Delivered on February 20, 2011 at Church of the Redeemer in Camden, NC and Church of the Good Shepherd in Nags Head, NC.
Last week I talked about the seven deadly sins and how Jesus did not possess them. Although he was flesh, he did not sin, because the seeds—the roots—of sin were not inside him. Jesus had no pride, anger, envy, greed, gluttony, sloth, or lust in his heart, so he was incapable of committing sins like adultery or murder. What we do is ask Jesus to replace those roots of sin in our hearts with his beautiful attitudes—his beatitudes—and he does.
Well, this week, I want to go a little bit deeper with anger, because you have to be blind to not read that God gets angry quite frequently in the Old Testament, and we can see that Jesus also gets angry, too. Mark 3:5 says, “And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.” Jesus also quite violently throws out the moneychangers from the temple. The movies have him howling with rage. Well, does God have the sin of anger in his heart or not? Well, the best way to answer this question is to look at what it means to be angry as a human being and compare that with what it means to be angry as God.
Anger, as seen in humans, is a character defect. In other words, it is part of original sin, like corrupted DNA that we are born with. It contradicts reason. It is in conflict with wisdom. And it is only appropriate when we judge something or someone righteously. When we wrote myths about Greek gods and goddesses, we gave them human anger, which is why they seem like jerks, making people sick, making them suffer, and creating random natural disasters, like petulant children. That's how we know the Greek gods are made up stories—because their anger resembles our anger, with rarely any righteous anger of proper judgment. The human kind of anger is anger with resentment.
Now let's look at our God—Yahweh. Even though words like jealous and angry are used to describe him, Yahweh's anger is always—ALWAYS—a righteous anger of proper judgment. Anger and jealousy are human words assigned to something we don't truly understand about God. The word “wrath” is a better word, but it has become corrupted to mean something that God may arbitrarily do to someone. I was just walking along, minding my own business, when suddenly a jealous, angry God unleashed his wrath on me!
The best words are righteousness and holiness, but we think of those two words as being passive. We picture Yahweh just sitting there, being all righteous and being all holy. He's not actively doing anything. He's maybe glowing really brightly, but we tend to think of him being alone in a room, maybe like a glowing man, thinking to himself, “I know I'm right.” Have you met a person like that? They know they're right all the time, and so they are always alone. They have no friends, because nobody wants to hang out with someone who is always right! Then you got the phrase “holier than thou” that we throw about. That's not a positive statement to say about someone! When you say someone is holier than thou, you are saying that they think they are always right and always acting like a goody-goody, and nobody wants to hang out with a goody-goody!
Our thinking needs to change about these words—righteousness and holiness. They are active words and they are very dangerous to us, because most of the time, we are not righteous nor are we holy! What happens when unholy people are caught in the same room with a holy God? Like an ant under a magnifying glass. We will burn up instantly. Ashes. And then the ashes will be burned up to nothing. God actively burns us to cinders. He incinerates us.
That's why the Hebrew word for Anger is much better than the Greek word for anger. The Hebrew word for anger is OFF, and it means literally to burn! It also makes me laugh, because I think of my four daughters crawling all over me until I cannot take it anymore and I shout, “OFF!” I picture a massive God with all these dirty little human beings crawling all over him, and he finally shouts OFF! And he literally burns them off of himself.
Here is what we think: God gave us all these rules to live by, and when we break them—which we always do, because, hey, we're human—he gets angry with us and punishes us. Here is the truth: God loves us and wants to have a relationship with us. The problem is, he's righteous! He's holy, and we're not! He loves us so much that he wants us to be in his presence, but he knows that he will burn us to cinders, if we are in his presence, so he gives us commandments to obey, so that we will be righteous, too, so that we will not burn up in his presence. The problem is, we are steeped in sin, and we cannot obey these commandments, and so we burn anyway. Read the Old Testament. God is burning up people left and right in that book. He burns up the unbelieving nations outside Israel, and he burns up Israel, too, because even though they have the law in their hands, they cannot obey it either.
Well, there's good news. God has given us a way to be in his presence without burning up. That way is Jesus Christ. We don't have to be righteous. We don't have to be holy, because Jesus takes on our sin—our unrighteous anger, our unholy anger, our resentful anger—and he give us his righteousness, his holiness. All we have to do is ask him to change our hearts.
I touched on what we ask for last week. When we have one of these root sins in our lives, we ask Jesus to take it away and replace it with one of his beatitudes. The antidote for anger is meekness. The beatitude is “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Meek? Really? Meek people are going to inherit the earth? Do any of us believe that? Not in this culture. Not in this age. Neitzche, the German philosopher whose teaching provided a philosophical base for Hitler’s ideas about world domination, said this statement is the most seductive lie in all history. He said, “The truth is, assert yourself. It’s the assertive who take over the earth.” To us, meek equals weak. Wimpy. But that is not what meek means. It means strength under control.
Meekness means self-control. It means keeping our tempers under control. It means controlled and balanced, getting angry at the right things and at the right time — getting angry at things like injustice, but not angry at frivolous things like personal insult. Meekness is anger without resentment. A meek man is angry on the right occasion with the right people at the right moment for the right length of time. That’s meekness.
Booker T. Washington, the great scientist who faced prejudice all of his life because of his race said, “I will never allow one man to control or ruin my life by making me hate him.” See, when you say, “You are making me so mad” — which I say all the time, and I know everyone in this room has, too — you are admitting the other is controlling your emotions. The other person has power over you. The moment you start retaliating, seeking revenge or trying to get back, you give up control of your life. You are no longer in control. You are reacting, not acting. Jesus says the meek person knows how to let it go.
Jesus describes a meek person in our Gospel reading today. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” Now, knowing what Meekness is, we realize that Jesus isn't describing a pushover here! He is not describing a doormat! He is describing people who possess strength under control. These are the people who will “inherit the earth.” These are the people who are in control of the situation. The world is theirs. The person who has control of his emotions is not controlled by the world around him. If you are a meek person, you are not a victim. You control your choices.
Viktor Frankl, the famous psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz said, “They took my clothes, my wife, my children, my wedding ring. I stood naked before the SS. I realized that they can take everything in my life, but they cannot take away my freedom to choose how I will respond to them.” That’s the freedom you always have. So, how do we react? How do we choose to react when people are hurting us? Jesus is saying blessedness belongs to people with self-control. You are saying, “Well, I guess that leaves me out.” It doesn’t have to because we know someone who can give us that self-control. For the Christian, it’s not just self-control, but it’s allowing God’s spirit to be so in your life that he controls your reactions, that he helps you not to react.
God has given us, through his son Jesus Christ, through the word of God, direction as to what is right and what is wrong. Jesus is happy to take on our human, resentful anger and give us in return his meekness, his righteousness, his holiness. Ask him to make the switch. Better yet, nail your anger up on that cross today. In just a little bit we will be praying for healing. Some of you may want to come up here and ask God to heal the anger in your heart. Together, we can ask God to take the anger in your heart away and replace it with meekness.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Flesh v. Spirit (1 Corinthians 3 & Matthew 5)
Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd on February 13, 2011.
Last week, we talked about fasting in order to remove that thing that is covering up our communication with God. Fasting from something that we think of as necessary to our lives allows God to do the work instead, and we end up having an intense spiritual experience. Well, this week, I want to ask, what is spirituality? Have you ever heard someone say, “I'm spiritual but not religious?” What does that mean? Even people who claim to not believe in God are into finding spirituality in their lives. I know an atheist who is a very prominent member of his church. He goes in order to be spiritual, even though he doesn't even believe in a spiritual realm.
We really are preoccupied with spirituality. There is a spiritual hunger out there, and most of it is misplaced. We have a lot of earth worship that ranges from extreme environmentalism to actual worship—Mother Earth, Gaia—to re-creations of the Wiccan and Druid religions. We've got a lot of alternative healing methods that offer up “union with the divine” in the process—stuff like Yoga, Crystals, and psychic energy centers called Chakras.
Oh, we can dabble, too. We don't have to become a full-blown Druid. For the dabbler we have Psychic readings, hypnotherapy, energy healing, and spiritual counseling so that we can find our true identity, our purpose as a spiritual being. There is a huge spiritual awakening out there, but this awakening says that all we have to do is slip off those chains of organized religion and we can achieve enlightenment. Perfect selfhood. Ah, here's where it's all pointing. All of this New Age stuff is all about one thing—finding out how You are God.
That's a little different from Christianity. Christianity does not help us find out how we are Gods, it helps us find out who the real, one, true God is—the creator of the universe who wants to have a personal relationship with each of us. But this search for the self as God is not new. This has been happening for a long time. We can read in the New Testament and among the church fathers about a “new age” version of Christianity called Gnosticism.
According to Gnosticism, all material is evil. Anything that physically exists—flesh, creation—is all bad, and the spirit is good. This sort of rules out the Christian God who created everything, doesn't it? How can an all good God create something that's evil? Also, is Jesus really God if he's flesh? The Gnostics didn't think so. Or maybe he just pretended to be flesh and was really spirit? Well, then a completely spiritual Jesus is unable to suffer and die on our behalf. The cross becomes meaningless.
In first Corinthians 3, Paul says that he can not address the Corinthians as spiritual people because they are still people of the flesh. This sounds like Paul is a Gnostic, right? It sounds like the Corinthians are still materialists and they need to break free and be spirit, so they can be like Gods! The problem is the word flesh. Everywhere Paul uses the word “flesh” in his letters, he does not mean man's physical nature only. He means both man's physical and spiritual nature. So, flesh means being human. He even says it in verses 3 and 4: when we are of the flesh we are behaving in a human way.
Well, then what does Paul mean when he talks about being spirit? If it's not the human spirit, then what is it? It's actually God's spirit. It is the way of God. Paul is telling the Corinthians that they are not walking according to God, because of the strife and jealousy, but are still walking according to man. Even though they are Christians, they are still walking in the way of mankind. Being human is being in a fallen state, so it means continuing to sin. That's why we see believers sinning all the time, and we say to ourselves hypocrites, but they can't help it. They are still human. They are not walking in God's way. They are still walking the human way.
Well, if even believers have difficulty walking in God's way, how can we possibly do it? Well, it's always good to turn to Jesus when we are in doubt, so let's do that now. Our Gospel reading is very important in this regard. First, we have to remember two things. One: Jesus was without sin, even though he was God in the flesh. His flesh did not cause him to sin, so we should not blame our flesh for causing us to sin. This leads us to point two: Creation is not bad. As we read in Genesis, God made things and saw that they were good. One of the first commands God gave us is to be fruitful and multiply. The flesh is not evil. His creation is not a source of evil. No, corruption has come to us first through the spirit, and our sins are symptoms of the evil in our hearts, our fallen nature.
Jesus shows us this in the Sermon on the Mount. We have a law against murder, he says, but anger is the source of murder. Anger is the problem. Even if you haven't physically murdered anyone, because you have anger in your heart you are a murderer, because anger causes murder. Jesus never held anger in his heart, so he was incapable of murder. There is a law against adultery, Jesus says, but adultery is not the problem, it is the symptom. The source of adultery is lust. Even if you have not committed adultery, because of the lust in your heart, you are an adulterer. Jesus never committed adultery, because he had no lust in his heart.
