Count it all joy…

 November 29 2020

Daniel 6

         Well, Thanksgiving is over so now we can legitimately get out the Christmas decorations and play incessantly the Johnny Mathis and Mariah Carey Christmas music until our ears bleed. At least that is the general consensus of the general public everyone that is except the die hard church goers who have not forgotten that we have to go through the season of Advent to at last get to the season of Christmas. The thing is that most people don’t know what to do with Advent. I mean it isn’t like we can put on our favorite Advent album and listen to our favorite Advent music while we make plans about what we are going to do this year during Advent. All most people know is that the church is kind of a kill joy when it insists on telling us to pump the brakes on Christmas because we first must have this season whose name means “Coming”. Now some think that we are to prepare for Christ’s first coming and some believe that we are to prepare ourselves for Christs second coming but either way what this season forces us to do is to keep Christmas about Christ and to remember just why it was that he came and why it is that he will come again. Once we define Advent like this it isn’t so hard to see why it is so important that we have this season before Christmas because its kind of obvious that Jesus starts to get lost in all that the world has made out of Christmas. I mean you have Jesus who is born in poverty in very humble circumstances being the cause of one of the most hedonistic and indulgent times of the year and it becomes kind of obvious that somewhere along the line there has been a serious disconnect.

         So, with that we begin this season of Advent to reconnect the coming of Jesus with how we celebrate and live into what his birth is really all about. Now, as I have said before, I follow what is called a narrative lectionary which is just a big name for a list of scriptures that week after week give us the big overarching story found in the Bible. This is a story first and foremost about God and secondly, the Bible is about us. The reason I try and follow the scriptures that they have for each given week is that it forces me to speak about parts of the Bible I would just as soon not preach about. Yet to be honest, it isn’t healthy to just pick and choose which Bible verses that we want to hear and ignore those that we would rather not delve into. Besides that, it is a challenge to be given a given scripture and to meditate on it to discover just what does this scripture has to say to us at this time, in this season and especially now, in this year that we are living in. I say all this so you join with me in wondering just what does the story of Daniel in the lion’s den have to do with this first Sunday in Advent? When I say that using this set of scriptures is a challenge you can begin to see what I mean. There are a few things that help to make sense of this scripture story and how it relates to Jesus and the first is, that the problem Jesus came into the world to address is a problem that has existed from chapter three of Genesis and it runs the whole entire length of scripture especially in the Old Testament. The second important thing that helps to make sense of scripture is to use scripture to interpret scripture especially to use New Testament scriptures to shine light upon Old Testament scriptures. With that being said, I want to let the second through the eighth verses of the first chapter of the letter of James to help us connect the story of Daniel in the lion’s den with the coming of Jesus. Sounds interesting doesn’t it?

         So, here is what we read in the letter of James: “Count it all joy my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds.” Right off the bat we are confronted with two ideas that just do not seem like they should go together, namely these ideas of joy and trials. We all, I imagine, desire joy, I mean this is what we sing that Jesus has brought joy to the world. But for most of us, this joy we are looking for we want in the absence of trials not in the midst of them. What most of us are looking for is a little happiness in a world doing its best to make us hurt. Yet it is here that we are reminded as to why Jesus came and that is that we live in a world that tests our faith. Ours is a broken world; this goes it out saying. It is hard to hang on to this idea that the goodness of God is going to prevail when we see the overwhelming presence of evil in our world. What is important is just how do we react to life in this broken and evil world? One way that people deal with life in a fallen world is to just deny as much as possible the hurt that they experience and to do everything possible to make themselves as comfortable as they can.

         This leads us to the back story of of Daniel’s trial of faith. To understand the importance of Daniel trusting God even as he is thrown into the lion’s den we first have to remover just why it was that the people of Israel found themselves living as exiles in Babylon. Why was it that God had allowed the Babylonian army to sweep down upon Judaea and Jerusalem and carry his people thousands of miles away? As you begin to study just what it was that they did wrong what you discover is that their problem is a universal one, the problem as to what do we do with the hurt we experience from living in a broken world. The people of Israel did what people still do today they tried to make themselves as comfortable as possible. They were living the, eat, drink and be merry, kind of life. Yet what happens when people begin with satisfying their base desires is that this life destroys the relationships we have with others as they become mere means to our ends of being comfortable. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have enough just as long as I have all I want. In the same way when we are solely focused on having a comfortable life now then we expect God to be the ultimate power to be the fulfillment of our desires. You see when we think that life is about all about the satisfaction of our base desires so that we can be as comfortable in a world where the brokenness is always out to bring us pain then life is going to become all about us. Life is going to be one where God and others will be used instead of enjoyed. This is what happened to the people of Israel and God brought his judgment against living such a life. What God did was to place his people in a situation where they were not able  to pursue their own comfort at the expense of everybody else, to place them in a strange land where they ended up being the ones who were used to bring comfort to others. God placed them in this situation so that once again they would seek him first, to put life in its proper order. When we make God and his kingdom our first desire what we discover is that we will have contentment not comfort. In God we find the one unbroken one in a world of brokenness, the one who is trustworthy in a world where very little can be trusted. What the people of Israel discovered while in exile is that in the midst of their pain, confusion and sorrow this is where they found God. They also discovered that when their relationship of God was right then their relationships with the other people in their life became the way God expected them to be. This is why it was said of Daniel became distinguished above all the other presidents and satraps because he had an excellent spirit in him. Daniel had first established his relationship with God, and then because he found contentment trusting God, Daniel dealt with people in a different manner, one where he could treat them with respect. So, of course the other presidents and satraps who were living the life which looks out for number one, Daniel was making them uncomfortable and when life is all about comfort, being uncomfortable was not a good thing. So they started looking for a way to eliminate Daniel which wasn’t so easy because his life lived with a faithful God made him a faithful man. So, what to do? Well, they decided that they would get the king to sign an ordinance that anyone who prayed to prayed to anyone else but the king would be thrown into the lion’s den. They did this because they knew that Daniel was a man of God who prayed faithfully to his God three times a day. So, they thought, problem solved.

         Well, when the king signed the decree that for the next thirty days everyone should exclusively pray to him, what do you think Daniel did? He went home and did what he had always done, he prayed. He prayed not in secret which may have made his life so much easier. No, instead he knelt down besides an open window in full view of a watching world and he prayed three times every day just as he had always done. What we are not told is just what exactly were the words spoken by Daniel as he prayed with the certainty that as he did so he was breaking the law which was punishable by death. There in his room, Daniel’s faith was on trial, it was being tested to see if it was for real. Would Daniel demand that God save him from the certain death that awaited him or would Daniel yield his very life to God to be used by God for his glory? This is the very essence behind what is meant when we read in Deuteronomy chapter six, that we are to love God with our very life. To love God with our life means that we realize that when we come before God we, being created by God, we cannot demand anything of the God who created us. All we can do is to give back to God the life God first gave to us. This is the what lies behind the teaching of James about the trials that we face, the testing of our faith. The trial, the test we are ultimately are going to have to face is are we willing to give our life back to the God who first gave this life to us? The end result of having our faith tested and tried as Daniel did is that we might develop endurance. The word translated as “endurance” here in James is a compound word which means to live under, as in to live under the hurt and suffering that are just part of the deal of living in a broken world. This means we don’t fight against the pain and suffering nor do we try to run away from the hurt and pain of this world through a life of denial. No, we live under this suffering and pain and hurt of this world because through our faith in God we have found a place of refuge. When we entrust our life to God we know that despite the afflictions that are inevitable in this life, our life remains secure because our life is grounded upon the unmovable God. This is what Daniel understood as he prayed and waited the inevitable outcome of his faith, the being thrown into the lion’s den at the hands of his enemies. What is interesting is that the faith of Daniel was a powerful witness to the king who told Daniel that he hoped that the God that Daniel served might deliver from certain death. 

