness of the Temple out to the common folk, you ought not to look at them as if they are some, filthy, good-for-nothing animal. Yes, you may have some wonderful pearls of great wisdom but if you try and force those on people you hold to be bottom feeders then don’t be surprised that at some point, those people will get tired of you and turn on you just to prove you right. Most of us, have probably experienced some well meaning person who looked down their nose at us because we simply did not have the good sense they were supposed to have and you know, I never want to listen to a word such people have to say because their attitude says it all.

So if we are serious about first, pursuing the king’s way of life, and looking for the righteousness of God, then we must put to death all those urges we might have to classify some people as being those who are less than us. No, instead we are to, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and it will be found, knock, and it will be opened to you. For all who ask will receive, and the one who seeks will find, and the one who knocks to them the door will be opened. You see, those who are asking, or those who are searching for something or even those who stand before a closed door and are asking to be let in, all of these are persons who know they stand in need of something and are not afraid to do what it takes in order to obtain it. What we need so desperately, as Jesus goes on to explain, is the goodness only our Heavenly Father can supply. This means we must be those who ask our Father for this good, and we must be searching for where this goodness might be found and also we must be those who pound on closed doors in order to find just where our Heavenly Father may be displaying his goodness. Right here is a good place for us to pause and consider what we know so far about finding the kingdom of God and the right way of living. First, Jesus states that we must stop judging. We must stop being a source of evil in a world where people are continually looked down upon.  After this we are to ask our Heavenly Father for what is good. We are to seek, longing to find just where our Heavenly Father is working out his good in this world. And we are to knock on every closed door so that the good that only our Father can bring, might enter into that space.

Finally, Jesus teaches us the third aspect of our searching for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, which is this: “whatever you wish that others would do to you, do so also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Here is where the judgment of our righteous Judge comes into play. You see, instead of relying upon our own faulty judgment we are to instead trust in the judgment of Jesus. As Paul tells us, the righteousness of God is manifested through faith in Jesus for all who believe, for there is no distinction all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God and all are given life by the grace, the free gift given to us by God. So, every face we look at is someone who has been declared equal to us, this is the righteous judgment of Jesus. When we look at any person on the planet we can instantly know this person for their life is just like our life. Their life an be known to be just as deserving of grace as we are. This is why we can rejoice when they rejoice and we weep when they weep. This is the life Paul tells us that we must believe is true, for what we are called to believe in is resurrection life, a life united together in love.

This then is how we find the kingdom of God and his righteousness, by first being done with judging others. God has appointed a righteous judge and his  name is Jesus. Instead of judging, let us ask our Heavenly Father as to where his goodness might be found, and there find a face in need of hope. We are to look upon another face and see our own selves staring back at us. This united life is not only a righteous life but it is the resurrection life our faith declares is true. Praise God, evil has been defeated through the righteous judgment of our king Jesus upon the cross. May we live out this truth, now and always! Amen!

 

The King’s Way: I’ve Been Redeemed

 May 4 2025

Hebrews 9:11-28

         As many of you know, I watch a lot of detective shows, so it is inevitable that the police in these shows will have to deal with a hostage situation. You know, the bad guy is holding someone against their will and they will only release them if certain demands are met like a duffle bag full of unmarked bills, some pizza and a get away car. Now when you watch shows like this you might begin to wonder, what would that be like, to have someone take you by force and then call somebody you love and tell them to cough up some serious cash, or they’ll do you in? Ultimately, what must be determined, is just how much are you and I worth, right? And not only that but somebody has to come up with the amount of what that bad guy thinks you’re worth. Think about it, just who are you going to call?I mean, just who is it that you know who is not only able to pay to get you back but who is also willing to do so. It is hard to say some days just which of these might be the real problem if I find myself in such a situation. 

         Well, it is fun to let our minds think about these things if only for a laugh, because most of us will never find ourselves in such a situation. Yet, we are forced to wonder about what it would mean for us to be a hostage, because Jesus, at the end of the tenth chapter of Mark, tells us, that he, the Son of Man,“…came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.” The service of Jesus is that he would give himself in exchange for us, we who were bound by a force we were unaware of, in order that we might no longer be bound to a dead-end life, free at last to live in awe of the One who found us to be of equal worth to himself. This is an image of what is called throughout the Bible as being redeemed. Last week, we heard Paul write about the wisdom of God, the wisdom that is most clearly seen at the cross where the image of a battered and broken man has been forever etched into its surface. What the world could not witness is that there on that cross is our King who fought a battle for us. Our King defeated the enemy who had kept us bound forever in the slavery of sin, fear and death. In doing so, this King demonstrated, in the clearest way possible, the wisdom of God.  As Paul writes in this first chapter of First Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no one might ever boast before the face of God.” Paul is here writing about our King named Jesus, who seemed to be so foolish, this one who held all power in his hands yet still, was willing to set aside that power in order to be nailed to a cross. This King appeared so weak hanging there between heaven and earth, unable to even breathe let alone move. Oh, Jesus, our King, how lowly and despised your whole life was, this one whose birth happened through strange circumstances being born in the lowest of places, to live a life without even a place to call home, a life that in the end was betrayed by his closest friend, and abandoned by the rest. His was a life the world could say had come to a tragic end, death and burial in a borrowed tomb. As Paul said, this Jesus his life ended up dead, a life that had come to nothing. Yet, in his death, in his nothingness, this whole world came to nothing, all so that a new world might be created. This life given in this way was given in order to demonstrate just how foolish is the wisdom of this world. Or to put it another way, the cross is the ultimate expression of just how magnificent the wisdom of God really is for there we witnessed the King’s way of life. It is his kingdom that comes when this wisdom of heaven is lived by us here on earth.