Do the sources of evil sound familiar? They are the seven deadly sins: anger, lust, envy, sloth, greed, gluttony, and pride—and pride is the first sin that brought all the others in. Pride is the one that convinces us that we are Gods. The serpent convinced Adam and Eve that they could eat the fruit and be like God. Remember the whole spirituality movement and finding perfect selfhood that I talked about in the beginning? That's a symptom of our pride.
How do we get rid of these roots causes of sin? Well, Jesus seems to say that we need to cut them out. If your eye causes you to sin, cut it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Is this possible? It may be easy for us to keep our anger from causing us to physically assault someone, but is it easy to keep our anger from happening at all? No. I guarantee that everyone in this room was angry at some time this past week. What about Lust? We can keep ourselves from committing adultery, but can we keep ourselves from looking twice at the waiter or waitress? Can we keep ourselves from having thoughts about the sexy movie star we just saw in that last movie? Pride is the worst one. That's one where everything can be a symptom. We can abhor the spirituality movement, and say we're only going to read scripture and pray, no more trips to the fortune teller! Next thing we know, we're getting all proud about reading scripture and praying. Look at how righteous I am! I am so much more righteous than anyone else. Pride is the sin we just cannot escape by ourselves.
We just cannot dig any of these roots out our gardens alone. It is impossible with man, but with God, nothing is impossible. If we ask, if we plead with Jesus, to remove these root causes of evil—those seven deadly sins—he not only will answer our prayers, but he will replace each one of those sins with virtues. Again and again, we should be going back to the beatitudes to see what these virtues look like. They look like this: to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to be meek, to hunger for righteousness, to be pure in heart.
So, when we say that murder is caused by anger, we can also say that God's antidote is being meek, which includes loving your enemies and forgiving others. When we say that adultery is caused by lust, we can also say that the antidote to lust is being pure in heart, which includes innocence, chastity, and true desire for God. Desire for God. We are turning our desire away from that movie star, and we're turning it toward God. And only Jesus can help us do that very difficult thing.
Let's take anger and look at an example: Corrie Ten Boom lived in a concentration camp during World War II. She watched her sister die there. After the war, one of the cruelest guards in the camp came up to her in public and asked her to forgive him. She couldn't do it. She had too much anger in her heart. She had to plead with Jesus to allow her to forgive him, to replace the anger with meekness. Listen to her own words:
“And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. ‘… Help!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’ And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. ‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’”
Pride, the root sin that caused not only the fall of man, entrance of all the other sins, and especially all that self-centered spirituality that is practiced today, is countered by humility, which is described by Jesus as being poor in spirit—the first beatitude. Jesus is such a model for humility. He knew no pride, and so he never gave into any of the seven deadly sins. Listen to a few of the things he said about himself, all from the Gospel of John:
“The Son can do nothing by himself. By myself I can do nothing, I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. I do not accept praise from men. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will. My teaching is not my own. I am not here on my own. I do nothing on my own. I am not seeking glory for myself. The words I say to you are not just my own. These words you hear are not my own.” Sounds repetitive, but all of these statements are spread throughout the Gospel of John.
This is Christ's testimony. His life was in complete submission to the will of the Father. And that was the source of perfect peace and joy for him. So, let us look to the life of Christ, let us listen to his words, let us understand those beautiful attitudes, and find that we, too, will be living life by the spirit of God.
Last week, we talked about fasting in order to remove that thing that is covering up our communication with God. Fasting from something that we think of as necessary to our lives allows God to do the work instead, and we end up having an intense spiritual experience. Well, this week, I want to ask, what is spirituality? Have you ever heard someone say, “I'm spiritual but not religious?” What does that mean? Even people who claim to not believe in God are into finding spirituality in their lives. I know an atheist who is a very prominent member of his church. He goes in order to be spiritual, even though he doesn't even believe in a spiritual realm.
We really are preoccupied with spirituality. There is a spiritual hunger out there, and most of it is misplaced. We have a lot of earth worship that ranges from extreme environmentalism to actual worship—Mother Earth, Gaia—to re-creations of the Wiccan and Druid religions. We've got a lot of alternative healing methods that offer up “union with the divine” in the process—stuff like Yoga, Crystals, and psychic energy centers called Chakras.
Oh, we can dabble, too. We don't have to become a full-blown Druid. For the dabbler we have Psychic readings, hypnotherapy, energy healing, and spiritual counseling so that we can find our true identity, our purpose as a spiritual being. There is a huge spiritual awakening out there, but this awakening says that all we have to do is slip off those chains of organized religion and we can achieve enlightenment. Perfect selfhood. Ah, here's where it's all pointing. All of this New Age stuff is all about one thing—finding out how You are God.
That's a little different from Christianity. Christianity does not help us find out how we are Gods, it helps us find out who the real, one, true God is—the creator of the universe who wants to have a personal relationship with each of us. But this search for the self as God is not new. This has been happening for a long time. We can read in the New Testament and among the church fathers about a “new age” version of Christianity called Gnosticism.
According to Gnosticism, all material is evil. Anything that physically exists—flesh, creation—is all bad, and the spirit is good. This sort of rules out the Christian God who created everything, doesn't it? How can an all good God create something that's evil? Also, is Jesus really God if he's flesh? The Gnostics didn't think so. Or maybe he just pretended to be flesh and was really spirit? Well, then a completely spiritual Jesus is unable to suffer and die on our behalf. The cross becomes meaningless.
In first Corinthians 3, Paul says that he can not address the Corinthians as spiritual people because they are still people of the flesh. This sounds like Paul is a Gnostic, right? It sounds like the Corinthians are still materialists and they need to break free and be spirit, so they can be like Gods! The problem is the word flesh. Everywhere Paul uses the word “flesh” in his letters, he does not mean man's physical nature only. He means both man's physical and spiritual nature. So, flesh means being human. He even says it in verses 3 and 4: when we are of the flesh we are behaving in a human way.
Well, then what does Paul mean when he talks about being spirit? If it's not the human spirit, then what is it? It's actually God's spirit. It is the way of God. Paul is telling the Corinthians that they are not walking according to God, because of the strife and jealousy, but are still walking according to man. Even though they are Christians, they are still walking in the way of mankind. Being human is being in a fallen state, so it means continuing to sin. That's why we see believers sinning all the time, and we say to ourselves hypocrites, but they can't help it. They are still human. They are not walking in God's way. They are still walking the human way.
Well, if even believers have difficulty walking in God's way, how can we possibly do it? Well, it's always good to turn to Jesus when we are in doubt, so let's do that now. Our Gospel reading is very important in this regard. First, we have to remember two things. One: Jesus was without sin, even though he was God in the flesh. His flesh did not cause him to sin, so we should not blame our flesh for causing us to sin. This leads us to point two: Creation is not bad. As we read in Genesis, God made things and saw that they were good. One of the first commands God gave us is to be fruitful and multiply. The flesh is not evil. His creation is not a source of evil. No, corruption has come to us first through the spirit, and our sins are symptoms of the evil in our hearts, our fallen nature.
Jesus shows us this in the Sermon on the Mount. We have a law against murder, he says, but anger is the source of murder. Anger is the problem. Even if you haven't physically murdered anyone, because you have anger in your heart you are a murderer, because anger causes murder. Jesus never held anger in his heart, so he was incapable of murder. There is a law against adultery, Jesus says, but adultery is not the problem, it is the symptom. The source of adultery is lust. Even if you have not committed adultery, because of the lust in your heart, you are an adulterer. Jesus never committed adultery, because he had no lust in his heart.
Do the sources of evil sound familiar? They are the seven deadly sins: anger, lust, envy, sloth, greed, gluttony, and pride—and pride is the first sin that brought all the others in. Pride is the one that convinces us that we are Gods. The serpent convinced Adam and Eve that they could eat the fruit and be like God. Remember the whole spirituality movement and finding perfect selfhood that I talked about in the beginning? That's a symptom of our pride.
How do we get rid of these roots causes of sin? Well, Jesus seems to say that we need to cut them out. If your eye causes you to sin, cut it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Is this possible? It may be easy for us to keep our anger from causing us to physically assault someone, but is it easy to keep our anger from happening at all? No. I guarantee that everyone in this room was angry at some time this past week. What about Lust? We can keep ourselves from committing adultery, but can we keep ourselves from looking twice at the waiter or waitress? Can we keep ourselves from having thoughts about the sexy movie star we just saw in that last movie? Pride is the worst one. That's one where everything can be a symptom. We can abhor the spirituality movement, and say we're only going to read scripture and pray, no more trips to the fortune teller! Next thing we know, we're getting all proud about reading scripture and praying. Look at how righteous I am! I am so much more righteous than anyone else. Pride is the sin we just cannot escape by ourselves.
We just cannot dig any of these roots out our gardens alone. It is impossible with man, but with God, nothing is impossible. If we ask, if we plead with Jesus, to remove these root causes of evil—those seven deadly sins—he not only will answer our prayers, but he will replace each one of those sins with virtues. Again and again, we should be going back to the beatitudes to see what these virtues look like. They look like this: to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to be meek, to hunger for righteousness, to be pure in heart.
So, when we say that murder is caused by anger, we can also say that God's antidote is being meek, which includes loving your enemies and forgiving others. When we say that adultery is caused by lust, we can also say that the antidote to lust is being pure in heart, which includes innocence, chastity, and true desire for God. Desire for God. We are turning our desire away from that movie star, and we're turning it toward God. And only Jesus can help us do that very difficult thing.
Let's take anger and look at an example: Corrie Ten Boom lived in a concentration camp during World War II. She watched her sister die there. After the war, one of the cruelest guards in the camp came up to her in public and asked her to forgive him. She couldn't do it. She had too much anger in her heart. She had to plead with Jesus to allow her to forgive him, to replace the anger with meekness. Listen to her own words:
“And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. ‘… Help!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’ And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. ‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’”
Pride, the root sin that caused not only the fall of man, entrance of all the other sins, and especially all that self-centered spirituality that is practiced today, is countered by humility, which is described by Jesus as being poor in spirit—the first beatitude. Jesus is such a model for humility. He knew no pride, and so he never gave into any of the seven deadly sins. Listen to a few of the things he said about himself, all from the Gospel of John:
“The Son can do nothing by himself. By myself I can do nothing, I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. I do not accept praise from men. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will. My teaching is not my own. I am not here on my own. I do nothing on my own. I am not seeking glory for myself. The words I say to you are not just my own. These words you hear are not my own.” Sounds repetitive, but all of these statements are spread throughout the Gospel of John.
This is Christ's testimony. His life was in complete submission to the will of the Father. And that was the source of perfect peace and joy for him. So, let us look to the life of Christ, let us listen to his words, let us understand those beautiful attitudes, and find that we, too, will be living life by the spirit of God.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Fasting (Isaiah 58:1-9)
Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd on February 6, 2011.
Fasting. It's not Lent yet, but we should probably start thinking about “giving something up,” and the scriptures this week talk about fasting, and so I thought that we should talk about what it means to give things up. Everyone here has given up something at this day and this hour. Superbowl parties! You all are fasting from Superbowl parties right now. Of course, the game doesn't start until 6:30, so you may have a chance to catch most of it or all of it. We'll see who goes downstairs for Cathi's delicious brownies after the service.
Did you notice that I said fasting from something other than food? We're not children anymore: we know that fasting includes anything that is controlling you. Fasting is a voluntary denial of some aspect of your normal life for the sake of intense spiritual activity. Fasting reveals what controls us.
