The Taste of Blessing: Staying Liberated

 July 13 2025

Matthew 5:6, Luke 24:13-35

         With the heat index going through the ceiling fairly early in this summer season, it is good for all of us to remember to stay hydrated. I have to admit that I don’t drink a lot of water preferring instead to drink coffee and iced tea. So Jennifer works at getting me to drink a glass of water as often as she can. I try and remember the danger of not drinking enough water, something I learned one day when I went along with some folks to drop their kid off at Scout camp in the middle of a heat wave. The camp manager said that dehydration was one of the biggest issues for the Scouts. This helped to explain why the restrooms at the camp had some interesting charts to help campers and staff to see if they needed to up their water intake. You see, the danger with not watching how dehydrated a camper might get is that at a certain point of dehydration, the body no longer has a thirst for water even though it desperately needs a cool drink. 

         Now, as I thought about how difficult it can be to stay hydrated, what occurred to me is that something very similar happens with those who follow Jesus. Instead of needing to stay hydrated, though, our lives need to stay liberated. You can hear this issue clearly in the words of Paul, from the fifth chapter of Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Now when Paul tells these good church going folks that they should not submit again to the bondage of slavery, we should sit up and listen because what this says to us is that even good, church going folk can end up in slavery, standing in need of being liberated. What Paul was telling these church members was that they had not let the sweet taste of freedom keep them from becoming enslaved.

         Now we have to wonder if these people Paul addresses had any clue that they were slipping into a state of slavery. Had they become like those who find themselves in a state of dangerous dehydration, unaware of the trouble they were in. Perhaps, just like when we desire to stay hydrated we need to be aware of our thirst, so if we desire to stay liberated, we must be become aware of this freedom Christ has given to us. Now, it might surprise us that we are not as free as we believe ourselves to be, however all we have to do is to go to the eighth chapter of the gospel of John, to the thirty-first verse. There we find believers in Jesus who are told by Jesus that they were in need of being set free. Can you imagine, Jesus walking in here and telling us that we no longer had to be slaves, that we had the chance to be free if we so desired. Most of us would have been just like these disciples, dumbfounded and in disbelief at this accusation of Jesus. We would respond that we live in a free country where no one is a considered a slave so how can you believe that any of us is not free. Yet we also must consider that Jesus may know something more about freedom than we do. I mean, what if Jesus is right and we are not as free as we think we are?

         Well, we are pondering on our freedom, because in this series called, “The Taste of Blessing”, we are looking at how the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit of freedom, brings about the fruit of God’s goodness. As the thirty-fourth Psalm teaches us, we must taste and see that the Lord is good. This tells us that the goodness of God is something which must be experienced, tasted and found to be the very goodness we are searching for. We experience the goodness of God through the Holy Spirit, the God who blesses us. So when Jesus teaches us about the blessings, in the fifth chapter of Matthew, we are to know that these blessings will be found through the experiences we have with the Holy Spirit. Take the first blessing where Jesus teaches us, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Here is where all of us begin, with the hearing of the good news that God desires to give us the fullness of his kingdom. When we hear this good news it is the Holy Spirit who is given to us without measure. Yet, this experience of receiving God’s kingdom can only be ours if our hands are empty, knowing ourselves as being utterly unable to save ourselves from the evil which threatens us. Through our experience with the Holy Spirit, we accept this gift of God’s kingdom. The result of the Spirit’s work is that we have the fruit of love, a love which fills our hearts.

         The Spirit is not done though, because Jesus goes on to tell us that, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” This grief expressed here is the sorrow at the realization that because our spirit is weak we now live in what Paul calls, “a body of death”.  This is an awareness that we deserve condemnation, a judgment of death because the desires of our flesh control us. Yet, what we find is comfort not condemnation. The Holy Spirit, called the Comforter by Jesus in the fourteenth chapter of John, comes along side of us, encouraging us and giving us the strength to overcome the downward pull of our desires. We find that God really has shielded us from death.  Now death no longer controls us but instead we have resurrection hope, the hope of a new relationship with God. The fruit of joy floods into our hearts as experience the Holy Spirit who now works within us so that we desire what God desires and we do what pleases God.

