In Step With the Truth

 May 10 2021

Galatians 2

         As I said a few weeks ago I began my work in ministry being among the youth of the church. At one point I was on staff as the Youth Minister and as part of that position I was asked to help with lunch duty at the local Middle School which was just up the street. So, once a week I went and hung out with a bunch of sixth, seventh and eighth graders watching them as they ate and played out on the playground. In doing so I become aware of so many things the first being that everything you can eat is better with ranch dressing. I saw kids eat so much ranch dressing it made me a bit queasy watching them slurp up the stuff. The second thing that I became aware of, something I’m sure I knew all about when I was younger, is that lunchtime is the time when the student body gets separated into a bunch of neat and tidy divisions. There at the one table sat the jocks, the up and coming athletic heroes of the school and over there was a group of girls dressed to the nines with immaculate makeup and well groomed hair. And then there would be a table of band geeks and one for the science and math nerds and of course, there was one table for those who didn’t fit into any general category, the kids who seemed to be the rather invisible ones who slipped in and out of the room hoping they wouldn’t be noticed. Now, there was nothing more terrifying for one of these poor adolescent children that when they came to the end of the food line, their tray in hand loaded with food slathered in ranch dressing, of course, only to find that their respective table was too full for them to find a spot to sit at. Their face witnessed to their inner panic because they had to go somewhere and they had to decide quickly because there were always more classmates coming through the line. So, off they would go to sit in a place of exile with whoever hoping that their  good reputation would not be ruined by their hurried choice. Only then would the divisions that brought order to the cafeteria jungle would get a little blurred.

         Well, when I was told that I was to teach the confirmation class for the church where I was on staff, I remembered that cafeteria scene and as part of the confirmation lesson I decided to have the parents bring a meal that could be shared by the kids in the class. The only dividing I did was to have boys at one table and girls at another because you know, middle school boys are gross, end of story. Now, what ended up happening is that there at one table sat kids who were athletes, kids who were geeks, kids who were special needs and kids who just didn’t fit into any pigeon hole. I remember quite vividly one night looking through the window of the door where these kids were eating and seeing all these kids from very different walks of life eating and laughing and sharing life together. That perhaps was one of the best lessons that I ever had the pleasure of teaching.

         So, it goes without saying that there is something very important about being the church and our eating together. That is one of the sad side effects of the pandemic that its really hard for us to get together and eat as God’s family. There is a very good reason why eating together is so important in the life of the church and that is that eating together is a God given image of the wondrous future that God has planned for us. In the twenty fifth chapter of Isaiah we are given a glorious image when Isaiah declares, “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all people a feast of rich food, of aged wine well refined.” So, let’s pause for a moment and imagine that here is God, the the God of the angel armies but he does not have his battle armor on but instead he has on an apron as he is busy grilling up the steaks, my version of rich food, and he is being the gracious host bringing out the very best for those who are guests at his table. Then Isaiah continues, “And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, ‘Behold , this is our God; we have waited on him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” As we read this it is interesting that as we think about being at this great banquet of fine food that God has set forth and of course as we eat we will swallow our food but what is going to be swallowed up we are told is instead, death. There as we sit and eat, God takes the corner of his apron and with great love takes and wipes the tears that death has caused us all our years and God tenderly will wipe them all away. This is what God means when he speaks of his salvation.

         Now, I think it is extremely important to understand these verses from Isaiah to grasp just why in our scripture for today that Paul is making such a big deal about Peter acting like a middle school kid who can’t figure out just which table he ought to be eating at. You see, it is very clear from reading this verse in Isaiah and many others throughout the Old Testament that God’s salvation is for all nations, the Jewish nation and every other nation on the planet; everyone is invited to the banquet. Now, Peter and his Jewish buddies would most likely have protested such a thought as they had been forbidden from eating at any table that wasn’t a Jewish table as their Law commanded. But what, or rather who they forgot was Jesus. It is Jesus who is God’s salvation that Isaiah spoke of that we are to be glad and rejoice in. As God’s salvation, Jesus through his death and resurrection ushered in the final days and because of this the church is called to live out the final reality captured in the image of a great picnic where all will eat together.

         You see, Paul, more than perhaps anyone else in the early church, understood just what was at stake when the people who called themselves followers of Jesus did not, in his words, have a conduct that was not in step with the truth of the gospel. This is why he had no fear when it came to getting in the face of Peter because Paul knew Peter stood condemned. Peter we remember was at the Council at Jerusalem and said there was to be equality among the Jews and Gentiles.This was perhaps the reason why Paul gave Peter an earful. While Peter was at the church at Antioch he never gave it a second thought about whether he should grab a bite with his non-Jewish brothers and sisters. All was all fine and dandy until the day that some Jewish big wigs from Jerusalem showed up and all of a sudden Peter grabs his lunch and hurries over to eat with them all because Peter was afraid of what they might say about his eating with those people. When Paul got wind of what Peter had done, he blew a gasket and the next time he saw Peter he laid into him like a man possessed. You see, when Peter, a man who was good friends with Jesus during his days of ministry decided to stop eating with the non-Jewish brothers and sisters then even people like Barnabas, Pauls good friend and missionary companion, started grabbing his lunch to go eat elsewhere. So, Paul called Peter on the carpet right there in front of everybody and said, “Peter if you a Jew, thought it ok to live like a Gentile because you know, you were eating with them, then why would you run off to huddle with your Jewish brothers implying to your Gentile brothers and sisters that they were second class followers of Jesus and if they wanted to fly first class then they should just become Jewish themselves?You have to admit, Peter’s actions were really messed up. What we have to keep in mind about Peter though is that the reason for him becoming such a major hypocrite was that he feared the Jewish big wigs who had come up to Antioch from Jerusalem. When we know that it was fear that motivated Peter to be so hypocritical it isn’t hard to hear Paul’s words from the end of the fourteenth chapter of Romans which says that whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

         So, Paul points out that even someone like Peter could succumb to fear and through his fear end up in sin as he lived as if the salvation of Jesus had not changed everything. With Peter’s fear clearly in mind, Paul then goes on to state what the church at Galatia should have known that a person cannot act in a just manner simply by following the rules. No, what is needed to be just people is that they must place their faith in Jesus the anointed one of God. This little phrase, “faith in Jesus the anointed one of God” is loaded with meaning, pointing us to his being the Suffering Servant of God who suffered and died for each one of us to be for us the offering for the guilt of our sin. In doing so, Jesus became our hope of life because he died in our place. Faith then is what makes what we hope for, a life in right relationship with God, real to us. This faith is not of our on doing but is a gift from God who gives us the sight to at last see and live in the new creation, the new creation that came about at the resurrection of Jesus. All of this is what Paul means when he speaks of placing our faith in Jesus Christ. Yet Paul not only tells the readers of his letter that they are to know that a person becomes part of God’s just people by faith but they have also done what they know is the right thing to do and that is they have believed in Jesus Christ. So, they knew what they needed to do and they did what they knew to do which was to place their faith in Jesus Christ. Faith in Jesus Christ, this is how the justice that God commands of his people will be achieved not by adhering to the laws commands because what the Law does is to point to the justice which is outside and beyond the law.

         So, when Paul pounds it home that the only way for God’s people to bring his justice upon the earth is through faith in Jesus Christ then he asks the rather obvious question, “But if in our endeavor to be just people in Christ, we too are found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Here I believe Paul is pointing back to his encounter with Peter, one who obviously had faith in Jesus Christ yet found himself driven by fear sinfully fracturing the unity of the church. This was certainly not what was supposed to happen. No, we are to understand that when Jesus died upon the cross he died in our place, dying the death that we deserved. This is why he is the acceptable offering we give back to God for our sin. So, if this is true, then we are to live knowing that we have died in Christ, died to a life condemned by the law, died to a life enslaved to sin. Now, because of Jesus, the old us is considered dead and in Jesus we have been risen with him from the dead to live a new life in God’s new creation.

         So, here in this second chapter of Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia, he has laid out the reason for his letter and in the last few sentences of this second chapter, Paul gives this church his plan to resolve the problem. It is clear that the people of this church have rightly understood that in order to be in right standing with God that they had to have faith in Jesus Christ. Nothing else could provide their salvation, not obeying the law, not hanging out with people who tried to keep the law, nothing could save them except what Jesus had accomplished through his death upon the cross and his resurrection from the dead. What Jesus had done is to create a new reality in which all could live, a reality that could be entered in through the gift of faith that God created within the hearts of people, a faith that gave people sight to see God’s new creation being brought about before their eyes. This is what was meant when Paul writes about being in Christ, it is an entering into a life united with Jesus and all those united to him as well, a life marked by the justice God commands. This is what is known as the first act of God’s grace, his justifying grace which in the Church of the Nazarene is also held to happen at the same time as our new birth and our adoption into the family of God. This first act of God’s grace when received by faith affects our relationship with our Heavenly Father, that because of the sacrifice of Jesus our sins are forgiven and we are given a not guilty verdict when Jesus is the perfect offering for us to present to God. This first act of grace is what Paul speaks of when he writes about being “in Christ”.

