The Power of a Story

June 21 2020

Job 2:11-13, 3:20-26, 4:3-6, 5:8-16

         In 2013, as many of you know, we had a tree fall on our house. This was no ordinary tree but was a tree that was almost one hundred feet tall, more than five feet across at the base and was estimated to weigh ninety tons. It was blown over in a micro-burst because its roots had become loose after over ten straight days of rain. If that weren’t bad enough, this tree cut diagonally across our house beginning with our daughters bedroom in one corner and landing in the kitchen in the opposite corner of the house.

         The morning after the tree fell on our house we got up early to go and see just what we could salvage from the wreckage. We were unable to walk down the familiar hallway to our daughters room as the trees massive trunk blocked the way. So, we crawled in a bedroom window. Seeing my daughter’s bedroom with this massive tree lying there, the wet insulation covering everything, her vanity smashed to pieces, it was all very overwhelming. Crying at that point was the easiest thing to do. Then out of the corner of my eye I began to notice that there was a corner of her bedroom that was unscathed. Her bookshelf was still intact so I decided to see what could be salvaged. As I looked over the shelves I saw a large purple cup and saucer just sitting there as if nothing had happened. I remembered that this was one of the presents my Mother had gotten Sarah because she knew Sarah loved the color purple. I picked it up to box it away when I noticed that there was something in the cup which looked like twigs and grass. I asked my daughter just what did she keep in this cup to which she replied that she didn’t keep anything in there. As I looked closer to the contents I realized just what was in there; it was a birds nest perfectly preserved just lying there in the cup. To me I couldn’t help but see God’s hand in all of it as if he was sending me a message. When I saw that bird’s nest, a survivor of the storm just like me, I remembered the words that not a bird falls to the ground and does not your Heavenly Father know it? And you are more valuable than the birds. I had been wondering where was God in all of this mess and the answer I found in that cup was that he was here all along.

         What gave me hope in that morning after the tree fell on our house was that I knew a story. I had heard and read this story over and over from a little kid on up about a God who was our heavenly parent who loved us and constantly watched over not just us but his whole creation. Yet, I didn’t know the importance of that story until the day when I was overwhelmed wondering just where the God I believed in was at in all of my mess. That is when the story I knew came out of my memory to remind me that God was right there. He knew the birds who had lost there homes and he knew that I and my family had lost our home. This is the power of the stories we tell; they are what we hold on to to give us hope when everything seems so hopeless.

         The power of stories is something the friends of Job knew very well. Yet, they were sensitive enough to wait with Job in silence as he mourned the loss of all ten of his children, as he dealt with all his immense fortune suddenly wiped away and then as he dealt with a body covered with horrible sores. Job’s friends came and they simply sat and listened before they spoke. Can you imagine just sitting with someone in silence for a week? This is what Job’s friends did, sitting, waiting, wondering just what or how they could bring consolation to a man who had suffered so much loss.

         Well, the silence was broken when at last Job spoke. Job wishes that he had never been born  so that he would have never had to experience  his misery. As he speaks though, you begin to hear something more. In the fourth verse of the third chapter, Job cries out, “Let it be darkness”, which is just opposite of what we hear God speak in the first chapter of Genesis where he declares, “Let there be light.” Job continues to speak about gloom and deep darkness and then he speaks about the mysterious beast called Leviathan. Now, no one really knows just what this beast was but they do know what was represented by his presence and that was chaos. Leviathan was the terrifying beast of chaos. This goes along with what Job said earlier when he said “Let there be darkness” because God spoke light out of the chaos. Job is speaking words of chaos because this is exactly what is going on inside of Job. When he tells us that the thing he fears has come upon him and that what he dreads befalls him that he has no ease nor is he quiet, he has no rest but instead trouble comes, the word he uses for trouble is a word which is the human equivalent of chaos. Just like the chaos and nothingness that was before God called creation into being, this same chaos is what Job was personally experiencing. Chaos as we see in the creation story, is a total lack of order and the what had ordered Job’s life was his relationships and his work. Now these were gone, his world was shattered, what had given his life structure and meaning was lost. So, now in his grief Job was experiencing an inner chaos that to Job seemed unrelenting.

         As you read along in Job, when and you come to the end of the third chapter it is as if Job just wants to continue speaking about his pain and anguish but he he is interrupted by his friend Eliphaz. The scripture says that Eliphaz answered but it is clear that Job had not really asked any question. This shows in how Eliphaz speaks to Job when he asks him, “If one ventures a word with you will you be impatient? It’s as if Eliphaz is asking Job for permission to speak a word to him because it is clear that want Job wants is to continue to cry out about how awful his situation is. What Eliphaz does is to first remind Job of his past telling him “Behold, you have instructed many and you have strengthened the weak hands. Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have made firm the feeble knees. But now it has come to you, and you are impatient; it touches you and you are dismayed. Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways, your hope?” Eliphaz is telling Job, look you helped other people when they were down, now you’re the one who are experiencing misfortune and you need people to help you in your weakness but it seems as if you just don’t have the patience to wait for it to happen. Job, why isn’t the fear of God your hope? Here Eliphaz brings into the conversation familiar wisdom language, the fear of God. You might remember the Proverb from the first chapter of Proverbs, the seventh verse where we hear “ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge…” and from the second chapter of Proverbs we are told that if one seeks after wisdom like one seeks after silver then they will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. What is interesting about this trifecta of wisdom, knowledge and understanding is that these are connected to creation. We are told in the third chapter of Proverbs that the Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens; by his knowledge the deeps broke open and the clouds drop down the dew.” This tells us then that the fear of the Lord as being the beginning of knowledge is in a way that we are connected with creation as we listen to God speak to us about the very order of the universe. That knowledge is about the giving of water from the deeps below and the dew above also tells us that knowledge is about life because there is no life without water. So, when Eliphaz wonders why, if Job has the fear of God why doesn’t he have any confidence, why doesn’t he have any hope, the reason why Eliphaz is wondering this is that the fear of God is the way we begin to learn knowledge and this knowledge is about life and it is this gift of life that is the ground of all hope.

         How different are the words of Eliphaz than the words of Job. Job speaks of chaos desiring for the world to collapse back into chaos and experiencing that chaos within himself. To this Eliphaz speaks to Job a different story, a story grounded in creation. That Job does not appear to have the hope from knowing such a story is evidence that Job only knows God as a power for his own use.Job does not appear to know God as the Creator the one who spoke creation into being out of the chaos. If he knew God as the Creator then he would know that God created this world with a purpose which was to see a world teeming with life. And because God had a reason for creating his creation then he also had a reason for creating Job and each one of us; no one is an accident. It is this reason that we hold fast to when the world seems so unreasonable. It is this reason that that doesn’t seem to be part of Job’s story which seems stuck in a wash of never ending chaos. This is why Eliphaz  when speaks to Job it is so important that Job hears a different story, a story of a God who does great things and unsearchable marvelous things with out number. Here how Eliphaz speaks about God the creator takes care of his creation, bringing rain upon the earth and waters on the fields, how he sets on high those who are lowly and how he lifts to safety those who mourn. The order of God’s creation is seen in the justice he demands causing the crafty to have no success and bringing the schemes of the wily to an end. This is a God who saves the needy from the mighty so that the poor have hope so that injustice has no chance to speak. This is the knowledge of the Lord, the knowledge of a God ordered life that we should be afraid if we would miss out living it.This is the story Eliphaz speaks to Job in order to give him hope. Even though it appears that in his world chaos reigns, there remains a God who can speak into that chaos and bring forth order. Those things that fill our days and appear to give our life order, our relationships, our work, our projects, all of these are temporary as Job so tragically found out. When we know God as our Creator then we begin to understand that only this God has an order for our lives that is eternal, an order that brings hope into our life. This is what Jesus spoke about on the night he was betrayed as recorded in the fifteenth chapter of John. There he told his disciples a story of a vinedresser who had a trustworthy vine. This vine had many branches and the branches that did not bear fruit he took away and the ones that bore fruit he pruned so that they would bear more fruit.  Then Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, and he told them, find your life in me and I will live in you. Just like the branches could not bear fruit unless they received life from the vine so also you cannot bear fruit unless you find your life in me. Whoever finds their life in me and whoever will allow me to live in them this is the person who is going to bear much fruit because apart from me you can do nothing. There is that word nothing, the nothing that was before creation, the nothing of the chaos that Job describe, the nothing that so many people experience when they, like Job, discover that all that brought order to their life, all of their work, all of their business, all of their relationships in the end were mere nothing as all things apart from Jesus are want to be.  Only those who know God as their Creator, the one who cares for his creation as a vinedresser does for his fruit bearing vine, only this God is the God whose story should shape our life. Only as we fear him, knowing that he is the God who brought forth life and graciously gave us this life and that he did so with a purpose, only then will we be part of a story that will give us hope. This purpose for us being created, what should order our life is the bearing of fruit, the bringing forth of more life just as God did in the beginning. This bearing of fruit is the doing of good works, the sharing of your food with the hungry, the giving shelter to the homeless, the giving of clothing who need it, and the bringing of justice to those crushed by injustice and in this way you life helps give life to someone else. In doing these things we display in our life the very order of creation witnessing to the knowledge of God which called this world out of chaos. This knowledge as Eliphaz told Job comes from the fear of the Lord and this gives us confidence even when the order of our personal world is shattered.