         Last week, we learned how there can be no peace in life if we don’t first have some peace about our death. Jesus teaches us in the fifth chapter of Matthew, that,  “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” The Holy Spirit, Paul explains in the eighth chapter of Romans, agrees with our spirit that we are indeed children of God, and if we are children then we do stand to inherit the earth in the life everlasting. This is the way that our experience with the Holy Spirit gives us peace. The Spirit makes us absolutely certain that in our relationship with God we are known as being his children.  So it makes sense then that as his children we belong with our Father, forever. Now as his children we, like all children, will have this desire to imitate our Father. We will see how our Father gives without measure to all who have absolutely nothing. We watch as our Father desires to gather all under his mighty wings to shield all from death, so that they might rejoice in the victory as life conquers death. Then, as the children of God who have watched what our Father does, we too give generously to all to those with an open hand. We too follow our Father’s lead, not condemning but like the Holy Spirit, we comfort those suffering through the very real fear of death. Together we can rejoice in resurrection power, this life which conquers death and so also, the fear of death. 

Now, we may wonder what happened to the gift of kingdom, but what Paul explains to us in the fourteenth chapter of Romans, is that the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. We find this to be true through knowing the Holy Spirit as our Comforter, and discovering we have an indescribable joy. Though the Spirit being for us the very Spirit of Adoption, we find peace as we know ourselves as being a child of God, one who stands to inherit eternal life. Through our working with our Father, giving generously to others and shielding others from death and the fear of death, we find that righteousness does spring up before us. So, yes, God promised to us the kingdom and through the work of the Holy Spirit we have received what God promised to us, the fullness of life in our Father’s kingdom.

          So it is perhaps no surprise then that through these first three blessings we have become obedient to what Jesus called the Great Commandment. This is the expectation of God that we love him with all of our heart, soul and strength. In the first blessing, the love of God experienced through our experience with the Holy Spirit causes our heart to be filled with love for God. Then through the work of the Spirit shielding our life from death, we come to love God with all of our life, or soul for the fear of death no longer controls us. And as we learn to channel our power, going to work with our Heavenly Father, giving generously to others and shielding others from death, we find that we have loved God with all of our resources or strength through the love shown to our neighbor. So yes, God causes us to respond to his great love, with a love found in our heart, our soul, and our use of our resources. Now because of the Holy Spirit, the word of God which calls us to love him receives the response God searches for, an all consuming love from his people.

         So, these core of the teachings of Jesus, are indeed the way every family on earth can be visited by the Holy Spirit and so receive the blessing of God just as God had promised would happen. Yet Jesus also understands that life is difficult, after all, we do live in an evil age. This is why we are people who hunger and thirst for this world to be set right. I mean, social media bombards us every day with image after image of pain, hurt and injustice done to yet another vulnerable person. How can we not want satisfaction for this ache we have for justice, and want it more than ever to happen, right here and right now? We relate to those two travelers on the road to Emmaus whose dismay was so evident on their faces that it drew the attention of a stranger who quietly had begun walking with them. Just what was it that caused their grief and sorrow, he asked them? They answered, saying, “Are you the only one in Jerusalem who does not know what happened? This visitor could not help but to poke these two a little harder, asking them, “What things? Then they blurted out their story of Jesus, the one they had hoped would set all things right again. They too wanted satisfaction and they wanted it here and now, and they had come up empty. They had hoped that Jesus would be the one who could redeem Israel, they told this stranger. In other words, they wanted Jesus to be the king who would lead his people in battle to overthrow their Roman tyrants who lorded over them. This is what it looked like to them to be satisfied, when their heartfelt desire might at last be be fulfilled. For them, the rest of the world could just rot for all they cared.