         Now, this is wonderful news, that we can have a right relationship with our Heavenly Father because of what Jesus has done for us. Yet, as amazing as this act of grace is, Paul teaches us throughout his writings that there is indeed more, a second act of grace and it is this second act of grace which is one of the main points of Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia. This is what Paul is referring to when he writes at the end of the second chapter, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave his life for me.” First, by faith in the grace of Jesus Christ we find ourselves in Christ, in a right relationship, the same relationship Jesus, the Son has always had with the Father. But here Paul speaks of Christ in him which is different. Now, as Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians, God is within him to will and to work for his good pleasure. This experience of the Spirit of Christ uniting with our spirits empowers us so that no longer do we have to be enslaved to the power of sin that has long held us back but instead we are free to be God’s agents of righteousness as he has always created us to be. This experience is the center piece of the beliefs of the Church of the Nazarene, an experience they call entire sanctification. This is the possibility by faith of being able to completely overcome sin’s control so that the life and power of God make us completely holy unto God. While there is much mystery with this experience, what is clear is why Paul speaks of this experience here. Listen to what John writes in the fourth chapter of his first letter, “So, we have come to know and to believe the love God has for us. God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him. By this is love perfected in us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment because as he is so also are we in the world. There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear.”You see, Paul knew that when we abide in God and God abides in us, this is when we realize that this is the love we were meant to experience; this love we experience when communing with God, this is as perfect as love can get. And it is this perfect love that so fills us up that there just is no longer any room for fear to find a place to live in us. Fear is thrown out because love has filled us up. What a contrast to Peter who out of fear broke the fragile unity of the early church. Pauls answer to this controlling fear is Christ in us, a controlling and compelling love. This is what Jesus hoped for when he prayed with his disciples on the night he was betrayed as found in the seventeenth chapter of John’s gospel “The glory that you have given me I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and you in me, so that they are perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” The oneness of the early church that was broken by the fear of Peter is restored as Jesus tells us, when Christ is in us, so that we have a perfect oneness not only with each other but also so that we might have a oneness with God. This is the way the world will witness that something has entered into our world, a salvation to be received with joy and gladness. In this way we can know we are loved in the very same way that Jesus, the Son of God has always been loved by our Heavenly Father. This is the perfect love that casts out all fear, the fear which is the root of all sin, the sin whose price is death. This then is our hope that one day at the great banquet we will celebrate the promised end of death. To God be the glory!Amen.

Strangers No More

 May 2 2021

Acts 15:1-21

         As many of you know I am a big sci-fi fan. I like Star-Wars, Marvel Comics and currently I am watching all of the episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation which originally aired in the late eighties. These episodes are just as great as they were the first time. What I have discovered about these sci-fi shows is that even though the technology is portrayed as being advanced and pretty cool what drives the story is actually something very old, that being, the basic ways people are to treat each other. You know, treating one another as you would want to be treated, justice for everyone even the weak and undeserving, working together for the common good; these very ancient values are still what makes the story understandable even one thousand years in the future. It doesn’t matter if on these shows you see humans interacting together or if they are dealing with some strange alien beings, the same basic rules seems to apply which is also rather interesting isn’t it? Its as if even far in the future people know that whether one is dealing with somebody who is like them or if they are dealing with somebody drastically different, the rules of basic conduct still are what we turn to. Now, you might be wondering just what does all this talk of how aliens being treated on some sci-fi show has to do with Jesus and the life we live together as his followers and the answer is that it is more relevant than you think. You see, we may not have to ever deal with aliens from outer space but I’m pretty sure we will have to deal with people who are alien to the way we live, people who have different ways of living, people who look different, people who have strange ways of looking at the world, at least to us, and the question is, just what do we do with that? Will we insist that they become like us before we will no longer judge them as being somewhat less human than we are or will we be able to live with the tension that exists between our differences? This, as it turns out is one of the central questions of this new future world life that the Holy Spirit was forming in the book of Acts and is still at work forming out of us today, this question of how to handle the dangers of strangers. By this, I mean, how do we deal with people who Jesus has saved but do things different than we do, do we judge them and therefore insist that that our response of faith is the only right way to believe or do we just love them and let God sort it all out in the end? This is the fundamental question of our scripture for today.

Our scripture from the fifteenth chapter of Acts is about the first council held by the early church. What brought about the need for the early church to hold its first council meeting in Jerusalem was the great problem of the conversion of the people of the nations, the people known as the Gentiles. On the surface, the problem appeared that there was no clear answer as to what to do about those who were not of the Jewish faith who had come to place their faith in God’s suffering servant, Jesus. It was the suffering and death of Jesus that we are told in the fifty third chapter of Isaiah that was necessary so that God might have an offering for our guilt for the sins we have committed. This is what the Ethiopian had learned from Philip in last weeks scripture lesson. The actions of the suffering servant were to bring forth a new era, one where people once excluded from intimacy with God, those such as eunuchs and foreigners, would now be brought near, to serve God and to experience his joy in the house of prayer for all people. Yet in spite of prophecies such as this from the fifty sixth chapter of Isaiah, there were some of the people of Israel in the time after the ascension of Jesus who felt that foreigners had to become Jews in order to be in right standing with God. Paul and Barnabas, two of the early missionaries of the church, came against this idea because they had seen first hand how God had saved  the people of the nations who had no knowledge of Judaism. So, its pretty easy to see that these two ways of considering the salvation of the Gentiles were pretty far apart and this is why the early church gathered together to consider the matter. It was Peter who got right to the heart of the matter which was this: are people saved by faith through believing in the gospel or does salvation happen because of any additional action on the part of the believer? As Peter reminded his Jewish brothers, their salvation was by faith alone just as it was that way for the Gentiles.

         As you read Peter’s account what begins to be clear is that there is more to the issue than whether or not one is saved by faith. As Peter told his Jewish audience, they, the very people of God, had been saved by faith, of this no one could argue. So, if the Jews had been saved through faith one has to wonder just what was the underlying issue that really needed to be addressed? Well, one clue as to what the real problem is found in the nineteenth and twentieth verses of this fifteenth chapter of the book of Acts. There we hear James the chief elder of the church of Jerusalem, put forth the answer as to what is necessary for the Gentiles to do saying that they should abstain from the things polluted by idols, abstain from sexual immorality, and to abstain from what has been strangled and to abstain from blood.This answer of James might surprise some people who wrongly believe that since we are not Jewish there is nothing more for us to do then to believe in Jesus and do as we please, or at the very least love each other. No, James is telling us that there are a few rules that have to be abided by, rules that have been taken from the book of Leviticus. It is as if the Holy Spirit is telling the early church that the answer to the future lies far back in the past in a book of Holy Scripture that was over a thousand years old.When one examines these rules set forth by James what is found is that the members of the church council searched in the book of Leviticus under the power of the Holy Spirit, searching for the places where God had spoken about the strangers living in the midst of the people of Israel. There in the seventeenth and eighteenth chapter of Leviticus is where God set forth rules of conduct for those strangers who joined themselves with the people of Israel. This is very similar language of Paul who in the eleventh chapter of the book of Romans where he compares the Gentile believers as being wild olive branches that have been grafted upon the nourishing root of the domesticated olive tree, the people of Israel. As people of the nations we have to understand that our salvation is from the Jews just as Jesus teaches us in the fourth chapter of the gospel of John.