We cover up that part of our soul that communicates with God with worldly things. Food is a big one, which is why it is always associated with fasting. Have you ever heard someone say, “when I'm stressed, I eat?” Have you heard the phrase, “comfort food?” Food makes a lot of people feel relaxed and happy. Sigh. Where's my coffee? Where's my half-gallon of ice cream? Straight from the container in front of the TV. There's another normal aspect of life that people feel empty without—the television. Things we fast from aren't necessarily corrupting “bad” things—they are usually things that we think are “good,” which we need in our lives. Thing that make us feel whole, although when we actually examine the good thing, we find that it is really worthless.
God wants us to fast from the things that control our lives. He wants us to let that controlling thing go, so that we are free to move in a new direction with him. Catherine Marshall is the author of the famous Christian novel called Christy. In her prayers with God, she got the message that she needed to fast from criticalness. For one day, she needed to stop being critical. Well, I'm not critical, she thought. I have an opinion, of course. I have to make good judgments throughout the day, so that I can better live my life. If that involves judging someone for the mistakes they made in life, so that I won't make those same mistakes, how can that be bad? Gossip? Well, it's not gossip, if I only share with my family, right? It's not gossip if I keep it to myself, right?
Well, she agreed with God and she began her day without being critical of anyone. She met her brother and sister and mother for lunch, and as they talked politics and culture, she felt her critical opinions welling up, but she refrained from saying anything. Even though her family would probably agree with everything she said, she said nothing. The first thing she noticed, was that they didn't even realize she wasn't contributing! Her void was not even noticed—they just kept yammering on. The real moment of true realization was when she was immersed in her evening prayers. She prayed for this young man who had really messed up his life, and before that day she used to be very negative about him in her prayers. This reminds me of a relative that I pray for: God, he screwed up again. I can't believe he has messed up so badly. Could you forgive him and keep him from doing stupid things again. Change his heart, Lord.
Catherine stopped herself from that kind of prayer. That was critical prayer and she was on a fast. When she cleared the negative prayer from her mind, suddenly the positive prayer was unleashed. She focused on the young man's strengths. Her praying became quite creative, and she had an intense spiritual experience. Stopping something that we think we need, something we think is good and important in our lives actually clears out the toxins and makes us healthier. That's another reason why food is used in relation to fasting.
It's dangerous to go too long without food, of course, but a good friend of mine had a nine day fast, during which he only drank water. He must have been miserable, right? Woozy and dizzy? Well, at first he was really hungry, as we know from just going a few hours without something to eat. Then, when his body realized that it was not going to get any food from the outside, it started burning off all the fat it had been storing. He stopped being hungry and a new burst of energy filled him. On the ninth day he was able to play basketball for a few hours without tiring, and he said his reading comprehension went through the roof—which meant his prayer life and scripture understanding were incredible. I'm not suggesting we start a big food fast for nine days, but it is a great analogy. When we cut out something we think is good for us, we clear the path for God to start doing some real work in our lives.
This leads me to the very interesting Old Testament lesson we had this evening: Isaiah 58. In this passage, Isaiah describes false fasting. We're trying to get God's attention, and he doesn't seem to see. Look at us! We're humbling ourselves, and you do not seem to notice! But God answers—you're not doing it right. You're serving your own self interest, but look at the fruits. You're oppressing your workers, you're fighting with each other, you're putting on an act. That's not fasting. You're pretending to be humble, but I can tell that you have not cleared out the obstacles from your lives. I can tell that you have not given up that “good” thing that you think you need.
Catherine Marshall cleared out her critical nature and she was able to really pray for people for the first time in her life. Fasting from food gave my friend the energy to be more “hands on” and active than he had ever been in his life. Isaiah says that true fasting shows itself in what we do for the poor. We know we have gotten our fasting right when it comes out in our compassion and generosity. Look at the fourth commandment: the Sabbath. The day of rest. We think of that as a God-directed commandment, and it is. We stop working and we are able to rest and worship the Lord on this day. However, it is also a man-directed commandment. Employers have to let their employees rest. They can't work them to death. God has commanded that we clear out a day of work—work that seems good, so that God can work out his blessings in the lives of our workers. Stopping work helps the real work get done.
This is the best piece of employee legislation ever! However important we think working is, how important it is to our happiness, to others' happiness, we have to clear out a day on our calendar. We have to fast from work, remove the obstacle, so that the real work gets done—God working in our lives, our sacrificing ourselves for others, and being compassionate and relational. I met someone just this week whose wife has really connected to her housekeeper. She stopped thinking, “I'm her employer and that's all there is to our relationship!” She fasted from being merely her housekeeper's employer, and her compassion has allowed her to help this woman through the troubles in her life.
This past Friday, I had a bunch of administrative things to do. I was going to spend the day hunkered down and really get some stuff done on my computer. Turns out it was the only day to get our license plates done, so my whole family hopped in the van went to Manteo. We stopped at one of our bank branches to get money out for the title transfer, and while I was waiting, I talked to the new bank manager there, and he saw my collar and asked about Good Shepherd. I told all about our home groups, and the C.S. Lewis discipleship videos, and he gave me his card, so that I could put him on our mailing list and to invite him to a home group. We went to the DMV, and suddenly I'm in a deep conversation with the woman there about what I had preached on last Sunday—God being a god of blessings. Why she brought up that topic, I have no idea, but she tells me that she will begin attending services. These services! I cleared out the things that I thought were important—my admin work, and God did some real work in my life. He just threw these people in my path.
Finally, I want to talk about clearing our hearts—the fasting of our souls. Here is where we allow God to fill our hearts with what he wants. Christian meditation stands in the middle between other “extreme” kinds of mediation. On the left is where you completely clear your mind, and on the right is where you are only using your mind—which is essentially “study.” We all know what it means to read the bible and study it, but we may not know what it means to meditate on it. First you are not emptying your mind completely. That is a very dangerous thing, as Jesus says in Matthew 12:43-45, because the empty mind can be occupied very easily by dangerous spirits. That's why Transcendental Meditation is not a good thing—it clears the mind, sweeps it completely out, and allows extremely dangerous things in. Meditating on God's word is clearing out the heart but not the mind. We are filling our minds with the bread of life, and when we pick a passage of scripture and really chew on it—reading it over and over, picking a single verse, and praying over that verse—God unlocks a lot of meaning in that verse, our hearts become clear, and we find ourselves praying for people in our lives, using that very verse of scripture. We've cleared an obstacle and God is allowed to let the waters of change flow through our souls.
Paul gives us a clue in first Corinthians 2, our Epistle reading this evening. Paul says he did not come to the Corinthians with lofty words of wisdom. He decided to know nothing among them but Christ Crucified. That's true Christian meditation. He has not cleared his mind completely. He has emptied it of all the man-made explanations and persuasions and academics that we all like to try to use to convince people of the truth of God. Instead, Paul has meditated on the cross, the one thing, and his mind is filled with nothing else. He lets the cross dominate his thoughts, and God is now working through Paul to bring the Corinthians to conversion and lives of hope.
The cross is like that. We meditate on it, we fast from everything else, and God begins to bring forth his fruits in our lives. We are finally being used in the way we were intended from the moment God conceived of our souls at the beginning of time. As Lent approaches, let's decide what obstacle to God's power we are going to remove this year, and as we let go of that “good” thing that has been controlling us, let's watch in amazement as God works out something incredible through us for his eternal Kingdom.
Fasting. It's not Lent yet, but we should probably start thinking about “giving something up,” and the scriptures this week talk about fasting, and so I thought that we should talk about what it means to give things up. Everyone here has given up something at this day and this hour. Superbowl parties! You all are fasting from Superbowl parties right now. Of course, the game doesn't start until 6:30, so you may have a chance to catch most of it or all of it. We'll see who goes downstairs for Cathi's delicious brownies after the service.
Did you notice that I said fasting from something other than food? We're not children anymore: we know that fasting includes anything that is controlling you. Fasting is a voluntary denial of some aspect of your normal life for the sake of intense spiritual activity. Fasting reveals what controls us.
We cover up that part of our soul that communicates with God with worldly things. Food is a big one, which is why it is always associated with fasting. Have you ever heard someone say, “when I'm stressed, I eat?” Have you heard the phrase, “comfort food?” Food makes a lot of people feel relaxed and happy. Sigh. Where's my coffee? Where's my half-gallon of ice cream? Straight from the container in front of the TV. There's another normal aspect of life that people feel empty without—the television. Things we fast from aren't necessarily corrupting “bad” things—they are usually things that we think are “good,” which we need in our lives. Thing that make us feel whole, although when we actually examine the good thing, we find that it is really worthless.
God wants us to fast from the things that control our lives. He wants us to let that controlling thing go, so that we are free to move in a new direction with him. Catherine Marshall is the author of the famous Christian novel called Christy. In her prayers with God, she got the message that she needed to fast from criticalness. For one day, she needed to stop being critical. Well, I'm not critical, she thought. I have an opinion, of course. I have to make good judgments throughout the day, so that I can better live my life. If that involves judging someone for the mistakes they made in life, so that I won't make those same mistakes, how can that be bad? Gossip? Well, it's not gossip, if I only share with my family, right? It's not gossip if I keep it to myself, right?
Well, she agreed with God and she began her day without being critical of anyone. She met her brother and sister and mother for lunch, and as they talked politics and culture, she felt her critical opinions welling up, but she refrained from saying anything. Even though her family would probably agree with everything she said, she said nothing. The first thing she noticed, was that they didn't even realize she wasn't contributing! Her void was not even noticed—they just kept yammering on. The real moment of true realization was when she was immersed in her evening prayers. She prayed for this young man who had really messed up his life, and before that day she used to be very negative about him in her prayers. This reminds me of a relative that I pray for: God, he screwed up again. I can't believe he has messed up so badly. Could you forgive him and keep him from doing stupid things again. Change his heart, Lord.
Catherine stopped herself from that kind of prayer. That was critical prayer and she was on a fast. When she cleared the negative prayer from her mind, suddenly the positive prayer was unleashed. She focused on the young man's strengths. Her praying became quite creative, and she had an intense spiritual experience. Stopping something that we think we need, something we think is good and important in our lives actually clears out the toxins and makes us healthier. That's another reason why food is used in relation to fasting.
It's dangerous to go too long without food, of course, but a good friend of mine had a nine day fast, during which he only drank water. He must have been miserable, right? Woozy and dizzy? Well, at first he was really hungry, as we know from just going a few hours without something to eat. Then, when his body realized that it was not going to get any food from the outside, it started burning off all the fat it had been storing. He stopped being hungry and a new burst of energy filled him. On the ninth day he was able to play basketball for a few hours without tiring, and he said his reading comprehension went through the roof—which meant his prayer life and scripture understanding were incredible. I'm not suggesting we start a big food fast for nine days, but it is a great analogy. When we cut out something we think is good for us, we clear the path for God to start doing some real work in our lives.
This leads me to the very interesting Old Testament lesson we had this evening: Isaiah 58. In this passage, Isaiah describes false fasting. We're trying to get God's attention, and he doesn't seem to see. Look at us! We're humbling ourselves, and you do not seem to notice! But God answers—you're not doing it right. You're serving your own self interest, but look at the fruits. You're oppressing your workers, you're fighting with each other, you're putting on an act. That's not fasting. You're pretending to be humble, but I can tell that you have not cleared out the obstacles from your lives. I can tell that you have not given up that “good” thing that you think you need.