         Job in his pain appears unable to find any solace in the story of Eliphaz, to hear the wonders of a God known as the Creator. It is because Job does not know that God as our Creator created  this creation with a purpose, a reason and therefore each person created is a person who has a reason for being here. We are part of this story that God is speaking out through his creation and our part of the story is important.  This is what keeps us from crying out like Job does in the sixth chapter, “ For the arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed before me.” How tragic that in his tragedy Job falsely believes that his disaster is God’s displeasure with him. Yet if all Job knew was that God was the ultimate power then who is to say just what this power will do? What Job failed to realize is that being powerful is just an attribute of God, what he is capable of, it is not who he is. Praise God, that we can be so certain of this because of Jesus. Jesus lived a life and died a death that displayed the power of God yet Jesus witnessed that God is more that he is thew God who is our Creator. Jesus placed his faith in his Heavenly Father who is the God who can bring the dead to life and bring into existence that which does not exist. This is the power of our Creator God; the power of life.This is the power revealed when Jesus stepped out of the grave three days after he hung upon the cross. This is the power that lives in all those who have faith in this same God. This is our story and this is what gives us hope even in the most chaotic of times.

         The question I leave you with today is this: just who needs to hear this story from you today? Who is it that you know believes that God is out to get the bad people or that only the good people go to heaven, whoever those good people might be? Who is hurting from the losses they’ve suffered, the loss job, the loss through the death of a loved one, the loss of security living in a world that appears more shaky by the day, who like Job needs to hear a story of hope? I pray that God will lead you to someone who needs to experience the power of your story today.Amen!

If It Weren’t For Bad Luck…

June 14 2020

Job 1-2:9

         When I was younger, all we had at home was a small black and white TV in a maple console with spindly little legs. We didn’t have cable but instead we had something called an antenna, kind of like a WI-FI receiver only far more primitive. Oh and it also had a remote, that was me because any time Dad said change the channel, I’d hop up and turn the channel. It didn’t really matter what was on because at our house we watched what Dad watched; end of story. One of the shows that we watched faithfully every Saturday night was this show called Hee-Haw. Anybody remember it? It starred Buck Owens and Roy Clark and it was a corny country comedy show. Now, almost every time it was on they would sing the song “Where O where are you tonight?”, a real classic and the other song I remember was “Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me”. The best line of the song was “If it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all”. My Mom would often speak of people that we knew as being the kind of people who if it weren’t for bad luck, they would have no luck at all. Everything just always seemed to go south no matter what they did.

         Well, today we begin a new series on the book of Job and I believe that if my Mom knew Job she would say that he was definitely a if-it-weren’t-for-bad-luck-he’d-have-no-luck-at-all kind of person. I mean, to read these first couple of chapters is pretty painful. Here is Job, the best of the best, a God-fearing man who turned away evil. God had blessed Job with abundance and he had a beautiful wife and a house full of kids. Job’s kids had been brought up right and they too feared God and loved each other and even if they might have messed up, Job offered up a sacrifice just for any sin they may have forgotten. So, far in the first five verses of the story, Job does not appear to have bad luck; on the contrary, it seems that he is living on the sunny side of the street.

         Well, all good things must come to an end and Job’s good times were ending as the sons of God came before God and of course Satan came along. The name “Satan” means accuser or one who opposes.What Satan does then is asks questions about the flip side of what God desires. If you remember in the Garden of Eden, Satan tempted Adam and Eve by just simply asking the question, “Did God actually say,” You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?” That’s what Satan does, he questions the authority of God and that is when the trouble begins. Well, with Job, Satan is no different because again he is asking questions only this time he asks God, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” It is kind of like the time that the grandpa was over at his daughters house and she saw him give his grandchild some money. The grandpa was curious why she would give her kid money like that and she replied that the money was the kids allowance because he had been good. The grandpa couldn’t hardly believe it and he exclaimed, “Well, in my day we were just good for nothing.” In the same way, Satan wants to know, is Job good for nothing? If God were to reach out with his hand and take away all the blessings God had given him, would not Job curse God to his face? So, God allowed Satan to to do what he talked about taking away every blessing God had given to him.

         Now, at this part of the story, what I have to remind you is that this is just a story. It is a fictional made-up story whose author is unknown but the authors purpose is not. This story is about two different ways of understanding God and how the problems of a wrong understanding of God don’t really show up until everything goes wrong. When the world is all as it should be this is when our beliefs go untested.But when, say, in times such as these, when a minuscule virus has spawned world wide havoc wiping out over four hundred thousand lives world wide, when the dam of frustration has burst over the issue of justice and equality for all people resulting in protests all over our country and on top of that the divisions that are between people only seem to have widened, this is the time you had better know what you believe. It is exactly in times such as these that you and I are going to find out just which God we believe in. The writer of Job wanted his readers to read his work and consider the God that they believed in so that when the hurt and suffering of this world came home to roost, as it did with Job, that they were ready. 

I say all of this because if you give the discussion between God and Satan any great thought it kind of makes your stomach queasy. I mean, is God really like this? Is he a God who allows Satan to play out an experiment on your life just to see what your made of? I know, there are days it seems like this is the case yet that is not the God I believe in. This is the God Job believes in and you need to read the entire story to figure this out. You see, this is one of those false ideas people have about God that God every so often is going to test you, either himself or with Satan’s help just to see how true you are. I mean it sounds legit until you consider doing such a thing in any other relationship and then it’s a little weird. I mean, when we are in a relationship we should know that such a relationship is built on trust and trust does not need to be continually tested to know if it is there. And trust doesn’t need to tested to see just how strong the bond is between two people in order to have a friendship; to do so may do irreparable damage to the relationship. 

         What the issue is with this exchange between God and Satan is that Job needed answers as to what happened to him. The God he believed in made him to be a person more focused on the truth instead of transformation and because of this Job focused on the past and the present. Job wanted to know, how did this happen, why did I end up in this mess? If God is all powerful why did he not do something to change this? While we some times might reflect on our past, believers in the one true God are very blatantly focused on the future. This is why forgiveness and mercy play such a big part in our relationship with God. Forgiveness allows us to let go of our past in order that we can live in the present and future with God. It is a realization that the past is just that,  the past and there is nothing that can be done with it. The future on the other hand is wide open and full of possibilities. Understandably though, that future is hard to see through tear filled eyes that come from the pain we experience in life.