         The king was troubled all night knowing that it was by his hands that Daniel had been given a sentence of death. The king unlike Daniel had no certainty of what the one true living God was able to do. Thus we can hear the anguish in the kings voice when the next morning upon reaching the lion’s den, the king cried out, “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?” What joy the king must have experienced when from out of the lion’s den came the voice of Daniel who exclaimed, “O king live forever. My God sent his angel and shut the lion’s mouths and they have not harmed me because I have been found blameless before him…” Daniel speaks of being found blameless before God which is what James teaches us is supposed to be the outcome of our endurance, our remaining under the suffering that we have when we live in this broken world. What our willingness to trust in God is supposed to create in us, despite the pain and hurt that this world produces, is a life God has always expected when he first created us. James uses the words “perfect” and “complete” but they have the same meaning of the word blameless that Daniel used. When are faith remains strong despite of the trials of this world this is when we become the people God created us to be, people who truly lack nothing. The way Daniel knew that he had it all was because there in the lion’s den, in the midst of the most fear-inducing trial he would ever face, Daniel keep the faith and it was there in the most unlikely place, a lion’s den, there Daniel experienced the closeness of heaven. Daniel reports how an angel had come and closed the mouths of the lions. Daniel experienced salvation in a real and powerful way which was the result of his faith. What Daniel had received was the very real presence of God with him through the one sent by God. Now, through looking at this experience of Daniel we can begin to understand how these two seemingly opposing ideas, the idea of joy and the idea of trial, how these two make sense together. You see, when our faith is tested and found to be strong, unwavering without doubt this is when God becomes more real than ever. There in those times that test our faith we receive a certain blessed assurance of the presence of God when our faith is found to be as unmovable as the God we believe in. Here is where we discover the difference between joy and happiness. We might put it like this: Happiness is achieved; joy is received. Happiness is something we must pursue, to seek out and make happen with our own effort. But joy is a given, a gift we did not expect, the gift of the presence of God, touching our lives. God gives himself to us, not in those times where hurt, suffering and pain are absent but right there in the worst that this world has to offer. It is there, when we choose to to continue to believe in the light in spite of the darkness, this is when God gives us the present of his presence. What joy it is to be given the fullness of God abiding with us, to know with him we truly lack nothing. This is the contentment that Paul wrote of in the fourth chapter of Philippians, “I have learned that in whatever situation, I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” You see, life in a broken world is not about denying the hurt and doing your best at making yourself comfortable. No, life in a broken world is all about loving God first, finding by faith in him a strength that empowers us to have peace and contentment right in the midst of the hurt and pain we might experience. 

         This peace and contentment we can have by faith which we can experience whether we find ourselves in the lion’s den or our living room comes to us as a gift, the gift of God’s presence. This is why we were given the gift of Jesus so that through him we might know the forgiveness and acceptance of God, and know that in the name of Jesus we can experience the power of new life, a life of joy. Yet, like every other gift, the gift of new life Jesus gives, this life of joy, this can only be ours if we have a faith which pasts the tests we face. As James teaches us, the person who doubts should not suppose that they will receive anything from the Lord. So, this time of Advent is our time to strengthen our faith. As a man who once encountered Jesus begged him, “Lord I believe; help my unbelief.” You see if our unbelief is evident then we must come to Jesus and plead for faith.  The whole reason Daniel could face the lion’s den is that his was a life marked by prayer. Continuously crying out to a God who is faithful results in a stronger faith in us. This then is where we must begin in our preparation for the coming of Jesus, in prayer, in faith counting it all joy these things in life that test our faith for by faith we receive the greatest gift, the very presence of God. Amen!

         

Taking God’s Word to Heart

 November 22 2020

Jeremiah 31:31-34

         Well, by now I imagine everyone’s Thanksgiving menu is probably set. My daughter Elizabeth has created a spreadsheet for our Thanksgiving spread where we can all put down what we plan on bringing to the party. Now, everybody kind of expects that there will be turkey, that’s a given. Then you probably have some kind of veggie dish like corn or a green bean casserole. And of course you have to have some kind of starch, mash potatoes or noodles or both. Last but not least is dessert perhaps pie, most likely pumpkin to top everyone off to full to overflowing. What is most likely not given much thought is what kind of bread will be served to go with the meal. It’s kind of interesting that one of our families favorite memories of Thanksgiving centers around the bread we ate more specifically the rolls that we had for our dinner. My sister and her family were coming up from Columbus and she said one of the things she would bring for dinner was the rolls. Now, when our family thinks about rolls our thoughts turn to soft doughy little balls of bread. So, we were a little perplexed when my sister shows up with hard rolls and when I say that that they were hard I mean that they like a rock. I mean you needed tools to break them open and you had to be careful how you ate them or you could have chipped a tooth. They did taste good but they were just so hard that our family just wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. At least they created some memories of Thanksgiving that still make us laugh.

         Well, our experience with those hard rolls just proves that while we like to have bread with our meal it really isn’t the main event. We are blessed to have so many other options when it comes to eating. But it hasn’t always been like this. There was a time when bread was the main staple on many peoples table. We  to keep that in mind to understand how radical it must have been for these same people when they heard Moses tell them that the reason God had fed them with manna, this strange bread from heaven was so that they might know that man does not live by bread alone but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. What is implied in what is being taught here is that there are two ways to view life, one way is by bread alone and the other way is through every word that comes out of the mouth of God. Now what is not apparent is that these two ways of coming at life are the background to our scripture for today.

         In our scripture that is found in the book of Jeremiah, we hear Jeremiah tell the people of Israel that God has declared that the days are coming when God is going to make a new covenant. This new covenant will not be like the old covenant that of had with his people, the one he had made when he had brought his people out of Egypt, the covenant that God points out, that his people had broke. This is why God had decided to enter into a new covenant because the old one was broken, no longer able to define the relationship with God. Before we are to consider the new covenant God is proposing, I believe that it is important that we have an understanding of just why the old covenant had broken, so damaged that it had to be abandoned and replaced by something else, something better.

         If we go back to some of the earlier chapters of Jeremiah what we find is that Jeremiah writes often about the matters of the heart. In the seventeenth chapter we find what is perhaps the best description of just what exactly is the problem that God is solving by initiating a new covenant. Jeremiah begins this chapter by stating that the sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron; with a point of diamond it is engraved on the tablet of their hearts. When you read this then you begin to see why it is important that we begin here because the heart on which God is going to write his law is not a blank slate. As Jeremiah tells us the hearts of the people of Judah have written on them, their sin. This sin has been written down using a pen of iron which has a point of diamond which implies that their hearts are hearts of stone. This echoes the prophesy of Ezekiel who in the thirty sixth chapter of his book declares in the days to come God is going to remove the stony hearts of his people and replace them with hearts of flesh, hearts that are beating with life. 