Catherine Marshall cleared out her critical nature and she was able to really pray for people for the first time in her life. Fasting from food gave my friend the energy to be more “hands on” and active than he had ever been in his life. Isaiah says that true fasting shows itself in what we do for the poor. We know we have gotten our fasting right when it comes out in our compassion and generosity. Look at the fourth commandment: the Sabbath. The day of rest. We think of that as a God-directed commandment, and it is. We stop working and we are able to rest and worship the Lord on this day. However, it is also a man-directed commandment. Employers have to let their employees rest. They can't work them to death. God has commanded that we clear out a day of work—work that seems good, so that God can work out his blessings in the lives of our workers. Stopping work helps the real work get done.
This is the best piece of employee legislation ever! However important we think working is, how important it is to our happiness, to others' happiness, we have to clear out a day on our calendar. We have to fast from work, remove the obstacle, so that the real work gets done—God working in our lives, our sacrificing ourselves for others, and being compassionate and relational. I met someone just this week whose wife has really connected to her housekeeper. She stopped thinking, “I'm her employer and that's all there is to our relationship!” She fasted from being merely her housekeeper's employer, and her compassion has allowed her to help this woman through the troubles in her life.
This past Friday, I had a bunch of administrative things to do. I was going to spend the day hunkered down and really get some stuff done on my computer. Turns out it was the only day to get our license plates done, so my whole family hopped in the van went to Manteo. We stopped at one of our bank branches to get money out for the title transfer, and while I was waiting, I talked to the new bank manager there, and he saw my collar and asked about Good Shepherd. I told all about our home groups, and the C.S. Lewis discipleship videos, and he gave me his card, so that I could put him on our mailing list and to invite him to a home group. We went to the DMV, and suddenly I'm in a deep conversation with the woman there about what I had preached on last Sunday—God being a god of blessings. Why she brought up that topic, I have no idea, but she tells me that she will begin attending services. These services! I cleared out the things that I thought were important—my admin work, and God did some real work in my life. He just threw these people in my path.
Finally, I want to talk about clearing our hearts—the fasting of our souls. Here is where we allow God to fill our hearts with what he wants. Christian meditation stands in the middle between other “extreme” kinds of mediation. On the left is where you completely clear your mind, and on the right is where you are only using your mind—which is essentially “study.” We all know what it means to read the bible and study it, but we may not know what it means to meditate on it. First you are not emptying your mind completely. That is a very dangerous thing, as Jesus says in Matthew 12:43-45, because the empty mind can be occupied very easily by dangerous spirits. That's why Transcendental Meditation is not a good thing—it clears the mind, sweeps it completely out, and allows extremely dangerous things in. Meditating on God's word is clearing out the heart but not the mind. We are filling our minds with the bread of life, and when we pick a passage of scripture and really chew on it—reading it over and over, picking a single verse, and praying over that verse—God unlocks a lot of meaning in that verse, our hearts become clear, and we find ourselves praying for people in our lives, using that very verse of scripture. We've cleared an obstacle and God is allowed to let the waters of change flow through our souls.
Paul gives us a clue in first Corinthians 2, our Epistle reading this evening. Paul says he did not come to the Corinthians with lofty words of wisdom. He decided to know nothing among them but Christ Crucified. That's true Christian meditation. He has not cleared his mind completely. He has emptied it of all the man-made explanations and persuasions and academics that we all like to try to use to convince people of the truth of God. Instead, Paul has meditated on the cross, the one thing, and his mind is filled with nothing else. He lets the cross dominate his thoughts, and God is now working through Paul to bring the Corinthians to conversion and lives of hope.
The cross is like that. We meditate on it, we fast from everything else, and God begins to bring forth his fruits in our lives. We are finally being used in the way we were intended from the moment God conceived of our souls at the beginning of time. As Lent approaches, let's decide what obstacle to God's power we are going to remove this year, and as we let go of that “good” thing that has been controlling us, let's watch in amazement as God works out something incredible through us for his eternal Kingdom.
Our God is a God of blessings, not curses (Micah 6:3-5)
Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd on January 30, 2011
Something I've learned over the years, especially being a Christian, is that sometimes, actually many times, it is best to stay silent and listen, and then ask questions when they are appropriate. Bishop Martyn Minns says he listens to people, until he can ask a really good question, so he can get them talking some more and maybe think through what they are saying. A friend of his told him once that he did not believe in God. Bishop Martyn responded, “Oh really? Tell me about the God you don't believe in.” “What?” “Tell me about the God you don't believe in—describe that God.” And his friend does, and then the two of them find out that Bishop Martyn doesn't believe in that God either. In fact, no Christian believes in that God. That God was a caricature made up by people who don't believe to feed others who don't believe.
That's how asking questions really help us out, especially when people try to attack Christianity. Like, when someone tells you that there are so many contradictions in the Bible. “Really? Tell me about them.” That sounds much better than, “nuh-uh!” “What?” “Tell me about the contradictions. Tell me about one.” “Well, one Gospel says Jesus gives a Sermon on the Mount, and another Gospel says he gave a sermon on the plain. Which is it?” That's an actual problem people have with the Bible, and some Christians have gone so far as to respond, "um . . . well, it must have been on a plateau!” Of course the easier answer is that Jesus gave two sermons at two different times and in two different locations. His ministry lasted three years. He had to have preached more than one sermon, perhaps?
Tonight's contradiction is one of my favorites: “The God of the Old Testament is mean and angry, and the God of the New Testament is sweet and kind. They can't be the same God.” Now, Pastor Fred with all his fancy book learning can answer that one and say something like, “well, the God of the Old Testament shows much more mercy than anger, and actually, Jesus talks about Hell more than anyone else in the whole rest of the Bible.” But in Micah 6, we get to hear God defend himself directly, so I'm going to let him do it. So, here's God defending himself. Think of a trial court. The mountains and hills are like character witnesses, because they are the oldest things on earth. They were here from the beginning, and they can attest to God's character. The accusation against God, much like the accusations against Christianity that I talked about before, is that God has cursed Israel, and God now makes his case by asking some questions.
Micah 6:3: What have I done to you? How have I wearied you? The questions are challenging Israel's assumptions about God. They challenge what we today think about God. There's what we think on the one hand, and then there's the truth on the other hand. Well, let's answer the questions God poses to us. What has he done to us? How has he wearied us? What we think is that our God is a God of wrath. God loves to punish. We may say that we don't believe that and that we believe in God's mercy and grace, but later this week we will be groaning and muttering, “Why me, God? Why did you let this happen to me?”
Now, the truth. God presents his evidence in verse 4. “I brought you out of Egypt, out of slavery.” We can read in Exodus that God actually did this. He freed an entire people group from slavery. We also know from reading the Gospels and from our own lives that he frees people out of slavery today. When someone who was lost to God is suddenly found, it's like being brought out of Egypt. The evidence is that our God is a God of great mercy and peace. That's not enough! God now brings in witnesses in verse 5: “Remember what Balak king of Moab devised and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him.” What did king Balak devise? He wanted God to curse Israel. He wanted God to be a God of curses. What did Balaam the seer answer? Everytime he was asked by the king to curse Israel, he instead blessed Israel.
We can see all this play out in Numbers 22 through 24. Balaam is called by the king to curse the Israelites, and we have him standing up there on the mountain, and it's like an Abbot and Costello routine. Four times the king says, you need to curse them, and Balaam says, okay, okay, I'm going to really curse them this time, and he opens his mouth, and a divine blessing comes out. God won't let him curse Israel. It's sort of funny, but the blessings are really beautiful. Israel is strengthened, because God is a God of blessings and not curses.
Now, in the Old Testament, Israel is interacting with God the Father, who is this vast mind. Sometimes it is tough to see that he is a blesser and not a curser when we read about little people interacting with this vast intelligence. Now, when Jesus comes, we have God in the flesh, and we can physically see him in action and see that he is a blessing God. Let's look at Matthew 3:7. John the baptist sees the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to where he baptizes, and he warns them of the oncoming curse: Brood of vipers. Repent. The axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. The one coming after me will baptize with fire. He has a big pitchfork, and he is going to clear the threshing floor. The chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire. It's easy to skip over the word “unquenchable.” I do it all the time, before I remember: that's an everlasting fire that cannot be put out. That's a lot of burning.
But Jesus finally sits down and speaks to the crowd in Matthew 5. This is the sermon on the mount. What does he begin to say? Does he say, time to get out the pitchfork? Time to burn some chaff! Here's what he says to the people:
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the pure in heart.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are those who are persecuted.
Now, these aren't blessings aimed at the same people that John the Baptist was cursing earlier. But we can really see God's nature here: he is a God who blesses. The threats of John the Baptist aren't necessarily things that God carries out directly on the Pharisees and Sadducees. God does not inflict curses. But God blesses the list of people I just read, and the Pharisees and Sadducees aren't on the list. They will not receive the blessings. They have chosen to reject the blessings. And being outside of God's blessing feels like a curse. We need to remember that when someone says that God has cursed them, that is only what it feels like. What they really mean is that they themselves have chosen to reject God's blessings, and when we reject God's blessings, we have cursed ourselves.
When we live outside of God's will, it feels like we are cursed. And when bad things happen to us, we hold God accountable. This lost world also loves to hold Christians accountable for what they blame God for. I want to pray for a woman named Emily. She's a cashier at K-mart. She's in her 20s and when she saw my collar she snickered. Three young boys, about high school age, were ahead of me in line. She told them that God was in the house. They saw me and they started making fun of me, loud enough for me to hear. Now, I'm not complaining to you. This is not about my persecution. I can handle that. This is about Emily. Before she got to serve me, she heard some bad news from her boss. She either had to stay late or do some stockroom stuff or something that made her visibly upset. She looked very sad when I got to her. Even though she had instigated my ridicule, I blessed her and told her to hang in there. She did not have a very happy life, it seemed, and by her attitude toward me, I could tell that she blamed God for her misfortune.
God is a God of blessings and not curses. If she only knew that God is in her corner. Listen to the first beatitude again. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. That's Emily. She was poor in spirit. Jesus says that we must pray especially for those who persecute us. Pray for those who hurt us. Pray for our enemies, because that person is the one who needs Jesus even more than we do. The one who is brought up from rock bottom into the presence of the savior has traveled the greatest distance. Let's pray for Emily, who is currently in slavery in Egypt. Let us pray that the Lord will release her from bondage and will shower her with his blessings.
Something I've learned over the years, especially being a Christian, is that sometimes, actually many times, it is best to stay silent and listen, and then ask questions when they are appropriate. Bishop Martyn Minns says he listens to people, until he can ask a really good question, so he can get them talking some more and maybe think through what they are saying. A friend of his told him once that he did not believe in God. Bishop Martyn responded, “Oh really? Tell me about the God you don't believe in.” “What?” “Tell me about the God you don't believe in—describe that God.” And his friend does, and then the two of them find out that Bishop Martyn doesn't believe in that God either. In fact, no Christian believes in that God. That God was a caricature made up by people who don't believe to feed others who don't believe.