         So, when faced with foreigners coming to salvation through Jesus, the early church understood that this situation was much like the situation was for the people of Israel in the days of Moses. This understanding is very important for us as we try and get to the real issue that prompted the necessity of the first church council. If you do a quick study of strangers in the life of the people of Israel within the book of Leviticus what you find is that there is no mention of strangers before the sixteenth chapter. Then in the next eleven chapters of Leviticus the mention of strangers is found quite frequently which is rather interesting. It quite naturally makes you wonder what happened in the sixteenth chapter to cause this change? The answer as to what has happened in the sixteenth chapter which opened the way for strangers to mingle in the life of the people of Israel was the Day of Atonement. This was one day God commanded his people to set apart each year for the atoning of the sins that the people of Israel had committed over the past year. It was one of the most solemn times marked off by fasting and repentance. In the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus we read how God, speaking through Moses tells the people that on this day that there were two actions that would happen, the first is that they would have their sins atoned for and the second action was that they would be cleansed of impurity. This helps explain the unusual requirement that God set forth that there were to be two goats to be offered up, one was for the forgiveness of the peoples sins and the second was to cleanse the people of their impurity. Now, as we find in the seventeenth chapter of Leviticus, the life of the flesh is in the blood and God gave the blood of the first goat upon the altar to atone for the souls of his people, for it is the blood that makes atonement for the life of the people. So, what this tells us is that God has made a way through this sacrifice that his judgment against the sins of the people would be poured out upon this animal, its life given in place of the life of the people in order that God might show mercy to his people. In this way, justice remains because the guilt of the sin is dealt with while at the same time allowing God to extend mercy to his sinful people. It is important that we understand that God has made a way for mercy to triumph over judgment in order for us to understand the purpose of the other goat that God required. This other goat was not sacrificed but instead upon his head were laid the hands of the high priest who placed upon the goat the sins of the people. Then this goat was sent out into the wilderness, carrying with him the sins of the people.This goat was to fulfill the necessity of the cleansing of the people of their defilement.Yet just what was this defilement that had been ceremoniously sent out into the wild places? Well, as we read through Leviticus what we find is that this idea of impurity or uncleanness has to do with those who were tearing apart the fabric of their community. It was the gossips and those who spoke wrongly about others, these were the ones God declared unclean and marked with a dreaded skin condition so that they had to be put outside the community so that they would do no further harm. So, at its root, what is meant by impurity is those things that tear apart the community and the cause of this disruption to a community is judgment. The reason for this is easy to understand because when a person judges another they present themselves as being superior in some way to the one they are judging. No longer is one able to love another person as themselves because the other person is now not on equal footing because they are judged to be in some way, less than the one judging them. So, what happens on the Day of Atonement is that as God has allowed mercy to triumph over judgment with the sacrifice of the first goat, with the second goat the people are to send away their sins against each other, the sins whose root is an attitude of somehow being superior than others which prevents one from seeing others as their equals. Nowhere was this more true than when the people of Israel interacted with the strangers, the foreigners, the aliens in their midst. How easy it was for them to look down their nose at these pitiful creatures who God had not chosen. This attitude is what Isaiah was addressing in the fifty eighth chapter where he writes specifically about the Day of Atonement. We know this to be true because he writes about the fasting which was almost exclusively done on that day. The people of Israel wondered why God did not seem pleased with them even though they had fasted just as he required. God told his people, “Is this not the fast that I chose: to lose the bonds of wickedness , to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the bruised go free, and to break every yoke?” We need to pause here to grasp the importance of what is being said because what God is pointing out is that this situation referred to is one of slavery, the ultimate situation of inequality where one is treated as a second class person. God then tells his people the fast that he desires telling us, “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh?” You see the fast God requires is to see everyone as your equal especially those who others might judge as being beneath you, those who are poor and in need. This is why after God tells the people about the necessity of the Day of Atonement he further tells them in the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus that when a stranger would journey with the people of Israel they were to do them no wrong. They were to treat the stranger as one of their own and they were to love the stranger as they would love themselves. And why were they to have this attitude? They were to treat the stranger as one who was on equal terms with themselves because they themselves had been a stranger down in Egypt. You see, what God is saying here is that instead of focusing on the differences that they found between themselves and the strangers among them they were to instead focus on what they had in common, the experience of being a stranger. They were to remember how it felt to be treated as something less than human, to remember the unease they had as they were looked upon with judgmental glances and to hold fast to those memories as a way to temper how they treated strangers who now looked for mercy and not judgment from them.

Now, it seems like we have gotten far off track from our story in the book of Acts but in all actuality we are right where we need to be because the issue at hand is the same issue addressed in the book of Leviticus and the book of Isaiah. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and this means that now he is the once for all offering for our atonement. As the Suffering Servant he bore our judgment suffering and dying to be the offering that we present to God to be the atonement for our sins. In Jesus once again we see how mercy has triumphed over judgment. Jesus has made a way for all of the people on the planet to be made right with God, to be declared righteous on account of what Jesus has done for them. This is what has set the stage for what we read in the fifteenth chapter of the book of Acts. What has caused the issue is that some of the Jewish followers of Jesus have forgotten the full picture of God’s atonement of their sin as is portrayed in the account of the Day of Atonement that was in their scriptures. They had forgotten that as God allowed Jesus to bear away the judgment so that we might experience God’s mercy so too in that moment our judgmental attitude was to have been bore away because Jesus made us all equals by making our response to his actions be nothing but faith. And if we are all equals at the foot of the cross then what becomes of judgment, this idea that one is in some way better than another so much so that they are in a position to lord over another? This idea is abolished. The Jewish followers of Jesus thought that the answer to what this new society of believers is to look like is uniformity, that everyone should look like them and act like them. Yet to do so would have witnessed to the false idea that not everything  has changed because of Jesus. Jesus has, through what he has done on the cross, transformed the world; he has made all things new. This means that now, all who place their faith in Jesus live their lives before the face of God and their faith response to God is theirs to live out as their faith leads them. As Paul writes in the fourteenth chapter of Romans, “Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls.” In other words, we are to leave the judging up to God so that God can leave the loving up to us.

         This helps us to understand those strange stipulations that James put upon the Gentile believers, those that had been read in the synagogues for generations. I believe the key to understanding these rules is found in the  statement against drinking blood which was that one should not do so because the life of the flesh is in the blood. It is this life within the blood that is given for the atonement of sins.  What has to be destroyed to have a oneness with God is the life of the flesh, the life ordered and lived on the strength of our own selves.This life of the flesh is what one must not rely upon. We cannot live by the desires and cravings of the flesh which find their greatest strength in our sexual impulses. We cannot live by our desires because it is the life of the flesh that destroys the oneness of our community. Only through God’s Spirit are we able to find fellowship together. The oneness that we have through our faith in what Jesus has done for us must not be ruined through our giving into the desires of our flesh that oppose the good work that God is doing. So, instead of judging one another which causes others to doubt their faith, I believe God instead calls us instead to encourage one another, to strengthen each other’s faith so that no one becomes hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. This is what we should do when we know that we together share in Christ who is our life. Amen.

         

The Quest for Jesus

 April 25 2021

Acts 8:26-40

         The way that God led me into the ministry was through doing ministry with youth. Yes, what a surprise, I used to be young. I could actually stay up to three in the morning until the last rowdy child decided to go to bed. Needless to say I have a lot of great memories from loving on the young people of the church. One of the memories that this weeks scripture brought to mind had to do with helping with a youth camp when my son, Matt was in eighth grade. This was a Moravian church camp and because I was a Moravian for twenty years, I was asked to do the program for this week long camp because there weren’t any Moravian pastors able to do so that week. So, I and my long time friend, Dan, who also was a Moravian at the time, put together a program and off we went to spend a week with a group of middle schoolers in the muggy heat of June. Well, when you say yes to God, God seems to always bless your willingness and Dan and I were abundantly blessed that week. We still laugh and talk about how God showed up in so many ways. One of the strange things that happened is that one young man on Wednesday of the week came up to me and said that he wanted to be baptized.  Now, I don’t know how things work in your world but in my world at church camp kids don’t randomly ask to be baptized. I wasn’t sure what to do; nothing like this had ever happened to me so I had no frame of reference as to what to do. I spoke with the camp counselors that were from his church about this boys request and they thought that I should just let his pastor baptize him at his home church. So, I thought I will let him know what the people from his church thought was best and that would be the end of it. Well, that wasn’t the end of it because he was not satisfied with that plan and insisted that he wanted to be baptized in the lake that was the focal point of the campgrounds. Finally, the last day of the camp arrived and of course as we are loading up the vehicles to head home, sure enough this young man came and asked me once more if I would baptize him in the lake. Fortunately for me, I had been talking with one of the camp counselors at the moment when this boy made his request and as I hemmed and hawed around this counselor quoted from our scripture for today, adapting the question that this Ethiopian man had asked Philip, “See, here is water! What prevents him from being baptized?” And so with that, this camp counselor, this boy and I went wading into the water, and in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit this young man was baptized. Just like the Ethiopian in our story, I don’t know what ever became of this young man, whether or not the baptism that he desired so much made any lasting impact on his life but I do know that I, like Philip, was following the Spirit’s lead.