         Well, not only had Jesus failed to throw off Roman rule, but a report had also came to them from the women who went to the tomb. The body of the crucified Jesus had come up missing. Good grief, who would steal the body of a failed leader? Now if these two were looking for sympathy they weren’t going to find it with this stranger. No, he turns to them and point blank calls them people who are, “without any thinking”, and “slow of heart”, in their belief of what the prophets had spoken of so long ago. I’m sure these words had to sting. Yet this stranger doesn’t apologize for his sharp criticism of them. Instead, he begins to lay out for them the truth of the scriptures. We can only imagine all that this stranger spoke about as they journeyed on that road. Yet just considering the prophecy Isaiah, we can be certain that he told of how in the second chapter, Isaiah spoke of how one day the nations will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and they will learn of war no more. Then skipping ahead, to the fourth-ninth chapter, God tells his people that it is too light a thing that they should just serve God, no they were to be a light to all of the world so that the salvation of God might go the ends of the world.  This salvation of God is then laid out in the fifty-second and fifty-third chapters of Isaiah, where the mysterious Suffering Servant of God takes upon himself the sins of not just Israel, but all the world. Then skipping ahead to the fifty-sixth chapter, we find that the fruit of God’s salvation is that there will be a house of prayer for all people. Finally, if we go to the end of the sixty-fifth chapter, we hear God tell Isaiah, that he is going to create a new heaven and a new earth where there shall be no more weeping or the cry of distress. So, I hope we can begin to grasp just how far off base these travelers really were. The truth they failed to comprehend is that God is going to create a new heaven and new earth where there will be no more crying there, where people will learn war no more. Such a world of peace, you see, simply cannot come through the use of violent methods found in this world. This is why this world of peace which God desires cannot come in the here and now. No, as we learn in the first letter of John, the second chapter, this world and it desires is scheduled to be destroyed. Yet all is not lost, because God also promises us that he will create a brand new world to replace the old world through an act of resurrection power. It is here is that I believe, we can at last, begin to understand the freedom that Jesus has given to us. You see, when we refuse to be patient, when we no longer seek to be satisfied in the age to come, then we will be tempted to use this world’s methods, acts of violence, to set things right. If we give in to this temptation, then we will be binding ourselves to this world and its desires. So when God discards this world, we will tragically go out with this world and it evil. So we remain patient by refusing to be enslaved by this world and its violence. No, we freely give ourselves to the Spirit of Freedom for he is the one who liberates us from the pull of this world.  This is what these two travelers remembered when they sat and ate at the table with this stranger. Something happened as the stranger took the bread, and then he blessed the bread, and he than as he and broke the bread and finally as he gave the bread to them. These two travelers suddenly remembered that these were the very words of Jesus spoken there at the last supper they ate with him. It comes as no surprise then that it was in that moment that the eyes of these two were opened so that they could at last see that this stranger was indeed the resurrected Jesus. Then in an act of total freedom, Jesus vanished, for his work with his followers was complete. He had done something which had at last liberated these two travelers..

         You see Jesus has given us a means of staying liberated. This act is found every time we commune with him at the table. Freedom, you see, is found in the words Jesus speaks as he lays his hands upon the bread. First, Jesus takes the bread. Here we remember the blessing Jesus has taken us out of the world, and has given us the good news that we now can live in his kingdom. Then Jesus blesses us, taking us who were unable to escape this body of death, and through the Spirit we were not condemned but we were instead comforted with resurrection hope. Then Jesus breaks us, the meek who like wild horses, training our raw power to be channeled in ways that prove that we are a child of God who will inherit the earth. Then the bread is given. Here at last, we come to another experience with the Holy Spirit, a blessing resulting in patience. The Spirit of freedom, takes a hold of us, and we freely give our life to our Father so he might use us to bring life to our world. So we rise from the table knowing that this bread and wine are given not to satisfy us but instead they are to whet our appetites for the life we one day will live in a new world, a life of freedom given to us today in resurrection power! So we stay liberated! In an act of true freedom we give ourselves over to the Spirit of freedom, for he liberates us like nothing else! To  God be the glory! Amen!