         So, back to where we were in the story, Satan stretches out his hand and the mass of Job’s wealth was suddenly gone. Job’s oxen and sheep were stolen. His sheep and his servants, burnt up with a fire from heaven.  The Chaldeans came and stole all of Job’s camels and killed his servants. The story does not even let us catch our breath in this tragic series of misfortunes until it hits us with the hardest blow of all when it tells us that a great wind came upon the house where Job’s children were making merry and in one foul swoop  the house fell and crushed them all. Job was understandably distraught and unconsolable. He tore his robe, he fell on the ground and in his moment of grief, our scripture tells us that Job worshipped. Even in with Job’s wrong understanding of God he still knew that in his moment of loss he needed God. Job cries out, “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb and naked shall I return. “ These are the two opposing poles of his life, his birth and his death and Job knows that he brought nothing with him when he came and he will take nothing with him when he goes. As a pastor friend once told me, he never saw a U-Haul trailer behind a hearse. This is what Job is acknowledging, the stark reality of his life. Then Job goes on to say “The Lord gave and the Lord took away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”Job acknowledges that everything from the day of his birth to the day of his final breath all of it the whole span of his life has been a gift from God. All the Lord had given Job was his to enjoy for as long as God saw fit. No matter what, the name of the Lord, the Lord’s character, his essence is the source of all blessing even in the moments of greatest loss because the presence of God is the one thing that can never be lost unless we will it so. Yet even so, in this moment when Job cried out “blessed be the name of the Lord” we have to wonder just what was name that Job knew the Lord as being because the different names of the Lord stressed different qualities of God. We discover this when Moses sees the burning bush and as he goes to check it out he has an encounter with God. God as we recall, tells Moses that he is to go to Egypt to seek the freedom of God’s people, the Israelites. As Moses speaks with God he asks God how he was to respond when he tells the people that the God of your father’s has sent me and they in turn they ask Moses“What is his name?” So God tells Moses that his name is “I AM WHO I AM”. God further told Moses, that he was to also tell the people of Israel, “I AM has sent you to me”. Then God also told Moses “Tell the people of Israel, “The Lord” the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has sent me to you.” So, here in this story God himself says that he is known by two different names, “I AM WHO I AM” and “The Lord”.  The name “I AM WHO I AM” , is a name that refers to a God who is beyond time. He is not the God who was or the God who will be but rather he is the God who is always present unaffected by time because he is a God outside of time and therefore a God who is separated, unaffected by his creation. As such, this name reveals God’s desire to be known as the Creator because only as God is our creator can we know ourselves as God’s creation. It is out of this Creator- creation relationship that we are to know God. The name “Lord” on the other hand, often seen in the Bible as “EL” simply means power. To Abraham, Issac, and Jacob God was simply one power among many powers yet understandably the greatest power.

         So, when Job cries out, “Blessed be the name of the Lord” we are left to wonder just which name of God is on his lips. Both names point to God but just in a very different relationship. As we will see as we go to the story, how a person knows God, whether as their Creator or simply their source of power for life makes a huge difference in the way they experience God.

         Well, because Job blessed the Lord instead of cursing him Satan asked God to try again only this time Satan asked God if he could afflict Job’s health. As Satan  stated “Stretch out your hand and touch his bone and flesh and Job will curse you God to your face.” So, the Lord struck Job with loathsome sores covering him from head to foot. This time his wife seeing him in such misery and pain told Job to just go ahead and curse God and get it over with. Job replied to her “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God and not evil?” In all this, our scriptures tell us, Job did not sin with his lips. It is slightly ambiguous as we will never know just what was going on in his heart. But again, these conversations of Job are disturbing because the God Job blessed, the God Job had been given everything was surprisingly a God who not only gave his people the good in life he was also a God who also gave people evil when he felt like it. Here we begin to see that knowing God merely as the greatest power among many means that God’s power can be used for either good or evil. Just as the people of Israel thought that people had two inclinations in them a good inclination and a bad inclination so when God is power he too is understood to have a good side and an evil side. If he can bless with the good then watch out because he can also hand out a little evil if he feels like it. It is right here that we see the serious flaws in this belief of Job and we are thankful that we have been given Jesus. I can’t help but think of a teaching of Jesus from the seventh chapter of Matthew where Jesus tells us this “” Not everyone who calls me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name and do mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them , I never knew you; depart from me you workers of lawlessness.” You see, the people trying to get in to the kingdom of heaven understood God as a God of power, I mean after all what a display of power. There were people prophesying, there were demons being cast out, more power and so many other mighty works happening everywhere, isn’t this what God is all about, displays of power? Jesus took a good long hard look at their face and said, “Nope, doesn’t ring a bell. Sorry there’s no getting in here for you.” To them so focused on power meant that they didn’t really know who God is, that he is a God of love, righteousness and justice and equal treatment for all which is what living by the law is all about. Being a person who loves, does righteous, seeks justice and treats everyone equally is the way of Jesus because it is the way of the cross. There on the cross Jesus put his faith in the God who can bring the dead to life, the God who can call into existence that which does not exist. This God raised Jesus from the grave and vindicated his faith as being the faith which leads to life.

The God Jesus placed his faith in is the God of love and the God of all creation as well. The reason we are sure that this is so is that we are God’s masterpiece, the ones God calls very good. Unlike Job, who only knew God as a God of power, the God who who might give out good as well as evil, the God we know through Jesus is radically different. When we know God as our creator then we also know that our God is a good, good God in whom there is no shadow of turning with him. We never have to expect that our God will ever give us any evil because we know he gave his only Son to condemn evil upon the cross. 

The story of Job as we are finding out is a story that causes us to think long and hard about what we believe and which God is it that we believe in. I hope you take some time to take a long hard look to see how your beliefs, your God and if the way you live your life all align together. I hope that if upon your inspection you find that any one of these needs changing that God, the God who created you and who loves, that he will give you the courage to become more like Jesus, each and every day. To his glory! Amen.

Pentecost-What In the World Just Happened?

June 7 2020

Acts 2:1-13

         This past week we had what, to me, was our first big scary storm. These are the storms where there is a hush, a quiet, as the sky turns pitch black then the wind begins to howl followed by thunder, lightning and all the usual terrifying aspects of such storms. The storm we had this past week was fairly calm as there was little damage done. I say this because in the past these kinds of storms have not been too kind to us. Two years ago we had one of these wild storms blow through. I had spent the better part of a week weeding, mulching and planting annuals so that I could feel pretty good about how everything looked going into summer. Then the storm hit and it was pretty nasty. Jennifer was at work so it was just my two daughters and I who were at home. As the sky grew darker and darker and the wind became to scream we decided to head for the basement. Just as we turned to open the basement door we heard a crash as a limb from a tree came crashing through the ceiling landing with a thud on the floor, rain and insulation came blowing in the gaping hole in the roof. As my daughter turned to see what had happened she angrily said in so many words, not again. You see, it was just four years prior to this storm was when we had lost our entire house to a similar storm which blew a hundred foot tall tree on to our house. So, when I say that storms make me a little edgy you can begin to see just why this is so.

         It is my experience with storms that makes me understand the mighty wind part of the Pentecost story. I can imagine the terror on the faces of those who had gathered in the Temple when this happened because I probably would be terrified too. In a way, it is good to have these details of this strange happening on what we call Pentecost because I believe that there is much about the story that is really hard to wrap our minds around. I mean a mighty rushing wind is one thing but what do you do with tongues of fire and speaking in other tongues? We have to wonder just what does it all mean and why is this day so important to us as followers of Jesus? Often we hear it said that Pentecost is the birthday of the church but what does that even mean? It is hard to take away much of anything from the story of Pentecost other than a lesson in church history. This is unfortunate because I believe that what happened on Pentecost is vitality important for us as Christ followers today, in our time, as we live in a world that feels like it is slowly unraveling into chaos.

         We begin to figure out what happened at Pentecost with the festival of Pentecost itself. This festival is in scripture, also called the Festival of Weeks as we read in the twenty third chapter of Leviticus. It is called the Festival of Weeks because the people of Israel were to count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath of Passover, from the day that they brought their offering before the Lord. The day after the end of the seven weeks, on the fiftieth day, the people of Israel were to have a Sabbath day to celebrate the first fruits of the wheat harvest. The Greek term for fifty is pente, which is where we get the title of Pentecost.