That's how asking questions really help us out, especially when people try to attack Christianity. Like, when someone tells you that there are so many contradictions in the Bible. “Really? Tell me about them.” That sounds much better than, “nuh-uh!” “What?” “Tell me about the contradictions. Tell me about one.” “Well, one Gospel says Jesus gives a Sermon on the Mount, and another Gospel says he gave a sermon on the plain. Which is it?” That's an actual problem people have with the Bible, and some Christians have gone so far as to respond, "um . . . well, it must have been on a plateau!” Of course the easier answer is that Jesus gave two sermons at two different times and in two different locations. His ministry lasted three years. He had to have preached more than one sermon, perhaps?
Tonight's contradiction is one of my favorites: “The God of the Old Testament is mean and angry, and the God of the New Testament is sweet and kind. They can't be the same God.” Now, Pastor Fred with all his fancy book learning can answer that one and say something like, “well, the God of the Old Testament shows much more mercy than anger, and actually, Jesus talks about Hell more than anyone else in the whole rest of the Bible.” But in Micah 6, we get to hear God defend himself directly, so I'm going to let him do it. So, here's God defending himself. Think of a trial court. The mountains and hills are like character witnesses, because they are the oldest things on earth. They were here from the beginning, and they can attest to God's character. The accusation against God, much like the accusations against Christianity that I talked about before, is that God has cursed Israel, and God now makes his case by asking some questions.
Micah 6:3: What have I done to you? How have I wearied you? The questions are challenging Israel's assumptions about God. They challenge what we today think about God. There's what we think on the one hand, and then there's the truth on the other hand. Well, let's answer the questions God poses to us. What has he done to us? How has he wearied us? What we think is that our God is a God of wrath. God loves to punish. We may say that we don't believe that and that we believe in God's mercy and grace, but later this week we will be groaning and muttering, “Why me, God? Why did you let this happen to me?”
Now, the truth. God presents his evidence in verse 4. “I brought you out of Egypt, out of slavery.” We can read in Exodus that God actually did this. He freed an entire people group from slavery. We also know from reading the Gospels and from our own lives that he frees people out of slavery today. When someone who was lost to God is suddenly found, it's like being brought out of Egypt. The evidence is that our God is a God of great mercy and peace. That's not enough! God now brings in witnesses in verse 5: “Remember what Balak king of Moab devised and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him.” What did king Balak devise? He wanted God to curse Israel. He wanted God to be a God of curses. What did Balaam the seer answer? Everytime he was asked by the king to curse Israel, he instead blessed Israel.
We can see all this play out in Numbers 22 through 24. Balaam is called by the king to curse the Israelites, and we have him standing up there on the mountain, and it's like an Abbot and Costello routine. Four times the king says, you need to curse them, and Balaam says, okay, okay, I'm going to really curse them this time, and he opens his mouth, and a divine blessing comes out. God won't let him curse Israel. It's sort of funny, but the blessings are really beautiful. Israel is strengthened, because God is a God of blessings and not curses.
Now, in the Old Testament, Israel is interacting with God the Father, who is this vast mind. Sometimes it is tough to see that he is a blesser and not a curser when we read about little people interacting with this vast intelligence. Now, when Jesus comes, we have God in the flesh, and we can physically see him in action and see that he is a blessing God. Let's look at Matthew 3:7. John the baptist sees the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to where he baptizes, and he warns them of the oncoming curse: Brood of vipers. Repent. The axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. The one coming after me will baptize with fire. He has a big pitchfork, and he is going to clear the threshing floor. The chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire. It's easy to skip over the word “unquenchable.” I do it all the time, before I remember: that's an everlasting fire that cannot be put out. That's a lot of burning.
But Jesus finally sits down and speaks to the crowd in Matthew 5. This is the sermon on the mount. What does he begin to say? Does he say, time to get out the pitchfork? Time to burn some chaff! Here's what he says to the people:
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the pure in heart.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are those who are persecuted.
Now, these aren't blessings aimed at the same people that John the Baptist was cursing earlier. But we can really see God's nature here: he is a God who blesses. The threats of John the Baptist aren't necessarily things that God carries out directly on the Pharisees and Sadducees. God does not inflict curses. But God blesses the list of people I just read, and the Pharisees and Sadducees aren't on the list. They will not receive the blessings. They have chosen to reject the blessings. And being outside of God's blessing feels like a curse. We need to remember that when someone says that God has cursed them, that is only what it feels like. What they really mean is that they themselves have chosen to reject God's blessings, and when we reject God's blessings, we have cursed ourselves.
When we live outside of God's will, it feels like we are cursed. And when bad things happen to us, we hold God accountable. This lost world also loves to hold Christians accountable for what they blame God for. I want to pray for a woman named Emily. She's a cashier at K-mart. She's in her 20s and when she saw my collar she snickered. Three young boys, about high school age, were ahead of me in line. She told them that God was in the house. They saw me and they started making fun of me, loud enough for me to hear. Now, I'm not complaining to you. This is not about my persecution. I can handle that. This is about Emily. Before she got to serve me, she heard some bad news from her boss. She either had to stay late or do some stockroom stuff or something that made her visibly upset. She looked very sad when I got to her. Even though she had instigated my ridicule, I blessed her and told her to hang in there. She did not have a very happy life, it seemed, and by her attitude toward me, I could tell that she blamed God for her misfortune.
God is a God of blessings and not curses. If she only knew that God is in her corner. Listen to the first beatitude again. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. That's Emily. She was poor in spirit. Jesus says that we must pray especially for those who persecute us. Pray for those who hurt us. Pray for our enemies, because that person is the one who needs Jesus even more than we do. The one who is brought up from rock bottom into the presence of the savior has traveled the greatest distance. Let's pray for Emily, who is currently in slavery in Egypt. Let us pray that the Lord will release her from bondage and will shower her with his blessings.
Monday, December 6, 2010
God's Airplane (1 Thessalonians 5:1-11)
Delivered in Trinity Chapel, 12/6/10
Way back when, before I aspired to go to seminary, before God called me to do all this, I had a relative who had gone to Princeton Theological Seminary! My brother and I had dinner with him, and we got to bombard him with questions about religion. My brother asked the ever-popular “Is Jesus the only way to God” question.
Let's call my seminary graduate Jack. Jack smiled and told us this analogy. You've probably heard it before. There's a mountain, and God is at the top, and we're all on the mountain, climbing to the top, and each one of us sees that his path gets to the top, and we look over and we see someone else climbing on their own path, and we shout over, hey! My path gets to the top! Come on over! But the other fellow says, I can see the top from here, too. So, the conclusion is that all paths lead to the top of the mountain. Brilliant! Case closed!
Of course, now that I have been to seminary myself, some questions come up, like HOW DOES HE KNOW? In order for him to make that statement that all paths lead to the top of the mountain, he would have to have a big picture view of the mountain. That means that he is not on the mountain himself. He has placed himself over the mountain in an airplane looking down.
He got this airplane from a seminary professor who got it from his own professor and all the way back to some guy who decided that all roads led to God and he needed to come up with an analogy, so he made up the story about the mountain. Now, am I knocking the airplane philosophy? Not at all. Philosophy should always pull back to see the big picture, but listen what Paul is saying in first Thessalonians 5. We have our own airplane. This Bible.
Paul's message today is about Advent and the Day of the Lord Coming. How is the day of the Lord coming? Like a thief in the night. That's the new testament spin on the old testament day of the Lord theme. Jesus says it, Paul says it. The day of the Lord is coming like a thief in the night. Do we believe this? Yes. Do we know when this going to happen? No. Do we know the time or the season? No. Do we know the chronos or the kairos? No. Does the Son know? No. Are we going to be taken by surprise? No!
This is where our airplane kicks in. We may not know the time but we know that it IS GOING TO HAPPEN. That's more than a lot of people know. The people who ARE going to be taken by surprise. And we know HOW it is going to happen. Like a thief in the night. Jack has a faulty airplane, a seminary professor, nothing against seminary professors, but WE have a well-crafted airplane, one that gives us an excellent view of the lay of the land. We have the Bible, but we can't just fly this plane all willy nilly. We can't pick and choose verses out of context. That's not flying the airplane right. We can't get a good big picture that way. Remember, context is king, or “king and queen” as my ESV footnote says. We keep the context and we're flying the plane right.
Here's a great example, because it's Advent and this is another day of the Lord reference. Matthew 24: Jesus tells about two men in the field. One is taken and the other is . . . left behind, eh? Two women grinding at the mill. One is taken and the other is . . . left behind! Ooh. It's the rapture! Look out! Don't want to get left behind! Wait a second. If we look at the context, if we jump back a few verses, we hear Jesus say the day of the Lord will be like the days of Noah, when people were just going about their business, getting married and having babies, and then the flood came and swept them all away. Context! This ain't the rapture. You WANT to get left behind in this scenario. This is the chaff being blown away and the wheat remaining. Left behind is GOOD. Guess we have to rewrite the novels.
God has given us an amazing airplane, and when we leave Ambridge, PA as I am doing in 29 days, 2 hours, and forty six minutes, we are going to encounter a lot of people who are just cruising around in the darkness, asleep as Paul says, not knowing that the Day of the Lord is coming at all, and we're also going to encounter people who have studied, and studied hard, and they are preaching the rapture, or they are preaching that all roads lead to the top of the mountain.
It's going to be tough. Pray for me, and I'll pray for you, too. Use this airplane to the fullest. It has its own mountain philosophy, you know. What does the Bible say about the mountain? Here's Christianity's take. NONE of the paths leads to the top of the mountain—NOT ONE! Ours is a God who descends from the mountain, picks us up and brings us to the top. Ours is a God who sacrifices his only Son on a cross, so that we can live forever with him. The cross is kinda shaped like an airplane, too.
AMEN.
Monday, July 12, 2010
The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)
Delivered at Anglican Church of the Redeemer, Camden, NC and Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd, Nags Head, NC on July 11, 2010.
Well, how many people here have heard the story of the Good Samaritan? Since you learned it it Sunday school, right? That's when I learned it. Over and over. I knew it backwards and forwards, but I didn't really know it. How many people here have gone deeper into this parable? There are at least three layers to this parable. Let's uncover the three layers and see what we can find.
First there's the Sunday School layer, and it's valid. It's good. It's the social gospel. Help the poor, the sick, the beaten and downtrodden. Don't be like the priest and the levite. Be like the Samaritan. You never know when you might be the guy dying in the street. This story is an example of the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's a great story. Notice the priest and the Levite are headed away from Jerusalem. They are going back home to Jericho. They are done with their temple worship. They aren't in a hurry. They do not need to worry about touching something unclean. There's no valid reason for them to walk on the other side of the street. And they do, because they don't want to get involved. They are filled with dread and apprehension. Some say that they are worried the robbers may still be around. Whatever the reason, their minds are not there. They may be the representatives of Judaism, but they are not representing Judaism very well.
Well, we're not like those two, are we? No, not at all. We're probably worse. There's a video on the Internet. I don't recommend you find it. There is a crowd of people waiting to be served in a Popeye's, and the security cam is filming everything. And one guy gets on his cell phone to tell his wife that he is going to be late getting home, because of the crowd. Now, he must have said something nasty, because the really big guy standing in front of him turns around and starts beating him. Then he's stomping on him, and fortunately the security cam doesn't show below the counter. The guy had to be rushed to intensive care. I can't remember if he lived or not. That's pretty awful, but that's not the worst part. The worst part is everyone else staring ahead, pretending it wasn't happening. A whole lot of priests and levites there. Who turned out to be the good Samaritan? The best our culture was able to do was someone who discretely slipped out of the building and called 911 in a corner of the parking lot.