         So, Jeremiah wants his readers to understand that the problem affecting God’s people is a heart problem.Yet as important as this is, Jeremiah also wants his readers to understand the root of just why the hearts of God’s people, the people God has claimed and promised so much to their well being, why are their hearts in such an unholy state. Here is what Jeremiah tells us further in the seventeenth chapter that the Lord says, “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness…”What again, may not be apparent is that what Jeremiah is telling us here is this way of life, this life is the same life that Moses was referring to when he said that man does not live by bread alone. In our modern times we have a difficult time to get the full weight is being said in this reference to live by bread alone. For us bread is just that loaf of Wonder that we grab on our way through the grocery store but for the people in ancient times to speak about bread meant speaking of plowing the ground, planting the seed, the watching and waiting until harvest, the harvest and threshing of the crop and then the storing and grinding of the crop into flour and finally the mixing up the flour into dough and the baking of the dough into bread. Now, it is easy to sympathize with the people who lived in these times when we find that this creation of bread became a kind of obsession for them. It’s obvious that the whole process was plagued with a lot of uncertainty, a lot of ways that problems could occur that could bring ruin upon the people struggling to just to have enough to eat. Yet God tells his people don’t believe for a second that this is what life is all about. When his people began to think that life was about raising a large crop so they could eat lots of bread then what they would do is use their creative urge that is part of being in the made of the image of God and use that to achieve their goal of a bountiful crop. This lead people to put their confidence in what they could do, what the strength of their own flesh could accomplish, their trust was in their own ability. This is what God declares is a cursed life. When we hear this we may be a little confused especially as we live in a world where personal achievement is an exalted way of life. But what happens when life becomes all about us and what we can achieve and when our focus is on the goal we have set out to achieve then we expect that God should be the guaranty of our success. Do you see how warped things begin to get when life is all about us? This is why this life is cursed because we start to expect that God will support our definition of life instead of allowing God to be the one who defines our life. What happens to a person’s relationship with God is that it morphs into religion. Religion is where people think they can formulate an understanding of the terms of God’s actions, the preconditions of God’s favor. In other words, religion is thinking that we have God all figured out so that all one has to do is just follow a formula and God’s favor will follow.

         Well, this life that puts its trust in man and finds its strength in the power of the flesh not only ruins ones relationship with God it also ruins the relationships we have with those around us. You see the thing is that it isn’t easy to a live a life where we are seeking to fulfill the goals we desire using our own power. People or nature can block us from reaching our goal which results in us getting angry at our inability to achieve what we desire. Or we begin to realize that there are any number of things that could go wrong, that there are so many things that are beyond our control that can destroy any hope we have of achieving the goal that we have chosen. The result is that we become anxious, worrying because of the reality that so much of life is beyond our control. Or it may become apparent that the goal we are pursuing is going to be impossible for us to ever achieve. This is going to make us depressed and distraught.So do you begin to understand how a life where we trust in ourselves, a life of anger, anxiety and depression how this is really a cursed life?

         Well, God is not fooled when we are trusting in our own efforts, when we attempt to use him like a utility we can plug into to make our life better. Jeremiah writes in the seventeenth chapter  that the heart is deceitful and desperately sick; who can understand it? What Jeremiah is saying here is that we believe, wrongly that we can use part of our heart to pursue the goals we desire and at the same time use another part of our heart to maintain a relationship with God. Yet God is not fooled because as we read further, God says, “I search the heart and test the mind to give to every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” God is the searcher of hearts, the one who knows who we are at the very depths of our being and God is not fooled and he will not be used to further the pursuits of anyone.Because the people of Israel continued to do what they wanted while religiously trying to maintain their relationship with God , God finally decided to send his people to serve foreigners in a foreign land. The reason was that the people of Israel striving to find life in their own strength by the power of their flesh were in effect being no different than the life lived by the foreigners who did not know God. So if they were going to live like foreigners then they might as well live with foreigners.    

         God had a purpose for sending his people out to serve the foreigners and that was to change their hearts. In the twenty ninth chapter of Jeremiah, God tells his people that after they had been in Babylon for seventy years, his people would call upon God and come and pray to him and God promises that he would hear them. They would seek God and they would find God when they would seek God with all of their heart. You see God put them in a place where no matter how strong or how smart they might be, in the power of their flesh they could nothing while in the captivity of foreigners. This is where God has to bring people, to places where they come to the end of themselves because it is there that God at last can be found. It is when we can admit the weakness of our spirit, what directs the power of our flesh that is when God can offer us his Spirit which gives us the victory to control our flesh.

         This brings us to the new covenant that God promises to his people.  In Hebrew thought we are given first the result of God’s action and we need to read down to find the cause of what God has promised. The cause of this new covenant is that God declares that he will forgive the peoples iniquity and God would remember their sin no more. What is incredible about this is that God forgives without any demands that his people do anything. There is no call for God’s people to repent, to grieve and clothe themselves with sackcloth. No, the message God is sending to his people is that it is not about them. There is nothing God’s people can do to win his favor, to manipulate God’s grace to be in service of them. No, God just forgives, he just forgets what is past in order that his people night have a future.  In forgiving the sins of his people, they no longer are living under a death sentence. Now they can know with certainty that their life is a gift from God. In knowing that their life is gift from God they then know God as the gift-giving God, the life-giving God. This is why we read that all will know the Lord from the least to the greatest. Why is this so? This is is going to be the reality because all will have experienced the forgiveness of their sins thus all will know their life as a gift from God and all will also know God as the life and gift giving God. So it is not hard to understand how it is that in this new covenant that God writes his law upon our hearts. God has given our life to us as a gift and so now our hearts are open to receive the word of God because now we know that God and not our strength is the fountain of our life.Instead of planting seeds in order to have bread for life God calls us to take the seed of his word into the seedbed of our heart and by faith plant it there and discover life through the power of God.

         Well, the prophesy that God was going to make a new covenant was given with no clear date in mind only the ambiguous saying that it would happen in the days to come. As it turned out that those days turned to months and years and centuries because it wasn’t until seven hundred years had passed, in the fulfillment of time, God sent his Son, Jesus. Jesus came to condemn sin in the flesh, this cursed condition where we put our trust in our own abilities, where we trust the strength of our own flesh. This is condemned because through the cross the world witnessed that the flesh far from being strong was in fact, weak. The flesh was unable to do the good it knew to do, held captive by the power of sin. It was this power of sin that Jesus destroyed upon the cross where he placed no confidence in his flesh but only found his strength in his faith in his Heavenly Father. There upon the cross Jesus shed his blood so that we people far from God might be forgiven of our iniquity so that our sin might be forgotten. Here at the cross we knew that we deserved death but in the gift of Jesus we received the gift of life. Now all can know God as the giver of gifts, the giver of life.  Now we know that the words God speaks are words of life that gives us life when we place our faith in that word. This we know to be the truth because the faith of Jesus was proved to be true when he walked out of the grave after three days. Now, through the Holy Spirit the life of Christ can live in us. This is the one thing we can be certain of that there is nothing in this world that can prevent us from growing to be more like Jesus except  us. All of this is possible, our hope of God’s new covenant because God forgives us, before we even repent, before we are even sorry, God has forgiven us and accepted us just as we are all to give us a blessed life. So, this Thanksgiving in addition to giving thanks for the turkey and all the rest of our feast let us also give thanks for a life that comes from every word God speaks to us. To God be he glory! Amen!

An encounter with a Holy God

November 15 2020

Isaiah 6

         It goes without saying that there are a lot of slogans out there that are used to advertise all of the stuff that we can buy. We’ve heard them so often that we just kind of automatically know the company that they refer to when we hear them. If I say the phrase, “I’m lovin’ it”, you just know that this is what McDonalds uses to promote their fast food. Or is I say, “Just Do It” most of us know that this is Nike’s slogan. If we hear, “Eat Fresh” that of course is the jingle for Subway. The best of these give us in a nutshell exactly the reason we should choose the company behind them. We know when we hear, “Fifteen minutes saves you fifteen percent or more” we know this is telling us that Geico insurance might just be able to save us some money in a short amount of time.