The Taste of Blessing: A Peace Within

 June 29 2025

Matthew 5:5, Luke 18:15-24

         As a pastor I often get questions from people that range from the serious to the silly. Yet each question is still taken seriously by me because I know that these questions often reveal a person’s inner longings. One of the saddest questions that I have been asked on several occasions has to do with a person’s longing to know something about what lays ahead after this life. With trembling uncertainty, the words come, asking me about their concern which is this: How good is good enough? They have time on their hands so they look back over their life and they realize that they have said and done some things which they regret. Yet, they figure, all is not lost because they have not been all bad. They have done some kind acts for the ones they loved, certainly not perfect, but perhaps good enough, right? The problem that plagues all who try and sort their life out by weighing the good they have done against those times they have messed up is that they are never quite certain if they have done enough of these so called, ‘good deeds”. So they go looking for the person who has to have the answer to this troubling question, the pastor, right? They have to know the answer to the question, “How good is good enough?”

         You see, this is an ancient question, one that was asked even of Jesus as we find in our scripture for today. This rich, young ruler who came to Jesus asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”, yet the question still centered on this, just how good did this rich ruler need to be in order to have some certainty of his ultimate future? Can you sense that those who seek the answer to such a question are those who will never have any peace until they find an answer to what is rightfully unsettling. I mean do you really want that moment when you cross over to eternity to be a moment of not knowing what comes next? Of course not, in that moment we want peace in our hearts. This is what we want to find in this latest segment of our message series, ‘The Taste of Blessing”, where we are looking at the fruit of the Spirit called peace. What must be understood about this subject of peace is that if a person has no peace in death then they certainly will have no peace in life. The good news is that Holy Spirit brings forth peace in our life yet we must wonder just how can you and I possess such peace? The answer is found by understanding the deeper meaning behind the promised blessing of Jesus who tells us, in the fifth chapter of Matthew, the fifth verse, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” When the Spirit touches us with the goodness of heaven and the truth of this blessing is known, this is when we will experience a lasting peace within us.

         To better understand this blessing, we need to look at an encounter Jesus had with a person who is only identified by his age and status in the community, a rich, young ruler. In Luke’s version of the story, I believe he deliberately places the story of Jesus and the little children directly before the story of the rich young ruler. I believe this to be so because he connects these two story’s with a carefully place, “and”. So, what we hear right before this rich young ruler comes on the stage is this, “The truth is this; whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child cannot enter this kingdom”. What Luke desires we comprehend is that the main issue with this rich, young, ruler is that he is, for some reason, unable to receive the kingdom like a child. 

         The rich, young, ruler comes to Jesus with this question, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” We pause here, to point out that this man is looking for what is exactly promised by Jesus in his teachings on the blessings of God. This tells us that the search for eternal life is the very place where peace is found. Now, what Jesus says next is quite surprising for he asks this young man, “Why do you call me good? No one is good; no one but God is good.” Can you grasp what Jesus is telling us here? Good is not some standard we all must attempt to achieve. The reason that the Bible does not have an answer to just how good we have to be is that the Bible tells us that good alone is God alone, end of story. So I imagine that this rich young ruler was taken aback by this answer of Jesus. Nonetheless, Jesus continues with the conversation, asking this puzzled young man if he knew the commandments, “Do not commit adultery; do not murder; do not steal; do not bear false witness; Honor your mother and father.” Of course, this one who had to be considered one of Israel’s brightest and best, would say that he had dutifully kept every law. Yet, even so, he had no peace. No inner confidence or certainty of whether God would consider him to be like a son, one worthy of receiving a future inheritance from him.