Jesus' Samaritan is a missionally-minded man. He doesn't even think—he kicks into gear. He helps the fallen victim. He is the example for all of us. We should be like the Samaritan. Good Samaritan! Jesus ends his parable with the words, “You go, and do likewise.” Go and be a good Samaritan. Help the poor, the sick, the needy. The one beaten down.
But that interpretation—and it's a good one!—is the answer to the first question the lawyer in our passage asks: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Actually, Jesus' parable is an answer to the lawyer's second question: “who is my neighbor?” The neighbor isn't the fallen victim; The neighbor is the good Samaritan. Why did Jesus pick a Samaritan? Because Jews HATE Samaritans. This is the second layer, and as adults we hear this layer. We don't hear it when we are a kid in Sunday school. We hear it when we are older and more ready for this tough lesson. Your neighbor is your ENEMY. The person you hate. When Jesus asks the lawyer, “which one of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?” The lawyer responds, “The one who showed him mercy.” Ha can't even get the word SAMARITAN out of his mouth. Never will he say that a Samaritan is his neighbor. Now, when Jesus says the words, “You go, and do likewise,” they mean something different. Love your enemies. Well, that gives us something to think about. Let's go home and think about what it means to love our enemies.
But here's the amazing third layer that I was telling you about! Here's the big twist, that you don't usually hear. Here's the part that made me raise an eyebrow and think, “ohhh, now I'm starting get it!” We know this: the Jews and the Samaritans are enemies. They don't like each other. They hate each other. Got it. This means, the Samaritan hates the Jew as much as the Jew hates the Samaritan. The Lawyer can't say that the Samaritan is his neighbor, and just as true: the Samaritan can't say the Lawyer is his neighbor. Now, we have another reason why Jesus picked a Samaritan as the hero of this parable. In real life, never in a million, billion years would a Samaritan help a Jew out! Jesus us making a big point here. Never in a million, billion years! Let's update the story a little, so it will make more sense to us today. The Jew on his way to Jericho is attacked by robbers and he lies bleeding and dying. Other Jews pass him by. So far the same story. Now, instead of a Samaritan, now we have an Militant Muslim terrorist from Iran, complete with bomb strapped around him, on his way to his 72 virgins in the great hereafter. Things start to get more clear. Does the Islamic terrorist come up to the fallen Jew and say, “oh dear. You're hurt. Let me help you.” Never in a million, billion years. He may kick him when he walks by. He may finish him off. But he will not help him.
So why does Jesus pick a Samaritan as his hero, knowing that in real life, never will a Samaritan help a fallen Jew? Because, in real life, we will never, never be able to love our enemies. It is impossible for us to love our enemies. Impossible. On our own. By human means. Never will we be able to will ourselves to help an enemy who has fallen. And that is Jesus' big point. You need God to be able to love your enemies. You need God's help. God loves our enemies. Really loves them. He made them. He loves them. Every hair on your enemy's head is numbered, too. God wants your enemy to have everlasting life, too. And once we get it in our heads that God loves our enemies just as much as he loves us, our behavior toward our enemies will start to change.
Now, I've heard from a lot of people what loving your enemy looks like. Here's what I hear a lot: “loving your enemy means wishing him well, even if you don't like him.” That's loving your enemy? Wishing someone well is not hard. Wishing someone well is always conditional. I can say, “I wish you well, as long as I don't have to be around you.” I can wish the Nazis well, as long as they surrender, because that's really the only way they are going to be well off.” I wish the guy who stole my girlfriend well, as long as he gets lost and lets me have my girlfriend back. See where I'm going. Wishing someone well is always conditional. You can't wish someone well as they are blowing up a cafe in Baghdad. Good luck in your bombing, I wish you well! No! You want the guy to not blow up people! That's how we wish people well. It's all conditional.
With God nothing is conditional. God loves every single person on this earth unconditionally. God plants his cross on earth, and he says, here it is! Grab hold! I will save you. But isn't that conditional? If you don't grab hold of the cross you aren't saved? That's not God's condition—that's our condition. God, I want to be saved, but I don't want to grab hold of your cross. I don't want to repent. I don't want to change my life. I don't want to put others first. I want to remain selfish. I want to continue to live a sinful life. I'll do it MY WAY, thank you. Those are my conditions.
And it's not like God won't agree to our conditions. God CAN'T agree to our conditions. Imagine that! God CAN'T do something. God can't agree to our conditions, because that is not the way creation works. That is not the way the universe works. God sustains the universe. He is the energy the universe runs on. God is wholly and perfectly good. The universe, therefore, runs on Good. But not us: we chose to run on sin. We actively chose to run on sin. Sin is our fuel. But the universe runs on good. If we run on bad sin and the universe runs on a good god, what should happen? Zaaaap! Like a bug zapper. Fried. Dead. God said it would happen in the garden. You will surely die, he told Adam and Eve. But it didn't happen. God loves us so much that he suspended the laws of goodness. He stopped the overwhelming good that he created from zapping us like bugs. He's still suspending the laws of the universe. He's still doing it at this moment. Right now. He is keeping all the amazing goodness in the universe from slamming closed on our heads and pulverizing us. Because he loves us.
And the only way he can get us out of this situation is through Jesus Christ. The cross is stopping the universe from crashing down on us. Jesus is like the big strong guy in the movies that holds the big steel door open, keeps it from slamming shut forever. He's holding the door, and he's saying come on! Get through! Everyone through! Come on! We jump through, right? Um, no, we stand there, and we say, “I've got three conditions!”
We are our own worst enemies. Which is why we'll never be able to love ourselves without God's help. God sent his son Jesus to die on the cross and create that way for us to have a relationship with the creator of the universe, the being who is so good that we would incinerate. No conditions, just the most amazing love.
What do I need to do to inherit eternal life? Love like God loves. Love God and love your neighbor.
Who is my neighbor? The one who shows us mercy. Our enemy.
How am I able to love my enemy? You can't. With man it is impossible. With God nothing is impossible.
Amen.
Well, how many people here have heard the story of the Good Samaritan? Since you learned it it Sunday school, right? That's when I learned it. Over and over. I knew it backwards and forwards, but I didn't really know it. How many people here have gone deeper into this parable? There are at least three layers to this parable. Let's uncover the three layers and see what we can find.
First there's the Sunday School layer, and it's valid. It's good. It's the social gospel. Help the poor, the sick, the beaten and downtrodden. Don't be like the priest and the levite. Be like the Samaritan. You never know when you might be the guy dying in the street. This story is an example of the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's a great story. Notice the priest and the Levite are headed away from Jerusalem. They are going back home to Jericho. They are done with their temple worship. They aren't in a hurry. They do not need to worry about touching something unclean. There's no valid reason for them to walk on the other side of the street. And they do, because they don't want to get involved. They are filled with dread and apprehension. Some say that they are worried the robbers may still be around. Whatever the reason, their minds are not there. They may be the representatives of Judaism, but they are not representing Judaism very well.
Well, we're not like those two, are we? No, not at all. We're probably worse. There's a video on the Internet. I don't recommend you find it. There is a crowd of people waiting to be served in a Popeye's, and the security cam is filming everything. And one guy gets on his cell phone to tell his wife that he is going to be late getting home, because of the crowd. Now, he must have said something nasty, because the really big guy standing in front of him turns around and starts beating him. Then he's stomping on him, and fortunately the security cam doesn't show below the counter. The guy had to be rushed to intensive care. I can't remember if he lived or not. That's pretty awful, but that's not the worst part. The worst part is everyone else staring ahead, pretending it wasn't happening. A whole lot of priests and levites there. Who turned out to be the good Samaritan? The best our culture was able to do was someone who discretely slipped out of the building and called 911 in a corner of the parking lot.
Jesus' Samaritan is a missionally-minded man. He doesn't even think—he kicks into gear. He helps the fallen victim. He is the example for all of us. We should be like the Samaritan. Good Samaritan! Jesus ends his parable with the words, “You go, and do likewise.” Go and be a good Samaritan. Help the poor, the sick, the needy. The one beaten down.
But that interpretation—and it's a good one!—is the answer to the first question the lawyer in our passage asks: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Actually, Jesus' parable is an answer to the lawyer's second question: “who is my neighbor?” The neighbor isn't the fallen victim; The neighbor is the good Samaritan. Why did Jesus pick a Samaritan? Because Jews HATE Samaritans. This is the second layer, and as adults we hear this layer. We don't hear it when we are a kid in Sunday school. We hear it when we are older and more ready for this tough lesson. Your neighbor is your ENEMY. The person you hate. When Jesus asks the lawyer, “which one of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?” The lawyer responds, “The one who showed him mercy.” Ha can't even get the word SAMARITAN out of his mouth. Never will he say that a Samaritan is his neighbor. Now, when Jesus says the words, “You go, and do likewise,” they mean something different. Love your enemies. Well, that gives us something to think about. Let's go home and think about what it means to love our enemies.
But here's the amazing third layer that I was telling you about! Here's the big twist, that you don't usually hear. Here's the part that made me raise an eyebrow and think, “ohhh, now I'm starting get it!” We know this: the Jews and the Samaritans are enemies. They don't like each other. They hate each other. Got it. This means, the Samaritan hates the Jew as much as the Jew hates the Samaritan. The Lawyer can't say that the Samaritan is his neighbor, and just as true: the Samaritan can't say the Lawyer is his neighbor. Now, we have another reason why Jesus picked a Samaritan as the hero of this parable. In real life, never in a million, billion years would a Samaritan help a Jew out! Jesus us making a big point here. Never in a million, billion years! Let's update the story a little, so it will make more sense to us today. The Jew on his way to Jericho is attacked by robbers and he lies bleeding and dying. Other Jews pass him by. So far the same story. Now, instead of a Samaritan, now we have an Militant Muslim terrorist from Iran, complete with bomb strapped around him, on his way to his 72 virgins in the great hereafter. Things start to get more clear. Does the Islamic terrorist come up to the fallen Jew and say, “oh dear. You're hurt. Let me help you.” Never in a million, billion years. He may kick him when he walks by. He may finish him off. But he will not help him.
So why does Jesus pick a Samaritan as his hero, knowing that in real life, never will a Samaritan help a fallen Jew? Because, in real life, we will never, never be able to love our enemies. It is impossible for us to love our enemies. Impossible. On our own. By human means. Never will we be able to will ourselves to help an enemy who has fallen. And that is Jesus' big point. You need God to be able to love your enemies. You need God's help. God loves our enemies. Really loves them. He made them. He loves them. Every hair on your enemy's head is numbered, too. God wants your enemy to have everlasting life, too. And once we get it in our heads that God loves our enemies just as much as he loves us, our behavior toward our enemies will start to change.
Now, I've heard from a lot of people what loving your enemy looks like. Here's what I hear a lot: “loving your enemy means wishing him well, even if you don't like him.” That's loving your enemy? Wishing someone well is not hard. Wishing someone well is always conditional. I can say, “I wish you well, as long as I don't have to be around you.” I can wish the Nazis well, as long as they surrender, because that's really the only way they are going to be well off.” I wish the guy who stole my girlfriend well, as long as he gets lost and lets me have my girlfriend back. See where I'm going. Wishing someone well is always conditional. You can't wish someone well as they are blowing up a cafe in Baghdad. Good luck in your bombing, I wish you well! No! You want the guy to not blow up people! That's how we wish people well. It's all conditional.