         Now, I was thinking about these jungles or slogans because I was thinking about this sign that hangs above the pulpit in our church. It states “Holiness unto the Lord.” I grew up in a United Methodist church, attended a Moravian church, served in a number of churches and this is the first church I have been a part of that has had such a sign. To tell you the truth, I find it kind of neat. To me its like our jingle or slogan. For most of you though you may have attended so long that this sign just kind of blends into the woodwork; that’s the other reason I thought I should point it out. So, I wonder if somebody new came and read this sign and was curious just what it meant, what exactly would you tell them?

         I am required to take classes to be ordained as a pastor and this class I am currently taking is all about this idea of Christian Holiness. In this weeks assignment we were asked to explain what this idea of holiness means to someone who had never attended church and to do so on one sheet of paper. Let me tell you, I have taken a lot of classes so far and had a lot of difficult assignments but this one was one of the hardest one that I have had to do.I mean you think about it, just how would you explain this idea of holiness to someone who had no clue about God, or Jesus or the Holy Spirit and do it using just enough words to fill a single piece of paper, twelve font and double spaced. 

         You see holiness is one of those things we kind of know, something we think we know but when pressed to express what we know, it isn’t all that easy to talk about it. I mean we can all agree that God is holy. This means that he is nothing like us, he is without sin, and we can say that God is love, like this is who God is. God doesn’t just love us he is love; that certainly makes him different from us. So, all of these kinds of thoughts run through our mind when we say God is holy. Now the reason that it might be important for us to know just what it means to be holy is that in the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, God tells his people, “You shall be holy as I am holy.” So in some sense, what God is saying to us here is that in some fashion we are supposed to be like him. On one hand then when we think of being holy we say that God is holy because he is nothing like us and on the other hand God tells us to be holy just like he is holy. Do you see how weird it is to talk about this thing called holiness? At least now you kind of have an idea where this sign we have in our sanctuary comes from, that it has its roots in this call by God that his people, in some way should be like him. The exact wording of this sign comes from the fourteenth chapter of the prophet Zechariah who prophesies that on the day of the Lord that the bells of the horses will be inscribed, “Holy Unto the Lord” and all the pots in the house of the Lord shall be as the bowls before the altar. Every pot shall be holy unto the Lord of Hosts. What the prophet foresaw is the day when what was thought to be the most common of objects would be considered as being able to be used for the holy work of God. No longer would holiness be something confined to the Temple but instead, one day holiness would be part of everyone’s every day life. From this then we start to understand what is meant by consecration which means to set something apart for God’s holy use.This then is what the sign we have is trying to remind us every Sunday, that we are to allow God to take us out of the world to be used by him for his holy purposes. All this then brings us back to the question just what do we mean by holy? What exactly is this holy purpose that God has chosen us to do?

         With all of these questions running around in our head we come to the scripture for today from the sixth chapter of Isaiah. It goes without saying that this chapter is a really strange, rather mind-blowing event that Isaiah invites us to experience with him. Not only that, but as we find out, this is when God calls Isaiah however this call does not happen in chapter one like we would expect but it happens after five chapters of prophesying by Isaiah have occurred. If you read these first five verses you hear Isaiah rail against all of the injustice he sees being done by these people who are supposed to be the people of God. Interspersed within Isaiah’s call of judgment against the people of Israel are these images of a glorious future that God has in store for his people that are found in the second and fourth chapters. Here Isaiah sees the day when people from all over the world will come to Jerusalem and learn the ways of the Lord. The result will be that the nations will beat their swords into plough shares and their spears into pruning hooks. So in these first five chapters there is this tension between what God’s people are now and this vision of what one day they will become. And then all of a sudden Isaiah has this vision, right out of left field. We are told that this vision happened in the year that King Uzziah had died. This detail lets us know that this is a year of uncertainty, a change in the leadership of God’s people. Uzziah had been one of the better kings but his greatness went to his head and in his arrogance King Uzziah attempted to go into the holy place of the Temple and light incense upon the golden altar. This was absolutely forbidden for the king to do what was the work of the priests. The priests took and surrounded the king forcing him out of the Temple and God punished the king by giving him the dreaded skin disease which meant that he was unable to be part of the rest of the community. His son Jotham took over the kings household and Uzziah  lived in isolation until his death.Now, I’m not sure if what had happened to Uzziah is important to our understanding of Isaiah. But as we study this vision of Isaiah we begin to notice that there are a lot of connections. So, what we re told next is that Isaiah’s sees the Lord sitting upon the throne. The throne of God was thought to be above the ark of the covenant in the holy of holiness, the most sacred place in the Temple so this helps us to understand just where Isaiah’s vision takes place. The statement that God is on the throne also tells us that here is the true king over all. The kings and rulers of this world come and go but the one true king remains and rules forever.We are told that God our king is high and lifted up not just physically but also in comparison to all that is in our world that seeks our worship. God is over all of these. Then we are told that the train of his robe filled the Temple. This is a very unusual wording to describe the presence of the Lord. If you look at the Hebrew word used for robe you find that it is used only in one other place and that is to describe the robes worn by the priests in the Temple. So the implication is that God is not only our king but he is also our heavenly priest. This serves somewhat to tell us why Uzziah was not allowed to be a king and to do the duties of the priests because only God was allowed to do both, to be our king and priest.

         Next we are told that above the throne of God were the seraphim. These are what we might call angels, or heavenly beings. Now these weren’t the cute little chubby beings with wings that are some Hallmark version of what we find in the Bible. No, these were terrifying awe-inspiring beings whose name means to burn. In some way they were fiery and they had six wings, two to cover their eyes because the glory of God was too much for them to behold; two wings to cover their bodies so that God could not look on them; and two wings by which they flew about. So the image is a flying fireball swirling around the throne of God. As is often said, where there is smoke there’s fire and this is also what Isaiah describes. So, Isaiah not only sees this awe inspiring imagery but he could smell the smoke that filled the Temple. This smoke corresponded to the burning of the incense in the most holy of places so that one could not directly gaze upon God otherwise they would die. Out of this smoke and this whirling of flying fire beasts came a loud chorus of voices crying out, back and forth to each other, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The sound of their voices, we are told, was so loud that the doorposts of the Temple shook violently. Definitely not your typical worship experience.

         What Isaiah is witnessing here is the inner workings of heaven where the Lord of hosts, the leader of the armies of heaven is surrounded by beings who never stop declaring one thing that God is holy, the most holy, the one whose holiness is above and beyond any other.It is this most holy God whose glory fills the whole earth. It is hard to know just what is meant by God’s glory filling the whole earth but something Jesus told his disciples may help uncover its true meaning. In the seventeenth chapter of John, in what is called the High Priestly prayer, Jesus says, “The glory that you have given me I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one.” God’s glory fills the earth because as we know from the first chapter of Genesis, that when God created his image bearers that they were to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Knowing what we know about God’s holiness, that he expects his image bearers to be holy as he is holy, then we can begin to understand that God’s glory fills the earth as the people he created display his holiness throughout the world.