         What is also very important for us to know is that God took these harvest festivals and he gave them a greater significance. With the Festival of Weeks, which celebrated the wheat harvest, what is also celebrated is the giving of the Law to Moses at Mt. Sinai. The people would remember what is written in the nineteenth chapter of Exodus whereMoses tells the people of Israel, “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles wings, and brought you to myself. Now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” This is the story of the first fruits of God’s care for his people as he bore them up upon eagles wings and told them that they were his Crown Jewels, his most precious treasure. As they remembered this great love God had for them the people of Israel would then renew their commitment to the covenant relationship they had with God.

         Now, it might seem kind of trivial to know this background to Pentecost but it turns out that it is very important for us to understand all of this in order to make sense of what this day is to us as followers of Jesus. This becomes even more clear when we realize that the phenomenon that we witness in our account of Pentecost, the mighty wind, the tongues of fire, the voices speaking in strange languages, all of these have a connection with what happened on Mt. Sinai.From the nineteenth chapter of Exodus we read of how on the third day that the people of Israel had camped at the foot of Mt. Sinai, in the morning of that day there was thunder and lightning and thick clouds upon the mountain.It was on this morning that Moses called the people to come out of the camp to come and meet God. Mt. Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended upon the mountain in fire. There was the sound like a loud trumpet blast and as this blasting noise became louder, Moses spoke and God answer him in thunder.” The word translated here as “thunder” can also be translated as voices, and often in scripture, the voice of God is described as thunder. So, it doesn’t take much imagination to see that the mighty wind on Pentecost was like the sound of the trumpet blast. Just as God descended upon Mt. Sinai with fire, the first temple experience of God and his people, now at Pentecost God came as fire again to descend upon the followers of Jesus, God’s new Temple. The voice of God that at Mt. Sinai that came as thunder now spoke through his people in words inexpressible and filled with glory.  All this happening during a festival where the covenant first ratified at Mt. Sinai was renewed by the people. It was not hard for all those present at the Temple that day to see the similarities. Fifty days after sacrificing the Passover lamb the people of Israel would renew their covenant of Sinai. Here on this Pentecost though, fifty days after the sacrifice of the new Passover lamb called Jesus the people were receiving the new covenant long ago promised in the Psalms, the book of Jeremiah and the other prophets,

         At Mount Sinai, the people received a gift of God, what they called his Torah, his teaching. Here on Pentecost the people also received a gift, the Holy Spirit who is the teacher.The Holy Spirit is God so we must not think of the Holy Spirit as an it as some people are want to do but rather understand that the Holy Spirit is God and is as God is always thought of addressed as a being a he. God as the Holy Spirit is sometimes the God we find hardest to figure out however there is much written in scripture that helps us to understand more about him. A good place to learn about the Holy Spirit surprisingly is the gospel of John.  As you look for the Holy Spirit in John’s gospel you find that the Holy Spirit is the one who comes upon Jesus at his baptism. It is at the baptism of Jesus that John the Baptist hears his Heavenly Father tell him that Jesus would be the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. In the third chapter of John we learn that only those who are baptized by water and the Spirit are those who are born from above and thus able to enter into the kingdom of God. At the end of John’s sixth chapter, Jesus tells us that the Spirit is who gives us life as the flesh is no help at all. The words Jesus spoke are spirit and life. This is an important teaching to hold on to as we learn about the Holy Spirit. As we continue in John, we next hear Jesus teach on the Holy Spirit in the seventh chapter, where Jesus at the Temple during the Festival of Booths, cries out, “If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Believe in me for out of my heart flows living water. Now this he said about the Spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet present as Jesus was not yet glorified.” So, at Pentecost when the Spirit was poured out on the disciples we know that Jesus was glorified ascended to the right hand of his Heavenly Father.

         Now all these verses in John tell us much about what the Holy Spirit does but it is not until the fourteenth chapter of John that Jesus explains just who the Holy Spirit is.  There we hear Jesus tell his disciples first, if they loved him they would keep his commandments. Then Jesus said that he was going to ask his Heavenly Father and the Father would give them another Paraclete to be with them forever even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it cannot see him or know him.” So, there are several things we can learn from this teaching. First, the Holy Spirit is only given to those who keep the commandments of Jesus. This is explained further in John’s first letter, the third chapter where we read that whoever keeps these commandments finds his residence in God and God finds his residence in them. By this we know that God has his residence in us by the Spirit he has given us.” And just what are these commandments that we need to do in order for the Holy Spirit to reside with us? There are two found in this same chapter of John’s first letter, that we believe in the name, the character, of Jesus to believe as Jesus believed, and to love one another, to love as Jesus loved. This is when we have separated ourselves from the world to be a dwelling place for God.

         The second thing we learn from what Jesus teaches us in the fourteenth chapter of John is that the Holy Spirit is to be for us another Paraclete. I use the original Greek term because this is a word that is hard to translate. Sometimes we see the Paraclete translated as the Comforter or the Advocate. But Paraclete when broken down into the two Greek words which it is made up of we find that it is made up of the word, para, which means along side of like parallel lines run along side of each other and kletos, which means to call. What is unclear is just who does the calling? Is the Holy Spirit the God that we call upon or is the Holy Spirit the God who calls on us or is he both? When Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Truth what we have to remember is that the Greek word translated here as “truth” is also used elsewhere as faith or faithfulness. So, we could say that the Holy Spirit is the God who is the faithful presence of God that we can call upon and the faithful presence who will call upon us.

         That the Holy Spirit is the God who calls to us, who speaks to us, is important for us to understand Pentecost as the day of God’s new covenant. We discover this in the fortieth Psalm where we read “In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then, I said, Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.” It is not a bunch of sacrifices that God is looking for. No, what God desires is people whose ears are open to hear his voice when he calls. This is when God’s law is within our hearts. This ties in with what Jeremiah was told by God, found in the thirty first chapter where we read, “This is the covenant that I will make with Israel after those days declares the Lord. I will put my law in them and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.’ This is the covenant that was given at Pentecost. God, the Holy Spirit, the God who comes along side and calls out to us showed up in a big way, and he spoke to people whose ears were open to what he had to say. These were people who believed in the name of Jesus and people who loved one another. This is what is meant by delighting in the will of God. This is why God could live with them and make his covenant with them, a covenant written on their hearts.

         When we know that the Holy Spirit speaks to those who have open ears we can also understand what Jesus tells us will happen when the Holy Spirit comes. In the sixteenth chapter of John, Jesus teaches that the Holy Spirit comes he will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness and judgment. Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you see me no more; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. Now, a lot of people get confused with this verse because it tells us that the Holy Spirit will convict the world and as we know the Holy Spirit doesn’t want anything to do with the world. So, how do we resolve the dilemma? The answer is that the Holy Spirit convinces the world through the lives of those who are attentive to his calling. We convince the world of their sin by living lives of faith in the name of Jesus. When this faith in God is active in our lives the world sees that living by putting faith in their flesh is missing the mark. Through a life lived by trusting God we show the world that a life that is marked by constant effort, worry and anxiety with no hope for the future is really no life at all.

         We show the world that righteousness, the right way of living, is found in the way of Jesus who went to the cross trusting in the will of his Heavenly Father. Jesus yielded his life through the Spirit to show the world his great love for his Heavenly Father and for us. This is why he was raised from death and has ascended to his Father’s side in glory. This is our hope also and why we everyday must be a living sacrifice yielding our lives through the Holy Spirit showing our love for others and our Heavenly Father. This means that we must think nothing of ourselves but instead lay down our lives for others even if those others are our enemies.This is righteousness. Think how much the world needs convinced of this right now.

         We also through a Holy Spirit filled life convince the world that the ruler of this world is judged. Satan rules this world through deceiving people that the best life is a life fulfilling our basest desires. When we live by and through the Holy Spirit we will have a life overflowing with the joy of eternity in our hearts no matter what our circumstances, and we will love others with abandon. When we live like this then the people of this world will be convinced that they have a choice, a judgment to be made as to how they can live. This choice can free them from being ruled by Satan to having Jesus be the Lord of their life. 