With God nothing is conditional. God loves every single person on this earth unconditionally. God plants his cross on earth, and he says, here it is! Grab hold! I will save you. But isn't that conditional? If you don't grab hold of the cross you aren't saved? That's not God's condition—that's our condition. God, I want to be saved, but I don't want to grab hold of your cross. I don't want to repent. I don't want to change my life. I don't want to put others first. I want to remain selfish. I want to continue to live a sinful life. I'll do it MY WAY, thank you. Those are my conditions.
And it's not like God won't agree to our conditions. God CAN'T agree to our conditions. Imagine that! God CAN'T do something. God can't agree to our conditions, because that is not the way creation works. That is not the way the universe works. God sustains the universe. He is the energy the universe runs on. God is wholly and perfectly good. The universe, therefore, runs on Good. But not us: we chose to run on sin. We actively chose to run on sin. Sin is our fuel. But the universe runs on good. If we run on bad sin and the universe runs on a good god, what should happen? Zaaaap! Like a bug zapper. Fried. Dead. God said it would happen in the garden. You will surely die, he told Adam and Eve. But it didn't happen. God loves us so much that he suspended the laws of goodness. He stopped the overwhelming good that he created from zapping us like bugs. He's still suspending the laws of the universe. He's still doing it at this moment. Right now. He is keeping all the amazing goodness in the universe from slamming closed on our heads and pulverizing us. Because he loves us.
And the only way he can get us out of this situation is through Jesus Christ. The cross is stopping the universe from crashing down on us. Jesus is like the big strong guy in the movies that holds the big steel door open, keeps it from slamming shut forever. He's holding the door, and he's saying come on! Get through! Everyone through! Come on! We jump through, right? Um, no, we stand there, and we say, “I've got three conditions!”
We are our own worst enemies. Which is why we'll never be able to love ourselves without God's help. God sent his son Jesus to die on the cross and create that way for us to have a relationship with the creator of the universe, the being who is so good that we would incinerate. No conditions, just the most amazing love.
What do I need to do to inherit eternal life? Love like God loves. Love God and love your neighbor.
Who is my neighbor? The one who shows us mercy. Our enemy.
How am I able to love my enemy? You can't. With man it is impossible. With God nothing is impossible.
Amen.
Discernment (Luke 9:57-62; 1 Kings 19:19-21)
Delivered at St. John's Parish, Quincy, IL, on June 27
Today's readings give us some lessons discerning our call. We can learn three things from this passage in Luke 9, and the one in first Kings. The first is this: it's ok to hesitate. It's ok to pause. Take some time to pray. The second: make sure you're called. Jesus may be calling you to something completely different from what you were thinking. We need to make sure that we are hearing Christ's call and not our own. The third thing: when we hear the call, and we know it is the call of Jesus, we've paused and prayed, we need to make sure that we obey Jesus and follow. So, I'm going to briefly unpack each of these three things.
The first: it's ok to hesitate. To pause. Today we have two passages that seem to be at odds with each other. One seems to say it's okay to hesitate, and another seems to say it's NOT okay to hesitate. The first is from first Kings 19: Elijah finds Elisha, who is plowing a field. Elijah passed by him and cast his cloak upon him. It's the call to discipleship! Elisha runs after Elijah and says, “Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.” Elijah lets him. Elisha slaughters all the oxen he was using to plow the field, and he and his family have a feast to celebrate his call. And then Elisha goes along with Elijah.
Now, wait a second! Our Gospel reading is from the end of Luke 9. We've got one guy saying he'll follow Jesus, and Jesus responds cryptically: Foxes and birds have homes, but I've got no place to sleep at night. O...k. Jesus sounds like a nut here. Then a second guy says I need to bury my Father before I can follow you. Jesus rebukes him, too. “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. You go and proclaim the kingdom.” Guess asking to stay home and bury your dad is the wrong answer with Jesus. Finally, we have a third guy who says “I will follow you, but let me say goodbye to my family first.” Hey, that's the same thing Elisha said! This should be an easy one. Jesus is going to let him do that, right? Nope. Jesus says, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.” Wow! Slap across the face! He even mentions plowing, and you know Jesus has read first Kings 19, so maybe he is criticizing the way Elijah and Elisha did things?
So, there's a contradiction, right? Which one is correct? Jesus, right? Elijah isn't God, so he obviously didn't know that when the guy you call hesitates you're supposed to reject him, right? Send him packing, right? Well, actually, the first Kings passage is the norm. Actually, the same thing that happened with Elijah and Elisha in Kings happens earlier in Luke, chapter 5! Just a few chapters before Jesus is disappointing these wannabe disciples, he calls Matthew. Matthew is sitting at his tax booth, and Jesus comes up to him and says simply, “Follow me.” Kind of like throwing a cloak on his shoulders. What does Matthew do next? He throws a great feast at his house. This is the same thing Elisha does!
So the Elisha passage is the norm. Elisha actually has a very positive reaction to be being called. What usually happens when God calls someone in the Bible? Here's a few examples from the Old Testament: God calls Moses from a burning bush. Moses responds: who am I? I can't free your people from Egypt! They won't listen to me. I don't talk very well. Excuses, excuses. Did God say, well, to heck with you, I'll find somebody else. No, he stuck with Moses. Jonah: he gets on a boat and runs away! God has to go hunt him down and bring him back to his task. Never once does God say, “aw, let Jonah go to Tarshish. I'll find someone else. Jeremiah: I'm but a child. I can't. I can't. You can just see God rolling his eyes and saying, “I give up!” But he doesn't. He sticks with these people.
So, Elisha's response is actually a very good one: let's celebrate! I'm going to be a prophet! Matthew's response to Jesus is the same: let's party! Jesus doesn't mind: he joins the feast himself. God is patient. It is ok to hesitate. It's even ok to be scared. It's okay to hesitate negatively. Actually, God wants us to hesitate. He wants us to pray to him and discern our call. What does the culture say? The culture says: plunge in—go for it! Don't hesitate. He who hesitates is lost. You may never get a second chance, fella! Get married in Vegas to someone you've just met. Go all the way! If you make a mistake, medical science can clear it up. The Bible says he who hesitates is wise. He who hesitates is listening for the Lord to speak.
That leads us to the second thing we learn from these readings. What is the Lord saying? Is he calling us to this mission or that one? Is he calling us to follow him here or there? This is where we can really break open the Luke 9 passage. Why is Jesus coming down on these wannabes so harshly? The first guy and the last guy are not listening to what the Lord is saying. The first guy was never called to follow Jesus. He just comes up to Jesus and says I'll follow you wherever you go. Jesus essentially responds, “you don't know what you are asking. I'm on my way to the cross. I'm not going to get any sleep until then. Are you sure you want to follow me there?” This guy knows that Jesus is the messiah, and the Jews had one idea of what the messiah was going to do when he came. Kick . . . you know what. The messiah was going to be a warrior. He was going to lead an army. He was going to overthrow the government. He was going to create a kingdom right here on earth and rule it himself. But that was not the way Jesus was going to do it. Jesus came to die, to be a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. When we follow Jesus, we are following him in suffering. But the guy doesn't get that. He wants to follow Jesus for the wrong reason, and Jesus knows that. Which is why he never called him. What does the culture say? Senior year of High School you have to pick a career. Don't try to figure out what God is calling you to do with your life, pick something right now. And then we'll send you to a university to focus on that subject. Spend thousands of dollars on something that might not be your calling. What happens? A lot of people fail out. A lot of people realize they are going down the wrong path. Some turn around and pursue something else, feeling lost and behind everyone else. Others drop out.
I was pretty good at math in High School. I liked to play computer games. Translation: Fred is going to be a computer programmer! Get him in a math program. I thought I was called to play music. Neither path was what God called me to. One was chosen by my parents and my guidance counselor. The other was chosen by me. No! I went to James Madison University as a math major. Calculus killed me! I ran away from that. Had no idea what I was going to do. Decided I liked literature, became an English major: the major for those who don't know what they want to do. Went to a graduate school to learn writing. Wrote novels. Worked in Web design. Still knowing that I was not where I was supposed to be. Finally got the call from God to this. 20 years later. What if I had heard the call earlier? Don't know. Here I am.
The last guy in Luke 9 is worse than the first: Once again, he was never called. So, he is calling himself to Jesus—taking control. But he adds a second insult. I'm calling myself to you, Jesus, he says, but on my terms. He has reduced discipleship to a human undertaking. I'll follow you, Jesus, but I'm calling the shots. I'm doing it my way. Imagine going in for a job interview and saying, I'd like this job, but I'm going to set my own hours and I'm going to put together my own salary and benefits. Hmm. Let's see. I'd like that corner office, too. How should the employer respond?: “I haven't hired you yet.”
The culture is all behind this last guy. What does the culture say? Take control of your destiny. You can do anything you put your mind to, and do it your way. Be independent. Follow your own path, march to a different drummer. Go against the flow, swim upstream. But if God isn't calling you to that path, what is your life? You're living a lie. What would happen if people chose careers in order to obtain wealth and power and influence instead of listening for God's call? What if that not only happened in the world but in the church, too? I wonder what that would look like. Oh well, I guess we'll never know.
The third thing we learn from these readings: once you've paused, once you've made sure that you are called, then you follow. You'd think that's the easy part, but you'd be surprised at how much we let things get in the way. We find excuses, so we can avoid following. Here's where the second guy in the trio comes in. The second guy is called. Jesus says to him, just like he says to Matthew, “Follow me.” But the guy responds that he needs to bury his Father before he can follow Jesus. He responds with a point of Jewish law. His dad is not dead yet. We assume that the dad just died, and he'll be a day late running after Jesus at the most. No, he could have 20 more years waiting to follow. He's using the law as an excuse. He has set up the law as a barrier between Jesus and himself. It's a convenient excuse. We can't break the law, can we? Well, let's see how Jesus responds. Jesus rebukes him: “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. You go and proclaim the kingdom.” Jesus's call is stronger than the law. Nothing, nothing should come in between Jesus and the one he has called, not even the law itself. We're not talking about committing crimes here. We're talking about letting those little details build up, like excuses, so that we can not follow the call. In Jesus' time, the Jewish law was filled with little details that constantly got in the way of following God. That's why Jesus comes down so hard on the Pharisees throughout the gospels. They could have been such great followers of Jesus, but the little details of Jewish law became big obstacles.
Paul was one of those Pharisees, and Jesus had to knock the guy off his horse to get through to him. Jesus blinded him, he had to yank him out from under that pile of legal details. And what did Paul do next? He went on to Damascus and waited. He waited for three days. He paused. He prayed. He fasted. And then Ananias came and restored his sight, calling Paul to follow Jesus. And Paul followed. All three lessons we just learned today. This last lesson is tough for us. We may not have the Jewish law but some churches have legal battles going on, and those barriers are using up lots of time, money, and resources that could be used to grow the kingdom.
Aside from Legal issues, we've got a lot of other things that pile up and prevent us from following the call. We're too busy. There's not enough time in the day. We're distracted by technology and a seemingly infinite variety of entertainment. We're over-committed, and most importantly, we've invested too much in the path that we are taking. Too much money, too much time, too much study, too much effort. I know of a woman, a doctor of theology, she went to oxford. Her dissertation was on the authenticity of the Gospel of John. Her committee tried to destroy her. They bombarded her with questions and virtually attacked her. She succeeded, though. She passed. They signed off on her work. She asked a member of the committee, why did you all attack me so harshly? He responded: “we were ordered to. Your paper contradicted the head of the department's life's work.” That's the big hurdle. We've invested too much in the wrong path. That's why we see so many people in the media, in politics, in the culture defending lies. Obvious lies, but they have to defend the lies. They've invested too much in the lies. If they speak the truth, they will be ruined.