         It’s important that we have this understanding of how God’s glory fills the earth to figure out Isaiah’s reaction to what he witnesses in heaven. Isaiah cries out, “Woe is me! For I am lost! For I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.” After hearing Isaiah’s reaction we are left wondering just what does he mean when he says he is a man of unclean lips and that he lives among a people of unclean lips. There is a lot of speculation as to just what this might mean but I think that its important to figure it out within this context of the vision that Isaiah is having. When we think of what comes out of our lips we think of communication, the communication of who we are, what we’re thinking, what we value, all of who we are and what we find important can be find out by what we say. Isaiah has just heard voices of what had to be clean lips because these were voices that were before the throne of God the king. These voices were crying out about the holiness of the Lord. Their whole being, their purpose as they understood it was to declare the holiness of God. Isaiah immediately realized that his people, the people of Israel did not have as their purpose the exaltation of God, the declaring of God’s holiness to a watching world. Isaiah knew that he was one of them; their uncleanness was his uncleanness. Without a life that declared the holiness of God it was obvious that it was unable for him to remain before a holy God.But all was not lost because Isaiah knew what it meant to have a life that declared God’s holiness for we read in the fifth chapter of Isaiah that the Lord of hosts is exalted in justice and the Holy God is shows himself holy in righteousness. It is when we act towards each other with justice that we exalt or lift high our God the Lord of Hosts. It is when we live righteously we declare to the world our God is holy. This justice and righteousness has as its foundation the ancient rule that we are to do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves. This means that in our dealings with others we see in them ourselves and live with the understanding of the oneness of our humanity. This is the glory of God that is to fill the whole earth, one united humanity. Isaiah knew that the people of which he was a part of were not a people of justice nor righteousness but they were people divided by wealth and privilege.Isaiah knew how far from holy he was and he also knew the great weight of the holiness of the presence he was in. Yet even though he knew what he deserved, as one who was unclean in the presence of a holy God, what happened next must have surprised him. One of the seraphim’s flew to him with a burning coal in his hands that he had taken from the altar.The seraphim took the red hot coal and pressed it to the lips of Isaiah. Imagine how terrifying it must have been for this flaming fiery beast to take a burning coal in his hand and come flying at you to press it upon your lips. Yet more surprising still, Isaiah found that he was not burned but instead he was healed. The seraphim told Isaiah that his guilt had been taken away because his sins had been atoned for. To make sense of what happened we have to know that in the twenty ninth chapter of Exodus that after the altar of the Temple was consecrated it was then holy and what ever touched the altar would become holy. So, the coal from the altar was holy and when this holy coal touched Isaiah, Isaiah then became holy, healed and right before God. God took Isaiah’s sincere confession, that he was a man of unclean lips, a man whose life did not declare the holiness of God because he lived in the midst of a people whose lives also did not declare God’s holiness, and he cleansed him by setting him apart through his gift of holiness. In much the same way we become a cleansed people, people of justice and righteousness when the Holy Spirit takes the love of Christ which burned for each one of us upon the altar of the cross and he touches our hearts with the holy love of God. This empowers us to be people whose lives exalt our God through acts of justice, whose lives declare the holiness of God through our righteousness.

         Well, the atoning of Isaiah’s sin is not the end of the story. When God at last spoke, he asked, “Whom will I send and who will go for us?” As the story unfolds it appears that the question is being addressed to one of the heavenly beings but before they could answer, Isaiah says, “Here am I! Send me! Isaiah’s response is a response  of gratitude that God in his mercy did not remove Isaiah from his holy presence when he was unclean but instead made a way to cleanse him and make him holy.It always sounds so noble, so exciting that Isaiah was willing to be sent by God to go and speak the message of God to his people but Isaiahs calling was one which was unbelievably hard. Isaiah was to go these people of unclean lips, those whose lives did not declare the holiness of God and tell them that they were like him, in need of healing. Yet as God forewarned him, these people would not listen, they would refuse to see the need of a coming clean with God. God already knew that the fate of these people was sealed yet God still sent Isaiah. The reason God sent Isaiah was that he was a God of justice and righteousness; this is what makes him holy. And this is why he would warn his people so that one day they would look back and remember that God had once offered them his mercy through the cries of Isaiah but they had turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the offer that had been extended to them. Unlike Isaiah who had allowed the fearful holiness of God to touch his life they would refuse him, satisfied with their status quo. What is important though is that Isaiah was willing to go, to serve God even among a faithless people. Isaiah would go because he had an encounter with a holy God, the true Lord and King who had been merciful to him. You see, what else could Isaiah do to show his gratitude but to give God back the life God had saved. So it is with us. God has cleansed our hearts by the burning fire of Christ’s love for us poured out for us upon the cross. What can we do to show our gratitude to God except to give our lives to him just as Christ first gave his life for us. We need to our lives and use them to exalt our God through treating others with justice. We need to allow our lives to declare that our God is holy God through a life of righteousness. May our prayer be the prayer of the seraphim that the whole earth may be truly filled with the glory of God. Amen.

         

          

We Have a Runner…

November 8 2020

Jonah 1:1-17, 3:1-10, 4:1-11

         As you can kind of tell from looking at me, I’m not a runner. There are people I know who are runners, who get up and go for a run every day but I am not one of them. My philosophy is that the only reason to run is if something is chasing me. Praise God this has never really happened because I’m not really sure my running would do any good. That being said, there is a kind of running we all can do, a running that we all are familiar with and that is a running away from God. Now the thing about running away from God is that eventually God is going to catch up with you, you simply can not out run God.I don’t just say this because I know for a fact that this is true.You see, I wasn’t always a pastor. A long time ago I was just a guy like everyone else sitting in the pew every Sunday morning doing my best to be the person God wanted me to be, I was active in church, on a lot of committees and when the pastor of the church where Jennifer and I first attended got called to another church, I stepped up and helped provide leadership until another pastor could be called to our church.Through all of these experiences with the church I started getting the nagging feeling that God was calling me to do more, to dedicate myself to pastoral ministry but I really wasn’t all that interested.  I wasn’t like any other pastor I knew; I didn’t fit the mold so to speak. To top it off I really did not like to stand in front of a group of people and speak. So, thanks but no thanks God. Well, a friend of mine offered to sponsor me on a three day retreat as a time to draw closer to God and I thought hey, why not, what’s the worst that could happen. Well, as part of this retreat all of the participants had to take a piece of paper and write our sins on it and then nail it to a cross. Sounds easy enough doesn’t it? Well, I really struggled with it and I wasn’t sure as to what to write and then the Holy Spirit grabbed a hold of me and convicted me that it was a sin to tell God no when he calls you to do something. In that moment, God caught up with me and I stopped saying “No” to God. Long story short, four months later I was hired as a pastoral assistant at a local church and the rest as they say, is history.

         That is my story but I believe that everybody has a story. God may not be calling you to be a pastor but I believe that God calls everybody to be somebody for him. The thing we all have to figure out is just what is it that keeps us from saying “Yes” to God. It is one thing to know Jesus as our Savior; we all love knowing that he gave his life for us. But it is when we call him Lord, this trips us up because this means that we in return, give our lives back to Christ. So, if Jesus is Lord then the answer has got to be yes. I had a thousand reasons to support my answer of “No” but only one reason why I would say “Yes” and that is that Jesus is Lord.