         At the end of the third chapter of the letter of James, we find the clearest statement concerning the wisdom of God. The wisdom we receive from above is, “…first pure, then peaceable, gentle, confident, overflowing with mercy, bearing the fruit of goodness, impartial and sincere.” If we stand back from this description, and we imagine such wisdom working in a human life, it becomes quite obvious that what James has done is to describe the life of Jesus. This is very similar to what we are told at the beginning of the first letter of John, the very opening introduction of the first chapter, where we are told, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the word of life- the life was made real to us, and we have seen it, and testify to this life and proclaim to you-the eternal life…” This life which was lived out before watching and listening people was a living demonstration of the wisdom that was there from the beginning, the wisdom, in other words, that created the world. As Paul says again from the first chapter of First Corinthians, “…our King Jesus is our wisdom of God.” Our King, Paul tells us, lived a life which always made choices that reflected the wisdom from above so that those who knew Jesus, could say that his heart was pure, and he sought peace and wept when peace was refused. Jesus was gentle, receiving the little children and the prostitutes, the sinners and the outcasts. He was confident in his Father, trusting even unto death. And so our king was known by everyone as being one who overflowed with mercy as he took upon himself our judgment to prove such mercy to us.  He was authentic all the way to death, his life poured out to bring about the good which defeats evil. 

This is the life that Jesus lived, and as this wisdom was encountered by people they noticed that this wisdom had three dimensions to it, as Paul tells us when he states that this wisdom from God, is, “…righteousness, holiness and redemption.” Now, while these are great terms to use to elaborate just how the wisdom of God affects us, they are, nonetheless, words used by those in the church which no one can seem to explain. I mean, if someone asked you, just what does it mean for someone to say, or sing, “I’ve been redeemed”, what would you tell them?  Well, surprisingly, the meaning of what it means to be redeemed is found in this hostage situation all of us find ourselves in, a fact that we only discover because Jesus told us that he was our ransom. You see, if Jesus is given for our ransom then we can also say that something very serious is holding us against our will. We may be surprised to find out that we are slaves, perhaps as confounded by those believers of Jesus in the eighth chapter of John, who insisted that they had never been enslaved by anyone, how could Jesus say that he is the one who could set them free?

Well, what these followers of Jesus and us as well, were to remember, is an old practice which was done within families. In the Bible, this practice is referred to as kins-man redeemer. This practice is found in the twenty fifth chapter of Leviticus, where we are told that if one of your family becomes poor, and on hard times and they sell themselves to a stranger, they can be redeemed. A brother, or an uncle or a cousin, any close relative with the means to do so, could pay off their debt and thereby redeem a family member who had been sold to a stranger. All that was needed was a desire to help and the means to buy them back. When I read this I cannot help but think of the prodigal son. I mean, in light of what is in the Law, we have to wonder just, why the elder brother did not go out to the far country and try to buy his younger brother out of the slavery caused by his indebtedness? The answer, as we might have guessed, is that the elder brother judged his wayward sibling as not being worthy of the time and effort to set him free. The elder brother could justify his callous disregard for his brother by saying that his brother had wasted his money on wild living.    