         The Spirit’s leading is what begins our scripture story for today. The book of Acts is actually called the Acts of the Apostles but it just as easily could be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit because over and over again it is the Holy Spirit who is causing the action. While the story begins with Philip hearing a message from an angel make no mistake the Holy Spirit is very involved. The message Philip hears is that he was to get up and go south, south from Samaria, south past Jerusalem to Gaza, close to the Egyptian border. Now, it seems like this shouldn’t haven’t been to big a deal until you study a map and find that this is an eighty mile journey to be covered by foot. But even so, there was no hesitation on the part of Philip; he just got up and went.What is amazing is that what we learn as we go along in the story is that what God is doing is bringing together two people who are separated by eighty miles that had to be walked by foot so that God might be able to reveal himself to one of them. We have to be in awe of the way God is able to put in motion plans that may just bring one more person closer to the reality of his love for them. What we see in this story is the truth of what we state the Church of the Nazarene believes, that God and his favor is at work in the lives of people before they ever come to have a right relationship with him. This is what is called prevenient grace, the grace of God working in the lives of people drawing them ever closer to a love relationship with himself. Now, what is also revealed in our scripture story is that one of the ways that God’s grace touches the people that are far from him is through the people who are already in a right relationship with him. You and I can be used in a very similar way that God used Philip. We can be bearers of God’s grace which is something all of us should think long and hard about.

         Well, the person God sent Philip to intersect with is a man from Ethiopia, the country just below Egypt. This man was a court official in the court of the Queen of Ethiopia, a trusted official who was in charge of her treasury. We are told that this man had traveled to Jerusalem to worship. Here we have to push the pause button because when we understand that this man was a eunuch, a man who had been mutilated in order to ensure the Queen’s safety, then we also know that in the twenty first chapter of Deuteronomy that he would not have been allowed to be part of the assembly who worshipped in the Temple. We have to wonder if this man had known this fact or had he traveled a very long distance only to find himself on the outside looking in? While the Law seems rather cruel it isn’t hard to figure out that the reason for not allowing those who had been mutilated to be part of the Temple worship was that the Temple and its worship was supposed to be a picture of a perfect world that God was trying to bring about, one where the people are whole and holy with God dwelling in the midst of his people. 

So, after what had to be a disappointing journey, this man from Ethiopia was headed back home. There is much speculation if this man was a Jew or a Gentile however knowing that he desired to worship in Jerusalem and the fact that he had the sacred scroll from which he was reading from, all of this points us to the real possibility that he as indeed a Jew. He may have been a descendant of the part of the people of Israel who had gone down to Egypt as recorded in the book of Jeremiah. Its important to remember this because it is implied that this man had heard the story of the suffering servant from the book of Isaiah but no matter how many times he had heard it, the story made no headway in his mind. So, he decides that on his way home he would study this story of the suffering servant once again. It is precisely at this moment that the Holy Spirit tells Philip to go over and join the chariot of this Ethiopian. It is as Philip is running alongside the chariot that he over hears the Ethiopian speaking the words from the book of Isaiah.The encounter between this Ethiopian and Philip thus begins with a question asked by Philip, “Do you understand what you are reading?” I can only imagine how fast the chariot came to a halt after hearing this voice of a total stranger who seems to understand what has been a most difficult passage of Scripture. The Ethiopian in response tells Philip, “How can I understand unless someone guides me? This question tells us that the Ethiopian was humble enough to ask for help, to seek guidance in order to understand the prophecies of God. So, he invites Philip, a total stranger, to come up into the chariot and sit beside him and teach him. The passage of Scripture that confused this Ethiopian was from the fifty third chapter of Isaiah, the seventh and eighth verses which stated, “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” What the Ethiopian could not figure out is just who is the subject of this passage? Just who is this one who was like a sheep, who complacently accepted the injustice against him? Just who was it that had been humiliated, who was denied justice, whose very life was taken without cause? Was this Isaiah describing his own experience or was this written about someone else? What the Ethiopian was lacking was the key that unlocked the scriptures of the scroll, the key called Jesus. It was only in the light of the cross that so much of the scriptures suddenly became clear. This good news of Jesus is what Philip told to this traveler from Ethiopia. When looking at the different versions of the fifty third chapter of Isaiah, it also becomes somewhat understandable why these verses, may have been of greater interest for this Ethiopian. What Isaiah was saying in the eighth verse of this fifty third chapter is that the suffering servant experienced the dishonor of being unable to have children. This is what was meant by stating about  the suffering servant that as for his generation who considered that he was cut off from the land of the living. The word translated as “generation” refers to one’s lineage so what is implied is that what has been taken from the suffering servant was that he was left without children and no one even gave this fact any thought. The people around the suffering servant were unaware of the tragedy of the servant having been left without any legacy and not only that they were also unaware that the reason for this was the fact that he was sacrificing himself in obedience to God. I believe that it was this fact that the suffering servant was willing to sacrifice himself even to the point of giving up having children this is what touched this man who had been rendered unable to have children himself. This man from Ethiopia had experienced an injustice just as this suffering servant had. So, in some way, this verse was helping this man see how God might take his brokenness and use his brokenness to further the work of God. This was a hopeful idea for a man who had been unable to worship in the assembly at Jerusalem.

Well, as Philip would have helped to explain just how it was Jesus who was the suffering servant that Isaiah had prophesied about, it is highly likely that Philip would have continued on in the fifty third chapter. It is in the following verses in the tenth and eleventh verses that the reasoning behind the servants suffering is revealed. There we read, “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him, it was the Lord who put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days.Out of the anguish of his soul he will see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant make many to be accounted to be righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.” Here it is explained that what God desired to come out of the servant’s suffering is that he would be an offering for the guilt felt by those who felt far from God’s people just like the man from Ethiopia. How relieved and amazed he must have been that even though he was not able to enter the Temple to offer the required guilt offerings for his sins, those things that came between him and God, now in this suffering servant God had made a way for his guilt to be dealt with. Here in verse ten the prophet Isaiah speaks directly to the one reading his prophesy and he tells him that if the Servant’s suffering is to have any meaning at all then what has to be done is that each one of us must take this broken Servant and offer him back to God to stand in our place.What has happened to the Servant, the dishonor he felt when he was cut off from having a living legacy, the dishonor of being buried with the wicked, all of this only makes sense when we learn that he was willing to suffer all of this even unto death because of us, to be the way that our consciences might be healed of its guilt, once and for all. How amazed the Ethiopian must have been to learn that the brokenness of this Servant, the Servant whose name was Jesus, could be used by God for such a healing purpose. And if this was true for this Servant of God then perhaps God could even take and use his brokenness as well.

Isaiah also prophesied that not only will the Servant’s suffering and death be for all people the necessary guilt offering but when this offering is accepted  then instead of a barren life now the life of the Servant will be fruitful.  Isaiah tells us that the Servant will see his offspring; he will make many to be righteous just as he is righteous.This is the whole point of the fifty third chapter, that, yes, the Servant described here suffers horribly, and dies without receiving justice but what gives purpose and meaning to the suffering and death of the Servant is that God is willing to allow the Servant to be an offering for us and when this offering is accepted then we are told, that the Servant is satisfied. Our acceptance of his work on our behalf is what made all of what the Servant had to endure worth everything. What satisfies Jesus, the suffering Servant, is the knowledge that what he endured, the shame, the suffering, the loss and the cross is knowing that what he accomplished through this is that many have become righteous because of him, that the iniquities of the many have most certainly been borne away.

The Ethiopian upon hearing of how the suffering Servant had allowed himself to be cut off from the land of the living, to endure the shame of having no living legacy in order to be true to what God demanded of him this must have certainly be especially understood by one from whom this had been taken from him as well. Yet to go further, to understand that this servant gave up so much, that he suffered so much, that he willingly went unto death as a sheep to the shearer, that the Servant did this all to be an offering to God for the guilt of our sin, this must have most assuredly broke this Ethiopian. Then to read further how what the suffering Servant endured only has meaning and purpose if you and I accept what he took upon himself and believe that this he has done for us, this the Ethiopian rightly understood, demanded a response. The response required, Philip explained, is baptism, the washing of the water symbolizing a death and a beginning. As Paul so powerfully explains in the beginning of the sixth chapter of Romans, “Do you not know that all who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” What we die to is a life that is ignorant of what Jesus our suffering servant has accomplished for us through his willingness to suffer and die in order that he might be for the world God’s chosen offering for the guilt of sin. Now that we know what Jesus has done, that he is the one who is offered in our place in order to satisfy God, now if his suffering and dying is to have any meaning and purpose then we must believe that this offering was for our guilt. When we place our faith in this offering, this gift given to us by God, a gift we know as grace, then as Isaiah tells us we become one of the many accounted as righteous because of the Servant. This is the newness of life proclaimed after the baptism waters wash over us. This newness of life, a life now accounted righteous because of our acknowledgement and belief in what our suffering Servant Jesus has done for us, this is what that Ethiopian man experienced that day at the hands of Philip, the God sent stranger who helped bring him into the grace of God.