         That being said, our reason for saying “No” tells us a lot of how we feel about God and what God is capable of doing. This is what the story of Jonah is all about. Now most people, even people who aren’t church goers, when asked about the story of Jonah are going to say something about this is the story of that guy who gets swallowed by a big fish or a whale. The thing is that we get so caught up with the fish in the story that we forget just why Jonah found himself in the fish or whale in the first place. In all actuality, Jonah is not about a fish at all. If you do a little word count, you find that in the story of Jonah, the word “fish” is only mentioned two times. In contrast, the word “God” and “Lord” is mentioned thirty five times. Are you beginning to see what Jonah is really all about? 

         The story of Jonah begins by telling us that the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Ammitai. The name Jonah in Hebrew means dove and as many people know the dove is a symbol for peace. This corresponds to the message of peace that God is going to entrust to Jonah. Yet another meaning of Jonah, the dove is found in the seventy fourth Psalm where we read “Remember this O Lord, how the enemy scoffs, and a foolish people revile your name. Do not deliver the soul of dove to the wild beasts, do not forget the life of your poor forever. So, the name Jonah whose meaning is a dove I believe points also to the fact the Jonah represents Israel who has been oppressed by her enemies. This also helps us understand just why Jonah was so reluctant to obey God. The dove, Israel who was oppressed, cries out to God because of her enemies and God’s answer is go to those same enemies and seek their repentance, to which Jonah’s reply is “No thank you” There is a certain irony in the fact that Jonah’s fathers name, Amittai means “The Lord is true” and Jonah is one who refuses to believe in the truth of God.

         So, as the story tells us, Jonah tried to run from the presence of the Lord.His plan is to go to the port city of Joppa and get on the first boat headed to Tarshish. This is a sea port on the coast of Spain where the Atlantic meets up with the Mediterranean, what Jonah would know as the very end of the earth.Well, guess what, God wasn’t real happy with Jonah’s choice so he sends a storm that is so fierce that the boat is in danger of breaking apart. The crew of the boat, they are running around terrified, crying out to the gods they believe in and where is Jonah? Jonah is below deck taking a nap. The captain of the ship goes down and tells Jonah to wake up and pray up because only a supernatural power is going to save them. The crew of the boat decide that they need to figure out just who it is that has done such evil to cause such a storm so they cast lots and of course, the lot fell on Jonah. So Jonah has to explain just what it is that he has done and all he tells them is that he is a Hebrew, and that he fears the lord the the God of heaven earth and sea. The text further tells that they already knew he was fleeing the presence of the Lord because this is what Jonah had told them. They ask Jonah just what do they have to do to get the storm to die down and Jonah knows that what has to happen is that they throw him overboard. Now here is where the story begins to get interesting because these sailors who don’t even know God, they have a hard time with thinking that they must send one man to his death in order to save themselves. They try hard to row to shore but the storm just gets worse when they do. Knowing that it is inevitable that they must throw Jonah overboard to save themselves, they cry out to God, praying “O Lord let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.” With that they took Jonah and hurled him over the side of the boat and immediately the storm ceased its raging. Then we are told that the men feared the Lord and offered to God a sacrifice and made vows to him. Now we have to ask just why if this story is about Jonah why are we given so much information about some nameless sailors? The reason, which will become more apparent, is that they act more like what the people of God should act like and Jonah, who is one of God’s people, fails miserably to act like he should. The sailors know how precious even one life is and they agonize and pray that the life of Jonah be spared. It is they who cry out to God, they who make sacrifices to God and make vows unto God which is what God’s people are supposed to do and that which Jonah does not do. 

         Well, Jonah finds himself in deep water, literally, yet God doesn’t desire that Jonah die so God appoints a great fish to swallow up Jonah. Jonah was in the fish three days and three nights, a powerful allusion to death.There in the belly of the great fish, in the midst of death this is where Jonah prays because it is here that he finally realizes that he cannot out run God. Jonah praises God for even there in the deep of the ocean, God could hear the cries of Jonah. Jonah is so certain that God will save his life that he exclaims that he is going to one day be back worshipping in the Temple of God. Jonah states that when he knew his life was on its way out, that is when he remembered that it ain’t over till God says its over. So he prayed and his prayer came to God whose presence is in his holy Temple. Then Jonah goes on to say something that will come back to haunt him because he prays, “Those who regard vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.” Now that sounds pretty correct, doesn’t it? But it is just this thinking that is the root of Jonah’s problem because God has called Jonah to go to Nineveh, that great gathering of idol worshipers precisely because of his steadfast love for them. We have to hold on to this thought as we continue with the rest of this story of Jonah.

         Well, God heard Jonah’s prayer and the fish spits Jonah out upon dry land. We read this so matter-of-factly that we dot even stop to remember that Jonah has refused to be obedient to God’s call yet here God in his great mercy has rescued Jonah from a certain death. So far in our story we have seen concern for human life in the group of anonymous sailors and God and it is Jonah who has been the focus of that concern.We have to ask if Jonah being the recipient of that mercy, has this affected him at all? Well, we get to find out because God once again calls out to Jonah to go to Nineveh, the great city of Assyria and all out against it, cry out to them the judgment that God has against them and seek their repentance. This is the same Assyria that was ruthless against her enemies, the one who would surround cities, placing them under siege until the people within the city walls would slowly starve to death. These people, these ruthless people, these are the ones God wants to repent. What Jonah is experiencing is the lived out truth that we hear in the book of Ezekiel, the eighteenth chapter where God tells Ezekiel, “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? As God told Ezekiel in this chapter, “If a wicked person turns from his away from all his sins that he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is just and right he shall surely live; he shall not die.None of the transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered against him; for the righteousness he has done, he shall live.” This is what is being lived out in real time in the story of Jonah. Jonah went into the middle of Nineveh and declared that in forty days the judgment of God would come upon them. And our story tells us that the people of Nineveh believed God. They put on sackcloth, the dress of mourning and they fasted also a sign of mourning,We are then told that the word Jonah spoke reached the king and he also put on sackcloth and fasted and he decreed that everyone in all of Nineveh was to fast, be covered with sackcloth and to call out mightily to God for mercy.Everyone was to turn from their evil ways and cease from their violence.Then the king said something that should have been familiar to at least the Jewish readers of the story Jonah. The king says “Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.” These are very similar words to what we hear Moses say when the people of Israel worshipped the golden calf. But the difference here is that God turns from his fierce anger because God saw what the people of Nineveh had done, that they had turned from their evil ways. God relented of the disaster he was going to bring upon Nineveh because of the people of Nineveh had done. In the story of the golden calf, it is God who repents, not the people of Israel, in order that God’s wrath did not come upon them. So, what is implied is that the people of Nineveh were more willing to repent of their wickedness than the people of Israel had been when caught in the fros of their wicked acts.