Even so, the eldest brother still proved the point that redemption, this buying back of someone, only happens when we judge that person as being worth the cost. The freedom of the person trapped against their will hinges on someone else’s belief that someone considers that they are worth the price that this freedom will cost. Well, Jesus determined before the foundation of the world, that we are worth the infinite cost of his life, because this is the cost required for our release. When we know this then we have to wonder, just what happened that we have ended up in slavery desperately in need of a savior to come and set us free? One of the best answers I have found is something I recently heard on a video series about the kingdom of God taught by Pastor Greg Boyd. He is of the opinion that when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree, as found in the third chapter of Genesis, the very fruit God told them specifically not to eat, their eyes were opened. This is when Adam and Eve became like God in that they were now able to judge just as God is the judge over all of us. The only problem is that Adam and Eve and all the rest of us, do not know how to judge, rightly. You see, when we judge one another we do so according to the same standards that determine worldly wisdom. These standards, are found in the third chapter of Genesis, when Eve looked at the tree, and she saw three things; first, that the tree was good for food; second, that the tree was pleasant to the eyes; and finally, that its beauty captured her thoughts. These are the very same three aspects we find in the second chapter of John’s first letter. John tells us that these three; the desire of the flesh, the desires of the eye, and the pride of our possessions, these are what define life according to the world’s standards. Well, when these same standards are used in our relationships with each other, evil enters into the world. We witness this when Adam is confronted by God who asks him, point blank, “Have you eaten of the tree that I commanded you not to eat? This question requires a simple, yes or no, answer but Adam instead turns to Eve, points his finger and exclaims, “The woman you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate.” What Adam is doing is using Eve as a means to escape the punishment that he knows is waiting for him. You can almost hear Adam say to himself, “Come on God, let Eve be punished, she’s the one who is really at fault here”. Adam had judged the life of Eve as being worth nothing more than cheap goods which could be thrown under the bus whenever the need arises. It is not hard to understand how just one generation later, Cain, the second son of Adam and Eve killed his brother Abel out of his anger toward God. 

So this wrong way of judging human life placed all of creation under a curse. The blessed life cannot be found in a world where the worth of a human life is determined by how useful someone might be to someone else’s plans. No, the blessed life is only found when God steps into our human story, as one of us, in order that all might know that every human life has an infinite worth. Every person is a pearl of great price that God knew was worth giving everything, even his very Son, in order to purchase and make his own. You see, the wisdom of God that came down from above in the life of Jesus, judged that we were worth the price necessary to free us from our slavery. The price that had to be paid is that the very Son of God had to humble himself, take upon himself our broken humanity  and become for all of us our kinfolk redeemer. The price he came to pay is his life, the giving of his very blood for this is what the wisdom from above demanded that he should do. Jesus demonstrated the wisdom from above when, as our scripture tells us, he, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without blemish to God, the Father, so that we might be purified, our thoughts no longer focused on the dead works of this world so that now we might serve the living God. What we find is that redemption is yet another way that Jesus, as the Son of God, intercedes for us. As our scripture tells us, Jesus is the mediator, the one who is fully human to represent us, yet one who is fully God so that he might be for us, the man in the middle, and also, the God who stands with us. Jesus knew that the evil of this life must be dealt with, forgiven and put away so that a new life ordered by the wisdom from above might take its place. Jesus knew the price that had to be paid, as we read in the seventeenth chapter of Leviticus, the eleventh verse, where it is written, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given blood to you upon the altar to make a way for us to have a life united together for it is blood which makes this unity possible through the life which is offered.” The price then is clearly a life for a life, a life given as a ransom which is paid to set us free, but not just free but free to at last to have a life united with God. The world’s wisdom scoffs at the actions of Jesus, this giving of one’s life so that others might be set free to find life, this seems to make no sense. Yet what the world does not understand is that we were made for a greater life than one marked by how much eating, drinking and making merry one can get away with before the quarter runs out. We are people who are called to put our life in the middle for someone else just as Jesus, our kinfolk has done for us. You see a life that is willing to offer themselves for just one other life, is a life that demonstrates the power of the wisdom from above.

Most of us are aware of the story of Moses found at the beginning of the book of Exodus. God had called Moses to go down to Egypt because he had heard the cries of his people who were enslaved by cruel masters. God, through Moses, defeated the king of Egypt and set his people free, and they walked out of Egypt through the Red Sea. This act of redemption by God finds its importance not just in the liberating of an enslaved nation, but this act was also to influence how one acts with strangers. Listen to what is written in the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, the thirty-third and thirty-fourth verses: “When a stranger travels with you…,you shall not do them wrong. You shall treat the stranger who travels with you as one of your own and you shall love them in the same manner that you love each other.”  And why should they bother to go out of their way to be so kind to the strangers among them? The answer is this: “You were once strangers in the land of Egypt.” I believe that God is telling them that when they were down in Egypt, they had no one to be for them their kinsmen redeemer. But when they cried out in misery, God heard their cry. At this point, the people of Israel were strangers to God but even so, God was willing to step in, and set them free. And since they had witnessed and remembered this mighty act of God, then they too were to do a mighty act themselves. The strangers among them were people who were far from home and kinfolk, no one to call on if they found themselves in a tight spot. So God says to his people, us included, be people who listen for the cries of others just as God listens for your cries. Be people willing to serve and love others for Jesus came not to be waited on, but instead he came to serve and give his life for us. Be people who are willing to give life for Jesus gave his life for you. You see, we are never really free until we in turn, help just one stranger find freedom from the fear and anxiety we have all experienced when we also were far from home, a stranger, who needed someone to stand with us. When we are a redeemer for a stranger, the world will never have to hear us say that we’ve been redeemed because our stepping in for someone else will surely prove that God has surely redeemed us. So, go, redeem, and in this way, give God the glory and honor he so richly deserves. Amen!