         The world right now is hurting, there is so much fear and pain and sorrow. But the Holy Spirit has come in power to empower us to convince this world that there is a way of life that can give this world the hope it is looking for. The question is this: will you allow the Holy Spirit who resides with you to convince you to live for him so that your life may be a life that can convince the world? This is what we see in the book of Acts. May we see it in our world, today.Amen.

The Resurrection Changes Your Worldview

May 31 2020

 Acts 24:10-21

         This past week I finally felt good enough to go outside and do some yard work which included way too much running of a weed eater.In doing so, I started to really wonder if all this effort I was putting into doing all of this was really worth it, I mean after all, it sure didn’t seem to bother my son who mows the yard. He could let weeds grow up nice and tall and it doesn’t bother him a bit. As I thought about it I realized that the reason I can’t stand straggly weeds rearing their ugly heads around my property goes back to my grandmother. Every year about this time my Dad would go pick my grandmother up and bring her to our house. Now my grandmother did not come for a social visit; no, she was on a mission. She would head out to the garden with us grandkids in tow to get the weed situation under control. She sat on a small stool and bit my bit she would work her way up and down the rows. She would also watch the progress that us grandkids were making always pointing out the ones we had missed and reminding us to make sure we would pull them out by the roots. You see, for Grandma, weeds were on the level of an enemy which needed eliminated. She knew that weeds kept the garden plants from growing like they should but on top of that, weeds growing up unattended were a sure sign that someone was slacking off, a sign that someone had not done their job. So getting the weeds under control was also a matter of pride, a sign that our garden was a neat and tidy affair.

         This is, I guess why I attack weeds with a vengeance but for me they aren’t a problem like they were in the garden growing up. I guess this is why my son could care less if there are weeds three feet tall next to the yard; what’s the harm. For me though it just bothers me. The reason it bothers me is that those weeds affect the way that I look at the world. To me a perfect world is a world where the weeds are under control just like Grandma taught me. You see, all of us have some idea of what a perfect world should look like. This is the idea behind what is called a person’s worldview. A person’s worldview has to do with more than their opinions on weeds though. A worldview is how we answer the big questions of life such as just why are we here, how do we define who we are, where did we come from and where we are headed, and just what is the meaning and purpose of life. What, after all, counts as a good life because after all who really wants to strive to live a bad life. All of us, somewhere deep in our hearts, have answers to these questions. They don’t often come up in our everyday conversations but they are there none the less. These answers help us make sense of the world we live and it is in times like we are living in, this is when these foundations of our reality are shaken and we get stressed out. The stress comes because we begin to wonder if by some chance we have the wrong answers to those big questions of life. I mean if you think that the measure of a good life is one without fear then having a deadly virus floating about is really going to call into question how you define life.

         When we begin to understand that all of us have a worldview, a way of making sense of this world we live in, a way of making a reality we can live in, then we can begin to make sense of this puzzling statement of Paul in todays scripture where Paul states “It is with respect to the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you today.” In other words, Paul is in trouble with the Jewish leaders solely because of the resurrection. Take a moment and wrap your mind around that thought. The resurrection, this fact that Jesus stepped out of the grave three days after being brutally being crucified, this amazing event which gives us such joy and hope, this event has made some people so angry and upset that they, in essence, called the cops on Paul. Do you hear how crazy that sounds? Why would anyone get so angry with someone over something like the resurrection that they would want them locked up? The answer is exactly what we were just talking about, a persons worldview. The Jewish leaders were fiercely upset at the thought that Paul was adamant that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead and they wanted more than anything to silence him because this truth, if it was true, shattered their way of looking at the world.

         What is interesting is that this wrong worldview of the Jewish leaders affected their reading of the Holy Scriptures. In the fifth chapter of the gospel of John, Jesus tells a group of Pharisees, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” Why did they refuse to come to Jesus to receive life? They refused to come to him because Jesus did not fit in to their view of the world. And because Jesus did not have a place in how they saw their world then they could not see him in the very scriptures they knew so well. This is one of the amazing truths around the coming of Jesus is that the very people who had read and reread the writings of the Old Testament for hundred of years did not recognize Jesus when he appeared even though these writings were to point to him.This is how a persons worldview can blind a person to the truth, the reality they create is a false reality.What shatters this false reality is the truth of the resurrection of Jesus.

         It wasn’t the fact of the resurrection that the Pharisees opposed. They did believe in the resurrection yet they held that the resurrection would happen at the end of the age. The one who is like the son of man that they read about in the seventh chapter of Daniel was the promised king from the line of David who at the end of the age would rise up and lead the people of Israel into battle and defeat their enemies. The everlasting kingdom that Daniel also writes about, the Pharisees assumed meant the kingdom of Israel not the kingdom of God. The hope of the Pharisees then was centered on the restoration of the nation of Israel through victory over her enemies. What they had not thought about is that if this was the truth of Israels future then how would she be any different from all of the other nations of the earth who survive by killing their enemies? Was the difference the fact that their victory came through the power of God, is this what would sanctify their efforts? This worldview of the Pharisees is still common today as some believe that one can use the methods of the world for the purposes of God because as long as it is used for God, God will sanctify ones efforts. Nothing could be further from the truth. You see, the roots of this worldview are this: as God’s people who live through the power of the Spirit instead of the power of the flesh, suffering will always be part of the equation. To trust in the God who gives life to the dead, who calls into existence the things that do not exist, means that we also believe that our momentary affliction will be followed by an eternal weight of glory. Yet it is hard to hold fast to this thought when we are trying to answer the question as to what determines a good life. The temptation for God’s people has always been to desire to carve out a good life in the here and now even at the cost that others might not have a good life or any life at all for that matter. This idea goes against the very love of God who makes the sun rise on the evil and the good, who makes it rain on the just and the unjust. It is God’s love which defines the equality of all people and so to have a worldview in touch with the truth of Gods reality we must see our face in the face of others. As Jesus taught us in the seventh chapter of Matthew, the Law and the Prophets, the entire Old Testament can be summed up in this, “whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.”So, when we know that the scriptures bear witness to Jesus and that they speak also of treating others in the same way we would want to be treated we begin to see there is a unity between Jesus and our treatment of others and this must be reflected in our worldview.

         Paul in his encounter with the risen Christ experienced this very unity. In these last chapters of the book of Acts, Paul tells of his encounter with the risen Christ no less than three times. For Paul, this encounter shattered his worldview which was the Pharisee party line. There on the road of Damascus, hot on the pursuit of those who belonged to the Way, the Way of the Messiah, Paul, who also went by the name Saul, was surrounded by a great light from heaven. Saul fell to the ground, and he heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul answered, “Who are you Lord,? The voice replied, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Now, in this brief encounter Saul or Paul very quickly must have figured out a few things. This voice from heaven was united with those who were believers in Jesus. Paul would have understood that in Scripture there was only one place where such unity was exhibited and that was in the prophecy of Daniel in the seventh chapter of his book. There, Daniel saw the one like a Son of Man  was presented before the Ancient of Days. To this one like a Son of Man Daniel records, was given glory, dominion, and a kingdom. Yet a little further in this prophesy, Daniel also records that the saints will also receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom. So there is an implied unity between the one like a Son of Man and those saints, the Holy Ones of the Most High. So, for Paul, the voice speaking from the light of heaven was the Son of Man, the one that God, the Ancient of Days, had given glory, dominion and an everlasting kingdom.This one like a Son of Man was united with the saints, the very people Paul was persecuting, including Stephen whom Paul had participated in his killing. So, Paul also knew that if he had done these things against the one who was the Son of Man, he stood condemned and deserved nothing but death.Yet this Son of Man, this Jesus of Nazareth did not condemn him but instead this Jesus did something more than merely forgive him. No, what Jesus did was to appoint Paul as his servant and a witness to the encounter Paul had with Jesus and to any later encounters where Jesus would appear to Paul.” Here, Paul would have recognized a similar pattern found in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy where we hear that the people of Israel were to fear, be in awe of God, to serve him and by his name they were to swear, to stake their life to upholding the reputation of God. Paul was in awe of God, in his power and also his amazing mercy, and he was called to serve him. Not only that, Paul was called to be a witness, to speak out about the reputation of God that he had experienced in the life of Jesus.The truth Paul would uphold then was not an abstract proposition but this truth was for Paul to be truthful to the one who was the very truth of life.