         Now, you would think that now that the people of Nineveh had repented of their wickedness that the story would be done but it isn’t. It isn’t done because the story of Jonah is not about great fish even though that’s what captures our imagination nor is it about Nineveh and its people; no, the story is about the subtle wickedness of the people of Israel. We must never forget that Jonah represents all the people of Israel, the people who quite rightly have been oppressed and perhaps it is felt that their attitude is justified but as we discover this attitude is not justified at all. The attitude I am referring to is the attitude that Jonah has when hearing of the repentance of Nineveh. We are told at the beginning of the fourth chapter that it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry. Thousands upon thousands of lives have been saved from the wrath of God and the reaction of Jonah is that he was exceedingly displeased and angry. And in this state of mind Jonah prays, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? This is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish. So, now we are going to find out why Jonah was running from God are you ready for it? Here is what Jonah says is his reason for his flight, “For I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. Let’s let what Jonah said sink in for a moment. Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh simply because he knew God, he knew God was a God of grace, a God of mercy, slow to anger and a God abounding in steadfast love and he knew that instead of being a God who would bring upon the people of Nineveh the same hurt and pain and devastation that they had brought to the people of Israel, God was going to be who he always has been a God of second chances.So you see that a group of unknown sailors struggled with knowing they may have sent one person to a watery grave, and where God had mercy on Jonah in spite of his blatant disobedient here is Jonah so cold and calloused that he desired that thousands upon thousands of lives be struck down in an act of severe vengeance. Here is the perennial problem that always plagued Israel. They wanted their God to be a God who was like all the other gods only stronger; a God who would mete out vengeance without mercy upon their enemies, those idol worshipers who deserved no steadfast love. But when they worshipped and prayed to this God of no mercy, a God of quick vengeance what they were doing, was in effect, worshipping an idol because the reality is that no such God exists except as a figment of their imagination. There is only one God and who he is does not change regardless of how much we desire that he would.  This is why Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh because he knew that God would have mercy on Nineveh instead of wrath. God attempted to get through to Jonah by causing a plant to grow up by the shelter Jonah had built in order that Jonah might have shade. But the next day after Jonah had so enjoyed the shade the plant had given him, God made the plant die leaving Jonah to scorch in the heat of the day.Jonah got angry that the plant had died because he liked the plant. God pointed this out to Jonah that he was more concerned and sad about a plant that had come and gone in a day than he had been for Nineveh. God asked Jonah could he not have pity on Nineveh and its one hundred and twenty thousand people who had no sense of right and wrong?

         You see this is what angers people is that they want a God to side with them in the hatred of their enemies but unfortunately no such God exists. It is this anger that blinded the people of Israel when Jesus, the one who came from the Father came and flatly told them that the God they believed in, the God who would empower them to conquer their enemies, this God does not exist. What Jesus was doing was telling all who believed this that they were no more than idol worshippers. So in telling the truth about God, Jesus became enemy number one who had to be silenced and silence him they did by nailing him to a cross. There on the cross Jesus demonstrated what the true worship of the true God entails, a laying down of ones life even for ones enemies all because this is the love of the one true God. God verified the faith of Jesus three days later when Jesus stepped victorious out of the grave. Jesus unlike Jonah did not run when called by his Heavenly Father to go into the world and speak the message of repentance and mercy and unlike Jonah, Jesus rejoiced when those furthest from God at long last returned home to him.

         You see what Jonah is is not a big fish story. No, Jonah is about people who run from God, running because they know that our God is a God who is gracious, a God who is merciful and abounding in steadfast love and they run because they really wish he was a God who supported the hatred of their enemies. Unfortunately, there is no God who is out their that will back such hatred and if you pray for God to support such hatred you are really just worshipping an idol of your own making. Nevertheless, God’s steadfast love remains for everyone, his mercy never ceases to call even the most wicked to come home to him. Amen! 

A Contagious Faith

November 1 2020

1 Kings 17:1-24

         As many of you know Jennifer and I are finding out what a full blown empty nest experience is all about. All of our children have flown the coop and quite naturally we are asking, what next? Well, it seems like kind of a waste just to let those areas we fixed up for our kids just sit empty collecting dust. So, we decided that we should at least try to rent out the basement out through this service called Airbnb.We became familiar with Airbnb when our daughter Sarah used this service to find a cheap place to stay when she visited New York City. Through Airbnb people offer up a room or several rooms in their homes to people who are looking for a cheaper alternative to motels or hotels. This is what we are hoping to do with our basement. We had fixed it up for our daughter Elizabeth so it has a bedroom, bathroom and a large living room area and it just made sense that we should do something with it.

         Now, when we tell people that we are thinking about opening up our home to let total strangers sleep in our basement we get a lot of wrinkled up noses and weird looks. The biggest consensus is just why would you want to deal with the hassle of dealing with having strangers invading your home. Yet we don’t see it like that. I guess it is that we have have opened up our house on numerous other occasions that we have a whole other take on it. One of the most memorable times we had people stay with us is when a local church was having a choir from South Africa come and perform and they needed a place for the performers to stay. We told them we had room for a couple people and we invited these travelers from across the globe into our home. It was so enjoyable hearing them tell of their life in a place we will probably never get to visit. They also gave us beautiful placemats and an embroidered cloth bag as tokens of their appreciation. There have been others in addition to them, the friend of my daughter Sarah who ended up living with us for nine months, and another friend of hers that we helped out for a while to get established after college. While it wasn’t always easy to share our home with them, in the end, the memories we have are always fond ones that bring us joy. So this adventure of opening our home once again we do so in hopes of having more fond memories we can one day look back on.

         Our experience of opening our home taught us that welcoming people is a two edge sword. Yes, there is always a risk involved anytime you invite people into your home or your life. It takes work and effort to get ready for them and then once they arrive you have to care for them which isn’t always easy to do. But the other side of it is that sharing life with others can also be joyful, a positive experience which reinforces this idea that ours is a good world created by a good God and we are more alike than we are different. It is no surprise then, the welcoming others is a spiritual thing, a holy idea. Paul writes in the fifteenth chapter in his letter to the Romans, “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accordance with Christ Jesus that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” An important word in what Paul has written here is the word “therefore” which tells us that our living in harmony with one another, our having a unity between us, this all begins by being open to welcoming others.

         This theme of welcoming others, especially strangers is so evident in our scripture that we read for today. Now we normally think that it is us, those who have faith in God who are the ones who are to be the ones doing the welcoming however as we consider this story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath what we discover is that it is the widow, who is not one of the people of Israel who opens her home to Elijah the greatest prophet of the people of Israel. This in itself should make us wonder just what is going on here. As we look at the background of this story what we find is that it has its roots in the reign of King Ahab. In the sixteenth chapter of the the first book of Kings, we are told that King Ahab “did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him.” Now it was bad enough that he himself was evil but to make matters worse Ahab also married Jezebel, the daughter of the king of of the Sidonians. Ahab most likely had married Jezebel in order to secure peace between Israel and the country of Sidon but the price of this peace was the high cost of the worship of idols that Jezebel brought with her. We are told that after his marriage to Jezebel that Ahab went out and served the idol Baal and worshipped him. Ahab erected an altar to Baal and built a house for Baal there in Samaria.Now, the connection between this worship of Baal and the declaration by the prophet of Elijah to Ahab that there would be no rain except by the word which Elijah would speak is found in the eleventh chapter of Deuteronomy. There God warns his people, take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.” So, God had given his people a warning, a promise even before they had ever even lived in the promise land that their idolatry would have severe consequences. Elijah merely served as a holy reminder to Ahab of God’s warning which was now going to become a reality just as God had promised. The coming drought was punishment for Ahab’s blatant worship of the idol Baal.

         Our story then tells us that God’s word came to Elijah that he was to go and hide himself by the brook Cherith. It was there he could drink from the last remaining water and be fed by ravens that would bring Elijah bread and meat morning and evening. The sanitized folklore of Israel tells that the ravens brought the meat from the slaughterhouse of King Ahab but common sense tells us ravens much like the crows we’re familiar with probably found the meat in the carcasses of the cows that were dying from lack of water. What we see in the life of Elijah is that the sins of the king affected him even though Elijah had not committed any idolatry.Here was Elijah, not living in the comfort of his home but instead camping out by a murky little stream being fed God knows what by ravens all because the king and his wife Jezebel had turned from God to worship the idol Baal.