The author of the book of Acts, Luke had a very important reason for telling this story of this Ethiopian eunuch at this place in this book because I believe that he wanted his readers to recognize the prophecies of Isaiah were coming true just as God had promised. But there is more because as we read further in the book of Isaiah , in the fifty sixth chapter we read this, “Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say,’ The Lord will certainly separate me from his people’; and let not the eunuch say, ‘I am a dry tree.’For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name, better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.” What God is saying here is that no longer do those who are broken have to focus on their brokenness but rather through the one who was broken for them, there is a better future than we can even ask or imagine. Jesus our suffering servant through being our offering for the guilt of our sin has given a new life to not only Ethiopian eunuchs, but also to all those who are alienated and foreign to God, so that through Jesus, everyone can at last come home to the God who loves them. To God be the glory! Amen.!

A Life lived by Power or by Promise

 April 18 2021

Acts 6:8-15, 7:44-60

         Have you ever thought about what it might be like to be the first to achieve something? I mean what must have it been like to be Magellan and be the first to sail completely around the world in a sailing ship? Or what kind of thrill must it have been for Sir Hilary to lay claim that he was the first one to climb to the top of Mount Everest? And we all remember that it was Alexander Graham Bell who was the first to send a voice message through the wires changing our world forever. There is something about being first that people quite naturally are in awe of. We all remember Neil Armstrong’s one small step for a man one giant leap for mankind as he was the first to step foot on the moon on a day in the summer of 1969 that none of us will forget. It is when something is first this is when that particular event is seared into our memories. I mean can anyone recall the second time someone stepped foot on the moon? Or does any one remember the name of the second person to reach the summit of Mount Everest? No, the ones who are remembered are the ones who went first, the ones who changed the course of history, the ones who expanded what we as humanity considered to be possible.

         Now, with all of this in mind we turn our thoughts to what is a first in the life of the church, the martyrdom of Stephen. We have to all admit it, don’t we, that this death of Stephen, the first death that happened because of a person’s faith in Jesus Christ, that this first seems vastly different from all of the other firsts that we celebrate, doesn’t it? I mean if we polled good church going folk as to just who was the first martyr of the church most of them I suspect probably could not name him and even if they could name him I suspect that they would not know why it was all that important to even know who had the distinction of being first. Yet, regardless of whether people recognize Stephen or not what is important in his death is that here was someone whose death perfectly echoed the death of Jesus. So, just as all the worldly firsts expand the range of human possibility, here in Stephen the range of human possibility is also expanded so that now we understood that not only could one live like Jesus but even more, one could also die like Jesus, offering themselves up willingly with forgiveness upon their lips. The importance of such a first is that it was a first that did not come about through power, through human efforts as so many of the firsts we remember have happened, but instead this was a first that happened because of faith in the rock solid promise of God. Stephen’s first then was one that happened through promise not power and that is why we should be in awe of his witness.

         What led to this witness of Stephen, what we call his martyrdom, which is merely the Greek word for witness, is what we read about in our scripture for today. The story begins with a good problem that the early church was facing, that being that there was an increase in the number of disciples.  This caught the early church off guard and they found that there were people who were being neglected not because of any meanness on anyone’s part but rather just because the church found themselves overwhelmed. Now, the ones who brought forth the complaint of neglect we are told is the group of Greek-speaking Jews. These were Jews who had previously lived in the many numerous countries that had been conquered by Greece and had taken up the habits and language of the Greeks. These Jews were contrasted with the group of Jews referred to as the Hebrews. These were the Jews who, so to speak, had never left home, people firmly planted in the land of Judaea. These were people who as their name suggests spoke the Hebrew language and were faithful Temple attendees unlike the Greek speaking Jews who found it difficult to make it back to Jerusalem to worship simply because of the distance involved. Yet, despite how difficult it was to travel to Jerusalem some made it back there and would live there and it was these elderly Greek speaking Jews who found themselves on the short end of the stick so to speak in the early churches efforts to show the love of Jesus. So, the twelve apostles called a church meeting and told the church to pick out seven men who could see to it that the poor would get fed regardless of whether they spoke Hebrew or Greek. Now, interestingly enough the men who were chosen to serve were all Greek speaking Jews perhaps as a nod to the fact that the complaint was brought up by Greek speaking Jews and therefore the problem would be solved by the calling forth of Greek speaking Jews. Stephen was one of the seven men who was chosen. What is also interesting is that what might seem to us to be a menial task without much spiritual significance was for the early church thought of much differently. They said that the men who would serve the food had to be those who had a good reputation, men who were full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom.The early church obviously understood that there was something extremely spiritual about serving food to others, that perhaps in the midst of waiting tables there was perhaps deeper conversations happening, perhaps even healings occurring as the poor came to receive their food. This is what is implied when we read that Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great signs and wonders among the people.  Now, in performing these miracles Stephen made himself an object of other peoples attention, people who did not understand that with the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus the whole world had been transformed. Now, the Holy Spirit that had anointed Jesus anointed all who professed faith in him. This Holy Spirit was the promised power from on high that Jesus had taught was going to be poured out on all people. It was this power that anointed Stephen and it was this power that it seems was the cause of those Jews, who were not believers in Jesus, to be irritated by what Stephen was doing. Most likely they knew that if people experienced this power for themselves than more and more people would come to be part of this Jesus movement leaving their old Jewish ways behind. The problem was that this same Holy Spirit that gave the power to heal others was also a power that gave Stephen the ability to refute the arguments of those who brought complaints against him. So, these evil men who had come against Stephen began to stir up trouble finding false witnesses to give a report that Stephen spoke against the holy place, the Temple and that Stephen spoke against the Law. They reportedly got this idea from what Stephen had spoke about Jesus, that Jesus had said that he would destroy the Temple and that Jesus was going to change the customs that Moses had given to them. Now, Jesus had never said any of these things. As we read in the second chapter of John, Jesus said destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up, referring to the Temple of his body. And in the fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus also said that he came not to destroy the Law but instead to fulfill the Law. So, we know that these men who were resentful at the power resting upon Stephen had twisted the very words of Jesus in order to condemn Stephen.

         Well, at least Stephen was given the chance to try and defend himself. The way he does this is to give a rather lengthy sermon which traces the history of the people of Israel from the days of Abraham forward. Now, to reach the proper conclusion as to the point Stephen was trying to make from his lecture on the history of the people of Israel we need to fast forward to the end where Stephen condemns his condemners by telling them that they are stiff-necked people who were uncircumcised in heart and ears, people who always resist the Holy Spirit just as their fathers had done. When we understand this is the reason for his lengthy telling of the history of the people of Israel then we cannot but be in wonder that the Holy Spirit had always been present in the life of God’s people. We have to ask ourselves then just what the Holy Spirit was doing down through history that was constantly being rejected?  Perhaps what Paul wrote in the second chapter of his first letter to the church at Corinth may help us figure out what the Holy Spirit’s purpose was. There we read, “What God has prepared for those who love him God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything; even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit that is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now, we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we might understand the things freely given to us by God.” This teaching of Paul helps us understand that what the history of the people of Israel could be thought of was God continually revealing himself to them in an ever greater degree. Even though he chose one man, Abraham, out of the world his hope always was that through this one man and his offspring the whole world would be no longer under the curse but instead experience the full blessing of God. What Abraham would discover is that this life of blessing came through trusting in the promise of God even in the face of uncertainty. What God was revealing to Abraham then was that he was a God who gives life to the dead and brings into existence those things which do not exist. Out of a man one hundred years old God brought a son who would be the beginning of the nation of Israel. What we see then throughout the life of the history of the descendants of Abraham is that in every situation God reveals himself to be a God who is to be trusted no matter how dire the circumstances. When Joseph found himself far from home, and afflicted in Egypt could God rescue him? The answer is that God did rescue him and God also gave Joseph favor and wisdom before Pharaoh. Then much later, God’s people found themselves enslaved by the Egyptians and they cried out to God and they wondered, could God set them free? The answer is yes, God could set them free and create a new people from them. Yet in spite of God’s continual demonstration of his power and his faithfulness to his promise, God’s people refused to place their trust in what the Holy Spirit had revealed to them. The people of Israel again and again refused to have faith in the God who was ever faithful to them. God desired that they would trust and obey him; this was more important to God than any empty worship ritual.