         Perhaps the most important part of Paul’s calling by the risen Christ was that Paul was to go to the Gentiles, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to turn to God, that they might receive forgiveness of their sins and find a place among those sanctified by faith in Jesus. Paul in hearing this must have thought of his ancestor, Abraham who when God called him out of Ur, promised him that he would make of him a great nation. God was going to bless him and make his name great in order that Abraham would be a blessing. God would bless those who blessed Abraham, and likewise God would curse those who cursed Abraham. This was a foreshadowing of the unity God desired with his people. Finally, God told Abraham that in him all the families of the Earth, those called the Gentiles, the people of the nations, they would be blessed because of God’s blessing upon Abraham. This is what Paul must have remembered when the risen Christ called him to to go the nations, that as a descendant of Abraham he was fulfilling this promise of God. Paul would also remember that Abraham was blessed by God out of God’s grace not by anything Abraham had done as Abraham was a Gentile when God had called him. Paul would also remember that it was Abrahams faith that caused God to declare him righteous and it is this insight that changed the world.

         It was the encounter with the risen Christ that forever changed the worldview of Paul. It was also the resurrection of Christ that shook the foundations of what the Pharisees believed in. What if the resurrection had already begun with the life of this man, this Jesus? What if he was the Messiah, this one cursed by hanging on a tree? Why would God have done something so against their idea of scriptural truth? The answers to questions like these the Pharisees were unwilling to accept and so they were left with only one option which was to silence the witness of Paul. Yet Paul could not be silenced except by death because Paul had an encounter with the risen Christ and not only was he changed but his worldview was transformed as well. Paul could now understand that who he was was one of the saints redeemed by Christ who gave his life upon the cross for him. Where was Paul coming from? Paul would say that he began his life in the dominion of darkness, in the slavery of sin, unable to do the good he knew to do. Paul would also say that the reason he was here was to worship the living Christ, to be in awe of his mercy and his glory and in light of this love Paul knew that he had to give his life to serve Christ as Christ had served him. And Paul would say that he was here to witness to and to uphold the reputation, the name of Christ declaring to all the love and mercy Christ had shown to him. Life for Paul was found  through the same faith as the faith of the Jesus the Risen One who had trusted his Heavenly Father with his life. So the good life for Paul was a life poured out in love for others and for God because of the hope of the resurrection. How different this worldview was than the one he had as a Pharisee! No longer was Paul desiring the restoration of Israel as a great nation through the death of their enemies but now he longed for the restoration of people to their original glory, to be the kingdom of God where enemies are loved into life, a kingdom where people treat others in the same way they want to be treated, with love. This is how the resurrection of Christ changed the worldview of Paul. The question only you can answer is thishow has the resurrection of Christ changed the way you look at the world? Is your reality founded on the bedrock truth of the resurrection of Jesus? Does the resurrection of Jesus affect how love God and love others? I hope and pray that everyone has an encounter with the risen Jesus and find themselves and the way they look at the world forever changed. Amen!

The Resurrection Changes Our Identity

May 24 2020

Acts 19:1-10

       It is hard for me to believe that this is Memorial Day weekend. Most of my memories about Memorial Day center on the observance on Memorial Day at the cemetery because of my kids being in the Dover band they performed as part of the service there. How strange that this year there will be none of that because of the corona virus. It was a real challenge for my kids when they were in band because they had to wear their uniforms of course, which were heavy and hot, and march in the humid weather of late May. Yet in spite of the challenges their performance of pieces like “The Battle Hymn of The Republic” added to a moving service punctuated by the reading of the Gettysburg Address and Flanders Field. As I recently heard it explained, Memorial Day is a day of remembrance not celebration, a day to ponder on the price paid so that we could be where we are at and live in the manner that we do. As Christians, we must remember the fallen but we have to be careful not to glorify war but rather to look forward to that day when nations will beat their swords into plough shares. For us, we live in these in between days, between the coming of Jesus and his coming once again, and the ushering in of that new day that when it dawns nations will no war no more.

         Sometimes there is so much news of war, divisiveness and hostility that we as followers of Jesus can forget what Jesus taught us is our primary work. We hear Jesus speak to us once again from the fifth chapter of Matthew, blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God. Now what Jesus teaches here is pretty straight forward yet the most difficult aspect of what he expects of us, this peacemaking may be a little hard for us to wrap our minds around. I mean, if I go a day without getting in a fight with any one I hardly think this is what Jesus meant by peacemaking. To understand peacemaking though I believe that we first have to know how Jesus understood peace. Peace in Hebrew thought was known as the word shalom. Shalom is a word loaded with meaning such as to be whole, sound, completeness, well-being, harmony; these hardly enter into what we normally think of when we think of peace. When you go deeper into what shalom means you find that it is the bringing together of opposites hence the reason that “shalom” is used by the Jews as their “Hello” and their “Goodbye”. It is only when seeming opposites are brought together that one can say that there is peace. So, knowing this then, peacemaking is the work of bringing opposites together, working at bringing a sense of wholeness back to a world that is broken and in pieces, when we do this we bring peace.

         When we begin to see that peacemaking is about wholeness then when we step back and look at where this admonition by Jesus comes at in the flow of Jesus’ teaching we find that peacemaking comes after the beatitude that says the pure in heart will see God. To have a pure heart is to have a heart fully devoted unwavering in its love for God, a wholehearted faith in God as the one who can give life to the dead and who calls into existence the things that do not exist. So, it is only when we have an inner wholeness within our heart that we are then called by God to be a person who works at bringing wholeness into a broken world. Broken people are unable to heal a broken world. In order to be healed and be made whole requires an act of God in the form of the movement of his Holy Spirit hovering over our life recreating us into the image of Jesus.

         This brings us to our scripture for today. In our story, Paul on his missionary journey has made his way to the city of Ephesus located in modern day Turkey. While at Ephesus, Paul encountered some disciples yet Paul in his brief encounter with them could figure out that something was missing in their witness. Paul did a little investigating asking them “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? The disciples must have had a puzzled look upon their face and they replied to Paul’s question “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit!” Paul inquired further “Into what were you baptized? To which these disciples replied “Into John’s baptism” This is a reference to John the Baptist, the forerunner to Jesus who called his fellow Jews to come to the Jordan to be baptized. This was a call for them to repent, to turn from their sinful ways and to be washed clean in the living waters of the Jordan. John knew that the coming day of the Lord was approaching and John wondered, who would be able to stand when God would at last arrive. So, the baptism of John focused on repentance, the confession and subsequent turning away from the sin in ones life and the seeking of God’s forgiveness of the sin confessed. For these disciples of Paul, this was the only baptism that they knew of; this was the only baptism that the Jewish faith knew of. This once again is where the resurrection of Jesus has changed everything. This very important change is found in what these disciples had no clue of, the Holy Spirit.

         The people who entered into the baptism of John found themselves in an endless cycle of sinning, repentance forgiveness then back to sinning again. They were never free of the enslavement of sin, its constant pull was always tugging at their heart. The truth is that the human will, the human spirit is weak being unable to make the flesh, our life conform to the good that it knows to do. This is what Paul found to be true and what he wrote about in the seventh chapter of Romans where we read “So I find it to be a law that when I do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being but I see in my members another law raging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” All the baptism of John did was to give those captive to this law of sin, as Paul puts it, a way to recognize this sin and fight against it. The war raging within them became visible as they washed in the water desiring to be cleansed, set free from the constant struggle to do the law that they delighted in.

         This sin that dwells in our members, this is the sin Jesus condemned in the flesh upon the cross. Jesus through the Holy Spirit offered himself as a sacrifice without blemish. Jesus had faith in the will of his Heavenly Father trusting in his ways and his power even unto death. Three days later this faith of Jesus stepped out alive from the grave, vindicated by his Heavenly Father truly the Son of God. Jesus was glorified because he emptied himself and became a servant willing to serve through the offering of his life in order to bring life to the world. Jesus, in the seventh chapter of John, taught his disciples that when he was glorified out of his heart would flow streams of living water, his way of speaking about the Holy Spirit who brings life to the bodies of death held in slavery to sin. Those who believed in Jesus, those who had the same faith Jesus had in his Heavenly Father, that this God can give life to the dead, that this God can bring into existence that which does not exist, those who believe this these are the ones who receive the Holy Spirit. 