And that's exactly what Jesus calls us to do: ruin ourselves. We drop the lies we are living when we are called. We repent, we turn 180 degrees from where we were headed. We take our hand from the plow and slaughter the oxen, so that we cannot go back to that old life. We leave our fishing boats behind, and our nets. We completely eradicate our old lives to follow the call. Because that is what Jesus did. He was there at the creation of the world. He is the Word of God. He is the son of God. But he was called to be a sacrifice for us, to break the bonds of sin and death, so that we could have everlasting life. Jesus heard the call of the father, and he paused, he waited until the fullness of time. And when the time came, he followed the call. He became incarnate. He became man. And he suffered, he died, he was entombed. And then he rose again. The firstborn of the new creation. The first of a new order, of which we are all a part.
All we have to do is pause, listen, and follow.
Amen
Today's readings give us some lessons discerning our call. We can learn three things from this passage in Luke 9, and the one in first Kings. The first is this: it's ok to hesitate. It's ok to pause. Take some time to pray. The second: make sure you're called. Jesus may be calling you to something completely different from what you were thinking. We need to make sure that we are hearing Christ's call and not our own. The third thing: when we hear the call, and we know it is the call of Jesus, we've paused and prayed, we need to make sure that we obey Jesus and follow. So, I'm going to briefly unpack each of these three things.
The first: it's ok to hesitate. To pause. Today we have two passages that seem to be at odds with each other. One seems to say it's okay to hesitate, and another seems to say it's NOT okay to hesitate. The first is from first Kings 19: Elijah finds Elisha, who is plowing a field. Elijah passed by him and cast his cloak upon him. It's the call to discipleship! Elisha runs after Elijah and says, “Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.” Elijah lets him. Elisha slaughters all the oxen he was using to plow the field, and he and his family have a feast to celebrate his call. And then Elisha goes along with Elijah.
Now, wait a second! Our Gospel reading is from the end of Luke 9. We've got one guy saying he'll follow Jesus, and Jesus responds cryptically: Foxes and birds have homes, but I've got no place to sleep at night. O...k. Jesus sounds like a nut here. Then a second guy says I need to bury my Father before I can follow you. Jesus rebukes him, too. “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. You go and proclaim the kingdom.” Guess asking to stay home and bury your dad is the wrong answer with Jesus. Finally, we have a third guy who says “I will follow you, but let me say goodbye to my family first.” Hey, that's the same thing Elisha said! This should be an easy one. Jesus is going to let him do that, right? Nope. Jesus says, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.” Wow! Slap across the face! He even mentions plowing, and you know Jesus has read first Kings 19, so maybe he is criticizing the way Elijah and Elisha did things?
So, there's a contradiction, right? Which one is correct? Jesus, right? Elijah isn't God, so he obviously didn't know that when the guy you call hesitates you're supposed to reject him, right? Send him packing, right? Well, actually, the first Kings passage is the norm. Actually, the same thing that happened with Elijah and Elisha in Kings happens earlier in Luke, chapter 5! Just a few chapters before Jesus is disappointing these wannabe disciples, he calls Matthew. Matthew is sitting at his tax booth, and Jesus comes up to him and says simply, “Follow me.” Kind of like throwing a cloak on his shoulders. What does Matthew do next? He throws a great feast at his house. This is the same thing Elisha does!
So the Elisha passage is the norm. Elisha actually has a very positive reaction to be being called. What usually happens when God calls someone in the Bible? Here's a few examples from the Old Testament: God calls Moses from a burning bush. Moses responds: who am I? I can't free your people from Egypt! They won't listen to me. I don't talk very well. Excuses, excuses. Did God say, well, to heck with you, I'll find somebody else. No, he stuck with Moses. Jonah: he gets on a boat and runs away! God has to go hunt him down and bring him back to his task. Never once does God say, “aw, let Jonah go to Tarshish. I'll find someone else. Jeremiah: I'm but a child. I can't. I can't. You can just see God rolling his eyes and saying, “I give up!” But he doesn't. He sticks with these people.
So, Elisha's response is actually a very good one: let's celebrate! I'm going to be a prophet! Matthew's response to Jesus is the same: let's party! Jesus doesn't mind: he joins the feast himself. God is patient. It is ok to hesitate. It's even ok to be scared. It's okay to hesitate negatively. Actually, God wants us to hesitate. He wants us to pray to him and discern our call. What does the culture say? The culture says: plunge in—go for it! Don't hesitate. He who hesitates is lost. You may never get a second chance, fella! Get married in Vegas to someone you've just met. Go all the way! If you make a mistake, medical science can clear it up. The Bible says he who hesitates is wise. He who hesitates is listening for the Lord to speak.
That leads us to the second thing we learn from these readings. What is the Lord saying? Is he calling us to this mission or that one? Is he calling us to follow him here or there? This is where we can really break open the Luke 9 passage. Why is Jesus coming down on these wannabes so harshly? The first guy and the last guy are not listening to what the Lord is saying. The first guy was never called to follow Jesus. He just comes up to Jesus and says I'll follow you wherever you go. Jesus essentially responds, “you don't know what you are asking. I'm on my way to the cross. I'm not going to get any sleep until then. Are you sure you want to follow me there?” This guy knows that Jesus is the messiah, and the Jews had one idea of what the messiah was going to do when he came. Kick . . . you know what. The messiah was going to be a warrior. He was going to lead an army. He was going to overthrow the government. He was going to create a kingdom right here on earth and rule it himself. But that was not the way Jesus was going to do it. Jesus came to die, to be a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. When we follow Jesus, we are following him in suffering. But the guy doesn't get that. He wants to follow Jesus for the wrong reason, and Jesus knows that. Which is why he never called him. What does the culture say? Senior year of High School you have to pick a career. Don't try to figure out what God is calling you to do with your life, pick something right now. And then we'll send you to a university to focus on that subject. Spend thousands of dollars on something that might not be your calling. What happens? A lot of people fail out. A lot of people realize they are going down the wrong path. Some turn around and pursue something else, feeling lost and behind everyone else. Others drop out.
I was pretty good at math in High School. I liked to play computer games. Translation: Fred is going to be a computer programmer! Get him in a math program. I thought I was called to play music. Neither path was what God called me to. One was chosen by my parents and my guidance counselor. The other was chosen by me. No! I went to James Madison University as a math major. Calculus killed me! I ran away from that. Had no idea what I was going to do. Decided I liked literature, became an English major: the major for those who don't know what they want to do. Went to a graduate school to learn writing. Wrote novels. Worked in Web design. Still knowing that I was not where I was supposed to be. Finally got the call from God to this. 20 years later. What if I had heard the call earlier? Don't know. Here I am.
The last guy in Luke 9 is worse than the first: Once again, he was never called. So, he is calling himself to Jesus—taking control. But he adds a second insult. I'm calling myself to you, Jesus, he says, but on my terms. He has reduced discipleship to a human undertaking. I'll follow you, Jesus, but I'm calling the shots. I'm doing it my way. Imagine going in for a job interview and saying, I'd like this job, but I'm going to set my own hours and I'm going to put together my own salary and benefits. Hmm. Let's see. I'd like that corner office, too. How should the employer respond?: “I haven't hired you yet.”
The culture is all behind this last guy. What does the culture say? Take control of your destiny. You can do anything you put your mind to, and do it your way. Be independent. Follow your own path, march to a different drummer. Go against the flow, swim upstream. But if God isn't calling you to that path, what is your life? You're living a lie. What would happen if people chose careers in order to obtain wealth and power and influence instead of listening for God's call? What if that not only happened in the world but in the church, too? I wonder what that would look like. Oh well, I guess we'll never know.
The third thing we learn from these readings: once you've paused, once you've made sure that you are called, then you follow. You'd think that's the easy part, but you'd be surprised at how much we let things get in the way. We find excuses, so we can avoid following. Here's where the second guy in the trio comes in. The second guy is called. Jesus says to him, just like he says to Matthew, “Follow me.” But the guy responds that he needs to bury his Father before he can follow Jesus. He responds with a point of Jewish law. His dad is not dead yet. We assume that the dad just died, and he'll be a day late running after Jesus at the most. No, he could have 20 more years waiting to follow. He's using the law as an excuse. He has set up the law as a barrier between Jesus and himself. It's a convenient excuse. We can't break the law, can we? Well, let's see how Jesus responds. Jesus rebukes him: “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. You go and proclaim the kingdom.” Jesus's call is stronger than the law. Nothing, nothing should come in between Jesus and the one he has called, not even the law itself. We're not talking about committing crimes here. We're talking about letting those little details build up, like excuses, so that we can not follow the call. In Jesus' time, the Jewish law was filled with little details that constantly got in the way of following God. That's why Jesus comes down so hard on the Pharisees throughout the gospels. They could have been such great followers of Jesus, but the little details of Jewish law became big obstacles.
Paul was one of those Pharisees, and Jesus had to knock the guy off his horse to get through to him. Jesus blinded him, he had to yank him out from under that pile of legal details. And what did Paul do next? He went on to Damascus and waited. He waited for three days. He paused. He prayed. He fasted. And then Ananias came and restored his sight, calling Paul to follow Jesus. And Paul followed. All three lessons we just learned today. This last lesson is tough for us. We may not have the Jewish law but some churches have legal battles going on, and those barriers are using up lots of time, money, and resources that could be used to grow the kingdom.
Aside from Legal issues, we've got a lot of other things that pile up and prevent us from following the call. We're too busy. There's not enough time in the day. We're distracted by technology and a seemingly infinite variety of entertainment. We're over-committed, and most importantly, we've invested too much in the path that we are taking. Too much money, too much time, too much study, too much effort. I know of a woman, a doctor of theology, she went to oxford. Her dissertation was on the authenticity of the Gospel of John. Her committee tried to destroy her. They bombarded her with questions and virtually attacked her. She succeeded, though. She passed. They signed off on her work. She asked a member of the committee, why did you all attack me so harshly? He responded: “we were ordered to. Your paper contradicted the head of the department's life's work.” That's the big hurdle. We've invested too much in the wrong path. That's why we see so many people in the media, in politics, in the culture defending lies. Obvious lies, but they have to defend the lies. They've invested too much in the lies. If they speak the truth, they will be ruined.
And that's exactly what Jesus calls us to do: ruin ourselves. We drop the lies we are living when we are called. We repent, we turn 180 degrees from where we were headed. We take our hand from the plow and slaughter the oxen, so that we cannot go back to that old life. We leave our fishing boats behind, and our nets. We completely eradicate our old lives to follow the call. Because that is what Jesus did. He was there at the creation of the world. He is the Word of God. He is the son of God. But he was called to be a sacrifice for us, to break the bonds of sin and death, so that we could have everlasting life. Jesus heard the call of the father, and he paused, he waited until the fullness of time. And when the time came, he followed the call. He became incarnate. He became man. And he suffered, he died, he was entombed. And then he rose again. The firstborn of the new creation. The first of a new order, of which we are all a part.
All we have to do is pause, listen, and follow.
Amen
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