         Finally, Stephen gets to the mention of how the prophets had announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, the coming of Jesus. This just as God had done many times before was the Holy Spirit revealing the innermost depths of the heart of God, a God who desired to save all of the people of his creation. This revelation was given in its fullest and clearest vision in the life of Daniel. There in the seventh chapter of the book named for him is where we read of the one called the Son of Man. The reason that this vision is so important in understanding the promise and plan of God is that as you study the gospels, Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man more times than any other title, even titles such as the Son of God and Christ or Messiah. Jesus again and again points his disciples back to the revelation given to Daniel. In his vision, Daniel saw the one like a son of man coming on the clouds of heaven. The phrase, “coming on the clouds of heaven” was a way of speaking about God because only God could ride the clouds like a chariot. So, what Daniel saw could best be described as a divine human. This divine human Daniel records came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. The Ancient of Days was again another way of speaking of the God of Israel. Then Daniel records that the Ancient of Days gave dominion, and glory  and a kingdom to this Son of Man so that all peoples, nations and languages might serve him. The dominion of this Son of Man, as Daniel records it, is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom is one that will not be destroyed. As Stephen was about to be stoned to death, what was revealed to him through the Holy Spirit was a vision of Jesus standing at the right hand of God and when Stephen saw this he exclaimed, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”You see, there in a moment, the faith of Stephen became sight. He had faith that this Jesus who had been crucified and raised from the dead was the very same one that Daniel had seen in his vision. Stephen believed in what the Holy Spirit had revealed that Jesus was indeed the divine man who had  come from heaven and had been received back to heaven to stand before the Ancient of Days. It was this profession of faith by Stephen which outraged his accusers causing them to cast him out of the city and stone him.

         With the anger of this mob, Stephen then became the first witness, the first martyr of the church. Stephen endured the horrible pain of his death not by any feat of great human power but only through the faithfulness of the promise of God. You see, the reason the vision of the Son of Man was given to Daniel was that he and the people of Israel were enduring great suffering on account of their faith. The stories of Daniel include the faithful being thrown into the fiery furnace, and being thrown into the lion’s den. What gave hope to Daniel in these difficult days was the promise that the kingdom of the Son of Man was going to be the last kingdom standing. Not only that but what is also revealed to Daniel was that the kingdom of the Son of Man was going to be given to the saints of the most high. This is what Stephen believed. Stephen had faith that beyond these days of suffering and persecution there would be endless days for him and all the saints in the kingdom ruled by the Son of Man. Even though this kingdom did not yet exist in all its fullness, Stephen knew that his God was the God who could bring into existence those things which do not exist. This is what the Holy Spirit had continually revealed throughout the history of the people of Israel. This is what the Holy Spirit revealed in Stephens life, what could only be described as a foretaste of the glorious future to come. So, Stephen knew the promise of God was certain and therefore he had no reason to use his power to create any other outcome than to let his life be a witness to the faithfulness of the promises of God.

         What this story of the church’s first martyr, the story of Stephen, does then is to cause us to ask ourselves just what is it that drives our life, our own power or the faith we have in God? Does our life witness to the fact that God is bringing about a kingdom that will out last every other kingdom, that we have nothing to be afraid of because we know that even though we may not see this kingdom in the here and now we have the certainty that God is the God who most assuredly brings into existence those things which at present do not exist?  This is what Stephen had placed his faith upon, the unshakeable certainty of the promise of God. This is why he would not be shaken when faced with suffering and death because he knew that as this suffering and death had happened to Jesus it was always a possibility for those who followed him. Yet this was not all because as Jesus had also conquered the grave so too those who placed their faith in Jesus would also rise from the dead in the final resurrection and as Daniel records these saints, the holy ones of God, these too shall serve the Son of Man before the throne of of the Ancient of Days. Knowing the certainty of this promise we, like Stephen, can say let this world do what it may because the best is yet to come. To God be the glory! Amen.

Recognizing Jesus

 April 11 2021

Luke 24:13-35

         It is hard to believe that the coronavirus has been impacting our lives for over a year now. Regardless of how we feel about all that must be done to keep from ending being sick with the coronavirus, washing our hands after being out and about, staying at least six feet from the people we meet and of course, wearing a mask, all these things which seemed so hard to get use to are now just a part of life. Now it seems weird to go somewhere with out a mask instead of having to wear one one we first started. And while wearing a mask has become second nature, there is this little problem with wearing a mask which is that it is really hard to recognize people when you and they have one on. Our nose and our smile and maybe perhaps our chins all play a part in helping others figure out who we are. The other week as Jennifer andI were coming out of the grocery store I saw a long time family friend so I said ,”Hi”, which was followed by a blank stare. I quickly figured out that he had no clue who I was because of the mask so I said who I was which quickly resolved the problem. Now I am sure that I or other people I know have probably known each other but did not stop to say hello simply because our brains just did not recognize each other because half of our face was covered up. I mean it used to be bad enough that when I saw someone that looked familiar but I could not for the life of me recall their name but now very few people are even familiar to me at all. This may be the only upside to wearing a mask that now, I no longer have to awkwardly try and figure out just who it was that I just ran into so as not to embarrass myself.

         So, this facial recognition, something that computers have figured out how to do fairly well even if we still struggle at it is kind of a big deal in life.  What is true for us today was just as true in the days of Jesus and his disciples as we hear in our scripture for today. We are told that these two rejected disciples had eyes that were kept from recognizing Jesus when he came long side of them as they walked the long road home. As usual, Luke has given us important clues to help us understand the story. The first of these clues is that there were two of them. Now why would this little detail be so important? Well, earlier in the ministry of Jesus, as recorded in the tenth chapter of Luke, we are told that Jesus, appointed seventy two others and sent them on ahead of him, in pairs, two by two, into every place he was about to go. These were the laborers for the harvest Jesus explains.  The number seventy two is often thought to represent the nations other than Judah. The number seventy two also corresponds closely to the elders chosen by Moses to assist him when the burden of caring for the people of Israel became to great. God instructed Moses to bring them to the tent of meeting and then God would take a portion of the Spirit which anointed Moses and pour it out upon those elders so they might be empowered for service. This is important to hold on to because the seventy two that Jesus sent out had two primary works they were to do. One was the healing of the sick and the second was to announce that the kingdom of God had come near.The implication was that the Spirit that anointed Jesus was now going to be anointing the empowering them to be agents of healing. Now, I believe, that is important that we understand that these two disciples had this previous experience in order that we might know that they had been the announcers to all they had met that the kingdom of God had arrived. So, imagine how humiliated they must have felt when the king of this kingdom ended up being executed by the Roman authorities, not even attempting to fight them, or call for his followers to join him in an insurrection and overthrow of the occupying forces but instead peacefully allowing the Romans to do their very worse to him. How horrified they must have been to be in the crowd, to watch and hear as their king was nailed to the dreaded cross beam then hoisted up to leave him hang there gasping for air until he breathed his last. How odd it must have been his words spoken in among his panting, words of forgiveness and at the last, an announcement that it was finished. This they must have surely agreed with, for to them it was finished, all of their hopes, their dreams and the longings of their nation once again wiped away by the cruel hand of Rome.