The way that those who believe receive the Holy Spirit is revealed by none other than John the Baptist who tells us in the first chapter of John, that the Heavenly Father had told John as he had baptized Jesus that this Jesus was the one, the one who not only had been anointed with the Holy Spirit but he was the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit. It is the risen and ascended Jesus who pours out the Holy Spirit, who comes to us like a stream of living water which we become immersed in. This living water flows over us, transforms us, empowers us and frees us from the slavery to sin.

         This is what the disciples Paul had encountered were missing out on. It is no wonder that Paul urgently wanted them to experience this transforming power. Yet there is more that we must understand about this baptism of the Holy Spirit. The book of Hebrews is a beautiful message of how much better the new covenant is from the old. One of the ways that the new covenant is better than the old is that we now have a high priest named Jesus who stands before the throne of our Heavenly Father to intercede for us. Jesus offered up the once for all sacrifice of himself that has has perfected for all time those who are being made holy. Jesus our high priest has made it possible for us to enter into the most holy of places, the very presence of God. In the tenth chapter of Hebrews we read more of what the sacrifice of Jesus has done for us as we read “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith  with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” Now, when we hear this it is not hard to think of baptism when we hear of washing with pure water. But there is more going on here that can only be known if you have an understanding of the Old Testament especially the book of Leviticus. What the writer of Hebrews has written here is the way a priest would be consecrated and ordained for service in the Temple. They would be sprinkled with blood and washed by the High Priest. The saying “to draw near” is also a Temple term which means to come into the presence of God to serve him. To add to all of this, the only place where people were anointed with the exception of kings and prophets was the priests in the Temple. I say all this to help explain something that has been left to fall by the wayside and that is that when we are baptized we are in essence being ordained as part of the priesthood of all believers.

         The Holy Spirit indeed does set us free from the slavery or service of sin but at the same time that same Holy Spirit is creating in us a servants heart, for a servants heart is the heart of Jesus. When we read in our scripture that Paul baptized the disciples he had met in the name of Jesus, this means that he was praying that the essence and characteristics of Jesus, his servants heart, his sacrificial love, his unity in faith with his Heavenly Father, Paul is asking for all of this and more be evident in the lives of these disciples. As Jesus is the High Priest those baptized in his name were to be priests just like him interceding on the behalf of others, to do as Jesus did to bring God to his people and to bring people to God. When we read that Paul laid hands on these disciples this is an act of commissioning, ordaining these disciples into the office of priest. When Paul commissioned them this is when the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied, witnessing to the work of heaven appearing in life on earth.This is exactly what Peter writes about in the second chapter of his first letter, where we read “As you come to him , a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”. And further in the letter we read “you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim his glorious deeds.” Baptism is when we become a part of this priesthood, to serve our God in the Temple of his world. 

          This baptism of the Holy Spirit, this great river of living water flowing from the heart of our Savior, our High Priest who intercedes for us, this not only makes us whole but it makes us people who seek to bring wholeness back into our world, to be peacemakers. Only as we have this as our identity Jesus tells us can we then identify as a child of the most high God. The reason for this is understandable because our Heavenly Father is a God who is a peacemaker being willing to give his only Son that through the shedding of his blood those of us who were far off could be brought near, the holy bringing his opposite, the unholy people to his side in order to bring peace to our world. Such peace can never come through the efforts of our flesh because it is the war within our members as Paul taught us that is the reason for the war among us. Jesus teaches us that it is the flesh that wants to know, “What shall we wear?, What shall we eat?, or What shall we drink? And it is the striving after these desires that leaves us anxious and fearful and this fear leads us to anger and this anger leads to strife. Jesus goes on to teach us to seek first the kingdom of God, the kingdom that one can only enter by water and the Spirit, seek this life Jesus tells us. Seek the life of service and intercession and God promises us that we will have all we need. Only as we have the peace that God will supply what we need can we make peace by offering what we have, even ourselves in order to bring the world back together. 

         This is how the resurrection of Jesus has transformed our identity. Jesus commands that we do two things; baptize and observe the Eucharist, the last supper of Christ. It is in this baptism that Jesus calls us to observe that we repent of our sin, that we experience God’s mercy but there is more, so much more. From the risen, glorified Jesus flows the river of living water, the Holy Spirit which is poured over us at our baptism, creating in us a servants heart, ordaining us as priests. In the Old Testament, the high priest on his headpiece had a sign stating that he was a possession of God. On the breastplate he carried with him were the names of all the tribes of Israel, all the people he represented and served in the presence of God. This for us should be our example. In our minds we should never forget that we are God’s treasured possession. He loves us and cares for us; we are at peace with him. Then on our hearts let us carry the names of the people whose burdens God calls us to bear. This is what it means for us as priests to declare the glories of God for God’s glory is always found in serving others. Amen.  

The Resurrection of Jesus Changes Salvation

May 17 2020

Acts 15:1-21

         I really enjoy professional football in spite of all its problems and controversies. The NFL draft came at a time when I was getting really tired of the never ending Covid-19 news so I decided to watch a little bit of it.What I enjoy about the draft is trying to figure out why certain teams pick the players that they do. Everyone knew Cincinnati would pick a quarterback because they desperately needed one. Their pick of Joe Burrows just made sense. Then there were other choices, like the Green Bay Packers picking a quarterback when they already had one of the leagues best quarterbacks in Aaron Rodgers that made a lot of people scratch their heads. What people wanted is for the General Manager and the coaching staff of Green Bay to justify their using their pick in the draft on a quarterback instead of using it to pick a wide receiver that they needed a lot more. This is the part of the draft that intrigues me, the reasoning behind the choices that the teams make. You see, their choices are a judgment call. The teams do their homework, they scout all the players and then the time comes when they have to make a decision. Now, once they announce that decision then they have to justify their decision, they have to explain why they made the choice that they made. For some weird reason, I find the reasons that the teams give for who they pick in the draft fascinating. The reasons for their choices have to be able to be defended and understandable when on the surface they don’t appear to be either.

         It might be hard to believe but the NFL draft has a lot in common with what the Bible calls salvation. Here is why this is so. When the Bible speaks about a persons salvation, like in the letters of Paul, Paul often writes about justification. A good example is in the third chapter of Romans where Paul writes “we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the Law”. So, often when we read this we want to make this word “justify” into some theological word but in all reality it is the same language used by a team after the draft. To justify is to merely give the reasons for a choice that was made. What Paul is writing about is the reasons why God chooses the ones he chooses and that reason is faith. God’s choosing of the ones who have faith is what the Bible refers to as salvation.

         Many of us when we hear the word “salvation” have a certain idea of what is meant by that word. To some it is a decision that one made through a prayer, or through a confession where we gave our life to Jesus, we surrendered our life to Jesus or we put Jesus on the throne of our heart. As important as this moment was though we should not assume that this idea of salvation is exactly what the Bible is speaking about. If we take what we understand salvation to be and project it back into the scripture story we will find that the story stops making much sense. You see, in the first century when the people of Israel would speak about salvation what they meant is Israels rescue when God would return at the end of the age and at long last destroy pagan oppression. So, yes this is a very different idea of salvation then what most of us think about when thinking about salvation.

         In order to have some degree of certainty that God would rescue them, the people of Israel relied heavily upon their covenant with God. Only those who had a covenant relationship with God here in the present could be assured of salvation by God in the future. This covenant for the men of Israel was entered into through the rite of circumcision. Every male child in Israel at eight days of age was given this mark of the covenant just as their ancestor Abraham had done thousands of years before them. This is how the covenant with God was entered into and this covenant relationship was maintained through study of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible which teach the right way of living with God. So, membership in this covenant was demonstrated rather than earned. The importance of this covenant membership was that when the end of the age came those who were faithful to the covenant would be the ones who would be victorious united with God the ultimate victor. To be faithful to the covenant though did not mean that the people of Israel had to keep the Law completely as God in his grace provided a system of sacrifices to deal with the sins of his people. The question in the first century people had about their salvation is just what were the marks of membership that marked out the people who were really safe, the ones who would be on the winning side when God showed up at the end of the age? There were many answers to what these marks were depending on which Jewish sect one belonged to. So it isn’t all that surprising that there was some uncertainty as to who it was who would be present at the victory party in the future.