         Then came the remedy for this man’s anxiety as Jesus tells him. “Young man, there is one thing that you lack”, Jesus replied. This in itself would have disturbed this obedient believer who had most assuredly crossed all of his, “t’s”, and dotted all of his, “i’s”. Jesus continues, “Sell all that you have and then go and give what you have to the poor.This is when your treasure will be located in heaven”. Then, Jesus invited this young man to go with him as he traveled down the road. To say that this was not the answer this young man was looking for is an understatement. One can only imagine, the sheer terror which had come over this young man, the terrible grief that overwhelmed him at the discovery that the peace he sought was only to be found by enduring such drastic actions. These words of Jesus still shake us today, as they should because we are still people who search for some sense of peace, some lasting contentment, some deep assurance of our eternal well being. So, we have to make some sense of these words of Jesus if we are to possess what we are searching for, this peace which escapes us. 

         The first requirement to comprehend this teaching of Jesus is that we know that the kingdom of God has to be received like a child. To hear that the kingdom has to be received points us back to the first blessing, where we learn that the poor in spirit, those with open hands, these are the blessed ones for into their hands will be placed the kingdom of God. The first blessings leads us on to consider the second blessing which we looked at last week.  There Jesus taught us, “Blessed are those who grieve and lament for they shall be comforted.” Now if we see these two actions of God as being the actions of a parent towards their child, we discover that what God does for us is strangely relatable. I mean, when we are a parent and our child comes to us with empty hands, we look at their smiling face and know that we would give all that we have if they were to just ask us for it. And the second blessing can be thought of as a child who is cowering, all alone and afraid to death, and they are blessed when their parent finds them and covers them with their arms and holds them still, a gesture which speaks volumes of a parents willingness to stand between their child and whatever might try to harm them. As Jesus also teaches, even though we live in an evil age, parents still seem to know that this is how we as parents are supposed to be, giving all that we have to our children, and doing our best to guard over their lives to keep them from harm. 

         So, if we do consider ourselves as being the children of a good, good, Father, then perhaps it makes sense that we are learn to act as our Father God has already acted toward us. You see, these first two blessings Jesus gives to us, are not merely the action of a concerned parent but they are in fact, the very work that the parents wish that we would learn, to see these two actions as being thought of as the family business. Now before Jesus opened up the blessing of heaven, God protected his people by giving them the law, those commandments that this rich, young ruler obeyed. These commandments are like the house rules we give to our children when they are too young to make right decisions for themselves. Since our children are too young to make proper judgments, as parents we make those judgments for them. The commandments God gave to his people served as a guardian or babysitter for God’s people, to ensure that order might be kept in the house of God. This is what Paul explains to us at the end of the third chapter of Galatians, where he says, “…before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith could be revealed… but now that faith has come we are no longer under a guardian for in Christ Jesus we are all sons of God through faith.” Paul uses the word, “son”, because this is one who stands to receive an inheritance. The way we can be certain that this is how God knows us is through the Holy Spirit. In the eighth chapter of Romans, the sixteenth verse where he Paul states,” The Sprit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children then we are indeed heirs of God, fellow heirs with Christ.” So it is the Holy Spirit which gives us the confidence that we are part of the family of God.