         All of this is what weighed down their hearts as they left Jerusalem and turned toward home, to go back to Emmaus and hope that no one connected them to their criminal king and decide that their just might be a cross for them as well. Luke records that as they walked and talked together, these two suddenly realized that someone else had come along side of them rather unexpectedly. No, social distancing here I’m afraid. Now, our scripture says something very curious, in that the eyes of these men were kept from recognizing Jesus much like our eyes keep us from recognizing people who have a mask on. There was something about them that prevented them from understanding just who this was sauntering beside them, which was none other than their risen king, Jesus. Jesus asked them what it was they were talking about so intently as the walked along to which they replied, “Are you the only visitor, literally, an outsider, who does not know the things that have happened in these days?” And to even frustrate them more, Jesus replies, “What things?” Its almost comical how Jesus plays these mind games with them but I think he wants them to honestly open up about how they perceived his death and resurrection. What they told him was very interesting because they told him that they were talking about him, Jesus of Nazareth but then they go on to describe him as a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all people. This is the same way that Moses was described which meant that they understood Jesus to be in some way a new Moses that God had raised up for them.Then they went on to describe how it was their own chief priests and rulers who had delivered this Jesus up to be condemned to death and it was they who had crucified him. So far so good but then we come to the “but” in their story, but they went on, they had hoped he would be the one who would redeem, better translated as liberate or deliver Israel. Yet they continued , there was more because just that morning when the women had gone to the tomb to care for the body of Jesus they found the tomb empty and then had a vision of angels who told them that Jesus was alive. These two Emmaus bound travelers told Jesus that they had gone to the tomb but they had not seen Jesus and so they were just left wondering what all of this was about. Here again is this problem of being able to see, to have eyes that could be able to see the risen Jesus. Now, listen closely to what Jesus says next because I believe that he is directly addressing just what it is that is keeping them from being able to see. Jesus tells them “O, foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that God’s anointed one should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” We can only wonder just what the reaction was for these two disciples when this complete stranger responds to their grief stricken story by calling them you stupid people who have zero understanding. Ouch! Yet for as rude as he seemed this outsider appeared to know what was in the books of the Prophets and he knew that the reason that this Jesus on which they had placed their hope had to suffer was to fulfill the prophecies about him. What Jesus did was to start with Moses and then working his way through the prophets interpreted the scriptures which explained all that had to happen. What Jesus was showing his traveling companions was something he had earlier taught about as found at the end of the fifth chapter of the gospel of John where we hear Jesus tell a group of Pharisees, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these Scriptures that bear witness to me yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” You see what the Scriptures are all about is Jesus. Period. What the people of Jesus’ day thought the Scriptures were all about how to have a God like life through their own efforts, you might say the ultimate self-help book. But nothing could be further from the truth because the Scriptures purpose is to do nothing more than to speak to the truth of Jesus, the one who is the very giver of life. The reason that these two disciples were blind to just who it is that walked beside them is that they were of the belief that they were able to save themselves with God’s help. This prevented them from seeing Jesus who can only be seen by those who know they are unable to save themselves and are totally counting on God to be there to deliver them. The first will seek to use their own effort fighting and destroying whatever is necessary to create their own version of heaven on earth. The second will trust in the promise of God that those willing to love as he does will certainly live like he does. It is they who, by doing the will of God, loving as God loves, these are the ones who bring heaven upon the earth. There is an old saying that you cannot find what you are not looking for and never was that more true than when searching the scriptures. If one believes that all God is good for is to bring success to ones life then they will probably find scriptures that support this idea but they most assuredly will miss out finding Jesus. If on the other hand, one has come to the end of themselves, their efforts, their dreams, their goals and is looking for some kind of hope to shine upon their hopeless life then they most assuredly will find Jesus staring at them from the pages of Scripture. They have to come to the place where it is Jesus or nothing else because to accept Jesus is to accept his version of life, a life that loves like God loves which means a refusal to retaliate, to seek revenge and to go further and to pray and care for those who persecute you and those who may even seek your life. This is why Jesus, God’s anointed one, had to suffer because he faithfully bore the name of God, the very characteristic of God a life full of steadfast love and faithfulness.  If God loved with steadfast love but was not faithful to extend this love to all he could not be a God who loved the whole world choosing to love a mere chosen few. If God were faithful without us knowing that he was faithful because of steadfast love we would be tempted to seek ways of getting God to be faithful to us alone. But as God is both we know that God is a God of steadfast love and faithfulness, faithful to extend steadfast love to all because of who God is not because of who we are. This is a love willing to suffer at the hands of those who oppose him. This is why throughout the Old Testament, especially in the book of Isaiah we read about the suffering of God’s servant. We hear it in the fiftieth chapter of Isaiah where the servant of God states, “The Lord has opened my ear and I was not rebellious. I turned not backward. I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard. I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.But the Lord helps me ; therefore I am not disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. He who vindicates me is near.” After you read these words does this sound like anyone you might know? Does any of this ring a bell? This same servant Isaiah continues to write about in the fifty second chapter where we read, “He was despised and rejected by men , a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, as one from whom men hide their faces; he was despised and we esteemed him not.Surely he has borne our griefs and our sorrows yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions and he was crushed for iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his stripes we are healed.” I wonder what those disciples thought when this stranger whose identity was hid from their eyes, just what was going through their minds as scriptures such as these from Isaiah were presented to them on that road to Emmaus. I mean how could anyone not connect with what happened with Jesus on that day he died with these profound images from the pages of Isaiah. And yet Luke records that even as scripture upon scripture were opened to them by this stranger these two disciples still had no clue as to who he was.

         Well, at last the journey had reached its end and as these two disciples went into their home, they saw how the stranger who had enlightened their hearts and minds about how the servant of God must suffer, they saw how he kept on going down the road. Well, as they saw the sun setting low in the sky they yelled at him to come and join them for the evening. The stranger stopped and turned back, entering into the home of these two disciples. Luke records that the stranger abided with them, sounding much like the accounts of John’s gospel, where in the fourteenth chapter we read verses like this, “if anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love them  and we will come to them and abide with them.” This is exactly what Jesus was doing, he had given these disciples his word, the truth about him from the scriptures and now he was going to abide with them and not only him but his Heavenly Father would also be there with them. So, as he sat at the table with these two disciples, it was this stranger who takes hold of the loaf of bread upon the table. Imagine that someone had invited you over for dinner and then you began serving the food to everyone at the table. Now you can understand the awkwardness of the moment. But Jesus broke all the rules because it had come time for him to heal their blindness. As Jesus took the bread, and then he blessed the bread and then he broke the bread and as he gave the bread something within the hearts of those disciples was no longer broken. There in those four movements their was recognition of the strangest sort. Since it was in these movements that their ability to recognize Jesus was at last restored it seems that we must meditate just why this is so. I believe that these four movements are the very way of Christ, how he relates to us, how we are to understand ourselves. You see, it is Jesus who has taken us, out of the world. In the seventh chapter of John we hear the prayer of Jesus. Jesus states the disciples were the Father’s and it was his Father who had given them to Jesus out of the world.  So the disciples were taken and then like the bread they were blessed or consecrated for a holy purpose. In the same way those the Father had given to Jesus were consecrated, set aside for holy use because they trusted in the faithfulness of the word of God. Then, as we remember, once the bread was taken and blessed it was broken. Those who whom Jesus has taken out of the world and blessed or consecrated for a holy purpose must also be broken. They must come to the end of their own efforts,  to be broken of their own selfish ambition to become like Christ, servants of God, loving others by serving others. Only as the ones Jesus has taken out of the world have been broken of their selfishness can they can experience oneness not only with each other but with God. Then the bread that was taken, and blessed, and then broken in the hands of Jesus, this bread was then given. This idea of bread that is given is reminiscent of what Jesus said about himself saying that the bread that he gives for the life of the world is his flesh. This is what it means to be given, to allow Jesus to take our life and use it to bring life to the world. You see, when we understand ourselves as people who have been taken out of the world into the hands of Jesus and that it is he who takes us and blesses us, sets us aside for a holy purpose through the faithfulness of his word, and when we allow him to break us, to create in us a heart of servanthood  and we then yield our very lives to him for service or to sacrifice what happens is that our very lives can be used by God to bring more life to the world. In this way, as those disciples witnessed, Jesus is seen. This is life which shines forth with the wisdom of God for as we learn in the twelfth chapter of Daniel, it is the wise that shall be raised up on the last day as Jesus has been raised up on the first day of the new creation.

         As the church we are the body of Christ, we are the one loaf, the bread of life. May we never forget that it is only as we remember that it is Christ who has taken us out of the world into his hands, only as he has blessed us, setting us apart for God’s holy purpose and only as Christ breaks us of our selfish desires and then as he gives us for the life of the world, this is when the resurrected Christ is seen in our midst for all the world to see. This is what the scriptures witness to and may it be what our lives witness to as well. To God be the glory! Amen!

An Empty Tomb, A Full Faith

 April 4 2021

Luke 24:1-12

         The Lord is Risen! The Lord is Risen Indeed! Yes, indeed death could not hold our Lord and Savior and on this Easter morning we praise our God and we celebrate the truth that Jesus is alive and because he lives those who place their in him will live forever with him!

         Now, it is quite natural for us to set our minds on the eternal on this the most glorious of days. After all, we hold fast to the confession, Christ in us is our hope of glory. So, yes, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the very ground of our hope but I believe that we have to ask ourselves is this all that the resurrection of Jesus is about? I mean any time it seems that Paul wrote of the hope we have in Jesus and his victory over death, he always seemed to make sure that faith and love were right there with what he had to say about hope. And so this morning, I want  us to think about just what does the resurrection of Jesus, his wondrous victory over sin, death and the grave, what does this truth have to do with our faith? If that weren’t enough of a stretch, then I think that we also have to wonder does this great story that we celebrate today, that Jesus is not hanging out with the dead but is certainly on the side of the living, does this speak at all to how we love? You see, I do believe that the resurrection of Jesus does change eternity for all who place their hope in it, but there is a problem if we become so heavenly focused that we become no earthly good. This is a problem because what Jesus died and rose again for was to create a new creation one where the people he called into being would love God and work together with him doing good, the good that can overcome evil in the here and the now.