         Now, the reason we have to understand this idea of salvation is so that we can figure out why in the fifteenth chapter of Acts that a group of Pharisees who had came to believe in Jesus were insistent that any new Gentile, non-Jewish converts had to be circumcised and they had to keep the law of Moses. These Pharisees were insistent upon these requirements because this is the only way that they knew that people would be safe, would be on the winning team when God came to rescue his people. Yes, they believed Jesus was the king who would rule in the new age after God stepped in and set things right but for them the resurrection of Jesus did not alter the fact that only those who were covenant members would be saved by God. So, it wasn’t that the Pharisees thought that one had to earn ones salvation as much as they believed that the marks of a right relationship with God were the mark of circumcision and the mark of devotion to the Torah or way of God.

         Once this group of Pharisees had stated their position, the apostle and elders gathered together to consider whether this was the way things were or not. Peter who had an amazing experience with Cornelius, a Roman centurion, a Gentile, who did not have a covenant relationship with God. Peter conveyed how God had chosen him to take the message of Jesus Christ to Cornelius and his household. Cornelius and his household believed in the gospel and God, who knows the hearts of people bore witness to Peter of his acceptance of Cornelius by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he done with Peter and the Apostles at Pentecost. God did this to show that he made no distinction between the Jews and the Gentile having cleansed their heart by faith. This was Peter’s experience which seemed to be very different than the doctrine held by the Pharisees. The experience of Cornelius was also different than what we in our modern times believe is necessary for salvation because Cornelius had not been baptized, Cornelius had not come to the altar, Cornelius had never signed a decision form or said a Jesus prayer. In fact Cornelius had never even made any kind of public confession. Yet it was pretty evident that Cornelius was accepted by God because the Holy Spirit was poured out mightily upon Cornelius and his household. It was this experience that led Peter to have a new understanding of salvation. This is why he chided the Pharisees asking them why were they putting God to the test placing a yoke on the necks of the disciples that neither their fathers nor they have been able to bear ?” Peter brings up a pretty serious charge against the Pharisee believers when he charges them of putting God to the test even though to our modern sensibilities putting God to the test seems like an odd saying. In the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy Moses instructs the people of Israel that they were not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” To understand what is meant by putting the Lord to the test we have to understand what happened at Massah. This incident is recorded in the seventeenth chapter of Exodus. There we read of the how the people of Israel were moving through the wilderness at the command of God. They came to a place called Rephidim and our story records that interestingly enough there was no water for the people to drink at this location. Now, we have to stop here for a moment and consider what we just read. God is leading his people and he has led them to a place where there is no water and we have to wonder why would God do such a thing. Well, what happened is that the people quarreled with Moses demanding that Moses give them water to drink. Moses replied “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord? So, here we learn that to test the Lord is the opposite of trusting the Lord. Testing the Lord is to question either the presence or the power of the Lord. The whole reason God led them to a place of no water was to test his people to see if they would trust him to provide even when the means to provide did not appear to be evident. God wanted his people to know him as the God who is the creator. What it means for God to be creator is to know the that he is a God who as Paul wrote about in the fourth chapter of the letter to the Romans, is a God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. This is what God did when he created the world. The Spirit hovered above the nothingness and God called forth the creation. God desires that we his highest creation might know him as the God who is able to make something out of nothing. This is what he was always trying to teach the people of Israel. When they were leaving Egypt and the Egyptian army was fast on their heels, God made a way through the sea for the people of Israel when there appeared to be no way to escape. In the wilderness, God led his people to a place where there was no apparent water to demonstrate once again that he is a God for which nothing is too great and in the end God had Moses gather the elders together to go and stand by a rock and when Moses struck the rock with his staff out flowed a gusher of water.

         Now, that was a long explanation for such a short phrase that Peter used in saying that the Pharisees were testing God however when we know what the term originally meant we can know that what Peter was accusing the Pharisees of was not trusting in the power and presence of God. The Pharisee contention still clung to their old understanding even though the death and resurrection of Jesus had changed everything. What the Pharisees had not comprehended is that to know who is justified in their belief that they will be saved meant that one first had to understand the justification of Jesus. Jesus went to the cross having faith in his Heavenly Father who he believed is able to give life to the dead and to call into existence things which do not exist. Jesus put no hope in the power of his flesh but allowed the powers that be to use all of the power of their flesh to bring about the ultimate end that flesh can bring which is death. Where the Jewish realm declared Jesus guilty and the Gentile realm represented by Rome declared Jesus guilty, God declared Jesus not guilty by rising him from the grave three days after his death upon the cross. The resurrection then is God’s justification of Jesus, that he truly is the righteous holy Son of God. The resurrection being the justification of Jesus is our justification also.What the Pharisees missed is what had changed when Jesus was raised from the dead. On the cross Jesus condemned sin in the flesh meaning that all of us are held by the power of sin and in our present state apart from God we walk about in bodies of death. What we need is resurrection, the resurrection that comes about by faith in the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence those things that do not exist. Through faith, God through the Holy Spirit hovers over the nothingness of our life and creates in us a new heart, a new spirit free from the power of sin. When the Pharisees insisted upon circumcision and adherence to the Torah as the marks that would justify a persons claim of future victory they were in effect stating that God was not able to make a people for himself by his own power. The Pharisees were dead wrong. God justifies who he calls his own people in the same way Jesus was justified as the Son of God, through resurrection. We know we are God’s people when we have a personal experience of God’s power which takes the nothingness of our life and creates something of beauty out of it. This is the experience of the new covenant that Jeremiah wrote about in the thirty first chapter where he prophesied that no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying “Know the Lord” for they shall all know me  from the least to the greatest.” We know the Lord, that he is a God who is able to give life to the dead and who calls into existence what does not exist because this is our personal experience. Jesus teaches us in the fifth chapter of Matthew that those who are pure of heart will see God and this is our experience of faith. Our hearts are pure when they are undivided in their faith in God knowing that only God can raise us from our dead life under the slavery of sin. When our hearts our pure in their devotion to God this is when we see God through the movement of the Holy Spirit. This was what Peter witnessed to in his experience with Cornelius and his family. Cornelius believed God with his whole heart and when he did the Holy Spirit came upon Cornelius and his household; everyone saw God move in an unmistakable way.

         The church council when it had heard the testimony of Peter decided that the resurrection of Jesus had changed everything even what they believed about their salvation. It would not be necessary for the Gentiles nor even the Jews to rely upon the actions of the flesh but instead they were to rely upon the actions of the Spirit. There was only one thing that needed to be clarified and that would be just what would be the mark of those who were justified of future victory? The answer is found in the new life free from the enslavement of sin. This is what Jesus was speaking about in the twelfth chapter of the gospel of John where he teaches “ if anyone hears my words and does not keep them I do not judge them; for I did not come into the world to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word I have spoken will judge him on the last day.” And just what is this word that will judge us? It is the word that is God’s commandment that we love one another just as God first loved us we also are to love one another. Now that we have been set free from our body of death through faith in the God who is able to raise us to new life, now we are able to love as God has always intended us to do. This is why John in his first letter, the third chapter can tell us “this is how we know we have passed out of death into life because we love one another.” This then is our salvation, not merely some hope of winging our way to heaven when this life is over, not some safety against the flames of hell but the real life experience here and now of living the life God has always intended us to live. Through the power of God the life where loving each other, treating others in the same way we want to be treated, this life is finally a reality. So with every act of love we do we grow more certain of our future victory. In this way our future victory becomes our present victory when we live out this victory today, loving others more and more to the glory of God. Amen!