         Well, as the drought kept getting worse, the little stream Elijah was living by eventually dried up yet their was no need for Elijah to panic because once again the word of the Lord came to Elijah. The Lord told Elijah to go to Zarephath which belongs to Sidon and dwell there. As you read where God was sending Elijah did you catch the connection in the address to other parts of our story? Elijah is being sent to the town of Zarephath which belongs to Sidon. Earlier in our story we found out that Jezebel is the daughter of the king of where? Sidon, the same land where Elijah is being sent. So, it is not hard to think that God is up to something when he sends Elijah to the same land where the king’s wife is originally from, a wife who had led God’s people astray.

         Well, Elijah ends up in Zarephath but he has no idea just where he will end up staying all he knows is that God has commanded a widow who lives there to feed Elijah. We are told that when Elijah gets to Zarephath he sees a widow there at the city gates gathering sticks. That she was gathering sticks indicates that she was poor and had no one to provide for her. Elijah called out to her and asked her to bring him a little water so that he could drink. This also was very unusual because men did not often speak to women in that day let alone a man who was a stranger. Perhaps Elijah did so to see what mattered most to her, the caring for conventions or the caring for others. The woman seeing that Elijah was quite thirsty having traveled through the drought stricken Israel hurried to bring him some water. As she turned to go and fetch the water, Elijah cried out to her to bring him some bread as well because he was hungry after his long journey. Her response to Elijah is rather profound, and rather tragic. She tells him, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering some sticks that I may go and prepare it for myself and my son, so that we may eat it and die. It’s very interesting that she begins by stating that the truth of what she tells Elijah is founded on the premise that the God of Elijah is a living God. The living God is the God of Elijah but not necessarily her God. Well, Elijah upon hearing the woman tell of her tragic fate does not give her sympathy but rather Elijah gives her hope. Elijah tells her, “Do not fear.” This is one of the most common phrases of the Bible. Over and over you find God telling his people be strong and courageous, do not be terrified, do not fear. These are not just some nice platitudes that we can we hang on the wall; no, these are the truth of the reality that we live in. We do not have to fear because we know a living God whose perfect love casts out our fear. This is what Elijah knows and this is what Elijah wants this woman trembling in fear to know, that his God, the one true living God is a God who can be trusted. Yet, Elijah also knew that it wasn’t enough for him to merely tell her to suck it up, to go and trust God. No, instead he tells the woman to go ahead and bake that bread but bring it to him to eat. Imagine how that woman must have felt when she hears this strange man tell her to take her last loaf of bread and bring it to him so that he could eat while she goes hungry? But Elijah quickly continues, telling her that after she baked him some bread to keep the fire going and bake her and her son some bread as well. By this time this woman has to have a strange look on her face because she knows that all she has is enough flour and oil for one loaf and this stranger is telling her to go ahead and bake two. Elijah explains to her that the Lord God of Israel declares that the jar of flour will not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth. You see Elijah is sharing his faith with this woman by allowing her to experience for herself the faithfulness of God to be true to his promises. This is what makes our God a holy God because he is a God who is faithful, a God with whom there is no shadow of turning with him.But the only way to really know that this is true of God is for us to experience it for ourselves. This is what Elijah knew. It was when Elijah used his vulnerability as a stranger to touch the heart of this woman so that even though she wanted to welcome him knew that her reality would not allow her to do so. In order for this woman to act on her impulse to welcome Elijah she would need to have faith, a faith Elijah would help her experience by merely accepting her welcome and eating her food.

         Well, it is one thing to trust God’s promise that he would provide the flour and oil for this woman and her son to survive but can she trust God to be the God who can raise the dead? Our story tells us how the woman’s son becomes gravely ill, so ill that there was no breath left in him. This is not hard for us to imagine in these days of Covid. Of course, the woman is grief stricken and in her anger she cries out to Elijah, “What have you against me , O man of God? You have come to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son! This woman’s sentiments are very typical of people who may not really know God so that when bad things happen they begin to believe that God is getting back at them for the sins that they have done. Jesus addresses this attitude in the ninth chapter of John where in an encounter with a blind man the disciples wonder who had sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind? And Jesus answers them, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Isn’t that a much better way to look at the world! Our problems are not indicators that God is getting back at us because of our sin but rather they are opportunities for the world to see the works of God displayed in them. This is what we find with this woman’s son because Elijah takes this boy’s lifeless body and carries it into his room and lays the boy upon his bed. Elijah fervently cried out to God asking God to let the child’s life be given back to him. Three times Elijah stretched himself out upon the still and lifeless body and then suddenly life came back into that boys body. God had answered Elijah’s prayer.Elijah took the boy to his mother and her response is rather profound. She tells Elijah, “Now I know you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” You see the truth of God is not just some statement found in the Bible that we defend as being true. No, the truth of God is something we are to know is true because we have experienced the presence and power of God and the truth of God has touched us in an amazing way.

         Now when you stand back and look at what has happened in this story of Elijah can you see what has happened? The land of Sidon represents the world, a world apart from Israel and God’s people. Ahab brought Jezebel into Israel and allowed this representative of the world to influence Israel so that in the end God’s people turned away from God to worship and serve the dead and lifeless idols. Elijah, the representative of Israel, God’s people, went to Sidon, into the world and as a stranger asked a person of the world, a person far from God, to welcome him in and give him food and drink. This woman apart from God could only know the world as a place of scarcity and fear and Elijah challenged her to be not afraid. Why? He told her to not be afraid because there is a God who lives, a God who loves, a God who one can never out-give yet the only way to know this about God is to experience it, to give even when giving means staring down death. This is what the woman did when she welcomed Elijah in to her life because she trusted in the promise of God and found out in real time the faithfulness of God.  Yet as wonderful as her trust was, this widow, who had already lost her husband , struggled mightily when her son became ill and died. Elijah cried out to the Lord and the Lord heard Elijah’s prayer and the life of her son came back into him. You see, it was this woman’s welcome of Elijah into her life that began her journey of faith in the one true living God. Then because Elijah was in her life, when her son died, she was able to see first hand the power of prayer and her faith increased so that from then on she would have no doubt that the word of the Lord in the mouth of Elijah was truth.So this woman from the same country as Jezebel, the worshiper of the dead idol Baal, became one who trusted in the word of the living God. I believe that God in this story is telling us that the experience of Elijah was always supposed to be the norm, that the people of God were to go out into the world, into the places of idol worshippers and by allowing themselves to be welcomed into that world, their faith in God could be experienced by those who did not know him.

         We know that this story of Elijah and the widow from the town of Zarephath is to be a story of how faith in the living God is to be shared with those who do not know him because this was Jesus take on it as well. In the fourth chapter of Luke we read of how Jesus after his first and only sermon to his hometown synagogue crowd, found that people who had heard his message lacked faith in God’s ability to do great works in him a guy from their hometown of Nazareth. In response, Jesus reminded them that there were many widows in Israel at the time of Elijah but Elijah had to go to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon in order to find faith. Needless to say, his audience was not impressed by the response of Jesus. All Jesus wanted of them and us is faith, for us to know and experience the faithfulness of God. Jesus with his arms spread wide upon the cross welcomes us in to his life, a life of trusting our Heavenly Father with our life so we can be people who can then by faith, welcome others into the welcome of Christ. In this way we can go into the world and and challenge those far from God to place their trust in God so that the world will have no chance of influencing us to worship the dead idols that govern the world. I pray that our faith can be a faith that can be given away. To the glory of God. Amen!