         Now, it comes as no surprise that when we know ourselves as sons, those who stand to receive an inheritance, we should also know that such a title comes with expectations. Jesus, the very Son of God speaks of these expectations in the fifth chapter of John. There, Jesus tells us, “My Father is working until now, and I too am working.” As children we are to move from needing the law, these judgments which serve as our babysitter, to being those who go to work at their Father’s side. Jesus goes on to say in that fifth chapter of John, “The Son does nothing of his own accord but only what he sees his Father doing, for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.”  You see, all our Heavenly Father asks of us is to follow his lead.Again, this should be understandable to those who are parents because this is one of the ways our children learn what they are to do. Children watch us and then they begin to imitate us when we work around the house. So we too, as his children, are to watch what our Heavenly Father is up to in the world. What we know as people who have been blessed by him is that our Father offers everyone the fullness of his kingdom. We have a Father willing to give all that he is and all that he has, to desperate people who are poor in spirit. Those who have had their empty hands filled with the Spirit given to then without measure, can only respond to their Father with love in their hearts. Yet our Father not only gives graciously and without measure but he also comes alongside of those who  are frightened, those driven by the fear of death and he comforts them. His Spirit whispers in their ear that they are indeed his children and he is their, Abba, Father.. So our Father not only gives to us abundantly, he also gathers us under his wings where death and the fear of death can no longer harm us. This is his power of resurrection which brings us overflowing joy. Perhaps the clearest human picture of what our Father does for us is found in the story of the Good Samaritan as found in the tenth chapter of Luke. Just as in this story, our Father found us his child laying half-dead in a ditch. We had been assaulted and robbed of life by the world and all its brokenness. Our Father in great love, lifted us up and he poured out his very life to bring us back to life. Those stripes upon his back are what healed our wounds. Our Heavenly Father, just like the Good Samaritan, gave all he had so that those he finds so hurt and wounded might be brought back to life.

         You see, the reason that the story of the Good Samaritan works so well in explaining what God has done for us is that this is the life our Father hopes we might make our own,  to live lives which speak of the goodness of our Father. As Jesus said, at the beginning of his conversation with the rich young ruler, God alone is good. So when we experience God we at the same time have experienced, good. So good is when God is seen in us, our actions and our words. This means that our life must be marked by two general actions: giving generously to others and guarding others from death and the fear of death. This should be obvious because our Father has given us experiences which prove to us  that this is our Father’s work. When we know that God generously gives his entire kingdom to us who are poor in spirit, is it any wonder that Jesus would tell the rich young ruler to sell all that he so that he too might give generously to those who are poor and desperate? And can it be any wonder that Jesus would invite this man to travel with him as he searched for those oppressed by the power of death in order to offer them life? All Jesus was trying to say to this young man is that it was time for him to leave the nursery. He had to put on his big boy pants and go out there and work with his Heavenly Father. And so do we. When we know that our Father gives his kingdom to those whose hands are empty, then  it is our turn to give of our abundance to those whose hands are empty. As the Father heard our cries when we wondered who would save us from this body of death, so we too, we are to hear the cries of those that death and the fear of death have robbed them of hope, and go and speak life to them. Just like the Spirit came alongside of us and gave us strength through his being with us, so too we are to come alongside those whose sorrow threatens to consume them and bring hope to them for this is what our Father has done to us through his Spirit.

         You see, all that God has given to us is so that we, his children, might have resources to imitate our Heavenly Father. Every Dad has probably given money to their kids so that they could go to town and buy a gift for him. He could have just gone and bought that same thing for himself but he gives the money to his kid so that they can experience for themselves the joy and the love that comes from giving to others. This is exactly what God hopes that we would do when he lavishes on us all that he has given to us.  Our Heavenly Father gives to us so that we might place a gift in someone’s empty hands and in that moment know our Heavenly Father like never before. Our Heavenly Father has made us overflow with joy when he refused to condemn us when death and the fear of death controlled us. No, our Father comforted us with wonderful words of life, words which give us great joy. So when we come alongside someone who is suffering, and fearful and we encourage them by what we say and do, and together we rejoice, this is when we truly know our Father. A life so controlled is what is spoken of in this word translated as, “meek.” You see, meek, in this context, does not mean weak or mild, far from it. This word in the original language referred to wild horses whose raw power was directed and channeled in ways that were useful to those who trained them. In the same manner, for us to be meek is to take the raw power we have, our ability to make choices and the resources we have to make those choices a reality, and we allow our Heavenly Father to direct and channel this power to serve his purposes. When we allow our Father to order our lives to be like his then this is when we know with certainty that we stand to inherit eternal life for we have a life that demonstrates what a life eternal looks like. And this is when we will experience a peace that passes all of our understanding because such is a peace which rests on the mystery of our Father’s great love for all of us. Amen!