         So, we can’t lose sight of the big picture as we take a look at our scripture for today, the resurrection story as recorded by Luke. Luke begins by telling us that it is the first day of the week, which is Luke’s way of stating that this is the eighth day, a day that symbolized the new creation, the old creation having been made in the first seven days. On this first day of the new creation, Luke tells us that “they” went to the tomb, and who he is referring to is the women who had followed Jesus, which we later learn were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James. It was they who knew that it was their work to go to the tomb early, before the heat of the day, and rub embalming spices upon the dead body of Jesus whom they loved. Now, imagine their surprise when there in the dim light of the early dawn they discover that the huge rock which had sealed the hollowed out rock which was the final resting place of Jesus, this huge rock had been moved. Now, in their minds this could have only meant one thing that someone had come and stolen the body of Jesus. Why else would anyone exert that much effort to open the tomb? So, they rush in to the dark dank tomb sorrowful at the thought that someone would have done such an awful thing. Sure enough, the body of Jesus was gone.Luke tells us that while they were at a loss to know what to do next, suddenly right before them were two men. Their dazzling clothes, we are told, dispelled the darkness. The story tells us that the women were frightened which was probably an understatement. They fell to their knees  and bowed their heads to the ground because these women knew that these were messengers who had come from the throne of God. And as these women knelt in trembling adoration, the next thing they heard was a very strange question: Why do you seek the living among the dead? It was if these heavenly beings picked a time like this to try out a little humor. The women must have thought what in the world kind of question is this. Then came the explanation to this angelic question, an even stranger statement for they told these women that the Jesus was not there because he had risen from the dead. Now, I am not sure who was more surprised at this moment because these messengers were kind of wondering why this was some new idea to these women, I mean after all, hadn’t Jesus himself told them how it was all going to happen. Yes, these women must have thought, it was all coming back to them. They may have remembered that day, as Luke records in the ninth chapter of his gospel, how Jesus point blank asked his disciples just who did they think he was and after much hemming and hawing Simon Peter blurted out that Jesus was the one, the long awaited Messiah. It was right after this most wondrous moment that Jesus began to speak like a madman because he told those he followed him that he was going to have suffer many things and he was going to be killed and on the third day he would be raised. Yet as these women pondered these words of Jesus over in their minds they also remembered that this was not just some solitary moment of absurdity, no, he had said the same thing again. It happened as Jesus and the crowd that followed him were coming into Jericho, the final stretch of their trip to Jerusalem and Jesus pulled the twelve away and spoke to them. Jesus told them that when they got to Jerusalem all that was written about the Son of Man by the prophets was going to happen just as they said it would. This meant that Jesus was going to be handed over to the people of the nations, the Romans, he was going to be mocked, shamefully treated and spit upon. After they flogged him they were going to kill him and on the third day he would rise. Perhaps these women at the tomb would have remembered the disciples babbling on about what Jesus had said but they would also would have remembered that none of them had any clue as to what Jesus meant. It may have been that the truth that Jesus had spoken to them was just so far a field from their expectations that they held for the Messiah but whatever the reason, the truth that Jesus spoke to them that day only met with confusion in the minds of the disciples. So, these women at the tomb had to reluctantly agree with these angelic messengers that stood before them that yes, Jesus had indeed told them of not only his death but also that he would rise again. Perhaps the point of these messengers shaking the cobwebs out of the memories of these women was so that they might begin to understand that the resurrection of Jesus is about the need to trust in the word of God which was uttered on the lips of Jesus. Jesus spoke the truth and the truth happened exactly as Jesus said it would. The resurrection of Jesus should have caught no one off guard because Jesus had talked to them about it and if that were not enough Jesus himself told them that everything that was going to happen just as the prophets who had lived over six hundred years earlier had predicted would happen. Again, since they were supposed to have known what was contained in the law and the prophets none of what was happening that early Sunday should have been a surprise. Yet, it was just that, a surprise, a shock. Death was such a certainty to them that even if they might attempt to hope beyond hope that Jesus was somehow going to be raised to life they just did not have the faith to make their hope a reality. It made no difference that they all knew that their God was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, a way of speaking of their spiritual ancestors as if they were very much alive, even so how did such truth help them in the here and now believe that God reigns over death.But this is exactly the news that these dazzling beings were giving to these terrified women on that first Easter.

         This news of Jesus, that he had been raised from the dead, that he now was among the living and not the dead, this news was too good of news for these women to keep to themselves. They went and they found the eleven faithful followers of Jesus and of course, these men, just like these women, remembered the words that Jesus spoke to them and it all suddenly clicked for them. Well, maybe not. No, when the disciples learned that Jesus had been raised from the dead from the very women who had been there and done that they dismissed what they had been told as being a bunch of nonsense, a story that simply was too full of fantasy to be believed. Yet in spite of such a rude response to the good news that the women had brought back from the tomb, Peter reconsiders and decides to go and check things out for himself. Luke records that after Peter saw the empty tomb for himself he went home marveling. The word translated as “marveling” might be better understood as being awestruck, as in to be personally and powerfully struck. We might say that the emptiness of the tomb hit Peter right upside the head. I think that in that moment Peter realized something that Paul also realized as he records it in the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians. There Paul, writing about the resurrection of Jesus, argues that if Christ has not been raised then our faith is in vain, better translated as empty. In other words if the tomb was not empty then our faith would be empty but since the tomb is empty then our faith is full, it has substance. Paul goes on to say that if Christ has not been raised then our faith has no purpose and we are still in our sins which is a remarkable thing to consider. What Paul is implying is that the cross and the empty grave cannot be separated; both are equally necessary for our salvation. There at the cross the world saw the perfect love of God in human form in what appeared to all to be a sure defeat at the hands of the enemies of Jesus. How could one insist that loving our enemies in such a manner that this is the life we were created to live all because this is a life which perfectly reflects the perfect love of God. Such a life sure seems like a life that one would find hard to believe in.  If all we had was a cross on Calvarys hill it would be almost impossible to have faith that the life of Jesus is the life all of us were created to live, a life of perfect love. But praise be to God, there was an empty tomb so now our faith can be made sure and our purpose, the purpose we hold on to by faith, a purpose defined by perfect love this we now know is the life of victory. This is how Paul concludes his work on the resurrection that in the end, in a twinkling of an eye the dead shall be raised imperishable and what is prophesied in the twenty fifth chapter of Isaiah will at last come true; death will be swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O, death where is your sting? The sting of death is sin  and the power of sin is the law but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! With the raising of Jesus from the tomb, the battle has been won, victory is at hand this we can be sure of, this is what Paul wants us to be perfectly clear about. Yet what is surprising is that in his next breath Paul does not turn our attention to the future but rather his focus is on the present. Paul doesn’t mention anything about our eternity being forever secure as well we know it will be but instead Paul tells us now that we know that the victory has been won by our Lord Jesus Christ, we are to be steadfast, immovable  always abounding in the work of the Lord knowing that our work is not in vain. You see Paul is speaking about life right here and right now, this is where the empty tomb is supposed to make all the difference. The word translated as “vain” describing our work in the Lord is again the Greek word for empty. So, it is the empty tomb this is the reason that we are able to abound in that work God calls us to do, to not come up empty in our effort, one might say. And what this all leads us to is just what is work that we are to do? Well, what is interesting in what Paul writes here is that he uses two distinct words for work or labor. The first is simply means work or action but the second word translated often as labor actually means to strike or to toil. From this it is not hard to hear the words of Paul from his second letter to the church of Corinth, the fourth chapter, where he states that he is afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Christ, so that the life of Jesus might be evident. The death of Jesus, this willingness to suffer rather than seek vengeance upon those who seek to harm us because we understand that our purpose is to perfectly love as our Heavenly Father perfectly loves, this is the labor which is not empty. It is not empty because when we labor to love what we find is the power of the risen life of Christ working in us. Yes, because of Jesus we may find ourselves afflicted, perplexed, persecuted and struck down what Jesus meant by having to carry our cross, in order to follow him. Yet, no matter how difficult is this labor, what we find because of the resurrection of Jesus is that we aren’t crushed, we aren’t driven to despair, we are never forsaken nor are we destroyed. This is our victory given to us through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is faith in the resurrection of Jesus, this is what is meant by putting our roots down deep into the living waters, the very life of God, this is what empowers us to not whither nor stumble when faced with suffering and persecution because of the word of God planted in our hearts. 

         So, yes we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus for the hope of eternity that lives with in our hearts but we also celebrate that because of the empty tomb our faith is not empty; our faith has purpose and meaning because Christ has been raised from the dead. Not only that but because of the victory over death Jesus displayed when he stepped out of the tomb to be with the living and not the dead now we can be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord all because that in the Lord, our labor, a labor that might cause us to suffer on account of loving others as God loves them, this labor will not be empty all because the tomb on Easter was found to be empty.  This is the good news we declare, now and until Jesus comes again! Praise be to God. Amen